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More "Niggardly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the case of men of letters. Every piece of work which is not as good as you can make it, which you have palmed off imperfect, meagrely thought, niggardly in execution, upon mankind, who is your paymaster on parole, and in a sense your pupil, every hasty or slovenly or untrue performance, should rise up against you in the court of your own heart and condemn ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... himself remained for the most part with them, that is to say except while ascertaining from time to time the situation of his wife. His presence, however, was only a restraint upon their good-humor, and his niggardly habits raised some rather uncomplimentary epithets during his short visits of inquiry. It is customary upon such occasions, as soon as the mistress of the family is taken ill, to ask the servants to ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... had fed on this when Death's white arms Came sleeved in vapors and miasmal dew, Curling across the jungle's ferny floor, Becking each fevered brain. On bleak divides, Where Sleep grew niggardly for nipping cold That twinged blue lips into a mouthed curse, Not back to Seville and its sunny plains Winged their brief-biding dreams, but once again, Lords of a palace in Tenochtitlan, They guarded Montezuma's treasure-hoard. Gold, like some finny harvest of the sea, Poured ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... gathers, is a quality dispensed with of necessity in the practice of most professions, being that of which nature is, for some reason, most niggardly. There is no such thing as passing in imagination for any department of public usefulness, even the government of Oriental races; the list of the known qualified would be exhausted, perhaps, in getting the papers set. Yet neither ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... reverence for Shakespeare had increased to an intensity that made Johnson's admiration seem feeble and niggardly. This transformation was due to many causes, but in the main it was a part of the vast changes in European literature known as the Romantic movement. This resulted in a rejection of the rules and models of neo-classicism, a new interest in the ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... satisfaction, when he was privately informed that the Intendant of the works proposed to allow him but a very trifling remuneration. "These drawings," said Cano, "are either to be given away, or to fetch 2,000 ducats;" and packing them up, he mounted his mule, and took the road to Granada. The niggardly Intendant, learning the cause of his departure, became alarmed, and sent a messenger after him post-haste, offering him his own ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... going to leave that money to?"[12] I would add to this that such fathers act very similarly to a person who should be very careful about his shoe but care nothing about his foot. Many persons also are so niggardly about their children, and indifferent to their interests, that for the sake of a paltry saving, they prefer worthless teachers for their children, practising a vile economy at the expense of their children's ignorance. Apropos of this, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... story. There seems to be an immense amount of seed wasted. Some of it falls on the roadway; some of it is snatched away by the birds; some of it is caught among the bushes. Yet the sower proceeds in no niggardly fashion. He strides away across the field scattering the seed broadcast, far beyond the border where he expects a crop, for he knows that, though much shall be wasted, whatever seed may fall on good ground will have miraculous increase. ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... enlightened self-interest, to protect the rights and to advance the welfare of the Colonies. His words are significant, and it seems well to quote them, since they gather up the policy which he consistently followed: 'If Great Britain gives up her supremacy from a niggardly spirit of parsimony, or from a craven fear of helplessness, other Powers will soon look upon the Empire, not with the regard due to an equal, as she once was, but with jealousy of the height she once held, without the fear she once inspired. To build up an ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... much to Dr. Young—a debt which the poet acknowledged, as we have already seen, in no niggardly way. Amongst Milton's Latin letters is the following, which has been translated by Professor Masson thus: 'Although I had resolved with myself, most excellent preceptor, to send you a certain small epistle composed in metrical numbers, yet I did not consider that I had ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... of the Life Ray is responsible for the miraculous growth of all life in New Eden. The Life Ray is Nature's most powerful force. Yet Nature is often niggardly and paradoxical in her use of her powers. In New Eden, we have forced the powers of creation to take ascendency over the powers ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... watch,—the first present he had made her during twenty years of service. Though he turned over to her his old shoes (which fitted her), it is impossible to consider that quarterly benefit as a gift, for the shoes were always thoroughly worn-out. Necessity had made the poor girl so niggardly that Grandet had grown to love her as we love a dog, and Nanon had let him fasten a spiked collar round her throat, whose spikes no longer pricked her. If Grandet cut the bread with rather too much parsimony, ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... period that Mr. Masaki was brought into personal contact with Yoshida; and hence, through the eyes of a boy of thirteen, we get one good look at the character and habits of the hero. He was ugly and laughably disfigured with the smallpox; and while nature had been so niggardly with him from the first, his personal habits were even sluttish. His clothes were wretched; when he ate or washed he wiped his hands upon his sleeves; and as his hair was not tied more than once in the two months, it ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mother had been living from hand to mouth, so to speak, for years, and they had also been obliged to keep up appearances, which is sometimes embittering even to persons of amiable tempers. Lady Anstruthers, it is true, had lived in the country in as niggardly a manner as possible. She had narrowed her existence to absolute privation, presenting at the same time a stern, bold front to the persons who saw her, to the insufficient staff of servants, to the village to the vicar and his wife, and the few ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to lay out for the Lord. Oh, what does this presage and witness but that I am of the earth and that my portion is not blessed, but that my goods are rather accursed! 4 Nov.—Neil Campbell staid with me. I found my niggardly nature still encroaching upon me, and made my supplication for escape. July 1.—Because I have not employed my wealth in charitable uses, therefore does the Lord take other ways more grievous to me to scatter what I have so sinfully kept back.' And so on, alternately ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... purposes. The task he set before Hunter now was to steer the Inglesby ship through a perilous passage into the matrimonial harbor he had in mind. Let Hunter do that—no matter how—and the pilot's future was assured. Inglesby would be no niggardly rewarder. But let the venture come to shipwreck and Hunter must go down with it. Hunter was not left in any doubt upon ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... to whom nature has been niggardly in the matter of roundness of form, but even these need not despair; if they cannot show their own busts, they can show something nearly as good, since we read the following, which we forbear to translate:—"Autre excentricite. C'est l'invention ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... many tears: "It is indeed my own fault, but you shall be safe. That niggardly wretch, Arthapati, is known to be intimate with me. I will say that I received it from him; and, as he is already suspected of stealing it, ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... know something of the fair Mistress Flanagan who was left in very comfortable circumstances by a niggardly husband, who did her the favour to die suddenly one day, to the no small satisfaction of the pleasure-loving widow, who married him in an odd sort of a hurry, and got rid of him as quickly. Mr. Flanagan was engaged in supplying the export provision trade, ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... his hand. She allowed him to take hers, but only to the extent of a niggardly inch or so. At the same moment she glanced up at him, when their eyes met, and hers were ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... the church in punishing those who dared to attack the established religion, and that such only were punished by the Inquisition.' He had in his pocket Pomponius Mela de situ Orbis, in which he read occasionally, and seemed very intent upon ancient geography. Though by no means niggardly, his attention to what was generally right was so minute, that having observed at one of the stages that I ostentatiously gave a shilling to the coachman, when the custom was for each passenger to give only six-pence, ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... of your friend, and the universal rule of good taste. Do not plunge into extravagance from which you will scarcely recover except in months of nervous strain and desperate financial struggle. On the other hand do not be mean and niggardly in your gifts. Oh, not that; avoid selfishness at Christmas, if at no other time. Rather no gift at all than a grudging one. Let your offerings represent yourselves and your affections. Indeed if they do not represent ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... now spending most of her life in the past—that sad past, which had been very niggardly of joy for her; but she was so used to suffering that she was still grateful for the least tenderness shown to her, and the pale lights which had shone here and there in the drab days of her life, were still enough to make them bright. All the evil that ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... from one of these watering-places to another, I have been more and more struck by the inconvenient and niggardly life led by the wealthy and well-fed, the dulness and feebleness of their imagination, the lack of boldness in their tastes and desires. And how much happier are those tourists, old and young, who, not having ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... food. At the expiration of every week, accompanied by William, he would journey to South Norwalk, to purchase the necessary stores for the following seven days, and he soon became well-known to the shopkeepers for the niggardly manner of his dealings. Upon his return his purchases would be carefully locked up in the strong box which he kept in his room, and would be doled out regularly to the servant for cooking in the apartments below, with a stinting exactness painfully ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... the province or its capacity for further development. In view of all the circumstances of the case the amount of twelve millions, which is apparently all that has been spent on railway construction since 1869, would certainly appear to be rather a niggardly sum. In spite, therefore, of the very unnecessary warmth with which Sir George Scott has urged his views, it is to be hoped that his plea for the adoption of a somewhat bolder financial policy in the direction of expenditure on railways, and still more on feeder ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... be lord of all this scene of almost unimaginable luxury and splendor. Then, he thought, how soon he'd turn his back upon the old school-house, snap his fingers in the face of Hans Van Ripper and every other niggardly patron, and kick any itinerant pedagogue out of doors that should dare ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... so magnificently endowed the most of his generals, who showed himself so liberal to his armies, and to whom, on the other hand, France owes so many and such handsome monuments, was not generous, and it must even be admitted was a little niggardly, in his domestic affairs. Perhaps he resembled those foolishly vain rich persons, who economize very closely at home, and in their own households, in order to shine more outside. He made very few, not to say no, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Genevra. She was thinking of the stock she had hoarded up for him in her dressing-table drawer, under lock and key. It occurred to her that she could have no end of housewifely thrills if she doled them out to him in niggardly quantities, at stated times, instead of turning them over to him in ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... Indian corn, cotton, tobacco, mulberries, cucumbers, melons, pumpkins, and the castor-oilplant. In Azerbijan the soil is almost all cultivable, and if ploughed and sown will bring good crops of the ordinary kinds of grain. Even on the side of the desert, where Nature has shown herself most niggardly, and may seem perhaps to deserve the reproach of Cicero, that she behaves as a step mother to a man rather than as a mother, a certain amount of care and scientific labor may render considerable ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... weary of being told that they pack badly, that they are niggardly about credits, that they do not send enough or sufficiently qualified representatives, that they are careless of details, and so on. Still, before mentioning some further particular steps that should be taken, it is necessary to emphasize the fact that these same old faults ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... favour; but I went back to my father and mother, and aunt, and Preston, and others; and comfort found no lodgment with me. Then there was an extract from a Southern paper, calling Yankees "the most contemptible and detestable of God's creation" - speaking of their "mean, niggardly lives - their low, vulgar and sordid occupations" - and I thought, How can peace be? or what will ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... hundred pounds for Tom Trippet, because he had declared that he would dance a minuet with any man in the three kingdoms except myself. But I often parted with money against my inclination, either because I wanted the resolution to refuse, or dreaded the appellation of a niggardly fellow; and I may be truly said to have squandered my estate, without honour, without friends, and without pleasure. The last may, perhaps, appear strange to men unacquainted with the masquerade of life: I deceived others, and I endeavoured to deceive myself; and have worn the face of pleasantry ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... it; and he would sign almost anything for to-morrow, provided to-day could be left unmolested. He was a man whom scarcely any amount of fortune could have benefited permanently, and who was made to be ruined to cheat small tradesmen, to be the victim of astuter sharpers: to be niggardly and reckless, and as destitute of honesty as the people who cheated him, and a dupe, chiefly because he was too mean to be a successful knave. He had told more lies in his time, and undergone more baseness of stratagem in ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the live-forever, not so well by the variable flower - for it is a niggardly bloomer - as by the thick leaf that they delight to hold in the mouth until, having loosened the membrane, they are able to inflate it like a paper bag. Sometimes dull, sometimes bright, the flower clusters never fail to attract many insects to their feast, which is accessible even to those of ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... cursed money. If only the Great Horatio would come out of his niggardly shell and stump up a bit! It was not fair—he was as rich as Croesus; it would not hurt him to fork out ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... noble devotion as honorable to himself as it was ill-deserved by its object. Time would not suffice, had I as many hours as I have minutes before me, to tell you of all the acts of generosity that this mean man, this niggardly actor, performed in his lifetime. One characteristic anecdote will suffice. When Whitfield was building his Tabernacle in Tottenham Court Road, he employed one of the carpenters who worked for Garrick at Drury Lane. Subscriptions for the Tabernacle do not seem to have come in as fast as ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... Jacopo? To me, they have ever seemed more prone to vent their seditious discontent. But 'tis the nature of man to be niggardly of praise and lavish of censure. This decree of the tribunal must not be suffered to die, with the mere justice of the case. Our friends should dwell on it, openly, in the cafes, and at the Lido. They will have no cause to fear, should they give their tongues a little latitude. A just government ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... officers, temporarily without commands, taking a cruise or two as privateers, until Congress should provide more ships for the regular service—a system which did not tend to make a Congress, which was niggardly at best, hasten to provide public vessels for work which was being reasonably well done at private expense. As a result of this system, we find such famous naval names as Decatur, Porter, Hopkins, Preble, Barry, and Barney also figuring in the lists of privateersmen. ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... to be had in the metallic atmosphere, the stunted copses, the marshy pools spotted with the blue shields of fleur-de-lys. For even here, in the refuse corner of the great city, Nature doled out niggardly gifts of green growth—proofs of her ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... view about education, which is that of times past, when 'the struggle for life,' as men used to phrase it (i.e., the struggle for a slave's rations on one side, and for a bouncing share of the slave- holders' privilege on the other), pinched 'education' for most people into a niggardly dole of not very accurate information; something to be swallowed by the beginner in the art of living whether he liked it or not, and was hungry for it or not: and which had been chewed and digested over and over again by people who didn't care about it in order to serve it out to other people who ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... to practise; inch by inch, and bit by bit, Jonas rather allowed the dazzling prospects of the Anglo-Bengalee establishment to escape him, than paraded them before his greedy listener. And in the same niggardly spirit, he left Mr Pecksniff to infer, if he chose (which he DID choose, of course), that a consciousness of not having any great natural gifts of speech and manner himself, rendered him desirous to have the credit of introducing to Mr Montague some one who was well endowed in ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... effect was not equally apparent. There were some who had scant minds to fix, and what nature had been niggardly in bestowing, they had frittered away in a trifling life; but for the earnest girls, those who truly longed to make the most of themselves and to be able to do a worthy work in the life before them, such advice became ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... of the husband you selected for your mother's child, and doubtless you had your own private reasons for sacrificing her to such a man. His worthlessness, too, furnishes an excuse for your niggardly allowance to me. The very dresses I wear are the price of dishonor. I often feel ashamed of the part I play toward your wife, Ottario, and I know not but some day I may throw myself at her ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... that we fear Sir W. Doyly did betray our design, which spoiled all; however, my Lady Batten invited herself to dine with him this week, and she invited us all to dine with her there, which we agreed to, only to vex him, he being the most niggardly fellow, it seems, in the world. Full of good victuals and mirth we set homeward in the evening, and very merry all the way. So to Greenwich, where when come I find my Lord Rutherford and Creed come from Court, and among other ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... to the need of strict economy in expenditures. The fact that our national needs forbid us to be niggardly in providing whatever is actually necessary to our well-being, should make us doubly careful to husband our national resources, as each of us husbands his private resources, by scrupulous avoidance of anything like wasteful or reckless ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... last (such depressed letters!) you compare your own fate with that of some others with an injustice which God measures, and which I too have knowledge of. Isa, you speak you know not what. Be sure of one thing, however, that God has not been niggardly towards you, and that He never made a creature for which He did not make the work suited to its hand. He never made a creature necessarily useless, nor gave a life which it was not sin on the creature's part to hold unthankfully and ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... jealousy made a hundred, whilst, differently from young men, La Portillone settled down to a virtuous life directly she had her thousand crowns. Even a Duke, who would have counted out five hundred crowns, would have found this girl rebellious, which proves she was niggardly with her property. It is true that the king caused her to be sent for to his retreat of Rue Quinquangrogne, on the mall of Chardonneret, found her extremely pretty, exceedingly affectionate, enjoyed her society, and forbade the sergeants to ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... oration, address, sermon, declamation, dissertation, exhortation, disquisition, harangue, diatribe, tirade, screed, philippic, invective, rhapsody, plea. Spruce, natty, dapper, smart, chic. Stale, musty, frowzy, mildewed, fetid, rancid, rank. Steep, precipitous, abrupt. Stingy, close, miserly, niggardly, parsimonious, penurious, sordid, Storm, tempest, whirlwind, hurricane, tornado, cyclone, typhoon Straight, perpendicular, vertical, plumb, erect, upright. Strange, singular, peculiar, odd, queer, quaint, outlandish. Strong, stout, robust, sturdy, stalwart, powerful. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... to all honest bibliomaniacs. It revived the drooping spirits of the despondent; and, like the syrup of the renowned Dr. Brodum, circulated within the system, and put all the generous juices in action. The niggardly collector felt the influence of rivalship; he played a deeper stake at book-gambling; and hastened, by his painfully acquired knowledge of what was curious and rare in books, to anticipate the rustic collector—which ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... stock for the purposes of land purchase. What, in the name of common sense, has land purchase to do with education? What indissoluble relationship is there between the two that the expenditure upon the one should be made dependent upon the requirements of the other? This niggardly and short-sighted attitude is hardly worthy of one of the richest countries in the world. It is but a matter of a few thousands, and surely the efficient training of the youth of Ireland is quite as important as buying out the Irish landlords ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... pleasant, for the world likes cheerful Mr. Barnum's success; New Haven, girt with flat marshes that look like monstrous billiard-tables, with hay-cocks lying about for balls,—romantic with West Rock and its legends,—cursed with a detestable depot, whose niggardly arrangements crowd the track so murderously close to the wall that the peine forte et dare must be the frequent penalty of an innocent walk on its platform,—with its neat carriages, metropolitan hotels, precious old college-dormitories, its vistas of elms and its dishevelled ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... fairly on the scent, he was nearly certain he would extract every thing from the patient. This was the principal reason why the deacon did not wish to send for him; the expense, though a serious objection to one so niggardly, being of secondary consideration when so many doubloons were at stake. It was necessary, however, to talk on boldly, as any appearance of hesitation might excite the doctor's distrust. ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... evil, wanteth a great foil to perceive the beauty of virtue. This doth the comedy handle so in our private and domestical matters, as with hearing it we get as it were an experience, what is to be looked for of a niggardly Demea: of a crafty Davus: of a flattering Gnatho: of a vainglorious Thraso [Footnote: All characters in the Plays of Terence.]: and not only to know what effects are to be expected, but to know who be such, by the signifying ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... Am I niggardly in thus confining the action of each of us within his own body? Is the range of volition thus marked out too narrow? On the contrary, it is probably still too wide. We are as powerless to direct our bodies as we are to manage affairs in China. This, at least, is the modern psychological ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... two hearts" (dhu'kulbein) signifies to be prudent, wise. Karun is the Arabic Croesus. "Thy hand is tied up" is equivalent to calling a man niggardly.] ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... historian! He sits in his dressing-gown to write: "The enemy attacked in force—" The tranquil pen, moving in a cloud of tobacco smoke, leaves upon the page its little hieroglyphics, serenely summing up the monstrous deeds and sufferings of men of action. How cold, how niggardly, to state merely that Penrod and the painted Verman succeeded in giving the long, black snake a motive power, or tractor, apparently its own but ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... railway through most of the year. Flowers, fruit, and vegetables might raise tantalising memories of the pleasant places where they grew, but were not the less welcome to dwellers in this somewhat austere tract where they did not grow or grew very niggardly. The traffic in these delicacies drew the attention of the London and North- Western Railway Company, whose officials called to account one of our servants for travelling with an excess of personal luggage. The artless contrabandist, besides his own modest pack, had fourteen ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... Dodsley for L150. The bookseller, although a liberal and generous man, was disposed at first to boggle a little at such a price for a didactic poem by an unknown man. He carried the "Pleasures of Imagination" to Pope, who glanced at it, saw its merit, and advised Dodsley not to make a niggardly offer—for "this was no everyday writer." It appeared in January 1744, and, in spite of its faults, nay, perhaps, partly in consequence of them, was received with loud applause; and the author—only twenty-three ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... apparent grossness, Mary, in venturing to bring my own larder with me. Abernethy has me under his orders, and I must eschew your rich country dainties. A little white wine and a cold bird—it is as much as the niggardly ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... it come garbed in drab or radiant with the glow of the sunrise. A prosaic, money-grubbing age we call this, but by the gods! romance hammers once in a lifetime at the door of every mother's son of us. There be those too niggardly to let her in, there be those to whom the knock comes faintly; and there be a happy few who fling wide the door and embrace her ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... untried soil, a rigorous climate, and a savage wilderness, for the sake of reconciling their sense of religious duty with their affections for their country, few, perhaps none of them, formed a conception of what would be, within two centuries, the result of their undertaking. When the jealous and niggardly policy of their British sovereign denied them even that humblest of requests, and instead of liberty would barely consent to promise connivance, neither he nor they might be aware that they were ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... others very beautiful. Those who were rich here will be rich there, and those who were poor on earth will be poor in Hades. As to any moral retribution which may overtake evil-doers in the life to come, their ideas are very vague; only they are sure that the ghosts of the niggardly will be punished by being dumped very hard against the buttress-roots of chestnut-trees. They say, too, that all breaches of etiquette or of the ordinary customs of the country will meet with certain appropriate punishments in the spirit land. When the soul has thus ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... asked how the inscriptions on the tombs in the church-yard were so badly spelled? "Because," answered Amen, "the people are so niggardly, that they ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... and hesitancy still marked that uneasy monarchy as its own. Prussia, although the principal in the fight, was but a feeble power. England, though reaping the harvest of Russia's commerce, had become niggardly in regard to subsidies, and had delayed the long-promised, much-vaunted Baltic expedition until it was useless. The King of Sweden was so hated by his own subjects that his efforts as an ally had been rendered almost futile. In Russia ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... through the outer room without once raising his eyes from the floor. He left Mother Doortje, as much depressed in spirits, as Jason had left her elated; the one looking forward to the future with a selfish and niggardly hope, while the other regarded it with a feeling as forlorn as the destruction of all his youthful fancies could render any view of his after-life. The reader may feel disposed to smile at the idea of Dirck Van Valkenburgh's possessing youthful fancies—regarding the young ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... ship, and Newton received orders to proceed round to the river. Before the Windsor Castle had anchored, the newspapers were put into his hands containing a report of the two actions, and he had the gratification of acknowledging that his countrymen were not niggardly in the encomiums ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the payment a few days helps to pull an order. It is not that a man is niggardly or that he does not want the article but it is the desire, rooted deep in human nature, to hold onto money after it ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... he was for his brother to make a good official showing. If a niggardly Government refused to provide decent quarters—no matter; the miners, with gold pouring in, would themselves pay for a suite "superbly carpeted," and all kept in order by "two likely contrabands"—that is ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was in collusion with the rascal, was not niggardly of her favours with the young Englishman. She received him every night to supper with Zanovitch and Zen, who had been presented by the Sclav, either because of his capital, or because Zanovitch was not so ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... superior in numbers and composed of the best fighting men the ancient world ever saw, had come against him to be broken, scattered, and destroyed. His career through Italy had been, in the words of Horace, as the rush of the flames through a forest of pines. But after Cannae the tide turned. His niggardly, short-sighted countrymen denied him the support without which success was impossible. As his veterans were lost to him he had no means of filling their places, while the Romans could put army after army into the field. But through ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... the Giants were so niggardly," he remarked, with a touch of contempt. "It's simply robbery for them to hold his services at such a figure. Mr. Matson could demand vastly ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... became of her; but for his four brothers, I am happy to state, that though not formidable as soldiers, they were very amiable as citizens. They bought farms — proved their oxen — married wives — multiplied good children, and thus, very unlike our niggardly bachelors, contributed a liberal and laudable part to the population, strength, and glory of their country. God, I pray heartily, take kind notice of all such; and grant, that having thus done his will in this world, they may partake of ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... damages. And those $13,000 belong to him bona fide; and whenever that unfortunate wife wishes a dollar of it to supply her needs she must ask her husband for it; and if the man be of a narrow, selfish, niggardly nature, she will have to hear him ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... which thereby befell a certain knight of Pistoia. Know then that at Pistoia there lived a knight, Messer Francesco, by name, of the Vergellesi family, a man of much wealth and good parts, being both wise and clever, but withal niggardly beyond measure. Which Messer Francesco, having to go to Milan in the capacity of podesta, had provided himself with all that was meet for the honourable support of such a dignity, save only a palfrey handsome enough for him; and not being able to come by any such, ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... statement my philanthropic friend had to set another as made by the partner. Quarriar, according to this, had received the five pounds direct from Conn, and had handed over niggardly sums to the partner for the purchase of goods, to wit, two separate sums of one pound each (of which he returned to Quarriar thirty-three shillings from sales), while Quarriar only gave him as his share of the profits for the whole of the five weeks the sum of seventeen shillings, instead ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... 'Tis wonderful, how she acquires all this. Her husband's ruin'd, my dissipated lord, Most lavishly, I hear, supplies her wants; Whilst even for domestic calls his purse Is niggardly unclos'd; and what he spares, Must be in strictest mode accounted for: Nor does he know a pleasure, absent from her. To keep this sum then, were but fair ...
— The Female Gamester • Gorges Edmond Howard
... of his natural sphere of society to ask Lords, Generals, Aldermen, and other persons of fashion, but is niggardly of his hospitality towards his own equals, is a Dinner-giving Snob. My dear friend, Jack Tufthunt, for example, knows ONE Lord whom he met at a watering-place: old Lord Mumble, who is as toothless as a three-months-old baby, and as mum as an undertaker, and as dull as—well, ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... from the Army of the Potomac, descriptive of the attack on Fort Steadman, March 25th. On the 26th he saw again the sparkling-eyed Sheridan. Once more he began to use his whip of scorpions upon the editors and people who were bestowing all praises upon the Army of the West, with only criticism or niggardly commendation for the Armies of the Potomac and the James, with many a sneer and odious comparison. He witnessed the tremendous attack of the rebel host upon the Ninth Corps, hearing first the signal gun, next the rebel yell, ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... modern manners; but those manners, because they are familiar, artificial, and polished, are, in their very nature, unfit for any lofty effort of the Muse. Whatever poetical enthusiasm he actually possessed he withheld and stifled. Surely it is no narrow and niggardly encomium to say, he is the great Poet of Reason, the first of Ethical authors in verse." Warton illustrated his critical positions by quoting freely not only from Spenser and Milton, but from recent poets, like Thomson, Gray, Collins, and Dyer. He testified that ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... praise cordially and to utter admiration with a free heart. They are mistaken, but no doubt they are sincere. Shakespeare, the wisest of monitors, is never so eloquent and splendid as when he makes one of his people express praise of another. Look at those speeches in Coriolanus. Such niggardly persons, in their detraction of Henry Irving, are prompt to declare that he is a capital stage manager but not a great actor. This has an impartial air and a sapient sound, but it is gross folly and injustice. Henry Irving is one of the greatest actors ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... using his counter for a table, with a newspaper for a cloth. He did not marry. One day he was visited by "Vulture" Hopkins, another well-known miser. "What is your business?" asked Guy, lighting a candle. "To discuss your methods of saving money," was the reply, alluding to the niggardly economy for which Guy was famous. On learning Hopkins's business he blew out the light, saying, "We can do that in the dark." "Sir, you are my master in the art," said the "Vulture;" "I need ask no further. I ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... eight hundred olfactory cavities, while the worker has only five thousand in both. There we have an instance of the almost universal disproportion that exists between the gifts she rains upon love and her niggardly doles to labour; between the favours she accords to what shall, in an ecstasy, create new life, and the indifference wherewith she regards what will patiently have to maintain itself by toil. Whoever would seek faithfully to ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... dear——! [To PHILIP.] On the other hand, Mr. Mackworth, as you are probably aware, my daughter is—no, I won't say a rich woman—I will say comfortably provided for; not by the late Comte de Chaumie, but by myself. [Closing his eyes.] I have never been a niggardly ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... forcibly the barrenness of what was best in that of man: nor is it to be wondered at, that, seeing her perfect and exquisite creations poured forth in a profusion which conception could not grasp nor calculation sum, he should think that it ill became him to be niggardly of his own rude craftsmanship; and where he saw throughout the universe a faultless beauty lavished on measureless spaces of broidered field and blooming mountain, to grudge his poor and imperfect labour to the few stones that he had ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... but two hundred and sixty thousand dollars has been raised through the agency of the labor organizations. This comparatively paltry sum is being doled out in niggardly fashion by a finance committee who feel reluctant to part with a single dollar unless assured that it will have a hundred fold its ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... dread of the Papal Interdict was still a reality. Though the clergy of Florence, roused to retaliative fury, might fling back in the teeth of Sixtus such words as leno matris suae, adulterorum minister, diaboli vicarius, yet the people could not long endure 'the niggardly and imperfect rites, the baptism sparingly administered, the extreme unction or the last sacrament coldly vouchsafed to the chosen few, the churchyard closed against the dead,' which, to quote the energetic language of Dean Milman,[1] were the proper fruits of the Papal ban, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... be induced to vote an annual grant for so important a work till it was accomplished; albeit, when we think of their niggardly denial of any thing to the printing, or{3} even the conservation of the public records, sanguine hopes from that quarter can hardly ...
— Notes & Queries,No. 31., Saturday, June 1, 1850 • Various
... As a home-maker man has the ruggeder part. It is his to provide. The man who falls short of this in the home does not do his part. No woman can respect a man much less love him, who places her, her work, her life, her home, her world under constant embarrassment by a scant and niggardly provision. She loses her ambition, ceases to make her self and her home attractive; disorder, filth, unwholesome food, lack of spirit on her part is the result. She can not be to him, most of all, what he expects her to be, a companion, a counselor, a comfort—a home-maker. Also, it is ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... in my heart, and perhaps a little terror also. It had not been our way to build great fires; we were, indeed, by the captain's orders, somewhat niggardly of firewood, and I began to fear that something had gone wrong while ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his tale with cautious ears; and examined into the state of the weather, and other matters connected with his duty, with the slow and deliberate decision of one who had never done much to acquire a confidence in himself, and who had been but niggardly rewarded for the ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of small and separate apartments." Here the poor wretches sit in a melancholy posture. "Before they cheapen 'em, they turn 'em about from this side to that, survey 'em from top to bottom.... Such of 'em, both men and women, to whom Dame Nature has been niggardly of her charms, are set apart for the vilest services: but such girls as have youth and beauty pass their time well enough.... The retailers of this human ware are the Jews, who take good care of their slaves' ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... like {those} of former days,[62] but as {times are} now, very passable: nor do I in the least wonder that Clinia doats upon her. But he has a father— a certain covetous, miserable, and niggardly person— this neighbor {of ours} (pointing to the house). Do you know him? Yet, as if he was not abounding in wealth, his son ran away through want. Are you aware that it is the ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... "I don't. They put me in the wrong, between them. They make me uncomfortable. I've a good mind to withdraw my subscription to those rascals who came first, and have nothing to do with any of them. Then, you see, down I go for a niggardly fellow. That's the reputation I get. Nothing of this in London! you make your money, pay your rates, and nobody bothers ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... no mercy upon those whom the ocean has many times spared. At that port it is very necessary to have something left over from one's sea-stores, for the expenses are very great in this country. The vicar must not be niggardly in distributing them, if he has to transact any business; or he must arm himself with patience, which is very necessary. His Majesty commands that the religious be provided there with what they need from his royal treasury for ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various
... rolled half a dozen cigarettes and placed them, one by one, beside the feast. One match from his thin supply he placed alongside the cigarettes. Then he looked very doubtful. No; one might blow out. He must not be niggardly. So he kept two for himself and gave three to ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... their hand and were not obliged to risk their capital in other lands. The same hard luck pursued him when, with sudden demonstrations of affection, he had tried to convince Don Marcelo that three thousand francs a month was but a niggardly trifle. ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... generosity of youth, that gauges other men's conduct by its own sentiments, believed that his father, who had never been niggardly to himself, had really acted as his words implied; and, engrossed by the pursuits of the new and brilliant career opened, whether to his pleasures or his studies, suffered the objects of his inquiries to pass from ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... stately cedars, the island naturally attracted a commercial and maritime people like the Phoenicians; while the abundance of its corn, its wine, and its oil must have rendered it in their eyes a Land of Promise by comparison with the niggardly nature of their own rugged coast, hemmed in between the mountains and the sea. Accordingly they settled in Cyprus at a very early date and remained there long after the Greeks had also established themselves on its shores; for we know from inscriptions ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... the Queen's feelings towards him, there is no doubt that one powerful influence, which lasted into the reign of James, was steadily adverse to his advancement. Burghley had been strangely niggardly in what he did to help his brilliant nephew; he was going off the scene, and probably did not care to trouble himself about a younger and uncongenial aspirant to service. But his place was taken by his son, Robert Cecil; and Cecil might naturally have been expected to welcome the ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... both by the emperor himself and by those who at one time or another had influence with him. And, as certainly and inevitably follows in all such practices], great sums of money naturally were spent, great sums unjustly procured, and great sums seized by force. For under no circumstances was Nero niggardly. Here is an illustration. He had ordered no less than two hundred and fifty myriads at one time to be given to Doryphorus, who attended to the state documents of his empire. Agrippina had it all ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... consequences of not listening to what he was saying with reverence, and, surrounded by Indians of various tribes, the good man, mounted on a primitive rostrum seat, dealt liberally in the terrors of the church, while he offered a niggardly allowance of hope even to the best, always excepting himself. For a time the motley crowd seemed disposed to assume a becoming deportment; but when the preacher went into the particulars of the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... would very soon belong to his master. The Hamburgers were deeply afflicted at this threat; in fact, next to the loss of their independence, their greatest misfortune would have been to fall under the dominion of Prussia, as the niggardly fiscal system of the Prussian Government at that time would have proved extremely detrimental to a commercial city. Hanover, being evacuated by the French troops, had become a kind of recruiting mart for the British army, where every man who presented himself was enrolled, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the chemists were half so careful in vending their poisons, there would be a notable diminution in the yearly average of victims to arsenic and oxalic acid. But, alas, in the matter of apology, it is not from the excess of the dose, but the timid, niggardly, miserly manner in which it is dispensed, that poor humanity is hurried off to the Styx! How many times does a life depend on the exact proportions of an apology! Is it a hairbreadth too short to cover the scratch for which you want it? Make your ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... an augury for the world freedom which they helped to create, and, overshadowing all else, WHAT an object lesson it should be to our country at large: east, west, north, south, that, "One touch of nature makes 'all men' kin." That in her opinion and treatment of her faithful, loyal black citizens; niggardly, parsimonious, grudging and half-heartedly, how shameful she has been, how great has been her sin; forgetting; or uncaring, even as Pharoh of old, that: "God omnipotent liveth," and that "He is a JUST ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... increased from year to year, until now it requires about $550 to $600 annually to cover tuition, room-rent, board, and common running expenses. A boy might squeeze through for $400 a year, but he would have to pinch and be niggardly, if not mean. The $550 or $600 would not cover vacation expenses and society dues, therefore the larger sum ought to be reckoned as the cost annually for a Harvard undergraduate at the present time. And upon inquiry, I find that about the same amount of money ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various
... blood and memory, it was the weather of Paradise itself. It might be a little too warm; but it was that modest and inestimable superabundance which constitutes a bounty of Providence, instead of just a niggardly enough. During my first year in England, residing in perhaps the most ungenial part of the kingdom, I could never be quite comfortable without a fire on the hearth; in the second twelvemonth, beginning to get acclimatized, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... die first, will be paid an annuity from my estate. But while Mees Lucy is my wife, I will buy all that she needs. I will delight to dress her, to feed her well. With discretion, of course. For there are many channels into which my income must flow. But I will not be a niggardly husband to her! No, no!" cried the little ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... husband who is willing to come home is often the attitude of the wife. Some of the causes at work when a woman takes her husband back have been discussed earlier.[35] Unfortunately, hopelessly bad husbands profit by them as well as hopeful ones. The policy of niggardly relief to a deserted wife has undoubtedly been responsible for many of these unfortunate attempts to patch up a life together. "She was worn down by her efforts to keep the household going, and, when the faint chance of her husband's supporting her ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... know not only too much, but a deal more than you guess. First let us take the case for the Crown. The jeweller is travelling by coach at night over the moors. He has one postillion only, Roger Tallis by name, and by character shady. The jeweller has money (he was a niggardly fool to take only one postillion), and carries a diamond of great, or rather of an enormous and notable value (he was a bigger fool to take this). In the dark morning two horses come galloping back, frightened and ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... but an half-day's rejoical, and thou likewise! Nay, good maid! we will have each her full day, and a bonfire in the base court, and feasting, and dancing to boot. Both on one day, quotha! marry, but that were niggardly." ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... all the abuse and maltreatment we have received, all the enmity and bitter hostility which the traitorous perfidy of England has engendered, more than one full-freighted vessel has left our ports bearing grain to those whom their own proud aristocracy is either powerless or too niggardly to sustain. Is this not evidence of a civilization considerably advanced beyond any which history has yet recorded?—a civilization based upon the golden rule of Christianity, and upon that still more precious command: 'Love those that hate you, and do good to those that persecute you.' For ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... unsettled economic conditions, its extensive system of slavery (precluding all successful practice of trades by freemen), the continuous military operations, the haphazard financial system, was forced to live niggardly. The contrast between the middle classes and the upper classes seemed very cruel. This condition may account for the many outcries against the "extravagances" of the few privileged ones who could afford decent food and for the exaggerated stories about their table found ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... ridden out the gale, for all that human art could do to make her safe and strong had been done without regard to expense. No niggardly owners had built her of poor and insufficient material, or sent her to sea weakly manned and with incompetent officers. The ship was heavily manned; eighteen or twenty men would have been deemed a sufficient crew to work her; and ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... expenses of that poor waif you were so interested in! My dear child, you are as niggardly with your philanthropies as you are with your favours. Why not be generous with me? And, by the way, can you tell me just why that young fellow appealed to you so? I daresay other 'unknowns' drift into ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... as a playwright, failed as a singer, failed as an actor. He had been forced to take up the profession of putting on dramatic and musical plays, a profession that required vast knowledge and high talents and paid for them in niggardly fashion both in money and in fame. Crossley owed to him more than to any other single element the series of successes that had made him rich; yet the ten thousand a year Crossley paid him was regarded as evidence of Crossley's lavish generosity and was so. It would have been difficult to ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... the doctor said. The point of the spindle had acted as a kind of operation. But it might just as easily have taken the other direction. Yes, we had the doctor to her three times; it was no use being niggardly." Kalle stood and tried to look important; he had stuck his thumbs into his ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Assembly to provide adequate means of defence. Not until the news of massacres of defenceless women and children upon the frontier struck terror to every family in Virginia did the legislators vote money for a body of men to drive back the enemy. And even then so niggardly were they in their appropriations that with the insufficient means granted him even the patient and frugal Washington was unable to prevent the continuance of the murderous raids of the Indians. In the Revolutionary War the same spirit ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... love is stronger than death; it rises superior to adversity, and towers in sublime beauty above the niggardly selfishness of the world. Misfortune cannot suppress it; enmity cannot alienate it; temptation cannot enslave it. It is the guardian angel of the nursery and the sick bed; it gives an affectionate concord to the partnership of life ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... niggardly before, though I have known thee often well intrenched behind Swiss frugality;" said the Signor Grimaldi, laughing. "Thy life, my dear Melchior, may have excellent value in thine own eyes, but I am little disposed to set so mean a price on my own, as thou appearest to think it should ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... greedy, mean, niggardly, penurious, rapacious, close, ignoble, miserly, parsimonious, petty, stingy. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... bound to be in what is really a variation upon a single theme. Though the author cunningly avoids this, I think it might justly be observed that he has made Olivia's plunges almost too uniformly successful. But perhaps not; after all, while you are handling fairy-gold, why be niggardly of it? The heroine's introduction to horse-racing comes about through the unconscious agency of her husband, who takes her with him on a visit to Newmarket in search of local colour for a "sporting" novel. The resulting situation reaches its climax in what is the best ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... also, that the remains of a ruined priory were at hand. We had often laughed since at the eagerness and delight with which we hurried off to look at these venerable objects. It was soon decided, however, that it was a pleasure too exquisite to be niggardly enjoyed alone, and the carriage was sent back with orders to bring up the ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the devil, "and the third must be divided between God and the devil," between the preachers and the Queen, and the Earl of Moray, among others. The eminently godly Laird of Pitarro had the office of paying the preachers, in which he was so niggardly that the proverb ran, "The good Laird of Pitarro was an earnest professor of Christ, but the great devil receive ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... children we are. What are inherited titles and ancient names many times since dishonored, compared with the heritage of uncomplaining suffering and heroism which we boast of to-day because those modest martyrs were working people, proud that by the sweat of their brows they wrung from a niggardly soil the food they ate, proud also that they could leave the plough to govern or to legislate, able also to survey a ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... be niggardly. They must not imitate old Cornelius Husk. Old Corn Husk, you know, saw his boy the other day carrying the thermometer from the kitchen ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... both tiny hands in his. "At best, your poet is an egotist. I must die presently. Meantime I crave largesse, madame, and a great almsgiving, so that in his unending sleep your poet may rehearse our present love." And even in Rigon's dim light he found her kindling eyes not niggardly. ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... forms of education of which they do not approve are as strong as the feelings of the Non-conformist conscience. The attempt to force undenominationalism on the country has been an expensive failure. Recognising this, the denominational—nay, more, the Jesuit—University College has in a niggardly fashion and by a back door been subsidised by the State. The demand is for no more than a university which shall be Catholic in the sense that it shall be national, and this in a preponderatingly Catholic country implies Catholicism. ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... the misery and abasement of the glorious creature on whom he had brought such sorrow, if not shame. The remorse that a strong will and hard heart had stifled so long found voice at last in three muttered words—"God forgive me!" A very niggardly and inadequate expression of contrition—was it not?—conceded to a life whose sins outnumbered its years. Yet the slight thread of hope drawn therefrom has been able since to hold back Cecil Tresilyan from the abyss of utter desperation. She forbore ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... be a nuisance), until at eighteen he is become a man. But the other constituent parts of the school have serious commercial interests at stake. For the masters the school is the means of livelihood, and the livelihood afforded them is in many cases so niggardly that they very rightly consider that the smallest financial mishap to the school might plunge them below the line of bare subsistence. From a slightly different angle, the eyes of the higher officials and the governors are fixed upon ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... maxims to practice: "We must save, that we may share." He never sought to save time or money that he might hoard the more of worldly goods to enjoy in a selfish way. He was ever generous and liberal, as we shall see hereafter. The superficial observer might suppose that a niggardly spirit prompted him to board himself,—that he adopted a vegetable diet for the sake of mere lucre. But nothing could be wider from the truth than such a view. We cannot discover the least desire to hoard ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... the public treasury, the salaries might be considered as net profit. This custom had originated many centuries in the past. In those early days, when a penurious character became an incumbent of public office, the social obligations belonging to it were often but niggardly requited. Sometimes business embarrassments and real necessity demanded economy; so, at last, the Government assumed all the expenses contingent upon every office, from the highest to the lowest. By this means the ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... interpretation of their springs of life and their warping by circumstance. The impression left on one by the studies of the Thrums community is not primarily of intellectual and spiritual narrowness, or niggardly thrift, or dour natures: all are there, but with them are souls reaching after God and often flowering into beauty, and we reverence the quenchless aspiration of maligned human nature for an ideal far above its reach. He achieves the rare feat of portraying ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... appeared as glad to see him as he was to see them, who wished him many happy returns of his birthday—William had forgotten it was his birthday—and were as lavish with pats and what little Fay called "stlokes" as Hannah had been niggardly. There were also two young ladies, who addressed him kindly and seemed pleasantly aware of his existence, and William liked young ladies, for the three Miss Walcotes had thoroughly spoiled him. But he decided to attach himself most ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... cabinet was undoubtedly much influenced by this section of its supporters in the blind confidence it snowed to the czar, in their presumption that moral influence would suffice to prevent a war, and in the niggardly, and therefore unwise, and ultimately costly scheme upon which armaments were provided. Probably never in the House of Commons was rebuke more eloquently and sincerely given, or more justly merited, than when Lord Palmerston ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... poor, pinched mind spending the rich days and years clutching a few bits of metal? What can be fine about paring the necessities of life to the very quick? We all know "economical people" who seem to be niggardly even about the amount of air they breathe and the amount of appreciation they will allow themselves to give to anything. They shrivel—body and soul. Economy is waste: it is waste of the juices of life, the sap of living. For there are two kinds of waste—that of the prodigal ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... with the she-devil, all of which he half jestingly ascribes to magic. Sir Cautious and various guests enter, dice are produced and, luck favouring the gallant, Gayman wins one hundred pounds from the old Banker, and a like sum from several others of the company. As the niggardly Sir Cautious bewails his losses the victor offers to stake three hundred pounds against a night with Julia, the bargain, of course, being kept from the lady. After some rumination Sir Cautious accepts and Gayman wins the throw. That night he causes himself to be conveyed to Sir ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... Mr. B. made a proposition for the purchase of the paper when written; but as he could offer me only fifty guineas a sheet, I thought it better to let our society have it, than sacrifice it for so paltry a sum. Notwithstanding this niggardly spirit, however, the gentleman showed his consideration for me in all other respects, and indeed treated me with the greatest civility. His parting words made a deep impression upon my heart, and I hope I shall ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the courtier is telling the truth. He who believes another anent some quality which he does not possess knows himself ill; for even if he is faithless and stubborn, base and as cowardly as a hare, niggardly and foolish and malformed, worthless in deeds and in words, yet many a man who mocks at him behind his back, extols and praises him to his face; thus then the courtier praises him in his hearing when he speaks of him ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... unnecessary and besides no small labor to build him a house portionable to that bulk and bigness. And do you not observe, O Chersias, continues he, many poor men,—how one while they pinch their bellies, upon what short commons they live, how sparing and niggardly and miserable they are; and another while you may observe the same men as distrustful and covetous withal, as if the plenty of the city and county, the riches of king and kingdom were not sufficient to preserve them from ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... that the Dandy asks in return? Solely, we may say, that you would recognise his existence; would admit him to be a living object; or even failing this, a visual object, or thing that will reflect rays of light. Your silver or your gold (beyond what the niggardly Law has already secured him) he solicits not; simply the glance of your eyes. Understand his mystic significance, or altogether miss and misinterpret it; do but look at him, and he is contented. May we not well cry shame on an ungrateful world, which ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... the things that have this kind[2] of utility have been given to man by nature. She has furnished some materials that are useful and has not furnished them in quantities sufficient to prevent them from being specifically important. On account of the comparatively niggardly way in which she has doled them out to man, every bit of the supply has a power to benefit him; and if he gains some portions, he goes upward in the scale of well-being, and if he loses some, he goes downward. Wild fruits ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... rode last, turned towards the house where a little group of Dermotts and Namaras stood next to a more numerous group of countrymen, and cried: 'Dermott, you deserve to be as you are this hour, a lantern without a candle, a purse without a penny, a sheep without wool, for your hand was ever niggardly to piper and fiddler and story-teller and to poor travelling people.' He had not done before the three old Dermotts from the Ox Mountains had run towards their horses, and old Dermott himself had caught the bridle of a garron of the ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... Tom Teeter came over after tea to give his opinion upon poor old Sandy's case. Jake Martin across from him was trying to buy Sandy's land, folk said, and if Martin did such a thing, then he, Tom Teeter, considered him a more penurious and niggardly miser, that would skin his neighbor's grasshoppers for their hide and tallow, than he had ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... (for, having gone so far, I would fain leave nothing untouched upon,) that I remember, somewhere about these venerable precincts, a picture of the Countess Godiva on horseback, in which the artist has been so niggardly of that illustrious lady's hair, that, if she had no ampler garniture, there was certainly much need for the good people of Coventry to shut their eyes. After all my pains, I fear that I have made but a poor hand at the description, as regards a transference ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... boot-heel at the back-stick, and laid on a good supply of fuel. We were wet through and through, but we wrapped ourselves in our travelling-blankets like a brace of clansmen in their plaids, put our feet towards the niggardly blaze, and were soon ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... carousal they returned to Charlesfort, where they were soon pinched with hunger. The Indians, never niggardly of food, brought them supplies as long as their own lasted; but the harvest was not yet ripe, and their means did not match their good-will. They told the French of two other kings, Ouade and Couexis, who dwelt towards the south, and were rich ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... strong box designated. You require four millions of dollars, and you desire that this sum shall be taken from the money set apart for the maintenance of the army and the assistance of famished and suffering villages and towns. I acknowledge that the court of his sainted majesty was somewhat niggardly, and that you, sire, may justly find some changes necessary. If, however, it is determined to use for this purpose the funds set apart for other important objects, then must your majesty impose new and heavy taxes upon your subjects, or ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... New Haven, girt with flat marshes that look like monstrous billiard-tables, with haycocks lying about for balls,—romantic with West Rock and its legends,—cursed with a detestable depot, whose niggardly arrangements crowd the track so murderously close to the wall that the peine forte et dure must be the frequent penalty of an innocent walk on its platform,—with its neat carriages, metropolitan hotels, precious old college-dormitories, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... their gold snuff-boxes into rough wooden ones; and the new-fashioned portraits were now only profiles of a face, traced by a black pencil on the shadow cast by a candle on white paper! All the fashions assumed an air of niggardly economy, till poor Silhouette was driven into retirement, with all his projects of savings and reforms; but he left his name to describe the most economical sort of portrait, and one as melancholy as his ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... rights and to advance the welfare of the Colonies. His words are significant, and it seems well to quote them, since they gather up the policy which he consistently followed: 'If Great Britain gives up her supremacy from a niggardly spirit of parsimony, or from a craven fear of helplessness, other Powers will soon look upon the Empire, not with the regard due to an equal, as she once was, but with jealousy of the height she once ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... rich here will be rich there, and those who were poor on earth will be poor in Hades. As to any moral retribution which may overtake evil-doers in the life to come, their ideas are very vague; only they are sure that the ghosts of the niggardly will be punished by being dumped very hard against the buttress-roots of chestnut-trees. They say, too, that all breaches of etiquette or of the ordinary customs of the country will meet with certain ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... hand. She allowed him to take hers, but only to the extent of a niggardly inch or so. At the same moment she glanced up at him, when their eyes met, ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... intention, even were it in my power, which it is not, to attempt an exact and complete description of all the productions of the group of islands composing the Philippines, to which nature has with no niggardly hand dispensed great territorial and maritime wealth. And as the limits of this work prevent much expansion, I will confine the following observations to an outline of the principal articles produced in the country, beginning ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... asks in return? Solely, we may say, that you would recognize his existence; would admit him to be a living object; or even failing this, a visual object, or thing that will reflect rays of light. Your silver or your gold (beyond what the niggardly Law has already secured him) he solicits not; simply the glance of your eyes. Understand his mystic significance, or altogether miss and misinterpret it; do but look at him, and he is contented. May we not well cry shame on an ungrateful world, which refuses even this poor boon; ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... somewhere a woman,—and because nobody of taste could surreptitiously possess herself of my veil, I have no doubt that she cut it incontinently into two equal parts, and gave one to her sister, and there are two women,—nay, since niggardly souls have no sense of grandeur, and will shave down to microscopic dimensions, it is every way probable that she divided it into three unequal parts, and took three quarters of a yard for herself, three quarters for her sister, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... is that they are neither so much in haste as the French to grow rich, nor so niggardly as the Dutch to save; that their houses are richly furnished, and their tables well served. You are neither soothed nor soured by the merchants of London; they seldom ask too much, and foreigners buy of them as cheap as others. They are punctual ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... 'brigands'," said Pulitzer as we came away, "differing according to individual character, to race and pursuit. Now, if I were writing that play, I should represent the villain as a tyrannous City Editor, meanly executing the orders of a niggardly proprietor." ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... increased by the reflection that a great many worthy people, even among his own acquaintances, are, by some mysterious law of their being, debarred from any share in his pleasure. Yet surely we need not be so niggardly in this matter. There is wit enough in those two reverend gentlemen to go all around the living earth and leave plenty for generations now unborn. Each ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... lord of the host which he sent out for the defence of his country, and for him fought Olaf divers battles and proved himself to be an able captain, and himself maintained a large host of warriors on the fiefs allotted to him by the King. Of no niggardly disposition, Olaf was ever openhanded to the men that were with him and who for this self-same reason held him in affection; but as oft times happens when men who are not of the country are exalted to power, or are ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... and the amendment of laws by those who have learnt how to legislate, justice by those who have studied jurisprudence, and the functions of a country postman are not given to a paralytic. Society should model itself on nature, whose plan is specialisation. "For," as Aristotle says, "she is not niggardly, like the Delphian smiths whose knives have to serve for many purposes, she makes each thing for a single purpose, and the best instrument is that which serves one and not many uses." Elsewhere he says, ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... again for fresh supplies; while Daddy, at his wits' end for waiters, after haranguing a group of customers on the philosophy of living, amid a tumult of mock cheers and laughter, would rush in exasperated to Dora, to say that never again would he trust her niggardly ways—she would be the ruin of him with ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... would begin and say, "Good pork:" "Yes," says the mother, "good pork." Then he cries, "Yes, very good pork." And so they said of all things; to which nobody made any answer, they going there not out of love or esteem of them, but to eat his victuals, knowing him to be a, niggardly fellow; and with this he is jeered now all over the country. Met Mr. Cooling, who tells me of my Lord Duke of Buckingham's being sent for last night by a Sergeant at Armes to the Tower for treasonable ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... and eyes are rendered inaccessible, when the body, moreover, has no wounds, the laying still takes place, but this time in a hesitating and niggardly fashion. I pluck the bird completely, the better to watch what happens; also, I cover the head with a paper hood to close the usual means of access. For a long time, with jerky steps, the mother explores the body in every direction; she takes her stand by preference on the head, which she ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... respect for Mrs. Moore,' he began. 'I know her to be a most devoted helpmeet to the vicar, and a truly good woman. At the same time'—he coughed—'at the same time, I should wish to say distinctly that after being niggardly in her domestic affairs, which is unfortunately the case, I do not think it adds to her stock of Christian virtues to give the money ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... best, They seldom cherish sorrow; But a bare-minded man Dreads everything; The niggardly is uneasy even ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... exceeding ten miles square meant not only police control, but it meant to make a home fit for the national seat of government, and to provide for the necessities of its representatives. Nevertheless conscientious scruples and niggardly appropriations had sufficient weight for many years to make the home of the Union a disgrace to the nation and a thing of contempt in comparison with the ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... mosses, was a great cluster of wild flowers, summer's last and autumn's first children. They had been gathered in no ordered garden, but taken from the skirts of the fields and the bosom of the woods; and Carolina the opulent, the beautiful, the free-handed, does not deck herself niggardly. ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... always la grande dame, rose without apparent embarrassment to meet the gentleman who entered, though I knew she could not help but feel keenly the niggardly appearance of the board she left with such grace. The stranger—he was certainly a stranger; this I could see by the formality of her manner—was a gentleman of urbane bearing and a general ...
— The Gray Madam - 1899 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... Greek. His delicate constitution permitted him the use only of bread and wine. Condemned by many as a renegade, he had no desire for places of honour, but only to see his merits acknowledged, and existence assured to him. He was simple without being niggardly; he desired to be neither ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... are women to whom nature has been niggardly in the matter of roundness of form, but even these need not despair; if they cannot show their own busts, they can show something nearly as good, since we read the following, which we forbear to translate:—"Autre excentricite. ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... had a tidy sum saved out of the housekeeping money. She was naturally thrifty, and Orville had never been niggardly. Her meals when Orville was on the road, had been those sketchy, haphazard affairs with which women content themselves when their household is manless. At noon she went into the dining car and ordered a flaunting little repast of chicken salad and asparagus, and Neapolitan ice cream. The men ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... almost anything for to-morrow, provided to-day could be left unmolested. He was a man whom scarcely any amount of fortune could have benefited permanently, and who was made to be ruined to cheat small tradesmen, to be the victim of astuter sharpers: to be niggardly and reckless, and as destitute of honesty as the people who cheated him, and a dupe, chiefly because he was too mean to be a successful knave. He had told more lies in his time, and undergone more baseness of stratagem in order to stave ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is natural; it does not come off!" the old lady exclaimed, and a smile crept over her parchment-coloured face. "Not but what a great deal of nonsense is talked about the usage of rouge, my dear children! There is no harm in supplementing the niggardly gifts of nature. You, for instance, Marie-Anne, would look all the better for a little rouge!" She spoke in a high, ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... one black sheep in the flock objected. He quite agreed, of course, with the general principle that liberality with small means was beautiful to behold as well as desirable to possess—the liberality, not the small means—and that, on the other hand, riches with a narrow niggardly spirit was abominable, but then—and the black sheep came, usually, to the strongest part of his argument when he said "but then"—it was an uncommonly difficult thing, when everything was up to famine prices, and gold was depreciated in value owing to the gold-fields, ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... him in prowess or in knowledge; and the lord thinks that the courtier is telling the truth. He who believes another anent some quality which he does not possess knows himself ill; for even if he is faithless and stubborn, base and as cowardly as a hare, niggardly and foolish and malformed, worthless in deeds and in words, yet many a man who mocks at him behind his back, extols and praises him to his face; thus then the courtier praises him in his hearing when he speaks of him to another; and yet he pretends that the lord does not hear what they are speaking ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... the Life Ray is responsible for the miraculous growth of all life in New Eden. The Life Ray is Nature's most powerful force. Yet Nature is often niggardly and paradoxical in her use of her powers. In New Eden, we have forced the powers of creation to take ascendency over the powers ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... have been the Queen's feelings towards him, there is no doubt that one powerful influence, which lasted into the reign of James, was steadily adverse to his advancement. Burghley had been strangely niggardly in what he did to help his brilliant nephew; he was going off the scene, and probably did not care to trouble himself about a younger and uncongenial aspirant to service. But his place was taken by his son, Robert Cecil; and Cecil might naturally have ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... to me! So then, I have made no will—I did not desire to do so—and then I knew what you were; you have a good heart; you are not niggardly, not too near, in any way; I said to myself that when my end approached I would tell you all about it, and that I would beg of you not to forget the girl. And then listen again! When I am gone, make your way to the place at once—and make such arrangements that she may not blame my memory. You ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... paid, and so good-bye. But it is needless to multiply examples; the proof of the pudding is in the eating. When we came to Apemama, of so many white men who have scrambled for a place in that rich market, one remained—a silent, sober, solitary, niggardly recluse, of whom the king remarks, "I think he good; he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... declining my compliment in such a manner, as only a person can do, who deserved it, she said, For her part, she had always thought me a man of sense [a man of sense, Jack! What a niggardly praise!],—and should therefore hope, that, when I wrote, it exceeded even my speech: for that it was impossible, be the letters written in as easy and familiar a style as they would, but that they must have that advantage from sitting down to write them which prompt speech ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... freedom from pain, which, even if it be a freedom from evil, is nevertheless not the chief good, make use of an addition which is not very easily recommended to men in general, and yet I do not understand why they do it in such a niggardly and restricted manner: for, as if they had to bring something to add to virtue, first of all they add things of the least possible value; afterwards they add things one by one, instead of uniting everything which nature had approved of as the highest goods, to pleasure. And as all these things ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... very soon belong to his master. The Hamburgers were deeply afflicted at this threat; in fact, next to the loss of their independence, their greatest misfortune would have been to fall under the dominion of Prussia, as the niggardly fiscal system of the Prussian Government at that time would have proved extremely detrimental to a commercial city. Hanover, being evacuated by the French troops, had become a kind of recruiting mart for the British army, where every man who presented himself was ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... patent laws grant protection for industrial property. Many of them, indeed, have formed the subjects of patents which, from one reason or another, lapsed long before the expiration of the maximum terms. Nature is ever prodigal of seeds and of "seed-thoughts" but comparatively niggardly of places in which the young plant will find exactly the kind of soil, air, rain, and sunshine which ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... the wiles he was set on to practise; inch by inch, and bit by bit, Jonas rather allowed the dazzling prospects of the Anglo-Bengalee establishment to escape him, than paraded them before his greedy listener. And in the same niggardly spirit, he left Mr Pecksniff to infer, if he chose (which he DID choose, of course), that a consciousness of not having any great natural gifts of speech and manner himself, rendered him desirous to have the credit of introducing to ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... frugal in your way of living; if you do not squander your estate, it will maintain you in time of necessity. I do not mean you should be either profuse or niggardly; for though you have little, if you husband it well, and lay it out on proper occasions, you will have many friends; but if on the contrary you have great riches, and make but a bad use of them, all the world will forsake you, and leave you ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... scanty, small, drained, insufficient, niggardly, scarce, sparing, exhausted, mean, poor, scrimped, stingy, impoverished, miserly, scant, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... come garbed in drab or radiant with the glow of the sunrise. A prosaic, money-grubbing age we call this, but by the gods! romance hammers once in a lifetime at the door of every mother's son of us. There be those too niggardly to let her in, there be those to whom the knock comes faintly; and there be a happy few who fling wide the door and embrace ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... political dues were paid out of the public treasury, the salaries might be considered as net profit. This custom had originated many centuries in the past. In those early days, when a penurious character became an incumbent of public office, the social obligations belonging to it were often but niggardly requited. Sometimes business embarrassments and real necessity demanded economy; so, at last, the Government assumed all the expenses contingent upon every office, from the highest to the lowest. By this means the occupant of a Government office was freed from every care ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... latest additions to the Conservative ranks, William Batters, a converted and reformed Liberal. He had been an active member of the Liberal party for many years, but at the last election he had been entirely convinced of their unworthiness by the close-fisted and niggardly way in which ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... Probably the most alert public in the world, it requires of its leaders that they be alert. Its appetite for variety is insatiable, but its appreciation, when given, is full-handed and whole-hearted. The American public never holds back from the man to whom it gives; it never bestows in a niggardly way; ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... see how anxious he was for his brother to make a good official showing. If a niggardly Government refused to provide decent quarters—no matter; the miners, with gold pouring in, would themselves pay for a suite "superbly carpeted," and all kept in order by "two likely contrabands"—that is ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... practice: "We must save, that we may share." He never sought to save time or money that he might hoard the more of worldly goods to enjoy in a selfish way. He was ever generous and liberal, as we shall see hereafter. The superficial observer might suppose that a niggardly spirit prompted him to board himself,—that he adopted a vegetable diet for the sake of mere lucre. But nothing could be wider from the truth than such a view. We cannot discover the least desire to hoard the money he saved. He laid it out ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... more than the Brutus was worth, but I disliked to appear niggardly in the matter, Donald. I knew you and your father would approve whatever sum I settled for—and the loss of the little boat provided a nice opportunity for generosity without hurting ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... this great law of the earth, let poets sing and fancy as they may, the Spring and Autumn of America partake largely of the universally distinctive characters of the rival seasons. What Nature has done on this Continent, has not been done niggardly; and, while we may boast of a decline of the year that certainly rivals, and, with few exceptions, eclipses the glories of most of the climates of the old world, the opening months rarely fail of equalizing the gifts of Providence, by a very decided exhibition of all the disagreeable qualities ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... told her that! How he had stood, with all the power of his "divine soul" in his will, and told her,—he,—a man,—that he put away her love from him then, forever! He spared himself nothing,—slurred over nothing; spurned himself, as it were, for the meanness, the niggardly selfishness in which he had wallowed that night. How firm he had been! how kind! how masterful!—pluming himself on his man's strength, while he held her in his power as one might hold an insect, played with her shrinking woman's nature, and trampled it under ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... must know something of the fair Mistress Flanagan who was left in very comfortable circumstances by a niggardly husband, who did her the favour to die suddenly one day, to the no small satisfaction of the pleasure-loving widow, who married him in an odd sort of a hurry, and got rid of him as quickly. Mr. Flanagan was engaged in supplying the export provision trade, which, every one ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... which I sat down occupied the recess of a bay-window, and commanded a view of the front of the inn, where I continued to be amused by the successive departures of travellers—the fussy and the offhand, the niggardly and the lavish—all exhibiting their different characters in that diagnostic moment of the farewell: some escorted to the stirrup or the chaise door by the chamberlain, the chambermaids, and the waiters almost in a body, others moving off under a cloud, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... out to welcome the strangers. Two children, nice children, who appeared as glad to see him as he was to see them, who wished him many happy returns of his birthday—William had forgotten it was his birthday—and were as lavish with pats and what little Fay called "stlokes" as Hannah had been niggardly. There were also two young ladies, who addressed him kindly and seemed pleasantly aware of his existence, and William liked young ladies, for the three Miss Walcotes had thoroughly spoiled him. But he decided ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... on this when Death's white arms Came sleeved in vapors and miasmal dew, Curling across the jungle's ferny floor, Becking each fevered brain. On bleak divides, Where Sleep grew niggardly for nipping cold That twinged blue lips into a mouthed curse, Not back to Seville and its sunny plains Winged their brief-biding dreams, but once again, Lords of a palace in Tenochtitlan, They guarded Montezuma's ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... kingdom about with one. [He slaps his right coat-pocket.] Here lies the crown of England. [Now the left coat-pocket.] Here the crown of Scotland—and here, in my waistcoat pocket, is Ireland. What shall I take from herein exchange? [He looks about.] Is the gilding real? It looks deuced niggardly and close-fisted. There's space enough in these great halls, but I'll wager there are many mice here. It's as quiet as an English Sunday. [Rises.] There's some ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... land, but the spring that year was a meagre starveling, niggardly of smiles. He seemed to have borrowed winter's breath, and the pale young leaves shuddered in the unfriendly blasts. The fruit blossom struggled into a nipped existence, and fell like thin snow to the ground. An eerie spring, and men said there was a spell upon the country, and looked ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... Jenny; the French are very niggardly, and give their poor carrots to live on, and so they have adopted the word, I suppose. ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... results, notwithstanding that the windows and doors remain wide open! The Board of Health would soon deal with the negligent official or landlord. With very few exceptions, "civilized" men, women, and children are negligent and niggardly caretakers of the human dwelling place—the marvellous body of man. "Lack of time," "haven't the time," or "no time," is the excuse they ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... but as it was somewhat rusty, the officer feared that the magnetic properties of the steel would be impaired. Baudin expressed his regret, and said: "Everything has been furnished by the Government in the most niggardly fashion; if they had followed my advice we should have been provided with silver needles ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... a shilling for scrubbing a hammock, and others owned a sewing-machine with which in spare time they made uniform suits. Washing and sewing men were bent upon having a good pay-day. These two classes of men would seldom buy any article from the canteen. I should not say they were niggardly or selfish—their course probably was governed by self-denial, or it may be that their future marriage day was the solution of their conduct. As for myself, I never could eat with relish any service food, consequently most of my wages was ...
— From Lower Deck to Pulpit • Henry Cowling
... was going to take one niggardly hour. Nor was he asking that little for his own sake. Eager as he was—as he had been for two weeks—for the privilege of just being alone with her, he would have foregone that now, had it been possible to write her what he had ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... more pitiable than a poor, pinched mind spending the rich days and years clutching a few bits of metal? What can be fine about paring the necessities of life to the very quick? We all know "economical people" who seem to be niggardly even about the amount of air they breathe and the amount of appreciation they will allow themselves to give to anything. They shrivel—body and soul. Economy is waste: it is waste of the juices of life, the sap of living. For there are two kinds of waste—that ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... of the churches be. It was for length the breadth of the temple, and of the same size with 'the Holiest of all' (1 Kings 6:3; 2 Chron 3:4). The first might be to teach us in charity we should not be niggardly, but, according to the breadth of our ability, we should extend it to all the house; and that in our so doing, the very emblem of heaven is upon us, of which the holiest was a figure. 'As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... back to my father and mother, and aunt, and Preston, and others; and comfort found no lodgment with me. Then there was an extract from a Southern paper, calling Yankees "the most contemptible and detestable of God's creation" - speaking of their "mean, niggardly lives - their low, vulgar and sordid occupations" - and I thought, How can peace be? or what will it be when ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... less true that he on many occasions displayed great generosity. He was always willing to give concerts for the benefit of his fellow-artists and for other charitable purposes, and on more than one occasion bestowed large sums of money for the relief of distress. We may assume that he was niggardly by habit and generous by impulse. Utterly ignorant of everything except the art of music, bred under the most unfortunate and demoralizing conditions, the fact that his character was, on the whole, so naive ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... shalt find a woman familiar with society, and instal her in thy house as governess and example. If the woman be also of Israel, so much the better; for then we may expect faithfulness without jealousy. And further, son of Jahdai, be niggardly in nothing concerning our Lael. Clothe her as she were the King's daughter. At going abroad, which she shall do with me in the street and on the water, I would have her sparkle with jewels, the ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... By a turn of imagination, by a refinement of reflection, by an enthusiasm of passion, we seem to take part in the interests of others, and imagine ourselves divested of all selfish considerations: but, at bottom, the most generous patriot and most niggardly miser, the bravest hero and most abject coward, have, in every action, an equal regard to their own ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... actually tell whether Snooks had made money or merely pretended to possess it. Some said they knew he had, for he lived so niggardly; others said the coal trade was not what it was; and there were not wanting people who hinted that old Betty Bodger's house and garden—which had been given to her years ago by the old squire, what ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... Sir W. Petty, who, a century and a half later, calculated the whole specie of England at only 6,000,000 l.—This hoard, whatever may have been its precise extent, was too great to be formed by frugality, even under the penurious and niggardly Henry. A system of extortion was employed, which "the people, into whom there is infused for the preservation of monarchies a natural desire to discharge their princes, though it be with the unjust charge of their counsellors, did impute unto Cardinal Morton and Sir Reginald ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 495, June 25, 1831 • Various
... still a reality. Though the clergy of Florence, roused to retaliative fury, might fling back in the teeth of Sixtus such words as leno matris suae, adulterorum minister, diaboli vicarius, yet the people could not long endure 'the niggardly and imperfect rites, the baptism sparingly administered, the extreme unction or the last sacrament coldly vouchsafed to the chosen few, the churchyard closed against the dead,' which, to quote the energetic language of Dean Milman,[1] were the proper fruits of the Papal ban, however ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... solitary men of strong minds, was a good critic of the substance of poetry, but somewhat niggardly in the allowance he made for those subsidiary qualities which make it the charmer of leisure and the employment of minds without definite object. It may be doubted, indeed, whether he set much store by any contemporary writing but his own, and whether he did not look ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... master, which was only another form of slavery. The colonel had been emancipated by the same token that had made Peter free. Peter had returned home poor and broken, not because he had been free, but because nature first, and society next, in distributing their gifts, had been niggardly with old Peter. Had he been better equipped, or had a better chance, he might have made a better showing. The colonel had prospered because, having no Peters to work for him, he had been compelled to work for himself. He would set his own success against Peter's failure; and ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... here are dried figs mixed with wrinkled dates, plums too, and fragrant apples in wide baskets, and grapes gathered from the purple vines. In the middle there is white honey-comb. Above all, there are welcome looks, and no indifferent and niggardly feelings. In the meanwhile, as oft as Baucis and the alarmed Philemon behold the goblet, {when} drunk off, replenish itself of its own accord, and the wine increase of itself, astonished at this singular event, they are frightened, and, with hands held up, they offer their prayers, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... contemptuously exclaimed Albani. "You would be a very niggardly vicegerent of God! But as Corilla is well worth two thousand scudi, I am content. Give me eight thousand scudi and the ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... your mixing. A color mixed for one place will never do for another, so don't try to paint another place with it. Have the patience to proceed slowly, and mix the color specially for each brush-stroke. On the other hand, don't be niggardly with your paint. Don't use less paint than you need. Mix an ample brushful and put it on; then mix another, and use judgment as to how much you should use each time. The variety of tone and value which comes ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... company, he and his people were doomed to struggle on precisely as heretofore. Scarcely any land had been cleared, so that it was impossible by means of agriculture alone to provide against famine in the winter. Nevertheless, the requisite supplies were furnished by the company's agents in the most niggardly manner. Its neglect became worse and worse, until, in the winter of 1626, there was an actual dearth of provisions at Quebec. In the spring of 1627 De Caen's vessels brought out, as usual, a certain supply of necessaries. But when the summer had passed away, and autumn came, although ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... ordinary man: the spirit which was fitted to lead others by its own invincibility, and some qualities he possessed of a better nature. All the fascination of his character is lost in the general shade cast over it by the niggardly commendation, that he possessed "some accomplishments of a courtier." Some, indeed! and the most pleasing; but not all truly, for dissimulation and hypocrisy were arts unpractised by this courtier. "His sweet and attractive manner, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... been niggardly to Prussia. Everything has had to be made with the hands of man. Brandenburg, Pomerania, Western and Eastern Prussia are dreary wastes; Berlin is an oasis of brick and stone amidst a Sahara of sand. ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... WHAT an object lesson it should be to our country at large: east, west, north, south, that, "One touch of nature makes 'all men' kin." That in her opinion and treatment of her faithful, loyal black citizens; niggardly, parsimonious, grudging and half-heartedly, how shameful she has been, how great has been her sin; forgetting; or uncaring, even as Pharoh of old, that: "God omnipotent liveth," and that "He is a ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... your waiter, room steward, bath steward, boot black and deck steward. These tips are always given on the last day of the voyage. American tourists are criminally lavish in giving tips, with the result that one who adheres to the rules of old travelers, is apt to be regarded as niggardly. It is to be noted that the richest travelers always conform to the regular ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... servile adherence to any system. It exposes the folly of the "social contract," and of the idyllic dreams of the advantages of savage life. It shows that nature, instead of being prodigal of her treasures, distributes them with a niggardly hand, and that it is necessary to conquer her by labor, intelligence and patience before we ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... never able to persuade the Assembly to provide adequate means of defence. Not until the news of massacres of defenceless women and children upon the frontier struck terror to every family in Virginia did the legislators vote money for a body of men to drive back the enemy. And even then so niggardly were they in their appropriations that with the insufficient means granted him even the patient and frugal Washington was unable to prevent the continuance of the murderous raids of the Indians. In the Revolutionary War the same spirit prevailed. ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... that Mr. Masaki was brought into personal contact with Yoshida; and hence, through the eyes of a boy of thirteen, we get one good look at the character and habits of the hero. He was ugly and laughably disfigured with the smallpox; and while nature had been so niggardly with him from the first, his personal habits were even sluttish. His clothes were wretched; when he ate or washed he wiped his hands upon his sleeves; and as his hair was not tied more than once in the two months, it was often disgusting ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... riches not for any good godly purpose but only for worldly wealth, it must needs be that he shall have little conscience in the getting. But, by all evil ways that he can invent, shall he labour to get them. And then shall he either niggardly heap them up together, which is, as you well know, damnable; or else shall he wastefully misspend them upon worldly pomp, pride, and gluttony, with occasion of many sins more, and that is ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... foretold by parables strange and wonderful, which he, the Well of Wisdom most wisely put forth. At one time he brought into his tale a certain rich man which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day, but who was so niggardly and pitiless toward the destitute as to overlook a certain beggar named Lazarus laid at his gate, and not even to give him of the crumbs from his table. So when one and other were dead, the poor man, full of sores, was ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... the need of strict economy in expenditures. The fact that our national needs forbid us to be niggardly in providing whatever is actually necessary to our well-being, should make us doubly careful to husband our national resources, as each of us husbands his private resources, by scrupulous avoidance of anything like wasteful or reckless expenditure. Only by avoidance of spending money ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Augusta, Georgia, living in ease and affluence, like the majority of Southern speculators. The lesson he received from his uncharitableness, has not benefited him in the slightest degree. He still speculates on the wants of the poor, and is as niggardly to the needy. Though loyal to the Confederacy, we believe his loyalty only caused from his being the possessor of a large amount of Confederate funds, but perhaps we judge him wrongfully. At any rate, he has never done any act, either for the government or for individuals to merit praise ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... cordially and to utter admiration with a free heart. They are mistaken, but no doubt they are sincere. Shakespeare, the wisest of monitors, is never so eloquent and splendid as when he makes one of his people express praise of another. Look at those speeches in Coriolanus. Such niggardly persons, in their detraction of Henry Irving, are prompt to declare that he is a capital stage manager but not a great actor. This has an impartial air and a sapient sound, but it is gross folly and injustice. Henry Irving is one ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... for the purchase of the paper when written; but as he could offer me only fifty guineas a sheet, I thought it better to let our society have it, than sacrifice it for so paltry a sum. Notwithstanding this niggardly spirit, however, the gentleman showed his consideration for me in all other respects, and indeed treated me with the greatest civility. His parting words made a deep impression upon my heart, and I hope I shall ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... bloated, good-for-nothing, impudent, and happy dogs, never before fed upon a baronet's substance, contradicted him to his very face, and fought for him behind his back. The females in my establishment bear but a most niggardly proportion to the males—in the ratio of Falstaff, one pennyworth of bread to his many gallons of sack: and these few are the most hideous, pox-marked, blear-eyed damsels that the country ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... stirrings of ambition, but they were the blind gropings of Homer's Cyclops round the walls of his cave. I saw my father's situation entailed on me perpetual labour. The only two openings by which I could enter the temple of fortune were the gate of niggardly economy or the path of little chicaning bargain-making. The first is so contracted an aperture I never could squeeze myself into it; the last I always hated—there was contamination in the very entrance! Thus abandoned of aim or view in life, with a strong appetite for sociability, as well ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... others, to find out the state of his feelings, and the condition of his mind. By means of these persons she should ascertain whether the man is pure or impure, affected, or the reverse, capable of attachment, or indifferent, liberal or niggardly; and if she finds him to her liking, she should then employ the Vita and others to attach his mind ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... bridge a crisis. As the shrewdest general he knew a vital campaign, and aided, if need be. But on a useless one the Republic's soldiers might starve, might freeze, might bleed and die, without ever the most niggardly solace ever reaching them from El Chaparrito. Economy was applied to vengeance, and ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... had grown cold in his very stomach, and bred rank fancies! "With two bottles like this under my belt," he said to himself, "I would defy them all, but this wretched night-capped curmudgeon of a host will never fetch me a second! If he had not been so niggardly last night, I should have got ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... operation in all the campaigns that we plan and carry through must be figured in terms of staggering material costs. We cannot afford to be niggardly with any of our resources, for we shall need all of them to do the job that we have put ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... however, reverence for Shakespeare had increased to an intensity that made Johnson's admiration seem feeble and niggardly. This transformation was due to many causes, but in the main it was a part of the vast changes in European literature known as the Romantic movement. This resulted in a rejection of the rules and models of neo-classicism, a new interest in the literature and manners ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... the window to look for him; then paced the room, trying to discover what she might believe. All his words, his looks, his gestures, since he had first come there, rose before her. But he had been reserved, almost niggardly, with them. But that was just their charm. His eyes had now interpreted them, and those eyes enveloped her; she gave herself absolutely up ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... a very dirty rogue, and a niggardly:—I hate a mean rascal. Well, fearing her second escape from that prison, and being hand in glove with the Parliament men, he gets her on board a sloop bound for the Virginias, just at the time when ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... guide yours in the ascent, for we will take our flight together. I now see and am convinced you can expect no pardon here, and I can only exhort you to seek it at that greatest tribunal where we both shall shortly answer. But let us not be niggardly in our exhortation, but let all our fellow prisoners have a share: good gaoler let them be permitted to stand here, while I attempt to improve them.' Thus saying, I made an effort to rise from my straw, but wanted strength, and was able only to recline ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... bring these unfranchised slaves—the Yankees—back to their true condition. They have long, very probably, looked upon themselves as our social inferiors—as our serfs; their mean, niggardly lives—their low, vulgar, and sordid occupations, have ground this conviction into them. But of a sudden, they have come to imagine that their numerical strength gives them power—and they have burst the bonds of servitude, and are running riot with more than the brutal ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... chiefest[47] part of the character of the edifice of pleasure is, and must be, its perfect ease, its appearance of felicitous repose. This it can never have where the nature and expression of the land near it reminds us of the necessity of labor, and where the earth is niggardly of all that constitutes its beauty and our pleasure; this it can only have where the presence of man seems the natural consequence of an ample provision for his enjoyment, not the continuous struggle of suffering existence with a rude ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... may you live!" said she. "Your fishing has sped to a wish. And now let us choose for the king the fairest of all your fish. For fear inhabits the palace and grudging grows in the land, Marked is the sluggardly foot and marked the niggardly hand, The hours and the miles are counted, the tributes numbered and weighed, And woe to him that comes short, and woe ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson
... singer, failed as an actor. He had been forced to take up the profession of putting on dramatic and musical plays, a profession that required vast knowledge and high talents and paid for them in niggardly fashion both in money and in fame. Crossley owed to him more than to any other single element the series of successes that had made him rich; yet the ten thousand a year Crossley paid him was regarded as evidence of Crossley's lavish generosity and was so. It would have been difficult to say ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... because the land was poor, because the country was barren, because Nature dealt with us in niggardly fashion, so that all men had to struggle against famine; if, in a word, there was democracy in our poverty, so that none were idle and rich while the rest toiled in poverty, it would be our supreme glory to bear it ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... we think is convenient, to make us somewhat orderly and handsome in his sight.25 Such never knew what these words meant, 'Begin at Jerusalem.' Yea, such in their hearts have compared the Father and his Son to niggardly rich men, whose money comes from them like drops of blood. True, say such, God has mercy, but he is loath to part with it; you must please him well, if you get any from him; he is not so free as many suppose, nor is he so willing to save as some pretended gospellers imagine. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... added nothing to my usual course of viands. Indeed, I had abstracted something. An entree, upon which my cook prides herself, was omitted. Was I going to allow these proud young misses to think I had exerted myself to please them? No; rather would I have them consider me niggardly and an enemy to good living; so the entree was, as the ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... were not obliged to risk their capital in other lands. The same hard luck pursued him when, with sudden demonstrations of affection, he had tried to convince Don Marcelo that three thousand francs a month was but a niggardly trifle. ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the last (such depressed letters!) you compare your own fate with that of some others with an injustice which God measures, and which I too have knowledge of. Isa, you speak you know not what. Be sure of one thing, however, that God has not been niggardly towards you, and that He never made a creature for which He did not make the work suited to its hand. He never made a creature necessarily useless, nor gave a life which it was not sin on the creature's part to hold unthankfully and throw back as a poor gift. Your excellent understanding will work ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... rich mines of copper and its forests of firs and stately cedars, the island naturally attracted a commercial and maritime people like the Phoenicians; while the abundance of its corn, its wine, and its oil must have rendered it in their eyes a Land of Promise by comparison with the niggardly nature of their own rugged coast, hemmed in between the mountains and the sea. Accordingly they settled in Cyprus at a very early date and remained there long after the Greeks had also established themselves on its ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... de Trailles had fallen back into his former state of existence. He went to the baths every year and gambled; he returned to Paris for the winter; but, though he received some large sums from the depths of certain niggardly coffers, that sort of half-pay to a daring man kept for use at any moment and possessing many secrets of the art of diplomacy, was insufficient for the dissipations of a life as splendid as that ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... years before, when he had had to denounce one portentous scandal in which a sacred order of the ministry was implicated. What internal laxity did not that scandal imply! And then again what a low standard of religion, what niggardly faith, and what worn-out, used-up sanctity in the community at large, was revealed in the fact of those frequent apostasies of individuals which then were occurring! He prayed fervently that both from the bright pattern of martyrs, and from the warning afforded by the lapsed, the Christian ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... were too short, leaving their shirts visible over their flanks; and each of them pretended that he had not the means of doing otherwise. A subscription was started to clothe the poorest of them. Foureau was niggardly, while women made themselves conspicuous. Madame Bordin gave five francs, in spite of her hatred of the Republic. M. de Faverges equipped a dozen men, and was not missing at the drill. Then he took up his quarters at the grocer's, and gave those who ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... its capacity for further development. In view of all the circumstances of the case the amount of twelve millions, which is apparently all that has been spent on railway construction since 1869, would certainly appear to be rather a niggardly sum. In spite, therefore, of the very unnecessary warmth with which Sir George Scott has urged his views, it is to be hoped that his plea for the adoption of a somewhat bolder financial policy in the direction of expenditure on railways, and still more on feeder roads, will receive from the ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... the moon," he jovially exclaimed as he proceeded to make my attempt at a "condumned good one" appear most niggardly. ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... "What," quoth he, "shall the house of the brave Lord Boteler, or such a brave day as this, be without a fool? Certes, the good Lord St. Clere and his fair lady sister might think our housekeeping as niggardly as that of their churlish kinsman at Gay Bowers, who sent his father's jester to the hospital, sold the poor sot's bells for hawk-jesses, and made a nightcap of his long-eared bonnet. And, sirrah, let me see thee fool handsomely,—speak squibs and crackers, instead of that dry, barren, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... fruit, and vegetables might raise tantalising memories of the pleasant places where they grew, but were not the less welcome to dwellers in this somewhat austere tract where they did not grow or grew very niggardly. The traffic in these delicacies drew the attention of the London and North- Western Railway Company, whose officials called to account one of our servants for travelling with an excess of personal luggage. The artless contrabandist, ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... me." Every trace of insanity had left him, and in the tender hands of his mother and his beloved, and his friends, he quickly recovered his strength again. Good fortune had in the meantime visited the house; a niggardly old uncle, from whom they had never expected to get anything, had died, and left Nathanael's mother not only a considerable fortune, but also a small estate, pleasantly situated not far from the town. There they resolved to go and live, Nathanael and ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... our great men, and widening our appreciation to the larger scale of the two or three that are left,—if there should be so many. Meanwhile we offer a premium to the production of great men in a small way, by inviting each State to set up the statues of two of its immortals in the Capitol. What a niggardly percentage! Already we are embarrassed, not to find the two, but to choose among the crowd of candidates. Well, seventy-odd heroes in about as many years is pretty well for a young nation. We do not envy most of them their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... often nothing more than an armed neutrality, or a menacing attitude to support negotiations or an attempt to gain some small advantage by small exertions, and then to wait the tide of circumstances, or a disagreeable treaty obligation, which is fulfilled in the most niggardly way possible. ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... year to year, until now it requires about $550 to $600 annually to cover tuition, room-rent, board, and common running expenses. A boy might squeeze through for $400 a year, but he would have to pinch and be niggardly, if not mean. The $550 or $600 would not cover vacation expenses and society dues, therefore the larger sum ought to be reckoned as the cost annually for a Harvard undergraduate at the present time. And upon inquiry, I find that ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various
... who is never sordid or niggardly," added Monsieur; "and who pays in gold all the orders ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... as deeming it not safe for him to afford any cause for Cleopatra to hate him. As for the king of Arabia, whose tribute Herod had undertaken to pay her, for some time indeed he paid him as much as came to two hundred talents; but he afterwards became very niggardly and slow in his payments, and could hardly be brought to pay some parts of it, and was not willing to pay even them without ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... two months, and here they were rejoined by Pao-yun and his friends.(11) (At the end of that time) the people of Woo-e neglected the duties of propriety and righteousness, and treated the strangers in so niggardly a manner that Che-yen, Hwuy-keen, and Hwuy-wei went back towards Kao-ch'ang,(12) hoping to obtain there the means of continuing their journey. Fa-hien and the rest, however, through the liberality of Foo Kung-sun, managed to go straight forward in a south-west direction. They found ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... could.' Christ would not have said that if she had taken a niggardly spoonful out of the box of ointment, and dribbled that, in slow and half-grudging drops, on His head and feet. It was because it all went that it was to Him thus admirable. I think it is John Foster who says, 'Power to its last particle ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... culprit and showed him this. "A thousand pounds!" said she. "Are you not ashamed? Was ever a niggardly act so embellished and exaggerated? I feel my face ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... and abasement of the glorious creature on whom he had brought such sorrow, if not shame. The remorse that a strong will and hard heart had stifled so long found voice at last in three muttered words—"God forgive me!" A very niggardly and inadequate expression of contrition—was it not?—conceded to a life whose sins outnumbered its years. Yet the slight thread of hope drawn therefrom has been able since to hold back Cecil Tresilyan from the abyss of utter desperation. She forbore to press him farther then, seeing his increasing ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... he was answering had adopted, to be original in everything, that selfsame conciseness: every sentence of his contained two or three ideas. But the member from Alcira would not be led astray by such niggardly parsimony. He believed that ponderousness and extension were qualities indispensable to eloquence. He must fill a whole issue of the Congressional Record, to impress his friends back home in the District. ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of his existence, but he had the instinct not to display his beggarly hunger—which reached even to the approbation of such to whom he held himself vastly superior. He seemed generous, and was niggardly, by turns; cultivated suavity; indulged in floridity both of manners and speech; and signed his name so as nobody could read it, though his handwriting ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... the mines! Where are they to-day, and what is their condition? Look for them in the sunless back rooms of San Francisco boarding-houses, and you will find them doing a little fine sewing for the shops; or working on their own garments, which they must make out of school hours, because the niggardly pay of teachers in the lower grades will not allow of their getting them done. Idealized indeed! Men talk about our getting out of our places where we clamor for paying work of some kind, for something to do that will enable us to live in half comfort by working more hours than ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... followed the reception of Charles by France, niggardly as that reception was—war with England broke out, and the French army of invasion was moved from Dunkirk to Flanders. The prince, not permitted to serve in the French army, returned to Paris, where ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... or frowned, according to what humor the Almighty, niggardly in his bestowal of humor, had allotted them. At all events they were used to "Jane." Mrs. Goodrich, who had led Mary to a sofa and seated herself beside her, took her hand and pressed it affectionately, as if she were encouraging her on the way to the ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... yet surely you yourself may, when even your babes and sucklings are endowed with abilities incomparably greater than our niggardly old gods have bestowed on the ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... have two hearts" (dhu'kulbein) signifies to be prudent, wise. Karun is the Arabic Croesus. "Thy hand is tied up" is equivalent to calling a man niggardly.] ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... the cursed money. If only the Great Horatio would come out of his niggardly shell and stump up a bit! It was not fair—he was as rich as Croesus; it would not hurt him to fork out another five hundred ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... I insisted on another occasion when he had just wired twenty-five dollars somewhere to help bury some one. (My spirit was not so niggardly as fearsome. I was constantly terrified in those days by the thought of a poverty-stricken old age for myself and him—why, I don't know. I was by no means incompetent.) "Why don't you save your money? Why should you give ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... not always end their monstrous rapine, for when they pay what is called the debt of nature they too often fling, in their wills, a posthumous sneer at that still larger debt owed to their fellow-creatures, and make some eldest son their principal heir. Charity may get a few niggardly thousands from them, and handsome bequests usually go to their younger children; yet the bulk of the big gambler's treasure passes intact to one who will most probably guard with avid custody the alleged prestige of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... becomes of this cushion whereon the Spider, that niggardly housewife, lays her saved-up bits of thread; for the moment, we will note that the Epeira works it up with her legs after placing each spoke, teazles it with her claws, mats it into felt with noteworthy diligence. In so ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... biologist has also perceived the degree to which size may be modified; may dwindle to dwarfness when a niggardly soil refuses to furnish beast and plant alike with a ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... the Geatmen with gracious responses! So ought one to do. Be kind to the Geatmen, 50 In gifts not niggardly; anear and afar now Peace thou enjoyest. Report hath informed me Thou'lt have for a bairn the battle-brave hero. Now ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... crass drawings with a charred stick on the walls, and viewing the blossoming orchards of spring with a crazy delight in color. I fear there was not much affection between this ill-matched couple. For long years I saw in my grandfather only a coarse, violent old man, niggardly and censorious. And to him there was doubtless something unwholesome and repellent in the most innocent of my tastes; I could not even sin roundly, like other boys, by pilfering or truantry, but must display an exotic passion for reading forbidden books, an abhorred dexterity ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... scarce generous, heroic or delicate feelings he possessed were spun out in his verses, and he kept none for his personal use. He was mean, selfish, above all very niggardly, a fault love seldom forgives. Then he had cut off his moustaches, and was disfigured by the loss. How different from that fine gloomy fellow with his carefully curled locks, as he appeared one evening declaiming his Credo, in the blaze of two chandeliers! Now, in ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... much wonder in my heart, and perhaps a little terror also. It had not been our way to build great fires; we were, indeed, by the captain's orders, somewhat niggardly of firewood, and I began to fear that something had gone wrong while I ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her. He could not even prolong this silent sleep until his own death."[85] When the war broke out between England and Spain, "the latter claimed the advantage of her defensive alliance with France. Fleuri, grievously against his will, was forced to fit out a squadron; he did so in niggardly fashion." This squadron, of twenty-two ships, convoyed to America the Spanish fleet assembled at Ferrol, and the reinforcement prevented the English from attacking.[86] "Still, Fleuri made explanations to Walpole and ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... a niggardly Host, and more sparing guest: But though my cates be meane, take them in good part, Better cheere may you haue, but not with better hart. But soft, my doore is lockt; goe ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... business as he did into others, methodically. He, therefore, read what his gazetteer had to say about these towns and cities, standing, for better light, at the window. But though, the type being small, his eyes were more pink than before, he was nothing wiser, the information being of that niggardly historical and statistical kind which availed nothing in his present scrutiny. He would get Murray's handbooks, and all sorts of works—he was determined to read it up. He was going into this as into a great speculative case, in which he had a heavy stake, with all his activity, craft, and ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... from an over-abundance of poison," said Genevra. She was thinking of the stock she had hoarded up for him in her dressing-table drawer, under lock and key. It occurred to her that she could have no end of housewifely thrills if she doled them out to him in niggardly quantities, at stated times, instead of turning them over to him in ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... chamber in his house filled with letters from the most eminent scholars of the age was discovered: the learned in Europe had addressed Peiresc in their difficulties, who was hence called "the attorney-general of the republic of letters." The niggardly niece, although repeatedly entreated to permit them to be published, preferred to use these learned epistles occasionally ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... and quadruple teams of human flesh as they pulled him from room to room, and his was no make-belief ferocity, either. He was a niggardly rake, but in order to indulge his Sadist tendencies, agreed to pay one Thaler (Seventy-five cents) for every drop of blood shed by ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... Weatherley's eldest girl Hope still at home,' she replied, after a moment's hesitation, 'but her mother will not let her work without pay. She is a poor sort of neighbour, is Susan Weatherley, and is very niggardly in ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... are doubtless weary of being told that they pack badly, that they are niggardly about credits, that they do not send enough or sufficiently qualified representatives, that they are careless of details, and so on. Still, before mentioning some further particular steps that should be taken, it is necessary to ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... dealt with the children of men in her part of the vineyard, deeply deplored the hardness of the sinners' hearts, their proneness to err, and the worldliness of even professing Christians, who seemed now to be wholly given over to the love of pleasure. She told also of the niggardly contributions; the small congregations. It was, indeed, a sad and discouraging tale that she unfolded. Only once did she show any enthusiasm, and that was in her closing words: "But I thank my Lord and ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... universally approved; but it sometimes appeared in petty artifices of parsimony, such as the practice of writing his compositions on the back of letters, as may be seen in the remaining copy of the Iliad, by which, perhaps, in five years five shillings were saved; or in a niggardly reception of his friends, and scantiness of entertainment, as, when he had two guests in his house, he would set at supper a single pint upon the table; and, having himself taken two small glasses, would retire, and say, "Gentlemen, I leave you to your wine." ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... small labor to build him a house portionable to that bulk and bigness. And do you not observe, O Chersias, continues he, many poor men,—how one while they pinch their bellies, upon what short commons they live, how sparing and niggardly and miserable they are; and another while you may observe the same men as distrustful and covetous withal, as if the plenty of the city and county, the riches of king and kingdom were not sufficient to preserve ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... capabilities gave a new value to the ear, and a large, roomy one became an asset in the marriage market. I have seen a pretty little damsel of Sind with fourteen jingling silver things hanging at regular intervals from the outside edge of each ear. If Nature had been niggardly, the lobe at least could be enlarged by boring it and thrusting in a small wooden peg, then a larger one, and so on until it could hold an ivory wheel as large as a quoit, and ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... I continued. "That, of course, is to trunch with. One truncheon, though, seems rather niggardly. I should prefer two, one in each hand. 'One note-book'—is that for autographs and original contributions from my ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 2nd, 1914 • Various
... patriot could look at them without wanting to fly to the uttermost parts of the earth; and yet it was not possible to build new ones, and hardly possible to obtain appropriations enough to shingle out the weather; for Fastburg would vote no money to adorn Slowburg, and Slowburg was equally niggardly toward Fastburg. The same jealousy produced the same frugality in the management of other public institutions, so that the patients of the lunatic asylum were not much better lodged and fed than the average ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... sunless back rooms of San Francisco boarding-houses, and you will find them doing a little fine sewing for the shops; or working on their own garments, which they must make out of school hours, because the niggardly pay of teachers in the lower grades will not allow of their getting them done. Idealized indeed! Men talk about our getting out of our places where we clamor for paying work of some kind, for something to do that will enable us to live in half comfort by working ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... children of men in her part of the vineyard, deeply deplored the hardness of the sinners' hearts, their proneness to err, and the worldliness of even professing Christians, who seemed now to be wholly given over to the love of pleasure. She told also of the niggardly contributions; the small congregations. It was, indeed, a sad and discouraging tale that she unfolded. Only once did she show any enthusiasm, and that was in her closing words: "But I thank my Lord and Heavenly Master that the other church in our ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... declared that he would dance a minuet with any man in the three kingdoms except myself. But I often parted with money against my inclination, either because I wanted the resolution to refuse, or dreaded the appellation of a niggardly fellow; and I may be truly said to have squandered my estate, without honour, without friends, and without pleasure. The last may, perhaps, appear strange to men unacquainted with the masquerade of life: I deceived others, and I endeavoured to deceive myself; ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... companion; he had taken a fancy to her saucy little nose, and though he could not flatter himself that he had ever found favor in her eyes he had brought something with him which she would certainly like, and which might help him to win her kindness. He was not niggardly, and if this—and this—and he displayed the sparkling necklace and laid the purse on her pillow—could please her she might regard them as an earnest of more, as much more as she chose, for ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... yourself so uplifted that the heels alone gently touch the sand. At each inspiration almost sufficient air is imbibed to float the whole bulk and machinery of the body. And when the radiant air is all one's own, why be niggardly? Let it be gulped greedily, strongly, wilfully, and let the smiling sea, responding to the embraces of your widespread arms, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... said Genevra. She was thinking of the stock she had hoarded up for him in her dressing-table drawer, under lock and key. It occurred to her that she could have no end of housewifely thrills if she doled them out to him in niggardly quantities, at stated times, instead of turning them over ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... hope ever again to make the representation of any national claims as effective as they had done in the Clare election. It may be taken for granted that Peel would not have marred the effect of an act of mere justice by niggardly qualifications of any kind, but he knew he had to deal with a Tory House of Lords, and was content to accept some compromise as long as he could carry the main object of his policy. The first great chapter in the modern history of political ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... banquet were on a heroic scale: twelve sheep, eight fat swine, and two oxen, the choicest of the herd, were slaughtered, and a goodly row of casks, filled with the finest vintages, gave further token that Alcinous was no niggardly host. ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... as he was usually called, was a man of business of the old school, moderate in his charges, economical and even niggardly in his expenditure, strictly honest in conducting his own affairs and those of his clients, but taught by long experience to be wary and suspicious in observing the motions of others. Punctual as the ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... room steward, bath steward, boot black and deck steward. These tips are always given on the last day of the voyage. American tourists are criminally lavish in giving tips, with the result that one who adheres to the rules of old travelers, is apt to be regarded as niggardly. It is to be noted that the richest travelers always conform to ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... the feelings of the Non-conformist conscience. The attempt to force undenominationalism on the country has been an expensive failure. Recognising this, the denominational—nay, more, the Jesuit—University College has in a niggardly fashion and by a back door been subsidised by the State. The demand is for no more than a university which shall be Catholic in the sense that it shall be national, and this in a preponderatingly Catholic country implies Catholicism. The Irish Catholic bishops in 1897 declared ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... man and his wife, who pottered about the place, and just contrived to keep the buildings from tumbling into ruin. The shutters were always closed, as though the mansion were in a state of chronic mourning for a race of proprietors now become extinct, except that now and then, in summer-time, a niggardly amount of fresh air and sunshine was allowed to find its way into the interior of ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... world likes cheerful Mr. Barnum's success; New Haven, girt with flat marshes that look like monstrous billiard-tables, with haycocks lying about for balls,—romantic with West Rock and its legends,—cursed with a detestable depot, whose niggardly arrangements crowd the track so murderously close to the wall that the peine forte et dure must be the frequent penalty of an innocent walk on its platform,—with its neat carriages, metropolitan hotels, precious old college-dormitories, its ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... trafficker in indulgences, Tetzel, who so raised Martin Luther's ire, they manage cheaply to transmit funds to heaven, is the paper dollar, strings of which are sold in the shops, looking exceedingly like goodly bunches of the silvery onion. It is worthy of a people who are so niggardly in all their transactions, who have a copper currency that would sink any man with a fortune invested in it, and who cheat all that come in contact with them, that they should cheat their departed friends with these remittances, a bundle of which are to be obtained for a few ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... but the Protestant Churches divide up, giving women the disabilities and mon the offices. The unselfishness of such a course is quite touching. It says to women: "You support us and we will damn you; there is nothing mean or niggardly about us." ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... would haggle!" contemptuously exclaimed Albani. "You would be a very niggardly vicegerent of God! But as Corilla is well worth two thousand scudi, I am content. Give me eight thousand scudi and ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... communicate to our neighbour the representation of our mind, imparting to him without dissimulation or jealousy what we have learnt concerning the science of salvation, so we ought to be still less niggardly in pleasing our friends by placing before their eyes the picture of our outward self which they so earnestly desire ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... think thus, Jacopo? To me, they have ever seemed more prone to vent their seditious discontent. But 'tis the nature of man to be niggardly of praise and lavish of censure. This decree of the tribunal must not be suffered to die, with the mere justice of the case. Our friends should dwell on it, openly, in the cafes, and at the Lido. They will have no cause to fear, should they give their tongues a little ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... He did not wish to learn that 'woman's talk', not he; and when one of the teachers advanced on him with a book and an ink-horn and waved them before him in a mild persuasive way, much as a churchwarden invitingly shakes the offertory bag under the nose of a rich but niggardly parishioner, he sprang up with a fierce oath and flashed Inkosi-kaas before the eyes of our learned friend, and there was an end of the attempt ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... Is it therefore easier for you in your heart to inflict the sorrow for which there is no remedy? Will you take, wantonly, this little all of his life from your poor brother, and make his brief hours long to him with pain? Will you be readier to the injustice which can never be redressed; and niggardly of mercy which you can bestow but once, and which, refusing, you refuse for ever? I think better of you, even of the most selfish, than that you would do this, well understood. And for yourselves, it seems to me, the question becomes ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... of strong minds, was a good critic of the substance of poetry, but somewhat niggardly in the allowance he made for those subsidiary qualities which make it the charmer of leisure and the employment of minds without definite object. It may be doubted, indeed, whether he set much store by any contemporary writing but his own, and whether he did not ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... pocketbook she had a tidy sum saved out of the housekeeping money. She was naturally thrifty, and Orville had never been niggardly. Her meals when Orville was on the road, had been those sketchy, haphazard affairs with which women content themselves when their household is manless. At noon she went into the dining car and ordered a flaunting ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... the love of an exalted and generous mind. He loved it as an end, not at all as a means; as a personal luxury, not at all as an instrument of advantage to others. He scraped it together and treasured it up with a timid and niggardly thrift; and never employed the hoard in any enterprise, however virtuous and useful, in which there was hazard of losing one particle. No wonder if such a person did little or nothing which deserves positive blame. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... blind gropings of Homer's Cyclops round the walls of his cave. I saw my father's situation entailed on me perpetual labour. The only two openings by which I could enter the temple of fortune were the gate of niggardly economy or the path of little chicaning bargain-making. The first is so contracted an aperture I never could squeeze myself into it; the last I always hated—there was contamination in the very entrance! Thus abandoned of aim or view in life, with a strong appetite for sociability, as well from ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... the summit of Owl's Head is 2,743 feet above the level of the lake, and the path to it is a mile and a half and thirty rods in length. It may seem niggardly not to throw off the last petty fraction; and indeed we might well enough let it pass if it were at the beginning of the route,—if the path, that is, were thirty rods and a mile and a half long. But this, it will ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... zennanah, the old governante, Kamalia, having counted us on her four skinny fingers, proceeded to fulfil that sacred rite, never omitted in the east, of presenting refreshments; without the heartless and niggardly-ceremony of appealing to the guests, as is wont in Europe, to learn whether they will take them or not, looking on those who receive them with an evil eye. I followed Kamalia to know how the genuine ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... fumed, "I don't. They put me in the wrong, between them. They make me uncomfortable. I've a good mind to withdraw my subscription to those rascals who came first, and have nothing to do with any of them. Then, you see, down I go for a niggardly fellow. That's the reputation I get. Nothing of this in London! you make your money, pay your rates, and nobody ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... said quite as much as need be said in answer to those who maintain that we ought to give support to this college, but that the support ought to be niggardly and precarious. I now come to another and a much more formidable class of objectors. Their objections may be simply stated thus. No man can justifiably, either as an individual or as a trustee for the public, contribute to the dissemination of religious error. But the church of Rome teaches ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Harrowby complained that Lord Grey was always beating about the bush of compromise, but never would commit himself fairly to concession. Melbourne complained last night that what was done was done in such an ungracious manner, so niggardly, that he hated the man (Harrowby) who did it. The ultra-Tories are outrageous 'that he gave up everything without reason or cause;' the ultra-Whigs equally furious 'that he had shown how little way he was disposed to go in Committee; his ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... left the land, but the spring that year was a meagre starveling, niggardly of smiles. He seemed to have borrowed winter's breath, and the pale young leaves shuddered in the unfriendly blasts. The fruit blossom struggled into a nipped existence, and fell like thin snow to the ground. An eerie spring, and men said there was a spell ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... me, O auspicious King, that Chosroes wrote his son, 'Be not thou too open handed with thy troops, or they will be too rich to need thee; nor be thou niggardly with them, or they will murmur against thee. Give thy giving deliberately and confer thy favours advisedly; open thy hand to them in time of success and stint them not in time of distress.' There is a legend that a desert Arab came once to ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... of her own, she lavished a pent-up wealth of affection upon Magda of which few would have thought her capable, and though she was by no means niggardly in her blame of Hugh Vallincourt for his method of shelving his responsibilities, she was grateful that his withdrawal into the monastic life had been the means of throwing Magda into her care. Five years ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... proposition for the purchase of the paper when written; but as he could offer me only fifty guineas a sheet, I thought it better to let our society have it, than sacrifice it for so paltry a sum. Notwithstanding this niggardly spirit, however, the gentleman showed his consideration for me in all other respects, and indeed treated me with the greatest civility. His parting words made a deep impression upon my heart, and I hope I shall always remember them ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... reflection, by an enthusiasm of passion, we seem to take part in the interests of others, and imagine ourselves divested of all selfish considerations: but, at bottom, the most generous patriot and most niggardly miser, the bravest hero and most abject coward, have, in every action, an equal regard to their ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... board—his fare paid, and so good-bye. But it is needless to multiply examples; the proof of the pudding is in the eating. When we came to Apemama, of so many white men who have scrambled for a place in that rich market, one remained—a silent, sober, solitary, niggardly recluse, of whom the king remarks, "I think ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a moment ago that school-teachers are paid so niggardly, I didn't mean that their remuneration was insufficient, considering the quality and quantity of the goods delivered—knowledge, scholarship, education. I only had in mind the bitterness of their lot, and the poor ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... influence with him. And, as certainly and inevitably follows in all such practices], great sums of money naturally were spent, great sums unjustly procured, and great sums seized by force. For under no circumstances was Nero niggardly. Here is an illustration. He had ordered no less than two hundred and fifty myriads at one time to be given to Doryphorus, who attended to the state documents of his empire. Agrippina had it all piled in a heap, hoping by showing him the money all together ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... thought it unnecessary and besides no small labor to build him a house portionable to that bulk and bigness. And do you not observe, O Chersias, continues he, many poor men,—how one while they pinch their bellies, upon what short commons they live, how sparing and niggardly and miserable they are; and another while you may observe the same men as distrustful and covetous withal, as if the plenty of the city and county, the riches of king and kingdom were not sufficient to preserve ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... Hotel men cannot be niggardly. They must not imitate old Cornelius Husk. Old Corn Husk, you know, saw his boy the other day carrying the thermometer from the kitchen out ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... religion, and that such only were punished by the Inquisition.' He had in his pocket Pomponius Mela de situ Orbis, in which he read occasionally, and seemed very intent upon ancient geography. Though by no means niggardly, his attention to what was generally right was so minute, that having observed at one of the stages that I ostentatiously gave a shilling to the coachman, when the custom was for each passenger to give only six-pence, he took me aside and scolded me, saying that what I had done would ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... Queen's feelings towards him, there is no doubt that one powerful influence, which lasted into the reign of James, was steadily adverse to his advancement. Burghley had been strangely niggardly in what he did to help his brilliant nephew; he was going off the scene, and probably did not care to trouble himself about a younger and uncongenial aspirant to service. But his place was taken by his son, Robert Cecil; and Cecil ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... less fair than my lady's eyes. Nor did a man of Croy have the size and strength to compel their respect; Cappen's light blade flickered swiftly enough so that no one cared to fight him, but he lacked the power of sheer bulk. Svearek alone had enjoyed hearing him sing, but he was niggardly and his brawling thorp was an endless boredom to a man used to the courts of ...
— The Valor of Cappen Varra • Poul William Anderson
... was built, and flourished while Cullerne flourished, and fell when Cullerne fell. It stood empty ever since I can remember it, till Miss Joliffe took it fifteen years ago. She elevated it into Bellevue Lodge, a select boarding-house, and spent what little money that niggardly landlord old Blandamer would give for repairs, in painting out the Hand of God on the front. It was to be a house of resort for Americans who came to Cullerne. They say in our guide-book that Americans come to see Cullerne Church because some of the Pilgrim Fathers' fathers are buried ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... highest respect for Mrs. Moore,' he began. 'I know her to be a most devoted helpmeet to the vicar, and a truly good woman. At the same time'—he coughed—'at the same time, I should wish to say distinctly that after being niggardly in her domestic affairs, which is unfortunately the case, I do not think it adds to her stock of Christian virtues to give the money thus ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... to the air of prodigality which pervades this story. There seems to be an immense amount of seed wasted. Some of it falls on the roadway; some of it is snatched away by the birds; some of it is caught among the bushes. Yet the sower proceeds in no niggardly fashion. He strides away across the field scattering the seed broadcast, far beyond the border where he expects a crop, for he knows that, though much shall be wasted, whatever seed may fall on good ground will have miraculous increase. There ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... still left—the most wholesome of delicacies; I have my staff, Anastasie has her new dress, Jean-Marie is the proud possessor of a fashionable kepi. Besides, we had a glass of Hermitage last night; the glow still suffuses my memory. I was growing positively niggardly with that Hermitage, positively niggardly. Let me take the hint: we had one bottle to celebrate the appearance of our visionary fortune; let us have a second to console us for its occultation. The third I hereby dedicate to ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of former days,[62] but as {times are} now, very passable: nor do I in the least wonder that Clinia doats upon her. But he has a father— a certain covetous, miserable, and niggardly person— this neighbor {of ours} (pointing to the house). Do you know him? Yet, as if he was not abounding in wealth, his son ran away through want. Are you aware that it is the fact, ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... estate. But while Mees Lucy is my wife, I will buy all that she needs. I will delight to dress her, to feed her well. With discretion, of course. For there are many channels into which my income must flow. But I will not be a niggardly husband to her! No, no!" cried the little man in ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... and everybody to his own purposes. The task he set before Hunter now was to steer the Inglesby ship through a perilous passage into the matrimonial harbor he had in mind. Let Hunter do that—no matter how—and the pilot's future was assured. Inglesby would be no niggardly rewarder. But let the venture come to shipwreck and Hunter must go down with it. Hunter was not left in any ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... in passing through our system by its suddenly distending the muscles, like any other mechanical violence; and that it is general pain alone that we feel, and not any sensation analogous to the specific quality of the object. Nature may seem to have been niggardly to mankind in bestowing upon them so few senses; since a sense to have perceived electricity, and another to have perceived magnetism might have been of great service to them, many ages before these ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... brave show of argument. The analysis of these interacting forces and of their various combinations requires careful investigation. Let us consider the interplay of the forces of land and sea apparent in every country with a maritime location. In some cases a small, infertile, niggardly country conspires with a beckoning sea to drive its sons out upon the deep; in others a wide territory with a generous soil keeps its well-fed children at home and silences the call of the sea. In ancient Phoenicia and Greece, in Norway, Finland, ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... top, and over it either put the plant or sow seed. A heavy top-dressing round each stem is also desirable, and the application of copious supplies of water will carry the nourishment down to the roots. Sub-tropical plants are only a source of disappointment under niggardly treatment, but they amply repay all the care and generosity which a liberal hand may lavish upon them. The plants will need the support of stakes to save them from injury ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... and was held to a strict account by his father, not only for half of all the grain and produce sold, but of all the horses and cattle raised, as well as those which were bought on speculation. On his share he managed—thanks to the niggardly system enforced in the house—not only to gratify his vulgar taste for display, but even to lay aside small sums from time to time. It was a convenient arrangement, but might be annulled any time when the old man should choose, and Alfred ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... alone, and began to feel that the hours which I knew must pass before the missing train could come would never make away with themselves. There were many others stationed there as I was, but to them had been given a capability for loafing which niggardly Nature has denied to me. An American has the power of seating himself in the close vicinity of a hot stove and feeding in silence on his own thoughts by the hour together. It may be that he will smoke; but after awhile his cigar will come to an end. He sits on, however, certainly patient, and apparently ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... payment a few days helps to pull an order. It is not that a man is niggardly or that he does not want the article but it is the desire, rooted deep in human nature, to hold onto money after it ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... short, leaving their shirts visible over their flanks; and each of them pretended that he had not the means of doing otherwise. A subscription was started to clothe the poorest of them. Foureau was niggardly, while women made themselves conspicuous. Madame Bordin gave five francs, in spite of her hatred of the Republic. M. de Faverges equipped a dozen men, and was not missing at the drill. Then he took up his quarters at the grocer's, and gave those who ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... the path to happiness easy and safe to all such as fear Allah, and give alms, and believe the truth proclaimed by Allah's messenger. But we will make easy the path to distress and misery for all such as are niggardly, are bent on making riches, and deny the truth when it is proclaimed to them. When these last fall headlong into Hell, their wealth will avail them nothing. In the burning furnace they shall burn and ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... Government decided to depart from the niggardly policy it had hitherto pursued towards the City of New York, and to take steps toward the erection of a Post-office adequate to the needs of the great and growing community which demanded this act of justice at its hands. It was decided to erect an edifice which should be ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... stronger than death; it rises superior to adversity, and towers in sublime beauty above the niggardly selfishness of the world. Misfortune cannot suppress it; enmity cannot alienate it; temptation cannot enslave it. It is the guardian angel of the nursery and the sick bed; it gives an affectionate concord to the partnership of life and interest, circumstances ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... it—for their capacities are the work of Nature, and the possibility of cultivating them a matter of chance circumstance—but by the way in which contemporaries receive their works; whether, I mean, they give their applause soon and with a will, or late and in niggardly fashion, or leave it to be bestowed ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... public exhibition of his master's household state, had positively enjoined his attendance. "What," quoth he, "shall the house of the brave Lord Boteler, or such a brave day as this, be without a fool? Certes, the good Lord St. Clere and his fair lady sister might think our housekeeping as niggardly as that of their churlish kinsman at Gay Bowers, who sent his father's jester to the hospital, sold the poor sot's bells for hawk-jesses, and made a nightcap of his long-eared bonnet. And, sirrah, let me see thee fool handsomely,—speak ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... its effect was not equally apparent. There were some who had scant minds to fix, and what nature had been niggardly in bestowing, they had frittered away in a trifling life; but for the earnest girls, those who truly longed to make the most of themselves and to be able to do a worthy work in the life before them, such advice ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... against the working-class, were now the foremost to preach peace and harmony. And for a very good reason. The fact is, that all these concessions to justice and philanthropy were nothing else but means to accelerate the concentration of capital in the hands of the few, for whom the niggardly extra extortions of former years had lost all importance and had become actual nuisances; and to crush all the quicker and all the safer their smaller competitors, who could not make both ends meet without such perquisites. Thus the development of production ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... was undoubtedly much influenced by this section of its supporters in the blind confidence it snowed to the czar, in their presumption that moral influence would suffice to prevent a war, and in the niggardly, and therefore unwise, and ultimately costly scheme upon which armaments were provided. Probably never in the House of Commons was rebuke more eloquently and sincerely given, or more justly merited, than when Lord Palmerston exposed ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... take our flight together. I now see and am convinced you can expect no pardon here, and I can only exhort you to seek it at that greatest tribunal where we both shall shortly answer. But let us not be niggardly in our exhortation, but let all our fellow prisoners have a share: good gaoler let them be permitted to stand here, while I attempt to improve them.' Thus saying, I made an effort to rise from my straw, but wanted ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... reconciling their sense of religious duty with their affections for their country, few, perhaps none of them, formed a conception of what would be, within two centuries, the result of their undertaking. When the jealous and niggardly policy of their British sovereign denied them even that humblest of requests, and instead of liberty would barely consent to promise connivance, neither he nor they might be aware that they were laying the foundations of a power, and that he was ...
— Orations • John Quincy Adams
... would recognize his existence; would admit him to be a living object; or even failing this, a visual object, or thing that will reflect rays of light. Your silver or your gold (beyond what the niggardly Law has already secured him) he solicits not; simply the glance of your eyes. Understand his mystic significance, or altogether miss and misinterpret it; do but look at him, and he is contented. May we not well cry shame on an ungrateful world, which refuses even this poor boon; which will ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... shepherds have ample opportunities of sporting with Amaryllis in the shade; opportunities which, to my certain knowledge, they do not neglect. Theocritus knew it well enough. But, in a general way, he is niggardly with the precious commodity of kisses; he seems to have thought that in literature, if not in real life, one can have too much of a good thing. Also, being a southerner, he could not have trusted his young folks to remain eternally at the kissing-stage, after the pattern of our fish-like ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... spending most of her life in the past—that sad past, which had been very niggardly of joy for her; but she was so used to suffering that she was still grateful for the least tenderness shown to her, and the pale lights which had shone here and there in the drab days of her life, were still enough to make them bright. All the evil that Melchior had done her was forgotten; she ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... her say so; for it showed a commendable anxiety to execute in no niggardly spirit the intentions of Master Richard Watts. But the room was really so well adapted to its purpose that I protested, quite enthusiastically, against ...
— The Seven Poor Travellers • Charles Dickens
... violent in temper, the beautiful Fury he had brought to his home makes that home a hell. Thus, what might seem to the superficial most enviable, is to their possessor most hateful. He dares not ask a soul to see how he spends his gold; he has shrunk into a mean and niggardly expenditure, and complains of reverse and poverty, in order to excuse himself to his wife for debarring her the enjoyments which she anticipated from the Money Bags she had married. A vague consciousness of retribution ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... close-grained theory. To have exclusive control over a district not exceeding ten miles square meant not only police control, but it meant to make a home fit for the national seat of government, and to provide for the necessities of its representatives. Nevertheless conscientious scruples and niggardly appropriations had sufficient weight for many years to make the home of the Union a disgrace to the nation and a thing of contempt in comparison with the capitals of ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... Homer and Milton; so that no man of a true poetical spirit is master of himself while he reads them. . . He who would think the 'Faerie Queene,' 'Palamon and Arcite,' the 'Tempest' or 'Comus,' childish and romantic might relish Pope. Surely it is no narrow and niggardly encomium to say, he is the great poet of Reason, the first of ethical authors ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... United States who could prolong life by moving to Southern California; there are many who would find life easier there by reason of the climate, and because out-door labor is more agreeable there the year through; many who have to fight the weather and a niggardly soil for existence could there have pretty little homes with less expense of money and labor. It is well that people for whom this is true should know it. It need not influence those who ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... they will endow scholarships for their own sex instead of giving millions of dollars to institutions for boys, as they have done in the past. After all the bequests women have made to Harvard see how niggardly that institution, in its 'annex,' treats their daughters. I once asked a wealthy lady to give a few thousands of dollars to start a medical college and hospital for women in New York. She said before making bequests she always consulted her minister and her Bible. He told her there ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... ascetic household, assisted in all those external formalities, centred all her intellect within that iron range of existence. But no grace descended on her soul,—no warm ray unlocked the ice of the well. Then, gradually becoming aware of the niggardly meanness, of the harsh, uncharitable judgments, of the decorous frauds that, with unconscious hypocrisy, her husband concealed beneath the robes of sanctity, a weary disgust stole over her,—it ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is by no means a niggardly man; still, he would like to have his treasure transported at a rate not exorbitant. And yet he is anxious about its safety; and for this reason has resolved to ship it with secrecy in a private trading-vessel, instead of by one ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... Snellaby?" I then explained to him that the Hall had passed out of my hands, and told him in a few words the state to which I had been reduced. His face clouded over and his manner chilled to me at once. "They are all on to me for money and for places," he said, "and truly the Commons are so niggardly to me that I can scarce be generous to others. However, Sir Jacob, we shall see what can be done for thee," and with that he dismissed me. That same night the secretary of my Lord Clarendon came to me, and ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the purposes of land purchase. What, in the name of common sense, has land purchase to do with education? What indissoluble relationship is there between the two that the expenditure upon the one should be made dependent upon the requirements of the other? This niggardly and short-sighted attitude is hardly worthy of one of the richest countries in the world. It is but a matter of a few thousands, and surely the efficient training of the youth of Ireland is quite as important ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... taken, leaving the mother and son to face the world. For several years things went along smoothly, for Mrs. Morrison was an excellent housekeeper, and could make a dollar go a great ways without appearing to be niggardly; but unexpected misfortune overtook them, and the company in which most of the carpenter's savings had been invested struck a reef, so that not only did the little income cease from this source but there was danger that the principal might ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... Army of the Potomac, descriptive of the attack on Fort Steadman, March 25th. On the 26th he saw again the sparkling-eyed Sheridan. Once more he began to use his whip of scorpions upon the editors and people who were bestowing all praises upon the Army of the West, with only criticism or niggardly commendation for the Armies of the Potomac and the James, with many a sneer and odious comparison. He witnessed the tremendous attack of the rebel host upon the Ninth Corps, hearing first the signal ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... Munychia,[225] and was neither inclined to give up the sea nor ready to engage with the Romans: his plan was to protract the war and to cut off the supplies of the enemy. But Sulla was as quick as Archelaus, and moved into Boeotia from a niggardly region, which even in time of peace could not have maintained his troops. Most people thought that he had made a false calculation in leaving Attica, which is a rough country and ill adapted for the movements of cavalry, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... wonders he made this exchange; for if he lost this powder he had no means of killing game, and was entirely dependent for food on the troop of Indians with whom he was travelling, and whom he knew to be most niggardly and inhospitable. Judge, therefore, of his horror when, at the end of a day's march, this weakly Indian porter was missing with his load. All night Hearne was unable to sleep with anxiety, and the whole of the next ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... than all that can be brought about by it in favour of any inclination, nay even of the sum total of all inclinations. Even if it should happen that, owing to special disfavour of fortune, or the niggardly provision of a step-motherly nature, this will should wholly lack power to accomplish its purpose, if with its greatest efforts it should yet achieve nothing, and there should remain only the good will (not, to be sure, a mere wish, but the summoning of all means in our power), then, like ...
— Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals • Immanuel Kant
... grudging, grumbling: at last he found out the famous new plan of owing himself; and as Bacchus's did not see fit to reject such wealthy customers, Roger soon chalked up a yard-long score, and grew so niggardly that they could not get a ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... half a column in a newspaper. Even the old man he was answering had adopted, to be original in everything, that selfsame conciseness: every sentence of his contained two or three ideas. But the member from Alcira would not be led astray by such niggardly parsimony. He believed that ponderousness and extension were qualities indispensable to eloquence. He must fill a whole issue of the Congressional Record, to impress his friends back home in the District. So he talked and talked on, trying deliberately to ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... had safely ridden out the gale, for all that human art could do to make her safe and strong had been done without regard to expense. No niggardly owners had built her of poor and insufficient material, or sent her to sea weakly manned and with incompetent officers. The ship was heavily manned; eighteen or twenty men would have been deemed a sufficient crew to work her; and though her force consisted of boys, they ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... four millions of dollars, and you desire that this sum shall be taken from the money set apart for the maintenance of the army and the assistance of famished and suffering villages and towns. I acknowledge that the court of his sainted majesty was somewhat niggardly, and that you, sire, may justly find some changes necessary. If, however, it is determined to use for this purpose the funds set apart for other important objects, then must your majesty impose new and heavy taxes upon your subjects, or ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... her during twenty years of service. Though he turned over to her his old shoes (which fitted her), it is impossible to consider that quarterly benefit as a gift, for the shoes were always thoroughly worn-out. Necessity had made the poor girl so niggardly that Grandet had grown to love her as we love a dog, and Nanon had let him fasten a spiked collar round her throat, whose spikes no longer pricked her. If Grandet cut the bread with rather too much parsimony, ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... and quick of apprehension, that, once fairly on the scent, he was nearly certain he would extract every thing from the patient. This was the principal reason why the deacon did not wish to send for him; the expense, though a serious objection to one so niggardly, being of secondary consideration when so many doubloons were at stake. It was necessary, however, to talk on boldly, as any appearance of hesitation might excite the doctor's distrust. The answers, therefore, ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... virtue. But what is more pitiable than a poor, pinched mind spending the rich days and years clutching a few bits of metal? What can be fine about paring the necessities of life to the very quick? We all know "economical people" who seem to be niggardly even about the amount of air they breathe and the amount of appreciation they will allow themselves to give to anything. They shrivel—body and soul. Economy is waste: it is waste of the juices of life, the ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... by a too servile adherence to any system. It exposes the folly of the "social contract," and of the idyllic dreams of the advantages of savage life. It shows that nature, instead of being prodigal of her treasures, distributes them with a niggardly hand, and that it is necessary to conquer her by labor, intelligence and patience before we can ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... those who were poor on earth will be poor in Hades. As to any moral retribution which may overtake evil-doers in the life to come, their ideas are very vague; only they are sure that the ghosts of the niggardly will be punished by being dumped very hard against the buttress-roots of chestnut-trees. They say, too, that all breaches of etiquette or of the ordinary customs of the country will meet with certain appropriate ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... crumb of her kindness, not because she was niggardly, but because there was little that belonged to him and to him alone. Sometimes, in the rush and roar of the office, came the memory of her eyes ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... familiar with society, and instal her in thy house as governess and example. If the woman be also of Israel, so much the better; for then we may expect faithfulness without jealousy. And further, son of Jahdai, be niggardly in nothing concerning our Lael. Clothe her as she were the King's daughter. At going abroad, which she shall do with me in the street and on the water, I would have her sparkle with jewels, the observed of everybody, even the Emperor. And ask not doubtingly, 'Whence the money for all this?' I ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... published, relate that when the copy was offered him, the price demanded for it, which was a hundred and twenty pounds, being such as he was not inclined to give precipitately, he carried the work to Pope, who, having looked into it, advised him not to make a niggardly offer; for "this was no ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... slaps his right coat-pocket.] Here lies the crown of England. [Now the left coat-pocket.] Here the crown of Scotland—and here, in my waistcoat pocket, is Ireland. What shall I take from herein exchange? [He looks about.] Is the gilding real? It looks deuced niggardly and close-fisted. There's space enough in these great halls, but I'll wager there are many mice here. It's as quiet as an English Sunday. [Rises.] There's ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... denied that the moving moments in this work come precisely in the release of the strain of dissonance, as in the returning melody of the Adagio. Only we may feel we have been waiting too long. The desert was perhaps too long for the oasis. Est modus in rebus: the poet seems niggardly with his melody; he may weary us with too long waiting, with too little staying comfort. He does not escape the modern way of symbolic, infinitesimal melody, so small that it must, of course, reappear. It is a little like the wonderful ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... who was always la grande dame, rose without apparent embarrassment to meet the gentleman who entered, though I knew she could not help but feel keenly the niggardly appearance of the board she left with such grace. The stranger—he was certainly a stranger; this I could see by the formality of her manner—was a gentleman of urbane bearing and ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... tapioca and a small quantity of Libonta meal, which I still reserved for worse times. The patience of my men under hunger was admirable; the actual want of the present is never so painful as the thought of getting nothing in the future. We thought the people of some large hamlets very niggardly and very independent of their chiefs, for they gave us and Manenko nothing, though they had large fields of maize in an eatable state around them. When she went and kindly begged some for me, they gave her five ears only. They were subjects of her uncle; and, had ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... simply cried aloud for admiration, he became eloquent over the foliage tints of an oak copse on the hill opposite. But now he was being taken to inspect the crowning pride and glory of Helsery; however grudging he might be in his praises, however backward and niggardly with his congratulations, he would have to see and acknowledge the many excellences of that redoubtable animal. Some weeks ago, while on a business journey to Taunton, Tom had been invited by his half-brother to visit a studio in that town, where Laurence was exhibiting one of his pictures, a large ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... meanness; and this sentiment was thoroughly wrought into their minds, that, they seemed not to rid themselves of the feeling of meanness in a refusal, to feel, notwithstanding their better knowledge, that to comply was generous, liberal, and social, and to refuse reproachful and niggardly. It would be impossible to enumerate or specify the crimes which emanated from this state of affairs. Their political condition was the very genius of despotism, systematically and deliberately conducted. Kings and chiefs were extremely jealous of their ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... which, from the state of the thermometer, had grown cold in his very stomach, and bred rank fancies! "With two bottles like this under my belt," he said to himself, "I would defy them all, but this wretched night-capped curmudgeon of a host will never fetch me a second! If he had not been so niggardly last night, I should have got through ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... which have no mercy upon those whom the ocean has many times spared. At that port it is very necessary to have something left over from one's sea-stores, for the expenses are very great in this country. The vicar must not be niggardly in distributing them, if he has to transact any business; or he must arm himself with patience, which is very necessary. His Majesty commands that the religious be provided there with what they need from his ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various
... London, to review the troops collected there to defend the capital. "I know," said she, "that I have but the feeble body of a woman, but I have the heart of a king, and of a king of England too." Unhappily the niggardly Queen had half starved her brave sailors, and many of them came home only to die. None the less Elizabeth went with solemn pomp to St. Paul's Cathedral to offer thanks for the great victory, which was commemorated by a medal bearing this inscription: ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... an object lesson it should be to our country at large: east, west, north, south, that, "One touch of nature makes 'all men' kin." That in her opinion and treatment of her faithful, loyal black citizens; niggardly, parsimonious, grudging and half-heartedly, how shameful she has been, how great has been her sin; forgetting; or uncaring, even as Pharoh of old, that: "God omnipotent liveth," and that "He is a JUST ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... despatches to Lord Liverpool, he was ill satisfied with the conduct of his allies guarding Ciudad Rodrigo, and returned to resume command in that region. In the same despatch he complains bitterly of the niggardly policy of his government in regard to money and supplies. The same timidity on the part of ministers at home appears in a letter from Liverpool, almost forbidding him to accept the command-in-chief of the Spanish armies, which, however, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... continued Aristotle, "the thruppenny bit has further been proved in a thousand ways an adjuvator and prime helper of the Gods. For many a man too niggardly to give sixpence, and too proud to give a copper, has dropped this coin among the offerings at the Temple, and it is related of a clergyman in Armagh (a town of which Your Majesty has perhaps never heard) that he would frequently address ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... such an event uniformly produces among the servants of a family. Fardorougha himself remained for the most part with them, that is to say except while ascertaining from time to time the situation of his wife. His presence, however, was only a restraint upon their good-humor, and his niggardly habits raised some rather uncomplimentary epithets during his short visits of inquiry. It is customary upon such occasions, as soon as the mistress of the family is taken ill, to ask the servants to drink "an aisy bout to the misthress, sir, an' a speedy recovery, not forgettin' a safe landin' ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... half-day's rejoical, and thou likewise! Nay, good maid! we will have each her full day, and a bonfire in the base court, and feasting, and dancing to boot. Both on one day, quotha! marry, but that were niggardly." ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... cucumbers, melons, pumpkins, and the castor-oilplant. In Azerbijan the soil is almost all cultivable, and if ploughed and sown will bring good crops of the ordinary kinds of grain. Even on the side of the desert, where Nature has shown herself most niggardly, and may seem perhaps to deserve the reproach of Cicero, that she behaves as a step mother to a man rather than as a mother, a certain amount of care and scientific labor may render considerable ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... required brought with her a train of servants. With the child's growth this was maintained, even increased. The young lady (Ojo[u]san) found herself graduated into one with a status to maintain. All the niggardly habits of Matazaemon were thrown to the winds with the advent of this grandchild. The affection never shown outwardly to the mother, was lavished on her daughter. At seven years of age O'Iwa underwent the common enough infliction of smallpox. ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... main sewer pipe of a dwelling stopped up? Think of the dire results, notwithstanding that the windows and doors remain wide open! The Board of Health would soon deal with the negligent official or landlord. With very few exceptions, "civilized" men, women, and children are negligent and niggardly caretakers of the human dwelling place—the marvellous body of man. "Lack of time," "haven't the time," or "no time," is the excuse they give themselves ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... conclude by warning everybody not to reprint your words at their peril. In Ireland every poet we honor has dedicated his genius to his country without gain, and has given without stint, without any niggardly withholding of his gift when his nation was dark and evil days. Not one of our writers, when deeply moved about Ireland, has tried to sell the gift of the spirit. You, brother, hurt me when you declare your principles, and ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... even facts thoroughly well known, changed with each repetition. A month after an occurrence one might search in vain for the actuality. It was more difficult to learn truthful details than anywhere I had been. The French are niggardly of publications concerning Tahiti. An almanac once a year contained a few figures and facts of interest, but with no newspapers within thousands of miles, every person was his own journal, and prejudices and ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... man was much embarrassed. He had an innate horror of seeming niggardly, and the course he had taken made his position more delicate. But his simplicity and truthfulness came to his aid, and he said firmly, although with a crimson face, "I am sorry I cannot accept your generous proposition, but I will give in accordance ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... continued. "That, of course, is to trunch with. One truncheon, though, seems rather niggardly. I should prefer two, one in each hand. 'One note-book'—is that for autographs and original ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 2nd, 1914 • Various
... it, madame," said the old professor, rising; "and, if it comes to the worst, I hope you will testify before the judge that I was niggardly about ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... safely aver. We have somewhere heard that "a live ass is better than a dead lion," which we quote, not as individually applicable, but as a general adage; for we disclaim personalities, and well know that J. K. is an eminent actor, and one whom we have not niggardly praised. Yet we will not disparage departed excellence for any person existing; and therefore cannot avoid wishing our young author had seen Garrick, and bearing in his "mind's eye" his natural acting of Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth, Richard, &c.—he might then go and witness the performances ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... employment at her cost, there were continual contests for the favours of another beauty, who was not much more niggardly in that way than herself; this was ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... of what constitutes a gentleman, many citizens are people of utterly penurious, niggardly habits. Frequently enough the fellow who can discuss all Socrates's theories with you is quarreling with his neighbor over the loan of salt or a lamp wick or some meal for sacrifice.[*] If one of the customary ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... a dream, you will concur with others in signifying some entertainment as a niggardly device to raise funds for the personal enjoyment ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... insisted on another occasion when he had just wired twenty-five dollars somewhere to help bury some one. (My spirit was not so niggardly as fearsome. I was constantly terrified in those days by the thought of a poverty-stricken old age for myself and him—why, I don't know. I was by no means incompetent.) "Why don't you save your money? Why should you give it to every Tom, ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... even were it in my power, which it is not, to attempt an exact and complete description of all the productions of the group of islands composing the Philippines, to which nature has with no niggardly hand dispensed great territorial and maritime wealth. And as the limits of this work prevent much expansion, I will confine the following observations to an outline of the principal articles produced in the country, beginning the catalogue with the ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... it gives place to the second course. Here are nuts, {and} here are dried figs mixed with wrinkled dates, plums too, and fragrant apples in wide baskets, and grapes gathered from the purple vines. In the middle there is white honey-comb. Above all, there are welcome looks, and no indifferent and niggardly feelings. In the meanwhile, as oft as Baucis and the alarmed Philemon behold the goblet, {when} drunk off, replenish itself of its own accord, and the wine increase of itself, astonished at this singular event, they are frightened, and, with hands held up, they ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... my friend, You run into extremes; too niggardly, Or, too profuse; imprudent either way. First, rather than permit him entertain A mistress, who was then content with little, And glad of any thing, you drove him hence: Whereon the girl was forc'd against her will, To grow a common gamester for her bread: And now she can't be kept without ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... than he, I call on God to prove it! I cannot give him all the monstrous sum he asks; he knows the estate to be incompetent; but I will give him what I have, and it is more than he expects. I have borne all this too long. See what he writes further on; read it for yourself: 'I know you are a niggardly dog.' A niggardly dog! I niggardly? Is that true, Mackellar? You think it is?" I really thought he would have struck me at that. "O, you all think so! Well, you shall see, and he shall see, and God shall see. If I ruin the estate and go barefoot, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... treble and quadruple teams of human flesh as they pulled him from room to room, and his was no make-belief ferocity, either. He was a niggardly rake, but in order to indulge his Sadist tendencies, agreed to pay one Thaler (Seventy-five cents) for every drop of ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... privately informed that the Intendant of the works proposed to allow him but a very trifling remuneration. "These drawings," said Cano, "are either to be given away, or to fetch 2,000 ducats;" and packing them up, he mounted his mule, and took the road to Granada. The niggardly Intendant, learning the cause of his departure, became alarmed, and sent a messenger after him post-haste, offering him his own ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... is wealth, it is not so because of a niggardly and parsimonious policy. Perhaps the simplest, fewest and best rules for economical business are these, by observance of which a noted merchant amassed a large fortune: 1. Obtain the earliest and fullest information ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... colonial chest, instead of being expended in local improvements; and, practically, when some petty war-storm breaks it is wasted like water. The local officials are not to be blamed for this miserable system, this niggardly colonial policy of the modern economical school, which contrasts so poorly with the lavish republican expenditure in French Senegambia. They have, to their honour be it said, often protested against the taxes raised from struggling merchants and a starveling population, poor as Hindus, ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... Willie and the Lost Soul, which are great bare heads. You get a glimpse of the Tickle from the deck of the mail-boat: this when she rounds the Cocked Hat and wallows off towards Gentleman Cove. 'Tis but a niggardly glimpse at best, and vastly unfair to the graces of the place: a white house, wee and listlessly tilted, gripping a rock, as with expiring interest; a reach of placid water, deep and shadowy, from which rise the hills, gray, ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... to work, a cattleman would tell you. Yet the TJ up-and-down herd never seemed to increase beyond a niggardly three hundred or so, though the Quirt ranch was older than its lordly neighbors, the Sawtooth Cattle Company, who numbered their cattle by tens of thousands and whose riders must have strings of fifteen horses apiece to keep them ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... malicious interest in the wiles he was set on to practise; inch by inch, and bit by bit, Jonas rather allowed the dazzling prospects of the Anglo-Bengalee establishment to escape him, than paraded them before his greedy listener. And in the same niggardly spirit, he left Mr Pecksniff to infer, if he chose (which he DID choose, of course), that a consciousness of not having any great natural gifts of speech and manner himself, rendered him desirous to have the credit of introducing to Mr Montague some one who was well endowed in those ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... She opened the door, staggered inside, locked the door again, and staggered toward the cot, and dropped upon it; and the gray dawn came in with niggardly light through the grimy little window panes, as though timorously inquisitive of this shawled and dissolute figure prone and motionless, this figure who in other dawns had found neither sleep nor rest—this figure who lay ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... worship! It is a marked sign of spiritual awakening when a man begins to contrast his own indulgences with the rights of God. There are so many of us who are lavish in our home and miserly in the sanctuary. We multiply treasures which bring us little profit, and we are niggardly where treasure would be of ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... of her life. Her husband spent the day with his friends. She grew tired of staying at home and her only amusement was making calls or going shopping. And after that came a complaint, always the same, which the father divined at her first words. Lopez de Sosa was selfish, niggardly toward her. His spendthrift habits never went beyond his own pleasures and his own person; he economized in his wife's expenses. He loved her in spite of that. Milita did not venture to deny it; no mistresses or unfaithfulness. She would be likely to stand that! ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... still making a hearty howl in the city.—'Tis a villanous, malicious old king. He is all swathed in furs. He still owes me the money for my epithalamium, and he came within a nick of hanging me this evening, which would have been very inconvenient to me.—He is niggardly towards men of merit. He ought to read the four books of Salvien of Cologne, Adversits Avaritiam. In truth! 'Tis a paltry king in his ways with men of letters, and one who commits very barbarous cruelties. He ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... loved her, and, I protest to you, bestowed much on her; followed her with a doting observance; engrossed opportunities to meet her; fee'd every slight occasion that could but niggardly give me sight of her; not only bought many presents to give her, but have given largely to 180 many to know what she would have given; briefly, I have pursued her as love hath pursued me; which hath ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... out of the public treasury, the salaries might be considered as net profit. This custom had originated many centuries in the past. In those early days, when a penurious character became an incumbent of public office, the social obligations belonging to it were often but niggardly requited. Sometimes business embarrassments and real necessity demanded economy; so, at last, the Government assumed all the expenses contingent upon every office, from the highest to the lowest. By this means the occupant ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... he became disgusted with the meanness of the doctors, who had bought for dissection the body of a child of a poor tailor for six shillings, the price asked being six shillings and sixpence, from which they made the needy man abate the sixpence. Turning from the niggardly surgeons, he enrolled his name as a student of divinity, and was frequently in Edinburgh attending the lectures at Divinity Hall. Wonderfully cheap was the living in those days, when, at the Edinburgh ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... the revenues, as Rambuksh is a bad paymaster. Had he not been so, as well to his own retainer as to the King's officers, the Nazim would not have been able to do this. It is remarked as a singular fact among Rajpoot landholders that Rambuksh wants courage himself, and is too niggardly to induce others to fight for him with spirit. The last Nazim, Hamid Allee, a weak and inexperienced man, dared not venture upon such a measure to enforce payment ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... behind them for the enemy to plunder. There the Romans recovered the effects, not of the allies, as at Algidum, but their own property, which had been lost by the devastations of their lands. For this double victory, gained in two battles, in two different places, the senate in a niggardly spirit merely decreed thanksgivings in the name of the consuls for one day only. The people went, however, on the second day also, in great numbers of their own accord to offer thanksgiving; and this unauthorized and popular thanksgiving, owing to their zeal, was even better ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... the Germans or the English. The dread of the Papal Interdict was still a reality. Though the clergy of Florence, roused to retaliative fury, might fling back in the teeth of Sixtus such words as leno matris suae, adulterorum minister, diaboli vicarius, yet the people could not long endure 'the niggardly and imperfect rites, the baptism sparingly administered, the extreme unction or the last sacrament coldly vouchsafed to the chosen few, the churchyard closed against the dead,' which, to quote the energetic language of Dean Milman,[1] were the proper ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... the husband you selected for your mother's child, and doubtless you had your own private reasons for sacrificing her to such a man. His worthlessness, too, furnishes an excuse for your niggardly allowance to me. The very dresses I wear are the price of dishonor. I often feel ashamed of the part I play toward your wife, Ottario, and I know not but some day I may throw myself at her ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... prompted by mere regard for virtue; surely they came from some violent rival of his. In this opinion Rita concurred, formulating, in ill-composed words of her own, this thought: virtue is indolent and niggardly, wasting neither time nor paper; only self-interest is alert ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... some tangible form. There is nothing of the pearl-like nature about me," she continued, with a short, bitter laugh. "I am more like the cold, glittering diamond, and give me pure crystallized carbon every time in preference to any other gem. He wasn't niggardly with her on that score, either," she concluded, lifting the upper layer of cotton, and ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... returned to Charlesfort, where they were soon pinched with hunger. The Indians, never niggardly of food, brought them supplies as long as their own lasted; but the harvest was not yet ripe, and their means did not match their good-will. They told the French of two other kings, Ouade and Couexis, who dwelt towards the south, and were rich beyond belief in maize, beans, and squashes. The mendicant ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... this man, O Phaeacians? Is he not tall and good looking, and is he not clever? True, he is my own guest, but all of you share in the distinction. Do not be in a hurry to send him away, nor niggardly in the presents you make to one who is in such great need, for heaven has blessed all of you ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... that mission must depend largely upon the loyal assistance we receive from those Indians who claim, in virtue of their superior education, to represent this twentieth century. Lord Morley has fulfilled in no niggardly spirit his pledge to associate the people of India with the Government far more closely than has hitherto been the case in the work of actual day-to-day administration as well as in the more complex problems of ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... you occasion them, people do not like to have critics sitting in judgment on their bottles and dishes. Water-drinkers are universally laughed at; but, it has always seemed to me, that they are amongst the most welcome of guests, and that, too, though the host be by no means of a niggardly turn. The truth is, they give no trouble; they occasion no anxiety to please them; they are sure not to make their sittings inconveniently long; and, which is the great thing of all, their example teaches moderation to the rest ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... those who have studied jurisprudence, and the functions of a country postman are not given to a paralytic. Society should model itself on nature, whose plan is specialisation. "For," as Aristotle says, "she is not niggardly, like the Delphian smiths whose knives have to serve for many purposes, she makes each thing for a single purpose, and the best instrument is that which serves one and not many uses." Elsewhere he says, "At Carthage it is thought an honour to hold many offices, but a man only does ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... look for him; then paced the room, trying to discover what she might believe. All his words, his looks, his gestures, since he had first come there, rose before her. But he had been reserved, almost niggardly, with them. But that was just their charm. His eyes had now interpreted them, and those eyes enveloped her; she gave herself ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... within the heart which sighs, Yet shuns, the modest sorrow to declare; And what rude Fortune niggardly denies, Love to the noble can with love repair. The lowly have the loftiest destinies; Love only culls the flower that love should wear; And ne'er in vain for love's rich gifts, shill yearn The heart that feels their wealth—and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
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