"Miser" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... effectually. With what jealousy a husband claims his wife, a mother her children, a miser his possessions! Pray that the Holy Spirit may show how God brought you to Himself, that you should be His. 'He is a holy God; He is a Jealous God.' God's love shed abroad in the heart makes ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray
... life's story you will find The miser—with his hoarded gold— A hermit, dreary and unkind, An outcast from the human fold. Men hold him up to view with scorn, A creature by his wealth enslaved, A spirit craven and forlorn, Doomed by the money he ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... ah! and pray who'd believe it? You ran away from me—but you ran away with me—first! In time? Did your father believe it, that virtuous old miser? would any one, who saw us together, believe it? No, Beatrix, I tell you all the world knows ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... the coarser clue, The finest of the wool is left for you: Spare me but one small portion of the twine, And let the Sisters cut below your line: The rest among the rubbish may they sweep, Or add it to the yarn of some old miser's heap. But if you this ambitious prayer deny, (A wish, I grant; beyond mortality,) Then let me sink beneath proud Arcite's arms, And, I once dead, let him ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... a good memory. In times of excitement such as that I seize all the best phrases and carry them away, and bury them out of sight, like a miser. They are my ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... Meddy; she can't abide the idee of huntin' a human with sech special coursers ez money reward. She 'lows it mought tempt a' evil man or a' ignorant one ter swear a miser'ble wretch's life away. Let the law strengthen its own hands—that's what Meddy say. Don't kindle the sperit of Cain in every brother's breast. Oh, Meddy is plumb comical whenst she fairly gits ter goin', though it's all on account of that thar ...
— Wolf's Head - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... go on with my own narrative, that Charles Grammont, with whose murder I lie charged, developed a remarkable and unexpected characteristic. A reckless spendthrift whilst penniless, he became a miser when he found himself possessor of five thousand pounds. He had returned to Naples, and had for some time engaged himself in drinking, to the exclusion of all other pursuits. But he drank sullenly and alone, and had dismissed from his society that ...
— The Romance Of Giovanni Calvotti - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... seemed to curl around it, like those of a miser around his gold. Some way, his grasp seemed caressing. Oh, it was easy to handle and lift! How naturally it swung in his arms! What a deadly blow the cruel point could inflict! Just one little tap had been needed. Bronson had rocked and fallen, no ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... of his money, too. . . . Funny thing if Nicky-Nan, that we've been pityin' all this time, should turn out to be a miser!" ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... to your friend, for a frightful end Is at hand for the miser Jew! Sit tight to your seat while the pulses beat— Nestle close to your neighbour, do! For he'll perish, alas! From a property glass Filled with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 12, 1892 • Various
... intelligently. For a third time Glaucon struggled across the raging flood. The passage seemed endless, and every receding breaker dragging down to the graves of Oceanus. The Athenian knew his power was failing, and doled it out as a miser, counting his strokes, taking deep gulps of air between each wave. Then, even while consciousness and strength seemed passing together, again beneath his feet were the shifting sands, again the voices encouraging, the hands outstretched, strange forms ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... the time, indeed, that the portier had occupied his present position. In all these years the old man was known to have been out of his room only twice. He was certainly an eccentric person, and was said to be a miser and extremely wealthy. The portier further averred that his property—except such small portion of it as was invested and on the income of which he lived—was realized in the form of diamonds and other precious ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... little ones. A strong mind sees things in their true proportion; a weak one views them through a magnifying medium, which, like the microscope, makes an elephant of a flea; magnifies all little objects, but cannot receive great ones. I have known many a man pass for a miser, by saving a penny, and wrangling for two-pence, who was undoing himself at the same time, by living above his income, and not attending to essential articles, which were above his portee. The sure characteristic of a sound and strong mind is, to find in everything those ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... passed through Tournai, I made inquiries as to this miser, and afterwards informed the King. It appears that he was surprised by robbers when despoiling one of these tombs. After robbing him of all that he possessed, they buried him alive in the very, grave where he was digging, so as to save expense. ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... Berwin's house, was a deaf old crone with a constant thirst, only to be assuaged by strong drink; and a filching hand which was usually in every pocket save her own. She had neither kith nor kin, nor friends, nor even acquaintances; but, being something of a miser, scraped and screwed to amass money she had no need for, and dwelt in a wretched little apartment in a back slum, whence she daily issued to ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... did not, possibly because they were meeting them every day. For among the poor there are still exaggerated characters; they do not go to the Universities to be universified. He told the charwomen, with progressive brightness, that a mad wicked old miser like Scrooge would be really quite impossible now; but as each of the charwomen had an uncle or a grandfather or a father-in-law who was exactly like Scrooge, his cheerfulness was not shared. Indeed, the ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... atrophy is benumbing us, we are losing our finer feeling for beauty, the rose is going back to the briar. I will not speak of the fine old crusted stories, ever the same, on which every drama is based, nor yet of the musty characters with which they are peopled—the miser in the old castle counting his gold by night, the dishevelled woman whom he keeps for ambiguous reasons confined in a cellar. Let all this be waived. We must not quarrel with the ingredients. The ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... the water of the North Sea) was effected in a Short biplane after one hour and twenty minutes in the air. I reckon every minute like a miser counting his hoard, for, if what I've got is mine, I am not likely now to increase the tale. That feeling is the effect of age. It strikes me as I write that, when next time I leave the surface of this globe, it won't be to soar bodily above it in the air. Quite the contrary. And ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... 'if—if—if'—like that. But just then he see the broken watch on the floor, and he stoop, with a laugh, and pick up the pieces; then he get a candle and look on the floor everywhere for the jewels, and he pick them up, and put them away one by one in his purse like a miser. He keep on looking, and once the fire of the candle burn his beard, and he swear, and she stare and stare at him. He sit down at the table, and look at the jewels and laugh to himself. Then she draw herself up, and shake, and put her hands to her eyes, and 'C'est fini! c'est ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... some frightful crisis of war, these people would, perhaps, never have been aware of the fact; and most certainly never would have tendered him a word of thanks, even if they had. When that important question, "Which is the greatest foe to the public weal—the miser or the spendthrift?" is discussed at the artisans' debating club, the spendthrift has all the eloquence on his side—the miser all the votes. The miser's advocate is nowhere, and he pleads the cause of his client with only half his heart. In the theatre, ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... Grace is on the threshold of young womanhood, she goes to stay with her grandfather in Ireland, with the trust from her mother of reconciling him and his son, Bertha's father. Bertha finds her grandfather a recluse and a miser, and in the hands of an underling, who is his evil genius. How she keeps faith with her mother and finds her own fate, through many strange adventures, is the subject of ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... call me poor, yet I am rich In the touch of her golden hair, My heart is filled like a miser's hands With the red-gold of her hair. The sky I ride beneath all day Is the blue of her dear eyes; The only heaven I desire Is the blue of her ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... matter. As she passed through the crowded rooms, she glanced from face to face with her quick, seeking look. She cordially disliked all these people. And their principal crime was that they ate and drank. For Lady Ferriby was a miser. ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... South American Indians are ready to render an amount of service for a little brandy, which it would be in vain to ask them to perform for ten times its value in gold. (Ausland, Jan. 15, 1870.) The miser estimates the possibility of being able to procure for himself, for one dollar, a hundred different articles worth a dollar each, to be ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... "G. H. Mumm, and A.D. 1884! I am no wine-bibber, Bunny, as you know, but I hope you appreciate the specifications as I do. It looks to me like the only bottle, the last of its case, and it does seem a bit of a shame; but more shame for the miser who hoards in his cellar what was meant for mankind! Come, Bunny, lead the way. This baby is worth nursing. It would break my heart if ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... was that of a man who had starved his mother to death, in order to obtain possession of her money. He was a miser, and was often taunted for his crime by the thief fraternity. He was the filthiest neighbour I ever had. Most of the prisoners are cleanly in their habits, but this one was the reverse. He would have his ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... running wide through the heather," where David "took his last look of Kirk Essendean, the trees about the manse, and the big rowans in the kirkyard, where his father and mother lay." Perfectly Scotch, too, is the mouldering, empty house of the Miser, with the stamped leather on the walls. And the Miser is as good as a Scotch Trapbois, till he becomes homicidal, and then one fails to recognise him unless he is a little mad, like that other frantic uncle in "The Merry Men." The ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... a day, when he was digging for roots, his poor sustenance, his spade struck against something heavy, which proved to be gold, a great heap which some miser had probably buried in a time of alarm, thinking to have come again and taken it from its prison, but died before the opportunity had arrived, without making any man privy to the concealment; so ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... being made miser'ble by the prospect of havin' Egbert show up any day and create a row. She confided the whole tale to Sadie, how she was through with Marston for good, but didn't dare tell him so, and how she sent him most of her salary ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... perpetuity."[1333] But, occasionally, we get a glimpse, beyond the mere dry facts, into the region of thought; as where the erector of a monument appends to the name of one, whom we may suppose to have been a miser, the remark, that "the reward of him who heaps up riches is contempt;"[1334] or where one who entertains the hope that his friend is happier in another world than he was upon earth, thus expresses himself—"In memory of Esmun. After rain, the sun shines forth;"[1335] ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... Johnny's mother had provided for the midday repast was bread and butter, plentifully besmeared with honey. If a bear, big or little, has one weakness in this world it is just honey. He will do for honey what a miser will do for gain, what a politician will do for office, what a lover will do for his sweetheart, what some women will do for dress. For that bear to pass that bread and honey was simply an impossibility. He would ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... claws of a crab. His faded hair, scanty and slight, like the down on a young duck, allowed his scalp to be plainly seen. The brown, crimpled skin of his neck showed the big veins which sank under his jaws and reappeared at his temples. He was regarded in the district as a miser and a hard man in ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... shots and coming on a dead run to the rescue." She picked up the cat and walked slowly down the hard-trodden path to the stable. "But there aren't any bandits, and dad hasn't any gold or anything else worth stealing—Ket, if dad isn't a miser, he's poor! And Lone Morgan is merely ashamed of the way I talked to him, and afraid I'll queer myself with the neighbours. No Western lead that I ever saw would act like that. Why, he didn't even want to ride home with me, ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... kinds of interest that need to be clearly distinguished: direct interest, which is felt for the thing itself, for its own sake, and indirect interest which points to something else as the real source. A miser loves gold coins for their own sake, but most people love them only because of the things for which they may be exchanged. The poet loves the beauty and fragrance of flowers, the florist adds to this a ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... love of doing something hard. No man but a miser punishes himself for love of gold—it's for love of what the stuff will buy, that men ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... the large brown volume and read: "'Nicholas Herison, an old miser, was hung at Batchford in 1763 for the murder of a farm lad who had accidentally discovered his secret hoard. His ghost is supposed to traverse the countryside, appearing sometimes as a white owl, sometimes ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... sixty-five years old, and the greatest miser in San Lorenzo County. He lived on less than a dollar a day, and allowed the rest of his income to accumulate at the rate of one per cent, a month, ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... to the heroine's home and implores her to return with him to the bedside of his dying wife. The sudden announcement that his wife—whom he had thought in a good state of health—is dying, is surely enough to startle even a miser out of his niggardliness, much less a hero; and yet what do we find Vasher doing? The heroine, in frantic excitement, has to pass through his smoking room, and on the table she sees—what? "A half-smoked cigar." He was in the middle of it ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... upon belonged to the Earl of Raincy. Even those blue hills bounding the meadow valleys to the north hid a fair half of his property, and he was sorry for that. Because he was a land miser, hoarding parishes and townships. He grudged the sea its fringe of foam, the three-mile fishing limit, the very high-and-low mark between the tides which was not his, but belonged to the crown—along which the common people had a right to pass, and where fisherfolk ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... first altar): Hail, Mammon! while man buys and barters, Thy kingdom in this world is sure; Thy prophets thou hast and thy martyrs, Great things in thy name they endure; Thy fetters of gold crush the miser, The usurer bends at thy shrine, And the wealthier nations and the wiser Bow with us at ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... paper parcel. More than once since she had possessed this money had Elma examined that little packet, getting up early in the morning to gloat over it, looking at it the last thing at night; but always taking care that Carrie should be sound asleep. It gave her comfort, the comfort almost of a miser to gaze at her gold. She used to forget at these supreme moments that the gold was in reality not hers at all. She used to forget everything but the delightful sense of possession. She felt as if she could never spend the money, as ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... a large hand and repayest like a very miser," answered Zaphnath. "All the money thou namest will not buy a thousand cargoes of grain, for behold, is not wheat worth iron money, weight for weight? And to reimburse the Pharaoh for feeding all his men and ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... artist in him that he chiefly cared for. And to this he set himself with a moral fervour and a scientific tenacity. There was in Ibsen none of the abundance of great natures, none of the ease of strength. He nursed his force, as a miser hoards his gold; and does he not give you at times an uneasy feeling that he is making the most of himself, as the miser makes the most of his gold by ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... her with a miser's praise; She craves no golden speech; her ways Wind through charmed nights and magic ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... But the old miser burst into frightful laughter. "Ah! the sweet young master takes off his shoe for a beggar! Ah! master spoils a pair of shoes for a barefoot! This is something new, indeed! Ah! well, since things are so, I will place the shoe that is ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... conversations, endeavoured to sound her father on this point; and although the suspicions of affection are often more apparent than real, in this they were not mistaken; for, without consulting his child—and as if her soul had been in his hand—he promised her in marriage to a rich old miser, ay, twice as rich, and ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... accounts as we had of it, had been full of antitheses as startling as if some malign enchanter had embodied one of Macaulay's characters as a conundrum to bewilder the historian himself. A generous miser; a sceptical believer; a devout scoffer; a tender-hearted misanthrope; a churchman faithful to his order yet loathing to wear its uniform; an Irishman hating the Irish, as Heine did the Jews,[1] because he was one of them, yet defending ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... brows seemed to bear the burden of all the sorrows confided to him: he felt, analyzed, and judged them all. As watchful as a Jew money-lender, he never raised his eyes from his books and registers but to look into the very heart of the persons he was examining, with the flashing glance by which a miser ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir.' BOSWELL. 'He has a singular talent of exhibiting character.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, it is not a talent; it is a vice; it is what others abstain from. It is not comedy, which exhibits the character of a species, as that of a miser gathered from many misers: it is farce, which exhibits individuals.' BOSWELL. 'Did not he think of exhibiting you, Sir?' JOHNSON. 'Sir, fear restrained him; he knew I would have broken his bones. I would have saved him the trouble of cutting ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... very shabby-looking man, as I thought to beg. He sidled up and whispered that he wanted me to go home with him. I'm afraid I rather snubbed him; but was sorry for it afterwards, when told that he was the rich old miser So-and-so, who had never taken a fancy to any one before. What a dolt I must have been to snub away the possible codicil of ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... his money against the fatal day," he laughed one night. "He has become a rank miser! Joe says he goes for days at a time, borrowing his tobacco, and he won't play anything but penny-ante now, when he can be coaxed to play ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... by God. Use thy noble vase to-day; to-morrow it may break. The soldiers fight and the kings are heroes. Commit a sin twice, it will seem a sin no longer. The world is saved by the breath of the school children. A miser is as wicked as an idolater. Do not make woman weep, for God counts her tears. The best preacher is the heart; the best teacher time; the best book the world; ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... was Mrs Garlick's. A miser, she was not the ordinary miser, being exceptional in the fact that her temperament was joyous. She had reached the thirtieth year of her widowhood and the sixtieth of her age, with cheerfulness unimpaired. The people of Bursley, when they met her sometimes ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... bad-tempered step-mother, or a drunken brute of an uncle, or a miser of a grandfather, or some other evilly-conditioned relative. Wouldn't you rather be as you are than to know ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... sexcentesimo octogesimo quarto, Ecfridus rex Nordanhumbrorum, misso Hiberniam cm excercitu duce Berto, vastauit miser gentem innoxiam, & nationi Anglorum semper amicissimam, ita vt nec ecclesijs quidem aut monasterijs manus, parceret hostilis. At insulani & quantum valuere armis arma repellebant, & inuocantes diuin auxilum pietatis coelitus se vindicari continuis di imprecationibus ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... entrance-gateway which have escaped the general ruin of the monastery. Within this ancient church the ornaments of some of the old stalls in the choir are very quaint, representing a man leading a bear, a dying miser handing his money-bags to the priest and doctor, and three rats solemnly hanging a cat on a gallows. The priory was the nucleus about which gathered the town, or, properly speaking, the towns, for there are a series of them, all well-known watering-places. Great Malvern ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... place, and the consumption of whisky the occupation? But alas for their would-be seeming indifference! Everybody in the lane, almost in the Widdiehill, knew every one of them, and knew him for what he was; knew that every drop of toddy he drank was to him as to a miser his counted sovereign; knew that, as the hart for the water-brooks, so thirsted his soul ever after another tumbler; that he made haste to swallow the last drops of the present, that he might behold the plenitude of ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... miser," affirmed the hotel-keeper with great force. "The meat here is not so good as at home—of course. And dear too. But look at me. I only charge a dollar for the tiffin, and one dollar and fifty cents for the dinner. Show me anything ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... "more than a million, amassed by dint of order, economy, and probity; and yet there are those who accuse Jacques of avarice! How, said they, his office brings him in fifty or sixty thousand francs a year, and he lives like a miser!" ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... of possessions, because he feared lest this should lead him to have excessive wealth, the abuse of which would be an obstacle to religious perfection. Hence Gregory adds (Dial. iii, 14): "He was as afraid of forfeiting the security of his poverty, as the rich miser is careful of his perishable wealth." It is not, however, related that he refused to accept such things as are commonly necessary for the upkeep ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... "The old miser said that he should have been delighted to give the poor fellow a shilling, but most unfortunately he had left his purse at ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... thy window be, It is the wished, the trysted hour! Those smiles and glances let me see, That mak the miser's treasure poor. How blythely wad I bide the stoure, A weary slave frae sun to sun, Could I the rich reward secure, The ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... the preference should be given to the generous lover, but Vatsyayana is of opinion that the one who is really attached to the courtesan should be preferred, because he can be made to be generous, even as a miser gives money if he becomes fond of a woman, but a man who is simply generous cannot be made to love with real attachment. But among those who are attached to her, if there is one who is poor, and ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... care of the world and the deceitfulness of riches lacerate the man who permits them to grow rank in his heart. The vain man is continually meeting with slights, or suspecting that his neighbours are about to offer them. The miser is always losing money, or trembling lest he should lose it in the next transaction. The world itself knows, and in its proverbs confesses, that around the most coveted pleasures are set sharp thorns, which wound the hand that tries ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... on her troubled lips all day! How, girl-like, knowing his caresses were all her own—knowing she could at an instant call forth enough to smother her—she tyrannized his importuning and, like a lovely miser, hoarded her responsiveness under calm eyes and laconic whispers until, when she did give back his eagerness, she made his ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... and Mr. Burnside shook hands with becoming coldness, as having just given a lesson in manners. He was not a bad man, nor a miser, nor a Scrooge, but he was a great stickler for manners, especially with people who had nothing to give him. Besides, he had already lent Overholt money; or, to put it nicely, he had invested a little in his invention, and he did not see any reason why ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford
... father was a shark! Susan Clegg, your father was a skinflint! Susan Clegg, your father was a miser! Susan Clegg, your father was a thief!' 'n' all this with me where I c'dn't but hear, Mrs. Lathrop, 'n' he must 'a' known it too. 'Susan Clegg, I was a young man in difficulties,' he says, ''n' I wanted a hunderd dollars bad,' he says, ''n' 'f I'd had it I c'd 'a' bought into a nice business ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... as carefully as a miser guards his gold, and whenever they were about to leave fairyland they had to promise in the presence of the king and queen that they would not give a single berry to mortal man, nor allow one to fall upon the earth; for if a single berry fell ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... live, by armed bands, this appears to me extraordinary condescension on the part of En-Noor. I hope we shall part in a friendly manner. This worthy sovereign gives the present Sultan of Sakkatou, Ali Bello, the character of a miser, but says that his father was a man of liberality. He cannot ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... The miser behaved as if he appeared to consider it a mark of studied disrespect to be compelled to contrast his gaunt leanness with the young man's embonpoint, and was propitiated only by the reflection that he contributed in no ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... If I knew a miser who gave up every kind of comfortable living, all the pleasure of doing good to others, all the esteem of his fellow citizens, and the joys of benevolent friendship, for the sake of accumulating wealth, Poor man, said I, you pay too ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... at peculation we did not do so badly. We robbed him and his valet of everything in the coach, including their breeches. You do not mean that Pevensey has detained the poor man's wedding trousers? If so, it is unfortunate, because this loud-mouthed miser has need of them in order that he may ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... not very willing to believe in the permanence of accidental states. The generosity of a miser, the good nature of an egotist, the gentleness of a passionate temperament, the tenderness of a barren nature, the piety of a dull heart, the humility of an excitable self-love, interest me as phenomena—nay, even touch ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... him. I was no miser. The day came in which I repented my generosity. I suffered when he turned from me; but jealousy I felt none. Perhaps I was to blame for not recovering my pride at once. But through my love he had taught me that it is bitter indeed to love ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... the cellar, broke open the doors, and found at last the iron one. They were obliged to send for workmen to break it open, by attacking the wall in which it was fixed. After much labour they entered, and found the old miser dead in his strong-box, the secret spring of which he had apparently not been able to find, after having locked himself in; a horrible end ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... Templar, it will be remembered, takes Nigel to be sworn in a brother of Whitefriars by drunken and knavish Duke Hildebrod, whom he finds surrounded by his councillors—a bullying Low Country soldier, a broken attorney, and a hedge parson; and it is here also, at the house of old Miser Trapbois, the young Scot so narrowly escapes death at the hands of the poor ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... regicide, the infidel, He who in blood and slaughter joys, A Brahman or a cow destroys, Untimely weds in law's despite Scorning an elder brother's right,(590) Who dares his Teacher's bed ascend, The miser, spy, and treacherous friend. These impious wretches, one and all, Must to the hell of sinners fall. My skin the holy may not wear, Useless to thee my bones and hair; Nor may my slaughtered body be The food of devotees like thee. These five-toed things a man may slay And ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... have gained the day; but the Emperor, surrounded as he was by a large army of devoted followers, found ready listeners to his descriptions of the Bishop's character. Abouna Salama was never very popular; he was, without being a miser, far from liberal. Friendship in Abyssinia means presents: it is accepted as such by all; and every chief, every man of note, who courts popularity, lavishes with an unsparing hand. The Emperor naturally took ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... cowardice and temerity; but it will be a lesser evil for him who is valiant to rise till he reaches the point of rashness, than to sink until he reaches the point of cowardice; for, as it is easier for the prodigal than for the miser to become generous, so it is easier for a rash man to prove truly valiant than for a coward to rise to true valour; and believe me, Senor Don Diego, in attempting adventures it is better to lose by ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... glass, whilst each himself survey'd, He sat with pleasure, though himself was play'd: The miser grinn'd whilst avarice was drawn, Nor thought the faithful likeness was his own; His own dear self no imag'd fool could find, But saw a thousand other ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... sir; but a changed man. Never speaks to a soul, if he can help it. Some folk say he's not right in his head; or turned miser, or somewhat, and takes naught but bread and water, and sits up all night in the room as was hers, turning over her garments. Heaven knows what's on his mind—they do say he was over hard on her, and that drove her to it. All I know is, he has never been in here for a drop of liquor ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... hide-and-seek, or repeats the story of Jack the Giant-killer; the shepherd-boy is a poet, when he first crowns his mistress with a garland of flowers; the countryman, when he stops to look at the rainbow; the city-apprentice, when he gazes after the Lord-Mayor's show; the miser, when he hugs his gold; the courtier, who builds his hopes upon a smile; the savage, who paints his idol with blood; the slave, who worships a tyrant, or the tyrant, who fancies himself a god;—the vain, the ambitious, the proud, the choleric man, the hero and the coward, the beggar ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... he had no virtues and probably told the truth, Jones decided. In which case he cannot be a miser. But he also said he had no vices and probably lied like a thief. The old scoundrel is a philanthropist. I would wager an orchard of pippins on that, but there is no one to take me ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... many and bitter were the disappointments I had, in being refused permission to pay a visit to her at her house. Some few times, however, at long intervals, I was allowed to go there; and then I found out that Mr. Barkis was something of a miser, or as Peggotty dutifully expressed it, was 'a little near', and kept a heap of money in a box under his bed, which he pretended was only full of coats and trousers. In this coffer, his riches hid themselves with such a tenacious modesty, that the ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... most human, and in rapture brief Almost divine. Love would possess, yet deepens when denied; And love would give, yet hungers to receive; Love like a prince his triumph would achieve; And like a miser in the dark his joys would hide. Love is most bold, He leads his dreams like armed men in line; Yet when the siege is set, and he must speak, Calling the fortress to resign Its treasure, valiant love ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... the most fun with another stingy fellow, who always scolded children when he found them spending a penny. If he saw a girl buying flowers, or a boy giving a copper coin for a waffle, he talked roughly to them for wasting money. Meeting this miser one day, as he was walking along the brick road, leading from the village, Styf offered to pay the old man a thousand guilders, in exchange for four striped tulips, that grew in his garden. The miser, ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... spirit of every man who has spent the chief part of his life in it, who has died at an age which gives final proofs of its tendency, and whose history is thoroughly known. We all know what Cromwell did to an honest parliament. Marlborough ended in being a miser and the tool of his wife. Even good-natured, heroic Nelson condescended to become an executioner at Naples. Frederick did much for Prussia, as a power; but what became of her as a people, or power either, before the popular ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... Betty came to the farm to find Joseph Peabody a domineering, pitiless miser, his wife Agatha, a drab woman crushed in spirit, and Bob Henderson, the "poorhouse rat," a bright intelligent lad whom the Peabodys had taken from the local almshouse for his board and clothes. Betty Gordon found life at Bramble ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... virtues which had developed on the firm ground of the Berlin life, and among which Frau Volkstett had perceived (as a most remarkable phenomenon and a proof that extremes sometimes meet) the disposition of a veritable little miser—and it made ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... off, but those about you. All around you are souls going to destruction. Forget your own concern. Look at the needs about you till your heart is filled with desire for these souls, till you covet them for the Master as a miser covets gold. Then you will find work enough to do ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... clever at fortune-telling, indulging in a light irony that amused the crowd. She told old Brunot, the miser, that he would lose all his money, marry a girl of sixteen, and live happily on a crust. Sholte, the fat Russian boy, who lived for his stomach, was to be disappointed in love, grow thin, and shoot himself from despondency. ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... shining into a chamber at two windows. Our people, who discovered the cause of my mirth, bore me company in laughing, at which the old fellow was fool enough to be angry and out of countenance. He had the character of a great miser; and, to my misfortune, he well deserved it, by the cursed advice he gave my master, to show me as a sight upon a market-day in the next town, which was half an hour's riding, about two-and-twenty miles from our house. I guessed there was some mischief ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... the patient spectators of our own pitiable change! The Permanent Possibility is preserved, but the sensations carefully held at arm's length, as if one kept a photographic plate in a dark chamber. It is better to lose health like a spendthrift than to waste it like a miser. It is better to live and be done with it, than to die daily in the sickroom. By all means begin your folio; even if the doctor does not give you a year, even if he hesitates about a month, make one brave push and see what can be accomplished in a week. It is not ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shape the Divine image it worships over again General practitioner submits to a servitude Great privilege of old age was the getting rid of responsibility Habits are the crutches of old age He did not know so much about old age then as he does now Hoard your life as a miser hoards his money Homo unius libri—the man of one book Hypocrisy of kind-hearted people I dressed his wound, and God cured him I told you so Intellectual Over-Feeding and its consequence, Mental Dyspepsia It is time to be old, To take in sail Know enough ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of Oliver W. Holmes, Sr. • David Widger
... Now, goodness knows how much he isn't worth I Father is always saying he could buy us up, lock, stock, and barrel." Janet laughed. "People often call him a miser, but he can't be so much of a miser, seeing that he's built ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... dear,' Mr Boffin would say, checking Bella's arm at a bookseller's window; 'you can read at sight, and your eyes are as sharp as they're bright. Now, look well about you, my dear, and tell me if you see any book about a Miser.' ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... do ask, How God can dumbness keep While Sin creeps grinning through His house of Time, Stabbing His saintliest children in their sleep, And staining holy walls with clots of crime? — Or, How may He whose wish but names a fact Refuse what miser's-scanting of supply Would richly glut each void where man hath lacked Of grace or bread? — or, How may Power deny Wholeness to th' almost-folk that hurt our hope — These heart-break Hamlets who so barely ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... only instead of blood they want money; and I need hardly say they get it from other people's pockets. Love and friendship are names that have lost their meaning, if they ever had any, with these gentry. They remind one of the miser of old who could not hear a large sum of money mentioned without an acceleration of the action of the heart; and perhaps that is the use of their hearts, which, otherwise, like that of the spleen in other people, must be only a subject of vague conjecture. They live ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... but two dozen remained when I succeeded to the charge twenty years ago. I, too, was not sufficiently chary of them to begin with, and all but six bottles were drunk in the first ten years. Since then I have been as stingy as a miser, and but two ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... so faultlessly in Fever Alley; the wealth that was accumulating so rapidly in Bleeding Heart Yard. But, above all, he didn't like the mean side of the Manchester philosophy: the preaching of an impossible thrift and an intolerable temperance. He hated the implication that because a man was a miser in Latin he must also be a miser in English. And this meanness of the Utilitarians had gone very far—infecting many finer minds who had fought the Utilitarians. In the Edinburgh Review, a thing like Malthus could be championed ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... bear the expenses?" says Uncle Ben, who always was 'cute as a miser about money matters. "Duty is sumtimes ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... saw none of his earnings and more didn't his father. He was under-keeper to Tudor Manor and very well thought on; but a miser of speech, as well as cash, and none knew what was in his heart. He lived at the north lodge of the big place and woke a lot of curiosity, as secrecy will; but at eight-and-twenty years of age he was granted to be a man very skilled ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... ungenerous spirits, this sympathy goes not beyond a slight feeling of the imagination, which serves only to excite sentiments of complacency or ensure, and makes them apply to the object either honorable or dishonorable appellations. A griping miser, for instance, praises extremely INDUSTRY and FRUGALITY even in others, and sets them, in his estimation, above all the other virtues. He knows the good that results from them, and feels that species of happiness with a more ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... occasion arose. He was well-known at auctions round about the country, where he bought miscellaneous lots of books, with some few ornaments as well. She could see the backs of two books Patsy had a great admiration for, "Fardarougha the Miser" and "Charles O'Malley"; and, on the chimney-piece, there were two large pink shells and a weather house which she had often seen on Patsy's chimney-piece. The more solid pieces of furniture and some of the plain crockery had been sent down ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... to himself, Just like a miser counting o'er his pelf? I do believe he's talking in blank verse, Or reasoning in rhyme, which would be worse. He's deaf; if he were blind, 't would suit us better, For then he couldn't read his ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... Small and skinny, with eyes bright and cunning, a hooked nose, a short yellow beard, unkempt hair, huge feet, and long bony hands, he presented all the typical characteristics of the German Jew, the heartless, wily usurer, the hardened miser and skinflint. As iron is attracted by the magnet, so was this Shylock attracted by the sight of gold, nor would he have hesitated to draw the life-blood of his creditors, if by such means ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... 'When the miser hides his treasure in the earth, he doeth well; For he opens up a passage that his soul may ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... break into convenient pieces the required amount of chicory and place in a salad bowl well rubbed with an onion. Just before serving pour over a French dressing, remembering to be in making it "a spendthrift for oil, a miser for vinegar, a counselor for salt and a madman ...
— Twenty-four Little French Dinners and How to Cook and Serve Them • Cora Moore
... I; no more can anyone! Martha has got the miser spirit. She's as grasping as a caterpillar. I ought to have ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... Laramie watched almost in awe the short-arm jabs she gave the meat on the broiler. The cuffs of her shirtwaist, half back to her elbows, revealed white arms tapering to wrists molded like the ankles, and hands that his eyes fed on as a miser's feed on gold. The blazing coals flushed her cheeks and when she looked up at him to answer some foolish question her own eyes, flushed and softened by the heat, took on an expression that stole all the strength he had left. When she asked him how he liked it, he exclaimed, "Fine," ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... jeweller named Neild came to No. 5. The condition of prisoners incarcerated for small debts occupied his thoughts and energies, and he worked to ameliorate it. He left his son James Neild an immense fortune. This eccentric individual, however, was a miser, who scrimped and scraped all his life, and at his death left all his money to Queen Victoria. The gate-piers before this house are very fine, tall, and square, of mellowed red brick, surmounted by vases. These vases ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... "Yes, my dear miser, neither more nor less. Only for private reasons, which he did not explain, the count stipulates that only two hundred thousand francs shall appear in the marriage contract. The remaining eighteen hundred thousand francs, ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... Poor as a miser[171]. But lodged so far off, in the other wing, 20 By which there's no communication with The baron's chamber, that it can't be he. Besides, I bade him "good night" in the hall, Almost a mile off, and which only leads To his own apartment, about the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... gent as owned it was as rich as rich, kep' his carriage and butlers and all. But when his son come into the property he sold the gardens for building on, and only kep' the gate-house—the Grotto they calls it. An' there 'e's lived ever since in quite a poor way. Nasty old miser, ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... to the servile crowd, Entice the wary, and control the proud; Make the sad miser his best gains forego, The solemn statesman sigh to be a beau, 120 The bold coquette with fondest passion burn, The Bacchanalian o'er his bottle mourn; And that chief glory of thy power maintain, 'To poise ambition in a female ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... it hungrily and eagerly, as a miser clutches a treasure-trove, pressing it wildly to her bosom, and covering it with passionate kisses. Dear little shabby case, that had been so near his heart; that his hand, perchance, only on hour ago had touched. Could anything on earth be more priceless ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... declare, if you don't hop about through the snow like a robin; there—she's gone. Now, I should like to know what business old Stillinghast's niece has to be doing such work as this,—the nipping old miser; and I'd like to know what she does with ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... and lurked so sorrowfully deep and far down in all human misery, neglect, and despair, that even his pencil could not bring them fairly and justly into the light. It was never his plan to be content with only showing the effect. In the death of the miser-father, his shoe new-soled with the binding of his bible, before the young Rake begins his career; in the worldly father, listless daughter, impoverished young lord, and crafty lawyer, of the first plate ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... useful except inasmuch as it is used; nor is there a perfect existence with inactive goodness. Even so of gold, and pearls, and other treasures which are subterranean, those which are in the hand of the miser are in a lower place than is the earth wherein the treasure was concealed. The gift truly of this Commentary is the explanation of the Songs, for whose service it is made. It seeks especially to lead men to wisdom and to virtue, as will be seen by the process ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... which such impertinence will not degrade. Inexcusable, therefore, must be the practice which has neither reason nor passion to support it. The drunkard has his cups; the satirist his revenge; the ambitious man his preferments; the miser his gold; but the common swearer has nothing; he is a fool at large, sells his soul for naught, and drudges in the service of the devil gratis. Swearing is void of all plea, it is not the native offspring of the soul, nor interwoven with the texture of the body, nor any how allied to our frame. ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... more about Illinois: We have fifty-six thousand square miles of land—nearly thirty-six million acres. Upon these plains we can raise enough to feed and clothe twenty million people. Beneath these prairies were hidden millions of ages ago, by that old miser, the sun, thirty-six thousand square miles of coal. The aggregate thickness of these veins is at least fifteen feet. Think of a column of coal one mile square and one hundred miles high! All this came from ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... without the beggar's outstretched palm, the miser's heartless, stony stare, the piteous wail of want, the livid lips of lies, ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... our imagination the freezing days of December. But now, shall I confess a truth?—I feel these audits but too powerfully. I begin to count the probabilities of my duration, and to grudge at the expenditure of moments and shortest periods, like miser's farthings. In proportion as the years both lessen and shorten, I set more count upon their periods, and would fain lay my ineffectual finger upon the spoke of the great wheel. I am not content to pass away "like a weaver's shuttle." Those metaphors solace me not, nor sweeten the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... The school the miser selected was one called Dotheboys Hall, a long, cold-looking, tumble-down building, one story high, in a dreary part of the country. It belonged to a man named Squeers, a burly, ruffianly hypocrite, who pretended to the world to be a kind, fatherly master, but in fact treated his pupils ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... she had money to handle; money furnished by Sir Oliver to be spent at her own disposal on the honeymoon. It seemed to her a prodigious sum, but she was none the less economical with it. I fear that sometimes she opened the bags and gloated over the coins as over a hoard. She was neither miser nor spendthrift; but unlike many girls brought up in poverty, she brought good ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... be too dear a payment for a night with her. One must love well to love like that, eh? and there are many worldly ones, who mock at such affection. But he, still thinking of her, neglected his cases and his clients, his robberies and everything. He went to the palace like a miser searching for a lost sixpence, bowed down, melancholy, and absent-minded, so much so, that one day he relieved himself against the robe of a counsellor, believing all the while he stood against a wall. Meanwhile the beautiful girl was loved night ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... brave and an able officer, not much more, except that he was known also to be a great miser. His wife, Sarah Jennings, now the Countess of Marlborough, was in high favour with the new Queen; indeed, she was at that time the most ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... are more than ordinarily rational. They are generous, foresighted, and in their relation to descendants affectionate. The men who really do the saving for society have more to make them think and act in the intelligent way we have described than do ordinary men. The miser, the paragon of abstinence, can hardly be said to be the man who thinks too much of future enjoyments, for he contemplates no such enjoyments that call for spending money, for he never means to spend it. He is an abnormal type and fortunately a rare one. With him there ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... by, in hasty and nearly incoherent questions and answers, before Middleton, hanging over his recovered treasure with that sort of jealous watchfulness with which a miser would regard his hoards, closed the disjointed narrative of his own proceedings ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the plural; as if, miser-like, he had counted his bags of treasure. And then see the contrasted singular, Xemian: he finds them all one mass ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... Lady O'Ryan, "do introduce Mr. Armine to my husband, and make him believe my husband is a miser instead of a spendthrift. It would be such a mercy to the family. We might begin to pay off the mortgage on ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... advance of their slow aid, by guesswork or by hook or crook, what shall we say of them? Were all of Clifford's works, except the Ethics of Belief, forgotten, he might well figure in future treatises on psychology in place of the somewhat threadbare instance of the miser who has been led by the association of ideas to prefer his gold to all the goods he ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... ball, Was moved with compassion, and thought it a pity A youth should be lost, that had been so witty: Without more ado, he vamps up my spark, And now we'll suppose him an eminent clerk! Suppose him an adept in all the degrees Of scribbling cum dasho, and hooking of fees; Suppose him a miser, attorney, per bill, Suppose him a courtier—suppose what you will— Yet, would you believe, though I swore by the Bible, That he took up two news-boys for ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... Kellys above. Here Hickey reclines, a most blunt, pleasant creature, And Slander itself must allow him good-nature: He cherish'd his friend, and he relish'd a bumper: Yet one fault he had, and that one was a thumper. Perhaps you may ask if the man was a miser? I answer, no, no, for he always was wiser. Too courteous, perhaps, or obligingly flat? His very worst foe can't accuse him of that. Perhaps he confided in men as they go, And so was too foolishly honest? Ah no! Then what was his failing? Come, tell it, and burn ye,— He was, ...
— English Satires • Various
... miser, so far as he can be. Whatever money he may have acquired by begging, he has kept. At all events, he has offered nothing of it for the common expenses. But Tom has not troubled himself about this. He suspects that Jacob ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... "What, that old miser pay any real money out? Huh, you don't know him. He squeezes every dollar till it squeals before he lets it go. He'd bargain for the difference of five cents. Nobody could do business with him on the square. But I tell ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... we fail, When just the story of our worth would need Eternity for telling; and our best Development comes ever through your praise, As through our praise you reach your highest self? Oh! had you not been miser of your praise And let our virtues be their own reward, The old established order of the world Would never have been changed. Small blame is ours For this unsexing of ourselves, and worse Effeminizing ...
— Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days • Annie L. Burton
... way home we met a woman who gave us a history of the house. An old miser lived there long ago. One night he was robbed and murdered, and his ghost still haunts the place. No one ventures in its vicinity, and she said most likely we were the first people who had gone there since the tragedy. ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... a backwoods town Lived Deacon Brown, And he was a miser old; He would trust no bank, So he dug, and sank In the ground a box of gold, Down deep in the ground a ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... about the contestants, looking for a chance to make her presence felt, without impairing the masculine gusto with which they were monopolizing the center of the stage, tossed in a suggestion, "Was it Hawthorne's—it's a queer fancy like Hawthorne's—the idea of the miser, don't you remember, whose joy was to roll ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... and until the day of his death she never left him. A great change had come over Rembrandt. He had become more morose and bitter than ever. Success had only seemed to harden his heart, until nothing but the chinking of gold had any effect upon it. He was immensely wealthy, but a miser. As the years passed the gloom settled deeper upon his soul, until finally he shut himself up in his dark studio, and would see no one but Jews and money-brokers. At times he would not let a picture ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... cup from the shelf; and then, to my great surprise, instead of drawing more beer, he poured an accurate half from one cup to the other. There was a kind of nobleness in this that took my breath away; if my uncle was certainly a miser, he was one of that thorough breed that goes near to make ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... miser in his chamber saw a mouse, And cry'd, dismay'd, "What dost thou in my house?" She, with a laugh, "Good landlord, have no fear, 'Tis not for board, but lodging, ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... Accordingly, the birth of a girl is not a joy, but a sorrow, especially if her parents are not rich. She must be married not later than when she is seven or eight; a little girl of ten is an old maid in India, she is a discredit to her parents and is the miser-able butt of all her more ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... hang him and welcome. But, once upon a time, a certain rich miser conceived the design of spunging upon this Abernethy for a medical opinion. Getting up, for this purpose, an ordinary conversation in a private company, he insinuated his case to the physician, as ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... portions of existence are the most difficult to chronicle. We may—nay, we must, impart our miseries and annoyances to our many "dear friends," whose forte is sympathy or consolation—and all men are eloquent on the subject of their woes; not so with their joys: some have a miser-like pleasure in hoarding them up for their own private gratification; others—and they are prudent—feel that the narrative is scarcely agreeable even to their best friends; and a few, of whom I confess myself one, are content to be happy without knowing why, and to have pleasant souvenirs, without ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... your senses of perception. Keep silence now. Its gold will accumulate in you at compound interest. You will realise the joy of being full of reflections and ideas. You will begin to hoard them proudly, like a miser. You will gloat over your own cleverness—you, who but a few days since, were feeling so stupid. Solitude in a crowd, silence among chatterboxes—these are the best ministers to a mind diseased. And with ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... he watched the old witch, and saw she often visited the house of an old miser who lived near by with his beautiful niece. Now all the people in the village touched their hats most respectfully to this old miser, for they knew he had dealings with the witch, and they were ...
— Welsh Fairy-Tales And Other Stories • Edited by P. H. Emerson
... will try to tell you one, which I remember imperfectly. It relates, as many such stories do, to a buried treasure. An old miser had an only daughter; he denied himself everything, but he educated her well, and treated her becomingly. He had accumulated a treasure, which he designed for her, but could not bear the thought of parting with it, and died without ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... the jaw, but pa says the size of a man don't make any difference, 'cause it is the heart that does the business. A man may be big enough and strong enough to tip over a box car, loaded with pig iron, but if his heart is one of these little ones intended for a miser, with no pepper sauce running from the heart to the arteries and things, and a liver that is white, and nerves that are trembly, and no gall to speak of, why a big man is liable to be walked all over by a nervy little ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... authority for the statement that White Island was not called so from its color, but from a family of Whites who lived on it before the light-house was built, and that the miser White who was murdered by Crowninshield in Salem was born on ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... his under-gods, figures in much of the Siwash {p.032} folklore, and the "Land of Peace" is often heard of. It is through such typical Indian legends as that of Miser, the greedy hiaqua hunter, that we learn how large a place the great Mountain filled in the thought ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams
... His forehead was low, and his whole character felonious; his eyes were small, deep set, and cunning; his nose was hooked, his mouth was wide, but his lips thin to a miracle, and such as always—are to be found under the nose of a miser; as for a chin, we could not conscientiously allow him any; his under-lip sloped off until it met the throat with a curve not larger than that of an oyster-shell, which when open to the tide, his mouth very much resembled. As for his neck, ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... The miser denies himself every comfort, and spends his whole life in hoarding up riches; and yet he dies and leaves his gold to be the ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... Christianity—no benevolence; nothing but the spirit of the extortioner is here manifested. There is no feeling of sorrow shown at her unfortunate position, no disposition evinced to shield the helpless mother and her babes. No! we find his actions narrowed down to the sordidness of the miser, the avariciousness of the extortioner. A feeling of surprise at such conduct may flit across your bosoms, gentlemen, and you may perchance doubt that I can show a man of this city, so bereft of charity, so utterly oblivious to all the better feelings of ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... since the City Arms hotel when he used to be pretending to be laid up with a sick voice doing his highness to make himself interesting for that old faggot Mrs Riordan that he thought he had a great leg of and she never left us a farthing all for masses for herself and her soul greatest miser ever was actually afraid to lay out 4d for her methylated spirit telling me all her ailments she had too much old chat in her about politics and earthquakes and the end of the world let us have a bit of fun first God help the world if all the women were her sort down on bathingsuits ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... had committed an error. The food of a liberal person is sanctified by Faith. The food, however, of the person that is void of Faith is lost in consequence of such want of Faith. The food of a liberal usurer is acceptable but not the food of a miser.[1193] Only one person in the world, viz., he that is bereft of Faith, is unfit to make offerings to the deities. The food of only such a man is unfit to be eaten. This is the opinion of men conversant with duties. Want of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... act before you know what ought to be done, you act at random. Liable to deceive yourself, you will have to retrace your steps, and will be farther from your object than if you had been less in haste to reach it. Do not then act like a miser, who, in order to lose nothing, loses a great deal. At the earlier age sacrifice time which you will recover with interest later on. The wise physician does not give directions at first sight of his patient, but studies the sick man's ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... de Conti wait," said Law, "and a plague take him for a grasping miser! He has gained enough. Time was when I waited at ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough |
