"Improvident" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had much chance to be improvident!" said Herbert "We have had to spend all our income, but we are not in debt—that is, we have no debts that we are ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... improvident blacks actually used to have a harvest time, and a harvest home too. When the doonburr, or seed, was thick on the yarmmara, or barley-grass, the tribes ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... article written by a cynical woman who has lived in the Islands only a few months. I read part of it to father, the part which says that "the Filipinos are a worthless, shiftless, lazy people; improvident, untrustworthy and immoral!" After I had read that he thought a moment and ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... which good Mr. Larkin had procured for the improvident vicar, bore interest, I am almost ashamed to say, at thirty per cent. per annum, and ten per cent. more the first year. But you are to remember that the security was altogether speculative; and Mr. Larkin, of course, made the ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... improvident youths like you, who come to lament their wasted lives. If I could receive him this once as he expects to be received, we cannot doubt that it would mean an income of two thousand francs to me. Prosperity dangles before us—shall I fail to clutch it? Mon Dieu, what a catastrophe, his ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... universally intelligible. "His types established themselves in the public mind like personal experiences. Their falsity was unnoticed in the blaze of their illumination. Every humbug seemed a Pecksniff, every jovial improvident a Micawber, every stinted serving-wench a Marchioness." The critic, indeed, saw through it all, but he gave his warnings in vain. "In vain critical reflection showed these figures to be merely masks; not characters, but personified ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... headlong. Butler! Butler! You are my evil genius, wherefore must you Announce it in their presence? It was all In a fair way. They were half won! those madmen With their improvident over-readiness— A cruel game is Fortune playing with me. The zeal of friends it is that razes me, And ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... have been always the best and kindest of uncles to me, and as you have shown such unparalleled goodness in forgiving this match, which to be sure may be thought a little improvident, I should never forgive myself if I attempted to deceive you in anything." He then confessed the truth, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... juries have shown a certain astuteness in applying the rules of law as to fraud and undue influence—the latter with certain special features—to transactions with needy "expectant heirs" and other improvident persons which seem on the whole unconscionable. The Money Lenders Act of 1900 has fixed and (as finally interpreted by the House of Lords) also sharpened these developments. In the case of both fraud and undue influence, the person entitled to avoid a contract may, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... his abuse of their kindness and forbearance? He thought of his neglect of his patient devoted wife, whom he was leaving, with her little ones, to struggle with poverty and dependence; he thought of his children growing up to know him only as the improvident selfish father, who had doomed them to difficulties, and without one tender word or kind look to grace his memory. No wonder he turned, unable to brook the sight of his unconscious babe; and that, ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... really great musician," Mrs. Vanderlyn said, speculatively. "They go everywhere in Germany. No doors are closed to them. It wouldn't be at all surprising for a musician to travel as he's doing. Such people are eccentric, and often so foolishly improvident. Something about music makes them so. But they worship them in Germany. They know the ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... end to try and reform men after they have become criminals? Yet you cannot begin with children, from want of schools. Poverty is the result of ignorance, and then ignorance is again the unhappy result of poverty. 'Ignorance makes men improvident and thoughtless—women as well as men; it makes them blind to the future— to the future of this life as well as the life beyond. It makes them dead to higher pleasures than those of the mere senses, and keeps them down to the level of the mere animal. Hence the enormous extent of drunkenness ...
— Letters on International Copyright; Second Edition • Henry C. Carey
... was soft even to weakness: he was so generous that he quite forgot to be just: he forgave injuries so readily that he might be said to invite them; and was so liberal to beggars that he had nothing left for his tailor and his butcher. He was vain, sensual, frivolous, profuse, improvident. One vice of a darker shade was imputed to him, envy. But there is not the least reason to believe that this bad passion, though it sometimes made him wince and utter fretful exclamations, ever impelled him to injure by wicked arts the reputation of ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... who, "if they had not possessed the courage of Spaniards," says a Castilian writer, "would have been reduced to the last extremity." In addition to this calamity, the garrison began to be menaced with scarcity of provisions, owing to the improvident waste of the soldiers, who supposed that the city, after being plundered, was to be razed to ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... his property," she thought, "is another expensive possession. I can see where his money goes—when he has any to spend. He is absolutely improvident. Too bad." ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... see—is it a wonder that they stoop to plead and whine for coppers around every carriage that traverses their country? That they fare miserably, their scanty rags and pinched faces sufficiently attest; that they are indolent and improvident I can very well believe: for when were uneducated, unskilled, hopeless vassals anything else? Italy, beautiful, bounteous land! is everywhere haggard with want and wretchedness, but these seem nowhere so general and chronic as in the Papal territories. Every ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... determined, as soon as his health would permit, to commence the study of law. During the four years he was in public service, his patrimony was greatly impaired. Towards his brethren in arms he had acted with liberality. Naturally of an improvident character, he adopted no means to preserve the property which he inherited. The cardinal vices of gaming and drinking he avoided. But he was licentious in the extreme, and regardless of consequences ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... An improvident man, who had quarrelled with his wife concerning household expenses, took her and the children out on the lawn, intending to make an example of her. Putting himself in an attitude of aggression, and turning to his offspring, ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... have been mended at night, and ready for use," in the tone which a teacher might use to idle boys.—"It is singular, Captain Swendon," turning his back on the men as on so many mud-turtles, "that the sea-air begets improvident habits in all coast-people. You cannot account for it rationally, but it is a fact. Along the whole immediate shore-line of Europe you find the same traits. Unreadiness, torpor of mind and body.—Ah! Captain Swendon and I wish to hire a boat for the day," ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... of course, of the thousand luxurious trifles with which improvident Robert Oglebay and his beautiful, spirited, improvident wife had surrounded themselves; trifles which had helped to create the artistic atmosphere that was the breath of life to them. Half a hundred creditors divided ...
— Old Valentines - A Love Story • Munson Aldrich Havens
... like the planet Venus, shine in her rightful heaven. And indeed Mr Harry could not fancy her heart so deeply engaged as he might wish; for he could scarce get a word in while the two peered into the mercers' shops, gloating on satin and muslin. Mrs Gunning, as improvident, was almost drawn in by them, when word came of a card debt that their papa owed to Sir Horatius Blake, and the unfortunate lady received not even the pittance that provided herrings for six hungry mouths; so that they were like to ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... delivered the young artist a level look of understanding from her topaz eyes. "I fear thou art indeed improvident," she continued, "if thou leavest ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... know very well what that means. Three women, each with an armful of brats, besieging the office and clamouring for a pension. Why are seamen such improvident dogs?" ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... he infused into nature that power which produces these apparently contradictory effects; which, although they seem injurious to man's interests, are, if he was but capacitated to judge fairly, the most beneficial advantages that he can possibly derive. Thus they made the Divinity appear improvident, by continually employing him to destroy the work of his own hands: they, in fact, taxed him with impotence, by the perpetual non-performance of those projects of which their own imbecillity, their own erring judgment, had vainly supposed him to ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... pressing need was for something to eat. To be sure, every man had gone into action that morning carrying his day's rations. But the British soldier, improvident as the grasshopper, carries his day's rations in one place, and one place only—his stomach. The Hairy Jocks had eaten what they required at their extremely early breakfast: the residue ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... three o'clock, but these savings will not go far when half a million can be thrown away on the bogs and rocks round Loch Doon with no useful result of any kind, and yet nobody seems to be made responsible for this waste, nor can anyone say why it was allowed. We hear again and again of improvident contracts and extravagant purchases, and also of absurd cost incurred in supervising minute details. Why cannot clear general authority to act on the spot in certain matters be given to some responsible ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... emergency arises, and if the saver can not furnish nine hundred dollars he will lose his home. In this case he must either borrow or use his reserve, so he takes nine hundred dollars from the savings bank and keeps his home. The improvident man loses his home under similar circumstances, for his credit is not good and he has no balance ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... and unearthly figure. Not that, as in times of old, he plays, as Holy Writ tells us, on a ten-stringed instrument; on the contrary, he brings the most powerful, the most wonderful, and the most heart-rending tones from one string. His name is Paganini; he is very improvident and very poor. The D——s, and the Impressario of the theatre got up a concert for him the other night, which was well attended, and on which occasion he electrified the audience. He is a native of Genoa, and if I were a judge of violin playing, I would pronounce him the most ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... another week. Grimes transferred his objectionable affection and Barbara was not even asked to be wife number three. Brewster's campaign was so ardent that he neglected other duties deplorably, falling far behind his improvident average. With Grimes disposed of, he once more forsook the battlefield of love and gave his harassed and undivided attention to his ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... this hankering after the woods and the freedom of the chase, they are a people easily instructed, quick to learn, (when they like to do so), and very submissive and grateful. But they are very, very improvident. So long as they have enough for to-day, let to- morrow look out for itself. Even upon great festivals such as Christmas, when my husband would give them a double allowance of rations, they would come ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... set up by economists for being too late for dinner is, "There was not a coach to be found."—Uncalculating and improvident selfish idiot, not to send for one till the very last moment; you save nothing by it, and spoil your friend's dinner, in order to save yourself sixpence. Suppose you have a mile and a half to go, the fare is one shilling ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... estate and put the money in a stocking, which they kept on the top of the bed; and when that store was used up, the young man actually sold a house in Dublin to buy a high-crowned hat and feathers. Still, reckless and improvident as they were, there was sound principle within them, and though they were great favorites, and Charles II. insisted on knighting the husband, their glimpse of the real evils and temptations of his Court sufficed them, and in the full tide of flattery ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the land. They don't understand any but the most elementary methods. They do not put the land to its best use. When they had prosperous years, and many a one they had, they put nothing by for a rainy day. They are very improvident. I have been in both England and Scotland, and I know the difference in the people. They have more self-reliance, and they are keen after improvements. They are not satisfied to have just enough, to live from hand to mouth. They must have comfort, and they like to be independent. Now, Paddy ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... that he really saw anything in his old age, but they were all certain that he saw things when he was a young man. His brother said, "Old he is, and it's all in his brain the things he sees. If he was a young man we might believe in him." But he was improvident, and never got on with his brothers. A neighbour said, "The poor man, they say they are mostly in his head now, but sure he was a fine fresh man twenty years ago the night he saw them linked in two lots, like young slips of girls walking together. It was the night they took away Fallon's little ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... disposition, he appears to have been careless, improvident, and sanguine; easily swayed both in his commendation and censures of others, by the reigning humour of the moment, yet warm, and (when not influenced by the baneful spirit of faction) steady in his attachments. On his independence he particularly prided himself. ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... Constitution. The grievances of which the Commons sought redress, whether from Tudor, Plantagenet or Stuart, were the improper use of prerogatives, the granting of oppressive monopolies, the waging of costly foreign wars, the misconduct of favorites and the like. The improvident expenditure of the royal patrimony, the granting the crown land or pensions to unworthy persons, is a ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... dear; well, you furnish the bread, and I will skirmish around after the water." This exact dialogue may never have taken place; but the circumstances which might have called it out have occurred thousands of times. How many times has a dependent woman who had hastily married an improvident husband awakened at the end of a short honeymoon to find that she had only a limber stick or a broken reed to lean upon, instead of a self-reliant, independent, self-sustaining man, able to provide for her the comforts of a home and to protect her from the rudeness and suffering of ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... oil and cork; Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, and Malaga are the chief towns; the widest variety of character exists among the natives of the various provinces, from the hard-working, thrifty Catalan to the lazy, improvident Murcian, but all possess the southern love "of song, dance, and colour," and have an inherent grace and dignity of manner; Roman Catholicism is the national religion; and although systems of elementary and secondary schools are ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... later than it should have come if the belligerents had not been far too afraid of one another to face the situation sensibly. Germany, having failed to provide for the war she began, failed again to surrender before she was dangerously exhausted. Her opponents, equally improvident, went as much too close to bankruptcy as Germany to starvation. It was a bluff at which both were bluffed. And, with the usual irony of war, it remains doubtful whether Germany and Russia, the defeated, will not ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... which he does not care for. Every body has selfish and unselfish interests, and a selfish man has cultivated the habit of caring for the former and not caring for the latter. Every one has present and distant interests, and the improvident man is he who cares for the present interests and does not care for the distant. It matters little that on any correct calculation the latter may be the more considerable, if the habits of his mind lead him to fix his thoughts and wishes solely on the former. It would be vain to attempt to persuade ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... first week the novelty has passed, and the money of some of the improvident families is running low. All are upon short allowance, the problem being to prolong life at the minimum of expense. The man goes without his meat, the mother without her tea, the children without the trifling, ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... vessel should be navigated, who only holds out a cold and steady hand after the catastrophe has happened, or, if no catastrophe supervenes, is content to walk away in that silent wonder which the care of Providence for the improvident must ever evoke. ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... about him. It was one of those inexplicable things which can not be answered. Otherwise Hillard enjoyed himself vastly. He found these people full of hope, light-hearted, generous, intelligent, and generally improvident. ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... stood the foremost in the list: not from the greatness of the sum; but from the danger of his adding to it the expenses of law. Sir Terence undertook to pay the whole with five thousand pounds. Lord Clonbrony thought it impossible: the solicitor thought it improvident, because he knew that upon a trial a much greater abatement would be allowed; but Lord Colambre was determined, from the present embarrassments of his own situation, to leave nothing undone that could ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... know that I rightly understand how you would avert all these sad consequences of improvident affections?" ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... persevering industry of my worthy and excellent friend, Colonel Talbot. Forty years ago, while exploring the about-to-be province, on the staff of its governor, General Simcoe, he was struck with the beauty and fertility of this tract; and afterwards observing that, from the improvident grants of the colonial government to friends and favourites, this fertile country, if left in their hands, would continue for ages a howling wilderness, he procured from the authorities at home an exclusive ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... Scotland added to the adult community in an untaught, uninformed condition. Nor need we say in how frightful a ratio their numbers must increase. The ignorant children of the present will become the improvident and careless parents of the future; and how improvident and careless the corresponding class which already exists among us always approves itself to be, let our prisons and workhouses tell. Our country, with all its churches, must inevitably ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... squatter's son to such a conclusion? The condition of the family had for some time been unsatisfactory to Tom. Though brought up in this roving, improvident way, his better nature often revolted against it; not, however, so strongly and decisively as now. Still, desires, and even longings, for something better had flitted through his mind, only to make him moody and irritable. Doubtless these aspirations were due, ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... Vicksburg storekeeper. This young woman, who had doubtless found ample opportunity for the practice of domestic economy in the paternal home, soon proved herself to be a most excellent housekeeper on her own account. She was a jewel indeed to her improvident husband, who, finding that she made shift by one means or another to keep the family larder supplied, whether he kept her purse supplied or not, dismissed a great care from his mind at once and for ever, and thenceforth to the end of his days never exerted himself beyond ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... good living, and Mr Armstrong had a very large family; he was, therefore, a poor man. His children were helpless, uneducated, and improvident; his wife was nearly worn out with the labours of bringing them forth and afterwards catering for them; and a great portion of his own life was taken up in a hard battle with tradesmen and tithe-payers, creditors, and debtors. ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... altogether improvident. He had hoped great things of Bill Siddall's wine-cellar—this despite an almost unbroken series of bitter disillusionments and disappointments in experience with those who had the wealth to buy, if they ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... sort of life had been Lady Kirton's. The wife of a very poor and improvident Irish peer, who had died early, leaving her badly provided for, her days had been one long scramble to make both ends meet and avoid creditors. Now in Ireland, now on the Continent, now coming out for a few brief ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... and patrols of soldiers guarding it. The American side was bright and clean, orderly and self-respecting, but only a hundred feet away, unkempt, dusty, with adobe buildings and a notorious gambling-hell in plain view, was Mexico itself—leisurely, improvident, not ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... say yours are white; I should except your free blacks, who are the most miserable class of human beings I ever saw. They are indolent, reckless, and impertinent. The poorer classes of society, are proverbially improvident—and yours, in sickness, and in old age, are often victims of want and suffering. Ours in such circumstances, are kindly cared for, and are never considered a burden; our laws are, generally speaking, humane and faithfully administered. We have enactments ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... schemes broached by as many wild heads of the excited crowd, in which were now lined up for any lawlessness all the idlers, floaters, the improvident, and the reckless elements of a frontier gambling town, one caught the popular fancy. Some one proposed a jail delivery to release Rebstock and Seagrue, persecuted by the railroad company. The idea spread like wildfire, and a score of men, reinforced by more at every door as they proceeded ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... separate vessels, found it easy to make the flame of their torches burn up as brightly as ever; but those who had neglected to provide such a supply could not with all their efforts revive the dead or dying light. "Give us," said the five improvident maidens, "give us of your oil, for our lamps are gone out." The more thoughtful, and therefore more fortunate watchers, while they pitied their sisters, were afraid to part with any portion of their own stores, lest they should be left in the ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... to the Cumberland river to be rafted. He raised cotton, but only the amount the women needed for their looms. He grew wheat and corn, but no more than was necessary for flour and meal for the neighborhood and to feed the stock he owned, laying aside a portion for use in time of need for the improvident and unfortunate. ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... almost said, anything but that; making bad worse, the improvident more improvident, the liar more ready to lie, the idler more ready to idle. But the Charity which is Humanity, which is the spirit of pure pity, the Spirit of ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... of fashionable life upon the class of tradesmen whose custom lies in that direction, is not less injurious. People of fashion are for the most part improvident: but even when they are not so in the long run, it seems to be their pride to be wantonly and perversely disorderly in the conduct of their pecuniary transactions. The result of this to themselves is not here the point in question, although there are few things which in their effects are more ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... personal habits and on those of his wife than on the actual amount he receives in wages. Social reform, to be effective, must be assisted in the home. The worker must aid the social reformer. Outside assistance alone will little benefit wasteful and improvident men who refuse ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... words now on unprofitable modes of employment. It seems, first, little less than infatuation, to make Negroes carry baskets of dung upon their heads, basket after basket, to the field. I do not mention this so much as an intolerable hardship upon those who have to perform it, as an improvident waste of strength and time. Why are not horses, or mules, or oxen, and carts or other vehicles of convenience, used oftener on such occasions? I may notice also that cruel and most disadvantageous mode of employment of making Negroes collect ...
— Thoughts On The Necessity Of Improving The Condition Of The Slaves • Thomas Clarkson
... increase both in the number and in the standard of the intellectually able. But I do not wish to assert that this tendency may not be more than counterbalanced in other ways, as by the multiplication of the reckless and improvident; but even to such as these, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... that society mainly consists of two classes—the savers and the wasters, the provident and the improvident, the thrifty and the thriftless, the Haves and the Have-nots. The men who economize by means of labour become the owners of capital which sets other labour in motion. Capital accumulates in their hands, and they employ other labourers to work ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... dealings with strangers, which they esteem no moral defect; suspicious; regardless of truth; mean in their transactions; servile; though cleanly in their persons, dirty in their apparel, which they never wash. They are careless and improvident of the future, because their wants are few, for though poor they are not necessitous; nature supplying, with extraordinary facility, whatever she has made requisite for their existence. Science and the arts have not, by extending their views, contributed ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... by all the Indian tribes of the Hudson's Bay territory; and were it not for them these people would be confined to one place for months together, and could not follow the deer or other game. As almost all savages are improvident, and none more so than the North American Indians, were they prevented for a season from going out to hunt, whole tribes would starve. Indeed, many individuals of them perish with hunger as it is; and the life of all these Indians is nothing more than one continued ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... weakness the boy beside him, but this enwrapped attitude, this eloquent, still, unconscious face, which spoke of thoughts and feelings familiar only to the eye of God, seemed to lift Louis into another sphere; he knew the people kneeling about, the headlong, improvident, roystering crowd, but knew them not in this outpouring of deeper emotions than spring from the daily ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... faults. I do not deny that he is improvident. I do not deny that he has kept me in the dark as to his resources and his liabilities both,' she went on, looking at the wall; 'but I never ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... is to get rid of the slackers. Inefficiency and slacking are often due to a man's enfeebled mental and physical condition, owing to neglect in his bringing up as a child, or to insufficient or unwholesome food provided by an improvident ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... undetermined to the last, and would not, I believe, have adopted my plan of settlement in Huaheine, if I had not so explicitly refused to employ force in restoring him to his father's possessions. Whether the remains of his European wealth, which after all his improvident waste, was still considerable, will be more prudently administered by him, or whether the steps I took, as already explained, to insure him protection in Huaheine, shall have proved effectual, must be left ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... manage their successions; he thought no pains too great to arrange between a widow and a son who had succeeded his father; he was often harassed and perplexed by tales of hardship; and I find him writing, almost in despair, of their improvident habits and the destitution that awaited their families upon a death. 'The house being completely furnished, they come into possession without necessaries, and they go out NAKED. The insurance seems to have failed, and what next is to be tried?' While they lived he wrote behind their ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of value was the livre, nearly equivalent to the modern franc. They were not very industrious, nor very thrifty husbandmen. Their farming implements were rude, their methods of cultivation simple and primitive, and they themselves were often lazy and improvident. Near their town they had great orchards of gnarled apple-trees, planted by their forefathers when they came from France, and old pear-trees, of a kind unknown to the Americans; but their fields often lay untilled, while the owners ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the fact that when the people reach that stage in their development in which they begin to till the soil, they soon become careful of the little property they have, in marked distinction to the savage and nomadic tribes, who are always lavish and improvident. I have seen as many as ten store-houses of the kind described, and once even fourteen near one dwelling, but generally one or two only are ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... power conferred upon it by the Constitution. It should be remembered, however, that this power is wholly negative and conservative in its character, and was intended to operate as a check upon unconstitutional, hasty, and improvident legislation and as a means of protection against invasions of the just powers of the executive and judicial departments. It is remarked ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... you separate impurity and pleasure, which indeed soon fly asunder when the improvident would unite them. But never believe that tenderness of heart signifies corruption of morals, if you happen to find it (which indeed is unlikely) in the direction you have taken; on the contrary, no two qualities are oftener found together, on mind ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... it would seem, than to the "Prodigal Father," as Dickens later called him. This father, whom Dickens long afterward described, in David Copperfield, as Mr. Micawber, was, as his son was always most willing to testify, a kind, generous man; but he was improvident to the last degree; and when in difficulties which would have made melancholy any other man, he was able, by the mere force of his rhetoric, to lift himself above circumstances or to make ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the rough, fighting, hunting, pioneer life. Joel Renton had made money, by good luck chiefly, having held land here and there which he had got for nothing, and had then almost forgotten about it, and, when reminded of it, still held on to it with that defiant stubbornness which often possesses improvident and careless natures. He had never had any real business instinct, and to swagger a little over the land he held and to treat offers of purchase with contempt was the loud assertion of a capacity he did not possess. So it was that stubborn vanity, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... great shifting of population did not take place without some inconvenience and hardship. Among the thousands who changed their place of residence were many ignorant and improvident persons; but sometimes it was the most skilled artisans and the most substantial owners of homes in different communities who sold their property and moved away. In the North they at once met congestion in housing facilities. In Philadelphia and Pittsburgh this condition became ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... very much disposed to think that, in this very emancipation, they have been saved from their own Parliament by the humanity of their own sovereign? Or do you wish to prepare them for the revocation of these improvident concessions? Do you think it wise or humane at this moment to insult them, by sticking up in a pillory the man who dared to stand forth as their advocate? I put it to your oaths: Do you think that a blessing of that kind—that a victory obtained by justice ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... farming community often has meager social life and lack of proper recreations; the city-dweller is made restless and improvident by an excess of opportunities ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... annihilating sway of man over the world in the past and in the present; and, proceeding from the historic fact that the countries which in the palmy days of the Roman Empire were the granary and the wine-cellar of the world have been given over by the improvident destructiveness of man to desolation and desert, he enters into a thorough study of the fact, that, no sooner does man recede from the barbaric state than he commences a career of destructiveness, cutting off, in a manner reckless and criminally wasteful, forests, the lives of quadrupeds, ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of it! It gets on my nerves, my brother's extravagance does. I often quarrel with him because he's so improvident. ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... can give. When the wealthy, the educated thus repudiated the words of Christ, what could be expected of those whom supreme Goodness has destined to a subordinate lot? No! material improvement was not the first thing, even for those unhappy people (victims for the most part of their own improvident or vicious habits) who had scarcely bread to eat and raiment wherewith to clothe themselves. Let them seek the kingdom of God, and these paltry, temporal things shall ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... river in canoes. A heavy shower fell this morning. My improvident men have torn all their waterproof cloaks and blankets just as we have arrived in a country where ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... was a failure, community of property was not. Whether the law of mine and thine is natural or incidental in human character, it soon began to develop its sway. The industrious, the skilful and the strong saw the product of their labor enjoyed by the indolent, the unskilled and the improvident; and self-love rose against benevolence. A band of musicians thought their brassy harmony was as necessary to the common happiness as bread and meat, and declined to enter the harvest-field or the workshop. A lecturer upon natural science insisted upon talking while others worked. Mechanics, whose ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... welcomed by the chiefs of the army, recounted to them "in detail," says William of Tyre, "how the people, who had preceded them under his guidance, had shown themselves destitute of intelligence, improvident, and unmanageable at the same time; and so it was far more by their own fault than by the deed of any other that they had succumbed to the weight of their calamities." Peter, having thus relieved his heart and recovered his hopes, joined the powerful army of crusaders ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... His works, recommended by Lord Dorset, were read largely, and even by the King himself; but there was then no great demand for books, and authors had to look to patrons, and eat the uncertain bread of dependence. We may suppose, however, that he was an improvident man, for during his life he held several offices, and was at one time steward ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... country where every household is burning wood and charcoal daily, a country where not only the houses but most of the things in common use are made of wood; and there seems to be no end to the trees that remain. It is little wonder that in many parts there has been and is improvident use of wood. Happily every year the regulation of timber areas and wise planting make progress. But for many square miles of hillside I saw there is ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... Love is so improvident that a parting a year away is no more feared than death, and a month's end seems dim and distant. But a week,—a week only,—that even to love is short, and the beginning of the end. The chilling mist that rose ...
— Lost - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... wild Indians could not be justly termed improvident, when their manner of life is taken into consideration. They let nothing go to waste, and labored incessantly during the summer and fall to lay up provision for the inclement season. Berries of all kinds were industriously gathered, and dried ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... yet been fulfilled. "I rejoice," he said, "on public grounds, in the hope that the wisdom of parliament will at length devise measures which shall inspire just confidence in the medium of exchange, shall put a check on improvident speculations, and shall ensure the just reward of industry and the legitimate profit of commercial enterprise conducted with integrity and controlled ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... term, beginning in 1893, the country by improvident bond issues and debt contraction, made rapid strides in the direction of bankruptcy. In 1893, the San Domingo Improvement Company, an American corporation, under contract with the government took charge of the customs collections for the purpose of providing for the services of the loans. The illegal ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... to her own room and spent half an hour in collecting every valuable she owned. They were not many; she had always been recklessly improvident. She put together in a package her few jewels, and even the laces she considered worth the most. Then she went out, and, taking a fiacre at ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... fortune—fellows who lived purely for the fun of living, and leavened their days with adventure. They were buoyant souls, for the most part, drifting with the tide, resentful of authority and free from care; meeting each day with enthusiastic expectancy for what it held in store. They were restless and improvident; the world counted them ne'er-do-wells, and yet she knew that at least their hours were full and that their names—some of them—were written large in the distant places. Alaire Austin often told herself that, had she been born a man, such a life as this ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... inspired clerk—as they did—and gave her the annuity to which a wife would have been entitled—but of which he could not feel assured. Living among literary men, some less distinguished and less discreet than those whom we have mentioned, he was constantly importuned to relieve distresses which an improvident speculation in literature produces, and which the recklessness attendant on the empty vanity of self-exaggerated talent renders desperate and merciless—and to the importunities of such hopeless petitioners he gave too largely—though he used sometimes to express ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... Moscow, she had been besieged by a handsome, impecunious young officer; and, instead of throwing him over for the wealthy young Count Dravikine, had capped her sister's black marriage by one wildly improvident? Besides, she was not without serious plans with regard to her daughter, even in these first weeks of her first season. But no plan seemed possible of fulfilment when, night after night, Nathalie would make a dutiful, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... know my past, but do not seem to think much about it. I live in the present. I brood neither over past nor future. I am careless, improvident, uncautious, happy out of sheer well-being and overplus of physical energy. Fish, fruits, vegetables, and seaweed—a full stomach—and I am content. I am high in place with Raa Kook, than whom none is higher, ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... we could judge, of their being able to pay us without allowing the mortgage to be foreclosed. That you may not think ill of me on that account, I may say that we thus had an opportunity of being of considerable service to many of these improvident gentlemen. Our trade throve, and I soon found that it would be convenient to establish a store at the principal place at which the steamer called. Arthur took charge of it, and the flourishing condition of the concern showed that we ...
— The Log House by the Lake - A Tale of Canada • William H. G. Kingston
... thought that the whole city has been formed into a line of skirmishers. You are startled by a noise on the front pavement, which sounds like an energetic drummer beating the long roll on a barrel-head; and you have an indistinct idea that some improvident urchin (up since the dawn) has just expended ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... lacking any spontaneous, central, rallying point, and who, failing natural leaders, simply push and jostle each other or stand still, each according to personal, blind, and haphazard impressions—a hasty, improvident, inconsistent, superficial opinion, caught on the wing, based on vague rumors, on four or five minutes of attention given each week, and chiefly to big words imperfectly understood, two or three sonorous, commonplace phrases, of which the listeners fail to catch the sense, but the sound which, by ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... was gardening. This, perhaps, accounts for his location of the scene in his comedy "The Cherry Garden," where a business-like man, who had once been a serf, just like the dramatist's own father, has prospered sufficiently to buy the orchard from the improvident and highly educated owners; and for all the details about fruit-gardening given in the powerful story "The Black Monk." This story infallibly reminds one of Gogol. A man has repeatedly a vision of a black ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... them a master. The duller of those who were the life-seekers of old would have told you how some chance, trivial, unlooked-for, foiled their grand hope at the very point of fruition,—some doltish mistake, some improvident oversight, a defect in the sulphur, a wild overflow in the quicksilver, or a flaw in the bellows, or a pupil who failed to replenish the fuel, by falling asleep by the furnace. The invisible foes seldom vouchsafe to make themselves visible where they can frustrate the bungler, as they ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Raymond was the youngest son of an old, wealthy and haughty family in Dorsetshire, England. At a very early age he married the youngest sister of Colonel Delany. Having nothing but his pay, all the miseries of an improvident marriage fell upon the young couple. The same hour that gave existence to Alice, deprived her of her mother. The facilities to ambition offered by America, and the hope of distracting his grief, induced ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... forgive him when the bailiffs were after him, and abused Mr. Addison for selling Dick's country-house. And yet Dick in the spunging-house, or Dick in the Park, with his four mares and plated harness, was exactly the same gentle, kindly, improvident, jovial Dick Steele: and yet Mr. Addison was perfectly right in getting the money which was his, and not giving up the amount of his just claim, to be spent by Dick upon champagne and fiddlers, laced clothes, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... apostolic example, and minister to their necessities by their own hands, and exhibit a pattern to their infant establishments, not only of industry to procure the means of personal livelihood, but to enable them to assist those improvident heathen by whom they are surrounded, even when their exertions are attended with danger and repaid by insult; and by these means they often acquire an influence over the most savage minds, which it were otherwise difficult to obtain. Of this we have a most remarkable instance ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... was her next trial—a debtor and improvident, with a wife and family of small children. Being recommended to her good graces, he stayed for a time in her household while trying to arrange with his creditors. He accompanied Miss Bosanquet, Mrs. Ryan, and Mrs. Crosby upon a troublesome journey to Yorkshire, ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... man whose interest it is to appropriate the fruits of your labours, which he can legally do. Now, in every class and profession, there are failures,—persons that are good for nothing, indolent, improvident, and thriftless. If such a man has a long lease at a low rent, he may be overwhelmed in debt, and leave his land in very bad condition. Others may imitate their aristocratic superiors in their contempt for labour and their habits ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... into the game as the cattle-sheep wars were at their peak and he played it strenuously. But with it all, Landy Spencer kept his moral slate fairly clean. Then as the sober days of manhood came, and Landy witnessed the finish of the improvident and foolish, he began to save and skimp. "Hit's the pore house fer a cow hand," was his terse aphorism on the subject, and Landy had never seen a "fitten" ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... perishing during severely cold weather. The father absent on a winter's hunt, the mother could not leave her children to apply to the fort for assistance, even had she strength left to reach there. The frozen bodies would be found in the lodges. The improvident character of the Indian is well known. Their annuities are soon spent; supplies received from government are used in feasting; and no provision is made for winters that are always long and severe. Though they receive frequent assistance from the public at the fort, the wants of all cannot be supplied. ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... little surprised to find the natives of the North so slow, indolent and improvident. We have an idea that a cold climate is bracing and stimulating—ergo, the further north you go, the more active and energetic you will find the people. But the touch of ice is like that of fire. The tropics relax, the pole benumbs, and the practical result is the same in both cases. ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... still more fruitful of wide-spread spoilation and plunder. The act of September 20th, granting alternate sections of land in aid of the Illinois Central Railway, inaugurated our famous land-grant policy, which, becoming more and more reckless and improvident in its exactions, and cunningly combining the power of great corporations with vast monopolies of the public domain, has signally eclipsed all other schemes of commercial feudalism, and left to coming generations a problem involving the very life of our popular institutions. The fruits of this legislation ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... habits were good. He had the artistic temperament and some of its incidental weaknesses. He acknowledged himself "constitutionally improvident," and a debt-burdened life is not easy. His later years were pathetic. Those who knew and appreciated him remember him fondly. California failing to ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... million pounds sterling, by mortgaging his different estates and giving his promissory notes to money-lenders. Of course, he did not spend this vast sum immediately. He might have lived in comparative luxury upon his income; but he was a restless, eager, improvident nobleman, and his extravagances were prompted by the urgings ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... embarrassments of Sheridan is to be added the extravagance of his own style of living, which became much more careless and profuse after death had deprived him of her, whose maternal thoughtfulness alone would have been a check upon such improvident waste. We are enabled to form some idea of his expensive habits, by finding, from the letters which have just been quoted, that he was, at the same time, maintaining three establishments,—one at Wanstead, where his son resided with his tutor; ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... steep is the hill, that an enemy resting at the edge of the forest, and within two hundred yards of the fort, is not from thence visible. Immediately above the fort is a small village and market, (bazar;) but the Hindu engineers have been so improvident, that the only supply of water is about half a mile higher up the mountain. There, near the road, is a small spring of fine clear water, like that at Bhimphedi. It is called Chisa Pani, or the cold water, and is reckoned unwholesome, probably from people having suffered by drinking it rashly, when ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... essential to the very existence of respectability; and, by carrying out this proposition, that in order to make the least amount of extravagance produce the utmost admiration and envy, it is desirable to be improvident as publicly as possible; the means for such expenditure being gleaned from retrenchments in the home department. Thus, by a system of domestic alchemy, the education of the children is resolved into a vehicle; a couple of maids are ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various
... it was, in the best mode they were able. It proved a severe shock. Mrs. Verner had loved John, her eldest born, above every earthly thing. He was wild, random, improvident, had given her incessant trouble as a child and as a man; and so, mother fashion, ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Congress, by an appropriation for that purpose, renders their continued enforcement possible. The experience of other nations teaches us that a country can not be stripped of its forests with impunity, and we shall expose ourselves to the gravest consequences unless the wasteful and improvident manner in which the forests in the United States are destroyed be effectually checked. I earnestly recommend that the measures suggested by the Secretary of the Interior for the suppression of depredations on the public timber lands of ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... of graceful and vigorous bearing. They are perhaps the most courageous and intelligent of the peoples; pugnacious, but less quarrelsome than the Sea Dayak; more energetic and excitable than the Kayan; hospitable and somewhat improvident, sociable and of pleasant manners; less reserved and of more buoyant temperament than the Kayan; very loyal and obedient to their chiefs; more truthful and more to be depended upon under all circumstances than any of the other ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... the irreconcilable enemy which the Christian theory holds it. Far from that, we should strive, first of all, to endow it with all possible vigour and beauty. But it is like a capricious child: exacting, improvident, selfish; and the stronger it grows the more dangerous does it become. It knows no cult but that of the passing moment. In imagination, desires, it halts at the trivial thought, the primitive, fleeting, foolish delight of the little dog or the negro. The satisfactions procured by the ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... pension list of the Republic a roll of honor, bearing names inscribed by national gratitude, and not by improvident ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... ma'am,' said Bitzer, dropping his voice and drawing nearer, 'he is as improvident as any of the people in this town. And you know what their improvidence is, ma'am. No one could wish to know it better than a ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... the same direction with them, our lives could only be safe by their destruction. Although they had taken fully one-third of the whole stock of our provisions, their appetites were so ravenous, and their habits so improvident, that this would soon be consumed, and then they must either starve or plunder us; for they had already tried to subsist themselves in ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... rental. They were modest in structure, but they could be made inviting and neat if the occupants were thrifty. No one was allowed to sell liquor on the property owned by the Gordons, but outside of this limit was a fringe of low saloons which did a thriving business off the improvident miners. ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... brave and alert, but cruel and revengeful, preferring treachery and cunning to open battle. At home, he was lazy, improvident, and an inveterate gambler. He delighted in finery and trinkets, and decked his unclean person with paint and feathers. His grave and haughty demeanor repelled the stranger; but he was grateful for favors, and his wigwam stood hospitably ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... shocks Of angry seas, and run along the rocks, Now, pale with terror, while the ocean foams, Fly far and wide, nor trust their native homes. The goats, while, pendent from the mountain top, The wither'd herb improvident they crop, Wash'd down the precipice with sudden sweep, Leave their sweet lives beneath th'unfathom'd deep. The frighted fisher, with desponding eyes, Though safe, yet trembling in the harbour lies, Nor hoping to behold the skies serene, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... to raise a stone rampart for their own defence; yet the Monkish historians [x], who treat of those events, complain of the luxury of the Britons during this period, and ascribe to that vice, not to their cowardice or improvident counsels, all their subsequent calamities. [FN [x] Gildas. Bede, lib. 1. ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... arts of peace, Alfred did not for an instant neglect the military defences of his kingdom, without which, indeed, he would have been like an improvident husbandman, who should carefully cultivate his land, but leave it unhedged and unprotected. One of his most efficient measures for this purpose, was the building of a new kind of galleys, which "were twice as long, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... besides being somewhat dazzled with ale and brandy, were speedily engaged in contemplating a half-crown which Joshua held between his finger and his thumb, saying, at the same time, 'Friend, thou art indigent and improvident. This will, well employed, procure thee sustentation of nature for more than a single day; and I will bestow it on thee if thou wilt sit here and keep me company; for neither thou nor I, friend, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... a natural nobility in the Indian character. The Indian is debased by heathenism and his wild life, lazy, improvident, filthy, obscene and cruel; and yet he is well endowed by nature with brains and heart and conscience. He is clear-headed and generous; he is often affectionate in his family; he is capable of becoming industrious, ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 06, June, 1884 • Various
... are better known—even to the local peculiarities of life and language—to the general reader, than those of Virginia, from negro melody to picturesque landscape, from old manorial estates to field sports, and from improvident households to heroic beauties; and among the freshest touches to the historical and social picture are those bestowed by Irving in some of the most charming episodes of his 'Life ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... is determined by its individual qualities; whereas in civilised societies a man may obtain the highest position and the most beautiful wife because he is rich and well-born, although he may be ugly, idle or improvident; and then it is he who will perpetuate the species. The wealthy man, ill constituted, incapable, sickly, enjoys his riches and establishes his stock under the protection of the laws." Haycraft in England and Jentsch in Germany have strongly emphasised these "anomalies," which nevertheless are the ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... was an accomplished scholar and a fine musician, with a stock of Irish and other songs which he sang admirably. In person he was very slender, over six feet in height, with a long neck, prominent nose, and very thin hair and whiskers. Cut off from home and being utterly improvident, he was entirely dependent on quartermaster's goods for his apparel, and when clothing was issued his forlorn and ragged appearance hushed every claim by others who might have had precedence. This Confederate clothing, like the rations, was very short, so that Merrick's pantaloons and jacket ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... indebted for all that was good and elevated in his character. She had emigrated with her husband to this town, at an early period of its settlement from the vicinity of Boston, where the latter had become so much straitened in his pecuniary circumstances, in consequence of being surety for an improvident and luckless brother, that he was induced, with the hope of bettering his fortunes, to gather up the poor remnant of his property, and, with it, remove to the New Hampshire Grant's, at that time the Eldorado most in vogue among ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... of democracy." For democracy means freedom, equality of opportunity, "self-determination." No man is a greater slave than one who is bound and driven by financial necessity. By thrift the mind is "unfettered by the petty annoyances that result from improvident ways." Thrift means providing for the future. There is nothing in the world that will so establish one's faith in the future and that will, therefore, give that freedom of spirit upon which democracy depends, as the wise use of to-day ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... of mantling the world with wonder. Commonness vanished before Ewart, at his expository touch all things became memorable and rare. From him I first heard tell of love, but only after its barbs were already sticking in my heart. He was, I know now the bastard of that great improvident artist, Rickmann Ewart; he brought the light of a lax world that at least had not turned its back upon beauty, into the growing fermentation of ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... prevent them becoming the objects of speculation, an official order for every issue, specifying the article, was necessary. Such methods of distribution gave, notwithstanding, ample room for partiality and corruption. On the arrival of Bligh, he found the improvident settlers, discontented and poor, completely in the hands of the martial dealers. Perhaps, from a love of justice, he attempted to rescue them from the grasp of these intermediate agents, who bought their produce at a narrow price, and gave them in exchange goods bearing an enormous per centage.[63] ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... the union; Brucker was unfortunate in a worldly sense. Delsarte, improvident for the future and scorning money, still had, during the best years of his professorship, a relatively comfortable home. He loved to have his friend take advantage of it. Large rooms, well warmed in winter, a simple table, but one ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... a good supply of pure fresh water, as well as of some European fruits, such as apples, peaches, and cherries, the growth of trees planted here by those who first took possession of the island. In 1823, however, these resources had all but disappeared, through the wasteful practices of improvident whalers. At no great distance might be seen the two round eminences which mark the mouth of the river Bio-Bio, the small island of Quebra-Ollas, and that of Quiriquina, and, these passed, the Bay of Conception opened to view, where was a solitary English whaler about to double ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... little better than heathen. The law had scarcely any hold upon these frontiersmen. They were wild and untamed, and personal freedom was kept in restraint mainly by the law of personal accountability. They were generous and improvident, frank, fearless, easy-going, and filled with an intense scorn for every thing that smacked of Eastern refinement or city life. They were proud of their buckskin and linsey-woolsey clothes, their squirrel caps, and their horny hands and rough ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... about marriages. Nasty letters. Refusals to recognise the choice of a son, a daughter, or a widowed but youthful old parent, among the upper classes. Harsh words. Refusals to allow meetings or correspondence. Broken hearts. Improvident marriages. Preaching down a daughter's heart, or an aged parent's heart, or a nephew's, or a niece's, or a ward's, or anybody's heart. Peace restored to the household. Intended marriage off, and nobody a penny ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... Orkney and Shetland had been added to certain royal donations, by a marriage with an heiress of the sirname of Speire. One of the Sinclairs had even borne the dignity of Prince of Orkney; but this distinction was lost by an improvident member of the house of Sinclair, called William the Waster; and the prosperity of his descendants was due only to the favour of James the Sixth, who created Henry Sinclair, of Dysart in ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... that pleasant humour'd gentleman were "but a little soberer," finishes, we take it, the portrait of the Fielding of 1730. "Jack call a coach; and d'ye hear, get up behind it and attend me," cries the improvident poet, the moment his generous friend has left him; and so we are sure did young Mr Fielding put himself and his laced coat into a coach, and mount his man behind it, whenever the exigencies of duns and hunger were for a moment abated. And with as gallant a humour as that of his own Luckless ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... of defending her questionable behaviour to me, which I should have been at pains to excuse. This produced a salutary calm in my soul, which had so recently been a prey to the worst anxieties. All that had driven me with such passionate haste to an improvident and premature marriage, all that had consequently weighed on me so ruinously, now seemed set at rest, leaving peace in its stead. And although the ordinary cares of life still pressed on me for many years, often in a most vexatious and troublesome form, yet the anxieties attendant on my ardent ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... general levity of his conduct, and especially to the Tories by the occasional flippancy or severity of his attacks upon them, that as it was clear that any Conservative Government must depend upon the great body of the Tory party for support, it was improvident in him to make himself obnoxious to them, and that he would do well to exert his influence over Stanley for the purpose of restraining those sallies in which he was too apt to indulge, and showing him ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... however, be the last word of foolishness to encourage improvident marriages, already a source of so much misery, and of course my remarks do not apply to the genuine poverty of the man who really cannot afford to wed. For him I have a very real sympathy, since he is missing the best things of life probably through no fault of his own. ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... arts of civilized life; but it must be added, that, denying him the inalienable rights of manhood, denying him the right to the product of his labor, it left him no noble incentive to labor at these arts, and thus tended to render him improvident, careless, shiftless, in short, to demoralize his ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... wealth, for that often proves a young man's ruin, but does he come of an honest, industrious family? Have you just reason to suppose that he will make a fair success of life? Is his father shiftless, lazy, improvident? If so, it will be harder for him to be provident, business-like. Has he true ideas of the dignity of life and his own responsibility? Is he looking for an "easy job," or does he purpose to give a fair equivalent for all that he receives? Would he rather toil at honest manual labor than be supported ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... would have permanently remained there. That is a question which interest decides. Vermont would not keep African slaves, because they were not valuable to her; neither will any population, whose density is so great as to trade rapidly on the supply of bread, be willing to keep and maintain an improvident population, to feed them in infancy, to care for them in sickness, to protect them in age. And thus it will be found in the history of nations, that, whenever population has reached that density in the temperate zones, serfdom, villenage, or slavery, ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... to vanish, for he will next propose to buy the Hortensian villa from the improvident prodigal who holds it, and will make you settle down here in spite of yourself, and so make a respectable heathen out of you; for of course you have not the courage to whisper in his ear that you are a Christian: his oven ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... women: they call it teaching her what is her proper place. Those good and discreet ladies have a notion that their conduct is full of propriety and discretion and sound sense; but how they make their sisters suffer—ah, how they make the poor things suffer! I believe that, if any improvident man could see, in a keenly vivid dream, a vision of his wife's future after his death, he would stint himself of anything rather than run the risk of having to reflect on his death-bed that he had failed ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... the prosperity of others. He spoke of the Beauchenes, the Moranges, the Seguins, the Lepailleurs, of all he had seen of them, of all they had said, of all their scarcely disguised contempt for an improvident starveling like himself. He, Mathieu, and she, Marianne, would never have factory, nor mansion, nor mill, nor an income of twelve thousand francs a year; and their increasing penury, as the others said, had been their own work. They had certainly shown themselves ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... hearing on the second of these points as any member of Parliament; but they had some glimmerings of the first. They would not hear of improvement on their part, but wished the world made over again in a crack, so that they might remain improvident and idle and debauched, and yet enjoy the comfort and respect that should accompany the opposite Virtues; and it was in this expectation, as far as I could see, that many of them were now on their way to America. But on ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... second time for their departure; and, on the day preceding that, all the party were invited by George to dine with him once more at the sign of the Black Bull of Norway. Everyone promised to attend, anticipating nothing but festivity and joy. Alas, what short-sighted improvident creatures we are, all of us; and how often does the evening cup of joy lead to sorrow ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg |
