"Penurious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the money. But those who had confidently expected to see her squander it were disappointed: on the contrary, it was presently whispered that she was exceeding penurious. That admirable woman Mrs. Stiver of Red Dog, who accompanied her to San Francisco to assist her in making purchases, was loud in her indignation. "She cares more for two bits than I do for five dollars. She wouldn't ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... produced a strange physiological phenomenon in Germinie's physical being. One would have said that the passion that was alive within her renewed and transformed her lymphatic temperament. She did not seem, as before, to extract her life, drop by drop, from a penurious spring: it flowed through her arteries in a full, generous stream; she felt the tingling sensation of rich blood over her whole body. She seemed to be filled with the warm glow of health, and the joy of living beat its wings in her breast like ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... friends and followers of the noble house; and the fire-utensils which still remain, and which seem destined for the consumption of entire forests, intimate that the household gods which presided here dealt in no stinted or penurious economy. There was scarcely need of flue or chimney, for the smoke curling up among the interlacing rafters of the roof, might long gather in its ample cavity without threatening those below with serious inconvenience. It is curious ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... the hands of their countrymen; and Warwick was forced to expel the natives in order to secure the lives of his own troops.[266] But no vigilance of the besieged could insure the safety of a detached position on the borders of so powerful a state as France. Elizabeth was too weak, or too penurious, to afford the recruits that were loudly called for. And now a new and frightful auxiliary to the French made its appearance. A contagious disease set in among the English troops, crowded into a narrow compass and deprived of their usual allowance of fresh meat and wholesome water. The fearful ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... "Steeple-top," was a penurious, grasping, hardly social man of neighborhood origin, but of a family generally unsuccessful and undistinguished, which had been said to be dying out for so many years that it seemed to be always a remnant, yet never quite gone. He alone of the Milburns had lifted himself ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... customary, rewarded him with the thought that she was unusual in the courage of her emotions. That was it—the courage of her emotions! There was a total lack of any penurious trait, any ulterior thought of appraising herself against a possible advantageous barter. She was never concerned with a conscious prudery in the arrangement of her skirt. Mariana was aristocratic in the correct sense of the term; a sense, he realized, ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... threatening, a lover of beauty, and indifferently inclined to either good or evil. He whose eyelids bend down when he speaks to another or when he looks upon him, and who has a kind of skulking look, is by nature a penurious wretch, close in all his actions, of a very few words, but full of malice in his heart. He whose eyebrows are thick, and have but little hair upon them, is but weak in his intellectuals, and too credulous, very sincere, sociable, and ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... stealing of honey and fruit is practiced by any except those who are candidates for State's Prison, is in a fair way of being soon considered as a very undesirable place of residence. If owners of Apiaries, gardens and orchards, could be induced to pursue a more liberal policy, and not be so meanly penurious as they often are, I am persuaded that they would find it conduce very highly to their interests. The honey and fruit expended with a cheerful, hearty liberality, would be more than repaid to them in the good ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... assisting the Society to your own. It is certain, a Vote of Parliament has often set up useful Manufactures here, and this will be but a general one, for the setting up all. Nor is there any Cause to doubt of this publick Bounty, for tho' private Men are penurious, Nations are generous, and the publick Money is so easily raised, is paid by so many, and hurts so few, that even a Parliament of Misers might be Charitable. Every body is well disposed to bestow bounteously out of his Neighbour's Purse, to good ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... now, it will with thee go hard: The fattest hogs we grease the more with lard. To him that has, there shall be added more; Who is penurious, he ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... occupied, my mother's health was broken. We, the four brothers, had no quarrelling among ourselves: but neither can I recollect any influence flowing down at this time upon me, the junior. One odd incident seems to show that I was meek, which I should not have supposed, not less than thrifty and penurious, a leaning which lay deep, I think, in my nature, and which has required effort and battle to control it. It was this. By some process not easy to explain I had, when I was probably seven or eight, and my elder brothers from ten or eleven to fourteen or thereabouts, ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... scheme of conduct in ministry is, and inconsistent with all just policy, it is still true to itself, and faithful to its own perverted order. Those who are bountiful to crimes, will be rigid to merit, and penurious to service. Their penury is even held out as a blind and cover to their prodigality. The economy of injustice is, to furnish resources for the fund of corruption. Then they pay off their protection to great crimes and great criminals ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... base that I never heard of any man who would confess that he had ever been guilty of it. Philip was my best friend, and I was always loath to think unkindly of him, but at this time I really think he began to be rather penurious—not avaricious, certainly not. But he was not a hermit of the holiest kind. He began to save money and acquire stock. He had not been long on the hill before he owned a horse, two dogs, a cat, a native bear, a magpie, and a parrot, and he paid ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... terms, Index, for after all you know it must come to that, and I am satisfied you will be as liberal as you can afford." Put in this way, the most penurious of the speculating tribe in paper and print would have strained a point, to overcome their natural infirmity: with Index it was otherwise; nature had formed him with a truly liberal heart: the practice of the trade, and the necessary caution ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... useful and enterprising seaman, was now displayed in the most ridiculous interference in his own domestic affairs, and those of his neighbours. With a great deal of low cunning, he mingled the most insatiable curiosity; while his habits were so penurious, that he would stoop to any meanness to gain a trifling pecuniary advantage for himself or ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... that penurious Herod was a builder!" they seemed to say. "There is enough stone insolence in these walls to ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... I'd stay right here and tell my penurious friends to whistle for their profits. It seems I'm cursed with a fatal beauty. You may have noticed it? No? Well, perhaps it's a magnificent business ability that I have. Anyhow, the president of my company has a notion that I'd make ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... questions to ask. Tom Teeter came over after tea to give his opinion upon poor old Sandy's case. Jake Martin across from him was trying to buy Sandy's land, folk said, and if Martin did such a thing, then he, Tom Teeter, considered him a more penurious and niggardly miser, that would skin his neighbor's grasshoppers for their hide and tallow, than he had already ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... enterprising and patriotic promoters in the prosecution of their gigantic task. In those stirring times few people were inclined to question the motives of those who advocated what appeared to be patriotic measures, or to be penurious in the expenditure of public funds when the public weal ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... offspring of a vicarious, impatient taste acting in stray moments. The worst was typified by a great picture framed in oak bark of Passaic as seen from the Erie Railroad—altogether a frantic, oddly extravagant, oddly penurious attempt to make a cheerful room. Marcia knew ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... sufficient to turn to advantage in their own country; and as I have served in all the great houses in Madrid, I am acquainted with the greatest part of them. I have nothing to say against the Asturians, save that they are close and penurious whilst at service; but they are not thieves, neither at home nor abroad, and though we must have our wits about us in their country, I have heard we may travel from one end of it to the other without the slightest fear of being either robbed or ill treated, which is not the case in Galicia, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... silly affair—I was an ensign at the time. You know ensigns—their blood is boiling water, their circumstances generally penurious. Well, I had a servant Nikifor who used to do everything for me in my quarters, economized and managed for me, and even laid hands on anything he could find (belonging to other people), in order to augment our household goods; but a faithful, ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... desire to win the love and admiration of young ladies, first, be intelligent; read books and papers; remember what you read, so you can talk about it. Second, be generous and do not show a stingy and penurious disposition when in the company of ladies. Third, be sensible, original, and have opinions of your own and do not agree with everything that someone else says, or agree with everything that a lady may say. Ladies naturally admire genteel and intelligent discussions and conversations when there ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... follow her, and they went into her father's room, where, to his surprise, he found some coffee ready for him—at that time a rarity, and one which Philip did not expect to find in the house of the penurious Mynheer Poots; but it was a luxury which, from his former life, the old man ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... will do a real service both to me and to the German stage; it is also my wish to write it expressly for the Berlin Theatre, as no new opera can ever succeed in being properly given here under this very penurious direction. Answer me soon, very soon—quickly, very quickly—as quickly as possible—as quick as lightning—and say whether such a thing is practicable. Herr Kapellmeister B. praised you up to the skies to me, and he is right; well may he esteem himself ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... M.A. until that year. Despite the apparent success of his publisher's enterprises (A Most Complete Compendium was in its eighth edition by 1713, and The Gazetteer's or Newsman's Interpreter reached a twelfth in 1724), little of the profit reached the penurious Echard. In 1717 Archbishop Wake wrote to Addison that "His circumstances are so much worse than I thought, that if we cannot get somewhat pretty considerable for Him, I doubt He will sink under the weight of his ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... for a boy to fill, and at that time I was not popular with the other boys, who resented my exemption from part of my legitimate work. I was also taxed with being penurious in my habits—mean, as the boys had it. I did not spend my extra dimes, but they knew not the reason. Every penny that I could save I knew was needed at home. My parents were wise and nothing was withheld from me. I knew every week the receipts of each of the three who ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... found that its sum-total only amounted to twenty-five roubles in notes, he refused to believe it, and declared that it was impossible that his sister-a woman who for sixty years had had sole charge in a wealthy house, as well as all her life had been penurious and averse to giving away even the smallest thing should have left no more: yet it was ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... better'd my Condition a little, and lived a whole Summer in the Shape of a Bee; but being tired with the painful and penurious Life I had undergone in my two last Transmigrations, I fell into the other Extream, and turned Drone. As I one day headed a Party to plunder an Hive, we were received so warmly by the Swarm which defended it, that we were most of us left ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... office door, he locked this adamantine, quibbling, frankly penurious, tyrannical man of business inside, and the chameleon does not change its color with greater ease than Sprudell took on another and distinct personality. On the instant he became the "good fellow," his pink face and beaming eyes ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... whose like was found too often in the small Pennsylvania villages. The only child of a close-fisted, saving farmer, he found himself on his father's death more than sufficiently well-off to go to college and later to study law. He was careful and penurious, but failing of success in Philadelphia returned to Westways when about thirty years old, bought a piece of land in the town, built a house, married a pretty, commonplace young woman, and began to look for business. ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... worked in silver thread much tarnished; to the right hand stood a prie-dieu. Between these isolated articles of furniture, and behind an unpainted table sat, in a high-backed chair, a wizen and shabbily-clad old man. This was Theodoret, most pious and penurious of monarchs. In attendance upon him were Fra Battista, prior of the Grey Monks, and Melicent's near kinsman, once the Bishop, now the Cardinal, de Montors, who, as was widely known, was the actual monarch of this realm. The latter was smartly habited as a cavalier and showed ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... metal with his own substance, became closer and closer, and age intensified it. His sister herself excited his suspicions, though she was perhaps more miserly, more rapacious than her brother whom she actually surpassed in penurious inventions. Their daily existence had something mysterious and problematical about it. The old woman rarely took bread from the baker; she appeared so seldom in the market, that the least credulous of the townspeople ended by attributing to these strange beings the knowledge of some secret ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... descend to their assistance from a higher elevation. To be obliged, is to be in some respect inferior to another[h]; and few willingly indulge the memory of an action which raises one whom they have always been accustomed to think below them, but satisfy themselves with faint praise and penurious payment, and then drive it from their own minds, and endeavour to conceal it from ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... Ellenborough inquired of the 'friend,' "Do you really mean to impose upon the court by appearing here in the disguise of a reasonable being?" Very pungent was his ejaculation at a cabinet dinner when he heard that Lord Kenyon was about to close his penurious old age by dying. "Die!—why should he die?—what would he get by that?" interposed Lord Ellenborough, adding to the pile of jests by which men have endeavored to keep a grim, unpleasant subject out of sight—a pile to which the latest mot was added the other day by Lord Palmerston, ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... of the place; people were never tired of talking about him—of describing his strange appearance, his odd ways and penurious habits. He formed a lasting theme of conversation to the gossips of the village, with whom the great man at the Hall enjoyed no enviable notoriety. That Mark Hurdlestone was an object of curiosity, fear, and hatred, to his humble dependents, created no feeling of surprise in those ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... Honnor Cunyngham, daughter of the late Sir George Cunyngham, and sister of Sir Hugh Cunyngham, of the Braes, Perthshire, and Aivron Lodge, Campden Hill.' I should like to have sent them a little wedding-present," he went on, absently, "for both of them have been very kind to me; but I am grown penurious in my old age; I suppose we shall have to consider every farthing for many a day ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... Retrospective Review in 1820. The last number of the London Magazine to bear Taylor & Hessey's name, and (in my opinion) to contain anything by Lamb, was August, 1825. We have no definite information on the matter, but there is every indication in Lamb's Letters that Taylor was penurious and not clever in his relations with contributors. Scott Lamb seems to have admired and liked; but even in Scott's day payment does not seem to have been prompt. Lamb was paid, according to Barry Cornwall, two or three times the amount of other writers, who ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... English form of the nickname, Luca-fa-presto, given Luca Giordano (1632-1705), a Neapolitan painter, on account of his constantly being goaded on in his work by his penurious and avaricious father. ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... tell Thy beauties o'er I love so well: Thy sweet low bosom's rise and fall, Pulsing thy heart's clear madrigal; Or how the blue beam from thine eyes Imageth all love's urgencies; Thy lips' frail fragrance, as of flowers Remembered in penurious hours Of winter-exile; of thy brow, Not written as thy breast of snow With love's faint charact'ry, for his wing Leaves not the heart long! Last I sing Thy thin quick fingers, in whose pleaching Lieth all healing, all good teaching— Wherewith, ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... 1779, says—"Admiral Gambier is ordered from this station, to the universal joy of all ranks and conditions. I believe no person was ever more generally detested by navy, army, and citizen, than this penurious old reptile." ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... is unkind, and the ground penurious, so that the most fruitful years will produce only enough to maintain themselves; where life unimproved, and unadorned, fades into something little more than naked existence, and every one is busy for himself, without any ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... Hungarians of family and large fortune affected; and so far the priest was correct, for the young Gorman was wasteful and extravagant from disposition, and his quarter's allowance disappeared almost when it came. His money out, he fell back at once to the penurious habits of the poorest subaltern about him, and lived on his florin-and-half per diem till his resources came round again. He hoped—of course he hoped—that this momentary fit of temper would not ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... their staple in trade, they wore the most filthy rags themselves. It is said that they had no bed, and, to save the expense of one, always slept on a bundle of packing-cloths under the counter. In their housekeeping they were penurious in the extreme. A joint of meat did not grace their board for twenty years. Yet when the first of the brothers died, the other, much to his surprise, found large sums of money which had been ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... during these eight years. His vanity was hurt, and no wonder. It seems a small matter to us now that Charles Dickens should have been ashamed of the blacking-bottle episode of his boyhood. Genius has a right to a penurious, and even to a sordid, boyhood. But genius has no right to a sordid manhood, and here was George 'Olaus' Borrow, who was able to claim the friendship of William Taylor, the German scholar; who was able to boast of his association with sound scholastic foundations, ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... encounter a man who was certainly not commonplace, but who seems to have been devoid of either poetical or humanitarian fervour. He figures as intent upon his worldly interests, accumulating a massive fortune, and spending lavishly upon the building of Castle Goring; in his old age, penurious, unsocial, and almost churlish in his habits. His passion was to domineer and carry his point; of this the poet may have inherited something. His ideal of success was wealth and worldly position, things to which the poet was, ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... were awkward and even offensive. Peculiar as were his habits, few of the distinguished persons who sought his acquaintance ever desired to renounce his friendship.[96] In his domestic habits, he was temperate often to abstinence; he was frugal, but not mean—careful, but not penurious. He was generous towards his aged parents; was deeply imbued with a sense of religion, and was the foe of vice in every form. He was of a slight figure, and of middle stature; his countenance was peculiarly expressive of intelligence. His hair was auburn, his eyes dark, and his complexion ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... become of my money?" he answered, with a smile which Dorothy understood. The doctor imagined it the speech of a man whom previous poverty and suddenly supervening wealth had made penurious. ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... forces them to work beyond their capabilities of endurance. The objection is without foundation, for indigence and liberty, never resided together in the same hovel or hut. Hunger and cold are hard masters, far worse than Southern slaveholders; and the penurious Yankee who inadequately pays the laborer, and thus suffers him to starve or freeze to death, is morally as bad as the man who whips his slave to death. If the latter is a murderer, so is the former. The generality of slaves are better paid for their labor, than the poorer ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... as thick-skinned as he was sapless. Believing that his penurious code was just, and his frugality the first virtue of his life, he was not ashamed of his table, and the outcast scraps upon it. But he looked at his young wife with a sharp drawing down of his spiked ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... clan called Dhundhele, perhaps an offshoot of the Panwars, who are also residents of Saugor. Their character, as disclosed in a number of proverbial sayings and stories current regarding them, somewhat resembles that of the Scotch highlanders as depicted by Stevenson. They are proud and penurious to the last degree, and quick to resent the smallest slight. They make good shikaris or sportsmen, but are so impatient of discipline that they have never found a vocation by enlisting in the Indian Army. Their characteristics are thus described in a doggerel verse: ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... money. He was writing to Charles that it was useless to expect the Empire unless he would spend at least as much as the French.[251] "It would be lamentable," he said, "if we should now lose all through some pitiful omission or penurious neglect;" and Francis was "going about covertly and laying many baits,"[252] to attain (p. 099) the imperial crown. To Henry himself Maximilian had more than once offered the prize, and Pace had declared that the offer was only another ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... paying his share of the reckoning. "And was he excused?" asked Dr. Burney of Johnson. "Oh, yes, for no man is angry at another for being inferior to himself. We all scorned him and admitted his plea. Yet I really believe him to be an honest man at bottom, though to be sure he is penurious, and he is mean, and it must be owned he has a tendency to savageness." He did not remain above two or three years in the club; being in a manner elbowed out in consequence of ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... and give it to the janitor for safekeeping. There were imitation Oriental rugs and imitation-leather chairs and imitation-mahogany furniture, plated silver, and imitations of china and of linen were to be found in the small three-cornered dining room, which resembled a penurious wedge of cake, Mary thought as she tried saying something polite. The imitation extended to the bedroom with its wall bed and built-in chiffonier and dresser of gaudy walnut. Trudy had promptly cluttered up the last-mentioned article with smart-looking cretonne ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... last official act of Colonel Hamilton. The penurious provision made for those who filled the high executive departments in the American government, excluded from a long continuance in office all those whose fortunes were moderate, and whose professional talents placed a decent independence ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... uneasiness. To be sure, he is despotic, but he is neither irritable nor unamiable. Besides, he has a great desire for social position (it aids in carrying out his plans), in which his wife is of real service. Hiram, although close and careful in all matters, is not what would be called penurious. In other words, he makes liberal provision for his household, while he rules it with rigor; besides, in petty things he ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... see what our Skinner's habits have been in the past—penurious. Why the sudden change? You know just as well as I do that a clerk can't travel around with ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... had returned to his home in the back street of Twybridge, and was endeavouring to spend the holidays in a hard 'grind'. He loathed the penurious simplicity to which his life was condemned; all familiar circumstances were become petty, coarse, vulgar, in his eyes; the contrast with the idealised world of his ambition plunged him into despair: Even Mr. Gunnery seemed an ignoble figure when compared with ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... too fast for the necessary neatness, and the public rightly would not trust politicos in any operation too confusing for them to be watched, and preferred to leave such businesses to private operation, accepting the danger for the profit of efficient and penurious operation, ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... cards that she might resurrect Gathbroke from his ivory tomb; lie would do admirably for her present needs, and when she found it difficult to visualize him after so long a period, she could pay Gora a sisterly visit) to a penurious attempt to increase her capital. At the same time she had no intention of diminishing it. To quote Tom Abbott (when Maria was elsewhere): She might be a fool, or even a——fool, but she was ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... the house of a cousin of my wife. He is a mean man, and his wife is also penurious and mean. They have made my sickness still more bitter by their taunts. They complain that I am an expense to them, and they would turn me out of doors, sick as I am, I am convinced, if they were not ashamed to do so. Poor Philip will be left to their tender ...
— Mark Mason's Victory • Horatio Alger
... him, sweet Timandra, for his wits Are drown'd and lost in his calamities. I have but little gold of late, brave Timon, The want whereof doth daily make revolt In my penurious band: I have heard, and griev'd How cursed Athens, mindless of thy worth, Forgetting thy great deeds, when neighbour states, But for thy sword and ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... if not absolutely impossible and unthinkable, at least practically impossible, and as difficult and rare as the transition from pauperism to princedom in the Old World is. A romantic European princess may marry a penurious coachman, and so provide the world with a nine days' sensation, but such cases are no rarer in the royal courts of Europe than in our own plutoaristocratic court circles. Has there ever been a king ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... bore a bold and cheerful countenance, and took fortune's worst as it were the showers of spring. But now his mother sits alone by the side of Fontainebleau woods, where he gathered mushrooms in his hardy and penurious youth. ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... whatever its merits might be, was partly owing to natural disposition, but I think full as much to reason and principle. I looked on the consideration of public service or public ornament to be real and very justice; and I ever held a scanty and penurious justice to partake of the nature of a wrong. I held it to be, in its consequences, the worst economy in the world. In saving money I soon can count up all the good I do; but when by a cold penury I blast the abilities of a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... that the only trade seems to be carried on, and this is limited to amber and serpentine. They are very dirty, and excessively penurious, but industrious. Owing to their habits and extreme penury, there is no outlet for our manufactures in this direction; so that I fully agree with Hannay's statement, that 500 rupees worth of British goods would be unabsorbed for some years. Rosa is common, also a Rumex; ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... weel, sir: sit ye down then, sit you down here: [They sit down.]—and now, sir, you must recall to your thoughts, that your grandfather was a man, whose penurious income of half pay was the sum total of his fortune;—and, sir, aw my provision fra him was a modicum of Latin, an expertness in arithmetic, and a short system of worldly counsel; the principal ingredients of which were, a persevering ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... discarded her nephew Hugh. She had never been tenderly affectionate to Hugh, or she would hardly have asked him to live in London on a hundred a year. She had never really been kind to him since he was a boy, for although she had paid for him, she had been almost penurious in her manner of doing so, and had repeatedly given him to understand, that in the event of her death not a shilling would be left to him. Indeed, as to that matter of bequeathing her money, it was understood that it was her purpose ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... Edinburgh. Soon after her arrival the Queen had the gratifying intelligence that a large legacy, about two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, had been left to her and her heirs by one of her subjects—Mr. Campden Nield— a gentleman without near relatives, who had lived in the most penurious way, denying himself the very necessaries ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... of new teachers, in search of books, in search of the necessaries of life; undergoing such an amount of bodily and mental toil as makes it wonderful that all of them did not—as some of them doubtless did—die under the hard training, or, at best, desert the penurious Muses for ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... of the ocean: but the evil genius of building prevailed, and the palace is fixed in a gloomy bottom, from which it can be overlooked by every body, and from which nothing can be seen. Frederick, though sometimes superb in his expenses, was habitually penurious. He seems to have thought that war was the only thing on which it was worth his while to spend money. The salaries of his gentlemen and attendants were all on the narrowest scale. Lord Malmesbury observes that even the Prince of Dessau's marriage, at which he was present, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... secret and having declared deadly war to papism, it cooperates even to the present day, helping out England in her exploits over the whole world with its capital and concessions, in which respect the Sanhedrin was never penurious. ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... support, what would be the event of his suit to Melissa, and stipulated marriage? Was it not probable that her father would now cancel the contract? Could she consent to be his wife in his present penurious situation?—And indeed, could he himself consent to make her his wife, ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... on the door. Between it and her was the table, covered with admirable things to eat, it being supper and therefore, according to a Twist tradition surviving from penurious days, all the food, hot and cold, sweet and salt, being brought in together, and Amanda only attending when rung for. Half-eaten oyster patties lay on Mrs. Twist's plate. In her glass neglected champagne had bubbled itself flat. Her hand still held her fork, but ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... slow, penurious winter of exhaustion after the acute fury of the spring and summer. These were hard times in earnest, not with the excitement of failures and bankruptcies, but with the steady grind of low wages, no employment, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... Drink the clear stream, and nothing wear but frieze, The All-giver would be unthanked, would be unpraised, Not half his riches known and yet despised; And we should serve him as a grudging master, As a penurious niggard of his wealth, And live like Nature's bastards, not her sons, Who would be quite surcharged with her own weight, And strangled with her waste fertility: The earth cumbered, and the winged air darked with plumes, The herds would over-multitude their lords; The sea o'erfraught ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... utterly decayed before the end of Sir Thomas Smith's government, that being the only bridge (any way soe to be called) that was ever in the country. At this time in all these labours, the miserye throughout the wholl Collony, in the scarcitye of foode was equall; which penurious and harde kinde of liveinge, enforced and emboldened some to petition to Sir Thomas Gates (then Governor) to grant them that favor that they might employ themselves in husbandry, that therby they and all others by plantinge ...
— Colonial Records of Virginia • Various
... beneath our feet cooling down for ever [99] from its old cosmic heat; watching pleasurably how their colours fled out of things, and the long sand-bank in the sea, which had been the rampart of a town, was washed down in its turn. One of his acquaintance, a penurious young poet, who, having nothing in his pockets but the imaginative or otherwise barely potential gold of manuscript verses, would have grasped so eagerly, had they lain within his reach, at the elegant outsides of life, thought ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... aunt, with whom he passed his days, had grown to be only vague, meaningless shapes to him. Their broadest pleasantries failed to raise a smile, and the coarse realities of a narrow, penurious existence had no power to disturb his happy serenity. All day long, in the back-shop where the penetrating smell of paste mingled with the fumes of the cabbage-soup, he lived a life of his own, a life of incomparable splendours. His little Corneille, ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... old Hochon grew more petty in his meanness, and more penurious; and at this time he was eighty-five years old. He belonged to the class of men who stop short in the street, in the middle of a lively dialogue, and stoop to pick up a pin, remarking, as they stick it in the sleeve of their coat, "There's the wife's stipend." He complained bitterly of the poor quality ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... regularly from father to son or next heir. All in good time Roger Stephen would marry and install his wife in the manor-house. But the shop in Coinagehall Street was no place for a woman. She would be a nuisance, sweeping the place out and upsetting him and Malachi; an expense, too, and Roger—always a penurious man—incurred no expense ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... come back. He will be drowned." And from that day no one ever heard her mention her son. It was believed, however, that she had news from him, and that she sent him money; for, although the rents of her house were paid to her regularly, she grew if possible more and more penurious every year, allowing herself barely enough food to support life, and wearing such tattered and patched clothes that she was almost an object of terror to children when they met her in lonely fields and ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... new club opened he came home pretty fruitful, and next morning his head ached so he said he would buy me a dog if I would go down town and get a bottle of pollynurious water for him. You know that dye house on Grand avenue, where they have got the four white spitz dogs. When I went after the penurious water, I noticed they had been coloring their dogs with the dye stuff, and I put up a job with the dye man's little boy to help me play it on Pa. They had one dog dyed pink, another blue, another red, and another green, and I told the boy I would treat him to ice cream if he would let one out at ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... handle and secure them. Abraham Allcraft, hunks as he was, was reputed wealthy. For years he had retained a high position as the opulent banker of the mercantile city of ——. His business was extensive—his habits mean, penurious; his credit was unlimited, as his character was unimpeachable. There are some men who cannot gain the world's favour, do what they will to purchase it. There are others, on the other hand, who, having no fair claim at all to it, are warmed and nourished ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... the building of the three churches erected since 1837, and a history of the changes that have taken place; though the writer is aware that there is no incident to tempt the reader—no siege of the one castle, no battle more important than the combat in the hayfield between Mr. Coram and the penurious steward, and, till the last generation, no striking character. But the record of a thousand peaceful years is truly a cause of thankfulness, shared as it is by many thousand villages, and we believe that a little investigation would bring to light, in ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... headman, Hazari (a leader of 1000 horse), Gore (fair-coloured), Dongardiya (a lamp on a hill), Pinjara (a cotton-cleaner), Gadria (a shepherd), Khaparia (a tyler), Khawasi (a barber), Chiknya (a sycophant), Kinkar (a slave), Dukhi (penurious), Suplya toplya (a basket and fan maker), Kasai (a butcher), Gohattya (a cow-killer), and Kalebhut (black devil). Among the territorial sections may be mentioned Sonpuria, from Sonpur, and Patharia, from the hill country. The name Badnagrya ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... good; but if it were known or suspected that we were calling for money, we should not only lose many signatures, but should in many instances be considered as very unwelcome visitors, and probably even be treated as downright intruders My companion, who was a narrow-minded politician, and of a penurious disposition, followed me in, grumbling, to the next house that we called at, which was a tradesman's, who, I recollect, sold salt. I accosted this tradesman in the usual way, by informing him of our business, requesting him to read the requisition, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... the houses of King as Christmas drew nigh. The air was simply charged with secrets. Everybody was very penurious for weeks beforehand and hoards were counted scrutinizingly every day. Mysterious pieces of handiwork were smuggled in and out of sight, and whispered consultations were held, about which nobody thought of being jealous, as might have happened at any other time. Felicity was in her element, ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... to them who are careful and penurious in some trifling things, but neglective in the ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... a Maecenas or a Medici, with their proposals, their calculations, their objections, their control, then we get things that look like war-memorials, waiting-rooms, newspaper-kiosks and drinking-saloons. It was not always so? No; but even in the most penurious times it was kings ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... very willing to accept the proposition, as it would bring a little more money into his pocket. He was an avaricious and penurious young man, who thought mainly of making money in his business, and it was of little consequence to him whether he made it out of his ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... delighted in were demonstrations of the unity of God from texts in the Bible, and polemics against tri-theism. Sympathy with the great problems then beginning to agitate men they had none. Socially they were cold, and the entertainment at their houses was pale and penurious. They never considered themselves bound to contribute a shilling to my support. There was an endowment of a hundred a year, and they were relieved from all further anxiety. They had no enthusiasm for their chapel, and came or stayed away on the Sunday just as it suited ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... discovered the loss of ten cents from her bureau drawer in which she kept her savings, had been kept awake by mental trouble. Some of my readers may think so small a loss scarcely worth keeping awake for, but Mrs. Joe Tucker was a strictly economical and saving woman—some even called her penurious—and the loss ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... a sudden start. She had not known these particulars of Mortimer's life; but they carried certain explanations of his conduct. Quite casually she had formed an impression that he was penurious; something he had dropped about not being able to afford certain pleasures. That was where the money went—to support his mother and sister. Unwittingly her mother was pleading the cause of ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... weight, Reason declares thy love can't be too great, And, in this light could he our country view, A very Hottentot must love it too. But if, by Fate's decrees, you owe your birth To some most barren and penurious earth, 190 Where, every comfort of this life denied, Her real wants are scantily supplied; Where Power is Reason, Liberty a joke, Laws never made, or made but to be broke; To fix thy love on such a wretched spot, Because in Lust's ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... whether Mr. Makely approved of his wife's philosophy or not; I do not believe he thought much about it. The money probably came easily with him, and he let it go easily, as an American likes to do. There is nothing penurious or sordid about this curious people, so fierce in the pursuit of riches. When these are once gained, they seem to have no value to the man who has won them, and he has generally no object in life but to see his ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... of many intellectual faculties, such as generalization, foresight, calculation, at the same time that the moral faculties are strengthened by the constant exercise of self-control. For, granted that the naturally economical are neither shabbily penurious nor deficient in the duty of almsgiving, it is still evident that it cannot be the same effort to them to deny themselves a tempting act of liberality, or the gratification of elegant and commendable tastes, as it must be to those who are destitute ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... match in their follies for the great nobles of the last century. Under the Restoration the nobility cannot forget that it has been beaten and robbed, and so, with two or three exceptions, it has become thrifty, prudent, and stay-at-home, in short, bourgeois and penurious. Since then, 1830 has crowned the work of 1793. In France, henceforth, there will be great names, but no great houses, unless there should be political changes which we can hardly foresee. Everything takes the ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... from the alms-house, now did the drudgery of the family. Abner Dimock had grown penurious, and not one cent of money was given for comfort in that house, scarce for need. The girl was stupid and rude, but she worked for her board,—recommendation enough in Mr. Dimock's eyes; and so hard work was added to the other burdens loaded upon his silent wife. And soon came another, all-mysterious, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... of Government positions were not large, compared with those of the sciences; but as their social and political dues were paid out of the public treasury, the salaries might be considered as net profit. This custom had originated many centuries in the past. In those early days, when a penurious character became an incumbent of public office, the social obligations belonging to it were often but niggardly requited. Sometimes business embarrassments and real necessity demanded economy; so, at last, the Government assumed all the expenses contingent ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... mind to—wait a little longer. Another year rolled on; Uncle Gunter got indeed low, and the lower he got the more assiduous got nephew Smith, and even the neighbors wondered how a young man could stick on, and put up with such a miserly, mean, selfish and penurious old curmudgeon as old Joe Gunter. Gunter himself was apprized of the great indulgence and wonderful patience of his nephew, and not unfrequently said, in a ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... simultaneously was the incumbent of other lucrative posts. Offices were created by Governor Dongan apparently for his sole benefit. His passion was to get together an estate which would equal the largest. Extremely penurious, he loaned money at frightfully usurious rates and hounded his victims without a vestige of sympathy.[21] As a trader and government contractor he made enormous profits; such was his cohesive collusion with high officials that competitors found it impossible to outdo ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... the love of a man for some particular woman. I meant love in every sense. I do not know what it is to have an affection for any human being. My parents died before I can remember. My only living relative was a penurious old uncle who brought me up for shame's sake and kicked me out on the world as soon as he could. I don't make friends easily. I have a few acquaintances whom I like, but there is not a soul on earth for whom I care, or who cares ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... had one son, now in the neighborhood of thirty, but he had not been at home for several years. As soon as he attained his majority he left the homestead, and set out to seek his fortune elsewhere. He vowed he wouldn't any longer submit to the penurious ways of the squire. So the old man was left alone, but he did not feel the solitude. He had his gold, and that was company enough. A time was coming when the two must part company, for when death should come he must leave the gold behind; but ...
— Bound to Rise • Horatio Alger
... their ups and downs, and now, being much together, they were in and out as partners in a dozen different deals. Mr. Harley attended to most of these; and Storri learned certain peculiarities belonging to that gentleman. Mr. Harley, for one solvent matter, was penurious to the point of dimes; also, Mr. Harley took no risks. Mr. Harley was willing to book a joint deal in both Storri's name and his own; or in his own for the common good of Storri and himself. But Mr. Harley would not give a joint order ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... of iron between them, until, regardless of the cries of the sufferers, they had bruised to pieces and forever crippled those poor, honest, innocent, laborious hands, which had never been raised to their mouths but with a penurious and scanty proportion of the fruits of their own soil; but those fruits (denied to the wants of their own children) have for more than fifteen years past furnished the investment for our trade with China, and been ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... insults heaped upon him. He will accept the atonement of two hundred thousand francs for the injury done him, assured that this penalty would be the severest punishment that could be inflicted upon a cowardly and penurious American like ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... considerable variety in the grain thus brought but sometimes the cure is almost overwhelmed by a single product such as peas; one of their number, thus paid, the neighbouring clergy christened the "cure des pois." The French Canadian farmer is often narrowly penurious and if he will not pay, as sometimes happens, the cure rarely presses him or takes steps to recover what the law would allow. In any case a bad harvest is likely to leave the cure poor. Changes in the type of farming may also curtail ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... money. But those who had confidently expected to see her squander it were disappointed: on the contrary, it was presently whispered that she was exceedingly penurious. That admirable woman, Mrs. Stiver of Red Dog, who accompanied her to San Francisco to assist her in making purchases, was loud in her indignation. "She cares more for two bits than I do for five dollars. She wouldn't buy anything at the 'City of Paris,' because it was ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... drop. I don't reckon I ever will, either. I don't take to the idea of back-trackin' to this farm an' gettin' old in overalls, like you say. I'm sort of penurious an' I aim to keep what little sense I got. A feller as dull as I am can't afford ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... United States of America is rich, well governed, and provided with more material comforts than China, Americans, one would think, should be happier than we are, but are they? Are there not many in their midst who are friendless and penurious? In China no man is without friends, or if he is, it is his own fault. "Virtue is never friendless," said Confucius, and, as society is constituted in China, this is literally true. If this is not so in America I fear there is something ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... modify Miss Calhoun's colloquial charms. Many of her delightful "way down south" phrases and mannerisms were blighted by the cold, unromantic atmosphere of a seminary conducted by two ladies from Boston who were too old to marry, too penurious to love and too prim to think that other women might care to do both. There were times, however,—if she were excited or enthusiastic,—when pretty Beverly so far forgot her training as to break forth ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... the best of his nature awoke to meet its calls, and he drew upon a growing store of love for strength to thwart the desires of her he loved. 'Entire affection hateth nicer hands,' and Francis learned not to mind looking penurious and tyrannical, selfish, heartless, and unsympathetic, in the endeavour to be truly loving and lovingly true. He had not Kirsty to support him, but he could now go higher than to Kirsty for the help he needed; he went to the same fountain from which Kirsty herself drew ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... much time, that, as our fund was so very low, we were reduced to some distress, and obliged to live extremely penurious; nor would all do without my taking a most disagreeable way of procuring money by pawning one ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... the miry spot, his life was a progress of glory. All about Rawleigh was as splendid as the dress he wore: his female sovereign, whose eyes loved to dwell on men who might have been fit subjects for "the Faerie Queene" of Spenser, penurious of reward, only recompensed her favourites by suffering them to make their own fortunes on sea and land; and Elizabeth listened to the glowing projects of her hero, indulging that spirit which could have conquered the world, to have ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... as yet respectful to his own wife, and standing in awe of his mother, he engaged Otho underhand to solicit her. For Nero lived familiarly with Otho, whose prodigality won his favor, and he was well pleased when he took the freedom to jest upon him as mean and penurious. Thus when Nero one day perfumed himself with some rich essence and favored Otho with a sprinkle of it, he, entertaining Nero next day, ordered gold and silver pipes to disperse the like on a sudden ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... French in America may sometime find a champion. For my own part, I would that the gentler principles which governed them, and the English under William Penn, and the Dutch under the enlightened rule of the States General, had obtained here, instead of the narrower, the more penurious, and most prescriptive ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... doors of the stove and held the palms of his stiffened hands to the blaze. The light brought out a thoughtful look on his large, uncouth, yet kindly visage. Life had laid hard lines on his brown skin, but it had not entirely soured a naturally kind and simple nature. It had made him penurious and dull and iron-muscled; had stifled all the slender flowers of his nature; yet there was warm soil somewhere hid ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... the preceding observations we do not in the least advocate the formation of miserly, penurious habits; for we hate the scrub, the screw, the miser. All that we contend for is, that man should provide for the future,—that they should provide during good times for the bad times which almost invariably follow them,—that they should lay by a store of savings as a breakwater ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... thrifty, but the way some of those people saved up their hunger for our dinner was too penurious for mine. ...
— Skiddoo! • Hugh McHugh
... patriotism, he would have soon sported the red coat; and perhaps under the immediate patronage of his royal friend, been advanced in time to no mean rank in the army of Britain. Nor in that case would we have had to follow him, as at last we shall, through long, long years of obscure and penurious wandering. ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... never in a condition to be so easily coaxed as now. Maude Glendower had a place in his heart, which no other woman bad ever held, and that very afternoon the village merchant was astonished at the penurious doctor's inquiring the prices of the finest broadcloth in his store. It seemed a great deal of money to pay, but Maude Remington at his elbow and Maude Glendower in his mind conquered at last, and the new suit was bought, including vest, hat, boots, and all. ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... concerning the persecution of women who dared to choose their own lovers. To put down this profligacy was the first care of Arthur; and in enforcing a severe attention to etiquette and outward respectability, he perhaps erred on the side of virtue. Honest, brave, and high-minded, he was also penurious and cold, and the ostentatious good humour of the colonists dashed itself in vain against his polite indifference. In opposition to this official society created by Governor Arthur was that of the free settlers and the ticket-of-leave ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... wear out mine age in a discomfortable, in an unwholesome, in a penurious prison, and so pay my debts with my bones, and recompense the wastefulness of my youth with the beggary of mine age; let me wither in a spittle under sharp, and foul, and infamous diseases, and so recompense the wantonness of my youth with that loathsomeness ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... ambition is the love of power; the spur to avarice is either the fear of poverty or a strong desire of self-indulgence. The amassers of fortunes seem divided into two opposite classes—lean, penurious-looking mortals, or jolly fellows who are determined to get possession of, because they want to enjoy, the good things of the wo others, in the fulness of their persons and the robustness of their constitutions, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... gravely. "Notwithstanding diminishing tithes and increasing taxes, Tommy is still left to us. Apparently he thrives on a penurious diet, for he is fatter ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... the homes of the great and gay were her constant resort, the child's home was becoming sadder, and her existence and that of her parents more precarious and penurious day by day. From my grandfather's first arrival in London, his chest had suffered from the climate; the instrument he taught was the flute, and it was not long before decided disease of the lungs rendered that industry ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... that Jezebel!" came the ringing denunciation. "The tricky, shameless, penurious, graspin' unprincipled little she-devil! She's after you, my boy, after you hard. An', you poor miserable blind worm of a fool, you ain't got the sense to see it! Everybody knows it; the whole country's talkin' about it; how Temple's ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... keeping the golden rule, he had insulted the laws of the institution under whose merciless sway thousands of human beings were groaning. He would live no longer where his convictions of duty were to be subordinated to, and palliated by, the penurious and cruel teaching of the slave institution. So, after having been robbed of his property, he left, in company with his family, for the fair shores of New England. He had sought no distinction, but had settled down to a quiet life in New ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... sprung. A few scraps of poetry and history recurred to him—a single tattered volume of 'Monte Cristo,' which he had lately bought with an odd lot at a sale—but nothing that suggested to his fancy anything like the peasant farm in the Mont Ventoux, within sight of Arles, where Louise Suveret's penurious childhood ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... benevolence to the poor, the sick and the distressed. We should "lay by" a certain amount each year of what God bestows, for the support of the church and the propagation of the gospel. Oh, how little do Christians now give to these benevolent objects! A penurious, close-fisted, selfish home cannot be a religious household. Family religion must be reproductive, must return to God as well as receive from Him. But as these characteristic features of the Christian ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... were times when Marion seemed actually to be trying to interest Fred; other times she purposely irritated him, as though she were deliberately amusing herself with him. All this was not taking into account Marion's penurious habit of charging Kate for every facial massage and every manicure she gave her. When Kate looked ahead to the long winter they must spend together in that cabin, she was tempted to feel as though she, for one, would be paying an exorbitant price for ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... Hecaton calls the case of Arcesilaus silly, and not to the purpose. Arcesilaus, he says, refused to receive a large sum of money which was offered to him by a son, lest the son should offend his penurious father. What did he do deserving of praise, in not receiving stolen goods, in choosing not to receive them, instead of returning them? What proof of self-restraint is there in refusing to receive another man's property. If you want an instance of magnanimity, take the case of Julius Graecinus, ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... with time; the years that made him long-haired, whiter, and more owl-like also made him more penurious and grasping, and anxious to get the better of every person about him. There was scarcely a poor person in the village—not a field labourer nor shepherd nor farmer's boy, nor any old woman he had employed, who did not consider that they had suffered ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... sizes and styles, and in many languages. If he hears of a Bible, in any part of the world, different in any respect from those he owns, he at once endeavors to obtain it, no matter how difficult the undertaking, or how much it may cost. Except in the matter of Bibles he is disposed to be some what penurious—although his estate is large—and has been known to refuse to have a salad for his dinner on account of the high price of good olive-oil. He makes his will, and dies, and then it is found that his whole property is left ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... the General Government. He possessed a native strong intellect, and far more knowledge of the principles of civil government and law than he got credit for. In private and public expenditures he was extremely economical, but not penurious. In cases where the officers had to contribute money for parties and entertainments, he always gave a double share, because of his allowance of double rations. During our frequent journeys, I was always ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... prose to be the appropriate expositor of such atrocities! No offence, but it is a cordial that makes the heart sick. Still thy skill in compounding it I not deny. I turn to what gave me less mingled pleasure. I find markd with pencil these pages in thy pretty book, and fear I have been penurious. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... called to the throne of France, she found herself transported from one of the most penurious and obscure to the most splendid of the Courts of Europe—"frightened and overwhelmed," as de Goncourt tells us, "by the grandeur of the King, bringing to her husband nothing but obedience, to marriage only duty; trembling and faltering in her queenly role like some escaped nun lost in ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... moved on. Could Captain Roland, the rigid, the thrifty, the penurious, be a gambler? The light broke on me at once: the unhappy father sought his son! I leaned against the post, and tried ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of this "ridiculing the State," as the Times, in its leader, expressed it, for the penurious pittance it doles out of the revenues of the richest country in the world towards the maintenance of a National Portrait Gallery, was that I was the cause of arousing the Press of Great Britain to the miserable condition of the National Portrait Gallery, ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... that England had been deprived of the glory of these great discoveries. Columbus, when repulsed by the courts of Portugal and Spain, sent his brother Bartholomew to London,[50] to lay his projects before Henry VII., and seek assistance for their execution. The king, although the most penurious of European princes, saw the vast advantage of the offer, and at once invited the great Genoese to his court. Bartholomew was, however, captured by pirates on his return voyage, and detained till too late, for in the mean while Isabella of Castile had adopted the project of Columbus, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... both to soul and body. So long as you are young, you will be able for a time to endure these hardships; but when the vigour of youth fails, then diseases and infirmities make their appearance; for these are caused by personal discomforts, mean living, and penurious habits. As I said, economy is good; but, above all things, shun stinginess. Live discreetly well, and see you have what is needful. Whatever happens, do not expose yourself to physical hardships; ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... inferiority." And Bliss Carman speaks out loud and bold: "The best poets who have come to maturity have always had some means of livelihood at their command. The idea that any sort of artist or workman is all the better for being doomed to a life of penurious worry, is such a silly old fallacy, one wonders it could have persisted so long." The wolf may be splendid at suckling journalism and various other less inspired sorts of writing, but she is a ferocious old ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... miserable fashion and refusing charity to every one, no matter how deserving. He was forbidding in appearance, and drove daily to and from his farm outside of Philadelphia in a shabby old carriage drawn by a single horse. No visitor was ever welcomed at that farm, where its owner dragged out a penurious existence. ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... were most of them high-school boys, and the poorest of them had "chipped in" and sent all the way to Denver for Queen Esther's flowers. There were bouquets from half a dozen townspeople, too, but none from Scott. Scott was a prosperous hardware merchant and notoriously penurious, though he saved his face, as the boys said, by giving ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... journey westward was made in safety, a thriving settlement begun, and young Otto Relstaub, the son of a hard-hearted, penurious German, was sent back over the trail, according to promise, to guide Jack Carleton, who was impatiently awaiting him. The next morning after his arrival the two started westward, all their earthly effects packed upon ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... not far from Arbroath, to celebrate the reconciliation of two neighbouring farmers who had long been at enmity. The host was pressing and hospitable; the party sat late, and consumed a vast amount of whisky toddy. The wife was penurious, and grudged the outlay. When at last, at a morning hour, the party dispersed, the lady, who had not slept in her anxiety, looked over the stairs and eagerly asked the servant girl, "How many bottles of whisky have they used, Betty?" The lass, ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... embarked with his last guinea for England. Here he has encountered many difficulties, often been in gaol for debt, and passed through various scenes of life, as valet, footman, thief-taker, and at length, a penny-barber! He has a wife and large family and lives in a very penurious manner, ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... secretary to the French academy, one day made a collection of a pistole a head from the members, for some general expense. Not observing that the President Rose, who was very penurious, had put his money in the hat, he presented it to him a second time. M. Rose assured him that he had put in his pistole. "I believe it," said the Abbe, "though I did not see it." "And I," said Fontenelle, "saw it, and could ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... may really claim to have invented, and which offers a wide field for idle women. It is healthy, moreover, and in its pursuit its followers can be of immense service to their overtaxed sisters. The vocation is called "Pram-Pushing for Penurious Parents," and it consists simply of taking charge of Tommy, or Bobby, or Baby for his morning or afternoon promenade, and thereby setting his mother free to take a ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Mrs. Mott's rigid economy, such as sewing together the smallest rags to be woven into carpets, and writing letters on infinitesimal bits of paper; but it must not be inferred from this peculiarity that she was penurious, as she was generous in her charities, and in the support of every good cause. Considering her means and the self-denial she practiced in her personal expenses, her gifts were lavish. Alfred Love, President of the Peace Society, who frequently ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the folly of the youth, shews us the imprudence of the father, who is supposed to have hurt the principles of his son, in depriving him of the necessary use of some portion of that gold, he had with penurious covetousness been hoarding up, for the sole purpose of lodging ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... the unfeeling, unmusical, penurious old ladies and gentlemen back into the lounge, glaring at them as belligerently and offensively as a gentleman could and maintain his self-respect. Then he went into the waiting-room and embarked upon a positive orgy of letter-writing. Looking up from the last of his pile a half-hour ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... crooked, shrivelled-limbed, cantankerous little man, with dishevelled hair and haggard countenance, bad-tempered and irritable, penurious and dishonest, at least in his claims for priority in discoveries—this is the picture usually drawn, alike by friends and enemies, of Robert Hooke (1635-1703), a man with an almost unparalleled genius for scientific discoveries ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Have tempted my unquestioned chastity Without a fowrth abetter, jealousy. The more I ponder that, I more suspect By that my Lord should have a hand in this, And,[101] knowinge there's such difference in our yeares, To proove my feythe might putt this triall on mee. Else how durst such a poore penurious fryar Oppose such an unheard of Impudens Gaynst my incensed fury and revendge? My best is therefore, as I am innocent, To stooddy myne owne safety, showe this letter, Which one [?] my charity woold have conceiled, And rather give him upp a sacrifice To my lord's just incensement then ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... That event terminated Decaen's military course. For a while he was imprisoned, but his life was not taken, as was that of the gallant Ney; and in a few months he was liberated at the instance of the Duchesse d'Angouleme. Thenceforth he lived a colourless, quiet, penurious life in the vicinity of his native Caen, regretting not at all, one fancies, the ruin of the useful career of the enterprising English navigator. His poverty was honourable, for he had handled large ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... readily recognized his infirmity, and confessed himself unable to accommodate his irascibility to the "humores" of the inhabitants. There was often sufficient cause for his petulance. Never had praetor of a province a more penurious civil list. "The baker has given notice," wrote Count John, in November, "that he will supply no more bread after to-morrow, unless he is paid." The states would furnish no money to pay the, bill. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... took in the kitchen together. Lady Henry's opinion of her as a soft and luxurious person dependent on dainty living was, in truth, absurdly far from the mark. After those years of rich food and many servants in Lady Henry's household, she had resumed the penurious Belgian ways at once, without effort—indeed, with alacrity. In the morning she helped Leonie and Therese with the housework. Her quick fingers washed and rubbed and dusted. In less than a week she knew every glass and cup in Cousin Mary Leicester's well-filled china cupboard, ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... over, and the bride and groom left, Martin giving his old classmate, to whom the world had been penurious, a hand-shake that, when examined by the breathless family a few moments later, was found to yield at least a new parlour carpet, an easy-chair for the Rector's bent back, and a new clerical suit ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... father, ill-used by his step-mother. Thus Tobias had not only his own early poverty to resent, but had a hereditary grudge against fortune, and "the base indifference of mankind." The old gentleman was lodged "with very hard and penurious people," at Glasgow University. He rose in the world, and was a good Presbyterian Whig, but "had no liberty" to help to forfeit James II. "The puir child, his son" (James III. and VIII.), "if he was really such, was innocent, and it were hard to do ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang |
