"Spendthrift" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the vulgar, that it is unlucky to build one's tomb in one's lifetime. Fear as well as envy stimulated Bramante, for the judgment of Michael Angelo had exposed many of his errors. Bramante, as every one knows, was given to all kinds of pleasures and a great spendthrift. The pension allotted to him by the Pope, however rich it might be, was not enough for him; he tried to make money out of the works, building the walls of bad materials, which, notwithstanding their greatness and width, ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... from himself. Even before he has entirely lost his independence, his ideas and feelings have undergone a transformation, and the transformation is so profound as to change the miser into a spendthrift, the sceptic into a believer, the honest man into a criminal, and the coward into a hero. The renunciation of all its privileges which the nobility voted in a moment of enthusiasm during the celebrated night of August 4, 1789, would certainly never have ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... power, Baby, the inquisitive postmaster and keeper of the bridge, was unlike the new arrival in Bonaventure. The abilities of the Honourable Tom Ferrol lay in a splendid plausibility, a spontaneous blarney. He could no more help being spendthrift of his affections and his morals than of his money, and many a time he had wished that his money was as inexhaustible as ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... twenty-seven. This abode was furnished in a style of the most lavish splendor, and Mr. Wellesley-Pole's income was more than adequate to maintain it in befitting style. But no income is adequate to meet the expenses of a gambler and spendthrift, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... safety, or are we really a nation of princes in disguise? Well, I shall never be satisfied with less hereafter," he added. "I am spoiled for ordinary paint and upholstery from this hour; I am a ruinous spendthrift, and a humble three-story swell-front up at the South End is no longer the place ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... cold world to hear? Rather he sings for very rapture of singing, At dawn, or in the blue, mild Summer noon, Knowing that, late or soon, His wealth of beauty, and his high notes, ringing Above the earth, will make some heart rejoice. He sings, albeit alone, Spendthrift of each pure tone, Hoarding no single song, No cadence wild and strong. But one day, from a friend far overseas, As if upon the breeze, There came the teeming wonder of his words — A golden troop of birds, Caged in a little volume ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... I left behind me," He'll sing, nor hear her moan, "The tears they come to blind me As I sit here alone." What else had you to offer, Poor spendthrift of the town? Lay out your unlockt coffer— The Lord will know ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... people's minds. He thinks of something, and people miles away think of the same thing. All the same wireless. Take it from me, there's a whole lot to it at that. I was out with a kind friend the other evening whose general disposition is to try and make Frank Daniels look like a spendthrift, so I knew it would be beer for mine unless I made a great mental effort, so all the way up the street in the taxicab I just held thumbs and concentrated my mind—I saw more new style hats, too—and said to myself, 'For Heaven's sake, order wine,' 'Please ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... never very long absent from Mr. Wells's work; the background of it is disagreeable. Hence its complete lack of magic, of charm. And without some touch of these qualities, the a peu pres of journalism, of that necessarily hurried and improvised work which is the spendthrift of talent, can never become literature, as it once did—under the golden ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... adjacent colonies. He also supplied the Micmacs with scalping-knives and tomahawks for use against his own countrymen. He died, a very rich man, in England, leaving his fortune to his daughter, who, with her spendthrift husband, the Duc de Bouillon, was guillotined ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... Travelling charges to London should be defrayed. This Mr. Hodge boggled at for awhile; but, seeing me Resolute he gave way, and at last said that there was no need for me to trouble with going to the Goldsmith in London to get the Draft changed—"If, indeed," says he, "the unhappy young spendthrift be not proclaimed a Bankrupt before I get this slip of paper cashed;" and that having a small store of Gold by him, he would give me the Ten Pound down, together with a couple of Pieces to bear my Expenses to the Town. To this I agreed; and his Reverence handing ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... man, "and a cowardly thief! One who sacrificed honour and truth and common honesty that he might gratify his foolish pride. But to come nearer, my friends, hear what I have done. By careless spendthrift ways I had wasted my money so that I had not sufficient to send my son to college. This galled my pride, and I stole from my son-in-law's drawer the sum of 40 pounds which I knew he had placed there. I was too proud to ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... favourable, at least erudite. Born in 1506, at the Moss, in Killearn—where an obelisk to his memory, so one reads, has been erected in this century—of a family "rather ancient than rich," his father dead in the prime of manhood, his grandfather a spendthrift, he and his seven brothers and sisters were brought up by a widowed mother, Agnes Heriot—of whom one wishes to know more; for the rule that great sons have great mothers probably holds good in her case. George gave signs, while at ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... mind it seems clear that you had better injure yourself than another. Better be a spendthrift than thief. Better throw away your own money than steal the money of another. Better kill yourself if you wish to die than murder one whose life is full ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... another.(540) When, therefore, the debtor employs the capital that he has borrowed, more productively than the creditor would have done, the whole country is a gainer; as it is a loser, on the contrary, when a person engaged in industry advances to the idler, the frugal man to the spendthrift, the solid man to the wild speculator. In declining nations, where every new development hastens decay, the latter alternative may be the prevailing one; and, especially here, may the usurious giving of credit by the shrewd to the simple lead to ruinous debtor-slavery. Among a vigorous and energetic ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... national affairs. They might not be satisfied with the honour of voting the supplies at his demand, but were capable of asking questions as to their appropriation. On the whole it was more king-like and statesman-like to remain quiet, and give advice. Of that, although always a spendthrift, he had an ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... night was black. The silent servant who conducted the young man to the death chamber, lighted the way so insufficiently that Death, aided by the cold, the silence, the gloom, perhaps by a reaction of intoxication, was able to force some reflections into the soul of the spendthrift; he examined his life, and became thoughtful, like a man involved in a lawsuit when he sets out for the ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... individual of a family by the head of it (called lepas or buang dangan surat, to let loose, or cast out with a writing) has its foundation in the custom which obliges all the branches to be responsible for the debts contracted by any one of the kindred. When an extravagant and unprincipled spendthrift is running a career that appears likely to involve his family in ruinous consequences, they have the right of dissolving the connexion and clearing themselves of further responsibility by this public act, which, as the writ expresses it, sends ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... Smith has very justly observed that nations as well as individuals grow rich by parsimony and poor by profusion, and that, therefore, every frugal man was a friend and every spendthrift an enemy to his country. The reason he gives is that what is saved from revenue is always added to stock, and is therefore taken from the maintenance of labour that is generally unproductive and employed in the maintenance of labour that realizes itself ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... my cargo prospered, yours outshines The best of it. Take it, my lad, and go; You're a rich man; and, if you use it well, Riches will make you richer, and the world Will prosper in your own prosperity. The miser, like the cold and barren moon, Shines with a fruitless light. The spendthrift fool Flits like a Jack-o-Lent over quags and fens; But he that's wisely rich gathers his gold Into a fruitful and unwasting sun That spends its glory on a thousand fields And blesses all the world. Take it ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... neither family, nor money, nor mercantile friends. So Henry Clay, at twenty-one, turned his eyes to the West,—the land of promise, which was especially attractive to impecunious lawyers, needy farmers, spendthrift gentlemen, merchants without capital, and vigorous men of enterprise,—where everybody trusts and is trusted, and where talents and character are of more value than money. He had not much legal knowledge, nor did he need much in the frontier settlements ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... eaten, the Abyssinian preferring a thin cake of durra meal or teE, kneaded with water and exposed to the sun till the dough begins to rise, when it is baked. Salt is a luxury; "he eats salt'' being said of a spendthrift. Bars of rock-salt, after serving as coins, are, when broken up, used as food. There is a general looseness of morals: marriage is a very slight tie, which can be dissolved at any time by either husband or wife. Polygamy is by no means uncommon. Hence there is little family affection, and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... anything but an assurance of support. Early widowed, the young mother herself may have to earn her children's bread. Or the husband may become crippled, or an invalid, or he may turn out a drunkard and a spendthrift. In any of these circumstances, the responsibility and the burden of supporting the entire family usually falls upon the wife. Is it strange that the group so often drift into undeserved pauperism, sickness and misery, perhaps later on, even into those depths of social maladjustment ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... haunts of the noble, the rich, and the great, many of whom leave their splendid habitations in the West in the morning, to attend the money-getting, 113commercial men of the City, and transact their business.—The dashing young spendthrift, to borrow at any interest; and the more prudent, to buy or to sell. The plodding tradesman, the ingenious mechanic, are exhausting their time in endeavours to realize property, perhaps to be left for the benefit of a Son, who as ardently sets about, after his Father's decease, to get ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... is rarely broad enough in youth to survey the field of life with an impartial view. "The years creep slowly by, Lorena," was written in the true youthful, spendthrift spirit. ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... of talent and imagination who was driven to literature for aid in supporting a large family abandoned by their spendthrift father. She was among the most prolific novelists of her time, but only one work, "The Old Manor House," enjoyed more than a passing reputation, or has any claim to particular mention here. The chief merit of Charlotte Smith's ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... unworthy man," squandered away the large estates he inherited not only in Perthshire, but also in Forfarshire, Kincardine, Caithness, and Haddington. One of the younger branches of the Oliphant family purchased from his spendthrift cousin the lands of Gask, which have ever since continued ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... imagine not. Or, rather, it would add to our population only those who desire to save instead of those who desire to waste. We should increase through the new-comers in virtuous economy, and not as now in spendthrift vainglory. In the end the effect would be the same for civilization as if we shrank to the size ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... way in which the ordinary Roman farm was cultivated in the earliest times. The next heirs had no protection against bad management except the right of having the spendthrift who squandered his inherited estate placed under wardship as if he were a lunatic.(12) Women moreover were in substance divested of their personal right of disposal, and, if they married, a member of the same clan was ordinarily assigned as husband, in order to retain the estate within ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... dramatic propriety; he begins again to turn aside and lecture us, in the midst of his tale, upon the text of De te fabula narratur. Sir Miles and Lady Warrington are scandalised by their nephew's extravagance, and refuse all help to the spendthrift. ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... their effect; and with some reluctance Louis consented that his brother should be appointed to the command of the army, desiring at the same time that he should receive fifty thousand crowns to defray the expenses of his equipment; and, although the spendthrift Prince lost the whole sum at the gaming-table during the course of a single evening, Richelieu did not venture upon further expostulation, the union of the two Queens, and the undisguised satisfaction of the great nobles, rendering a more ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... says I, "he's a plain incumbent of the mountains, with asperities and the usual failings of a spendthrift and a liar, but I never on the most momentous occasion had the heart to deny that he was a gentleman. It may be that in haberdashery and the sense of arrogance and display Idaho offends the eye, but inside, ma'am, ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... really coming to live in Nemours, they were seized (in spite of the political events which were just then weighing so heavily on Brie and on the Gatinais) with a devouring curiosity, which was not surprising. Was he rich? Economical or spendthrift? Would he leave a fine fortune or nothing? Was his property in annuities? In the end they found out what follows, but only by taking infinite pains ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... to the manner born? Take worthy Scaeva now, the spendthrift heir, And trust his long-lived mother to his care; He'll lift no hand against her. No, forsooth! Wolves do not use their heel, nor bulls their tooth: But deadly hemlock, mingled in the bowl With honey, will take off the poor old soul. ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... Like a spendthrift in the midst of a winning game, I still watched eagerly and ungratefully for manatees. Kiskadees splashed rather than flew through the drenched air, an invisible black witch bubbled somewhere to herself, and a wren sang three notes and a trill which died out in a liquid gurgle. Then came another ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... we know their bees That wade in honey red to the knees: Their patent reaper, its sheaves sleep sound In dreamless garners underground: 40 We know false glory's spendthrift race Pawning nations for feathers and lace; It may be short, it may be long, "'Tis reckoning-day!" sneers unpaid Wrong. Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! 45 Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! In the shadow, year out, year in, The silent ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... sombre and uncommunicative melancholy that hung like a cloud over her face. I felt reluctant to delve further into a history that was footed upon so unsatisfactory a foundation as this enigmatic creature who had blazed suddenly upon the painter-cousin's vision, a mere spendthrift man of pleasure, inarticulate save in his startlingly decadent behaviour. After all, what had he done, this fine gentleman with an eagle face and iron will? Sold a few automobiles to the aristocracy. Pooh! In America he would pass as a hustling business man with ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... patience, and see your father To rifle up the treasure of my love, And play the spendthrift upon such an harlot! This same will make me have patience, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... were lined, selling anything from a ten-cent pocket knife to a blue-barreled Colts revolver. The numerous saloons were going full blast, and were doing a profitable business. Nobody is more of a spendthrift than your true cowboy when he is out on pleasure bent, and the fakirs and saloon-keepers were taking ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... but very lightly, on the commonplaces of stock plots and characters. The whole array of puppets is familiar to us all: the cunning slave, the fond or licentious papa, the spendthrift son and their inevitable confrA"res appear in play after play with relentless regularity. The close correspondence of many plots is also too familiar to need discussion.[187] The glimmering of originality in the plot of the Cap. called for special advertisement.[188] In the light of the foregoing ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... course of these pages, I will state in a few words who and what he was. He was born of an ancient Roman Catholic family in Ireland; his parents, whose only child he was, had long been dead. His father, who had survived his mother several years, had been a spendthrift, and at his death had left the family property considerably embarrassed. Happily, however, the son and the estate fell into the hands of careful guardians, near relations of the family, by whom the property was managed to the best advantage, and every means taken to educate the young man in a manner ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Don Jose, one of the courtiers, determines to help the King in his amour, in order that he may afterwards use his infidelity as a means of advancing himself in the favour of the Queen. There is a law against duelling in the streets of Madrid, and a certain spendthrift nobleman, Don Caesar de Bazan, has rendered himself liable to death for protecting a poor boy named Lazarillo from arrest. Don Jose promises the condemned man that he shall be shot instead of hanged, if he will consent to marry a veiled lady an hour before the execution, ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... all shook hands with the spendthrift and slapped him on the back in good fellowship, and said they knew all the time he had a heart of gold and they feel free to say now that once the money has passed he won't be let to go off the place till he has ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... her story here. It was only the same old story—of the young girl of fortune marrying a spendthrift, who dissipated her property, estranged her friends, alienated her affections, and then left her penniless, to struggle alone with all the ills of poverty to bring up her three little girls. By her own unaided efforts she had fed, clothed, and educated her three children for the ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the sleep of utter exhaustion in camp. Average Jones felt amply qualified to join him. But it was not in the Ad-Visor's character to quit an enterprise before it was wholly completed. So long as the two bandits were on their way to cash the young spendthrift's checks—Jones had heard from the victim a brief account of the extortion—success ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... that he knew how to give hard blows. Their place was quite near to where we lived. One of the turrets of their house could be seen above Saint-Mihiel, and from a good distance too; but it didn't belong to them in my time. They were a spendthrift lot, that family. Oh, they were queer ones for nobility; they lived with the charcoal-burners in the Croix-du-Soldat woods, ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... he was a fashionable young spendthrift, and the other a sheriff's officer of the first water—the genteelest beak that ever was known or heard of—who had been on the look-out for him several days, and with whom the happy youngster was doomed to spend ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... the sinking heart, and make each vital throb like the last heavy thud of death. Then suicide has a charm and self-destruction a temptation. Many a turbulent wave has closed the career of a the beggared spendthrift and ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... pictorial effect, the possibility of clear mental presentation, is a sine qua non. Aiming primarily at this, the mountaineer says of an impudent man, "He has as much shame as an egg has hair;" of a garrulous one, "He has no bone in his tongue" or "His tongue is always wet;" of a spendthrift, "Water does not stand on a hillside;" and of a noble family in reduced circumstances, "It is a decayed rag, but it is silk." All these metaphors are clear, vivid and forcible, and the list of such proverbs might be ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... and like a flood, tall and resistless, came the recollection of their far-off past and of its least dear trifle, of all the aspirations and absurdities and splendors of their common youth, and found him in its path, a painted fellow, a spendthrift king of the mode, a most notable authority upon the set of a peruke, a penniless, spent connoisseur ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... poisoners. It was in the following month that the notorious La Voisin was burned alive, at Paris, for practices to which many of the highest nobility were charged with being privy, not excepting some in whose veins ran the blood of the gorgeous spendthrift who ruled the destinies of France. [Footnote: The equally famous Brinvilliers was burned four years before. An account of both will be found in the Letters of Madame de Sevigne. The memoirs of the time abound ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... a powerful machine, and its coughing, open exhaust was adding to the din on the highway. It was trailing smoke in a dense, bluish cloud that meant they were burning up their lubricant with spendthrift prodigality. But the monster was ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... which refers to the man's profession of building those walls without mortar which are always tumbling down and being repaired again; or O'Sciacquariello (acqua—a leaking—one whose money leaks from his pocket—a spendthrift); or San Pietro, from his saintly appearance; O'Civile, who is so uncivilized, or Cristoforo Colombo, because he is so very wideawake. But eighty per cent of them are quite obscure even to their owners, going back, as they do, to some forgotten trick or incident during childhood ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... of small holdings in Great Britain will find much to interest them in the history of Danish legislations. British policy for many generations was to preserve demesne land, and there are many devices for insuring that a spendthrift life-owner shall not be able to scatter the family inheritance; but as long ago as 1769 the Danish legislators set an exactly opposite example. They enacted that peasant land should not be incorporated or worked with estate ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... happened, one of them ran directly into it. Clarence, the older, was anything but a model boy. He was much addicted to ale and cigars, and thought of nothing in the world so much as money. He was a spendthrift, and, like Godfrey Evans, had a great desire to be rich, but he never thought of working and saving in order to gain the wished-for end. This good old-fashioned and safe way was too long and tedious for him, and he was constantly on the lookout for a short road to wealth ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... Such a criminal thought does not originate by chance; it is the blossom of a poisonous tree with trunk and branches. Valentine had to tell him all that had happened since Apollonius' return home. It was the story of a wanton, inordinate, pleasure-seeking spendthrift who in spite of the efforts of his better brother had sunk to the level of an ordinary libertine and drunkard; of a faithful brother who, compelled by the necessity of rescuing the honor of business and home, had shouldered the care of everything ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... a poor display of tact for the rich man to irritate the poor man by flaunting his lavish, spendthrift habits in his face; and this is precisely what you have done. The emphasis you laid on a certain possession of yours, the value of which we will not dispute, provoked my contempt. It gave you pleasure to cry when you saw a cat eating a sparrow. A banal newspaper novel could rob you completely ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... us in this; and it would be well for young people generally to set themselves to grow in a carrotty or turnippy manner, and lay up secret store, not caring to exhibit it until the time comes for fruitful display. But they must not, in after-life, imitate the spendthrift vegetable, and blossom only in the strength of what they learned long ago; else they soon come to contemptible end. Wise people live like laurels and cedars, and go on mining in the earth, while they ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... was in Sir John's well-known indolence and irresponsibility. Sir John was the exhausted reaction from the efforts of a self-made grandfather and of a father spendthrift in energy; he had had everything done for him ever since he was a baby, and consequently was now unable or unwilling to do anything for himself or other people. You couldn't see him taking an active part in the management of the League, and Mr. ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... yearnings unconfessed. And a happy year went rapidly by. But the money which penny by penny had been painfully assembled in the wretched store where Rosario had been born, streamed away between the fingers of the spendthrift husband; and the cow was running dry, as the mistress of the tavern-boat observed to her son one day, in ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... parlour together. For the Cut-rate had not cut his salary, which, sordidly speaking, ranked him star boarder at the Peek's. And he thought of Captain Peek, Katie's father, a man he dreaded and abhorred; a genteel loafer and spendthrift, battening upon the labour of his women-folk; a very queer fish, and, according to repute, ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... as Taine thought, that sayings of this sort are mere commonplaces, will never understand Johnson: he may give up the attempt at once. The true commonplace is like the money of a spendthrift heir: his guineas come and go without his ever thinking for a moment where they came from or whither they go. But Johnson's commonplaces had been consciously earned and were {169} deliberately spent; he had made them himself, and when he handed them ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... declared one side to be as bad as the other. Thus he felt that all his happiness was to be drawn from the past. There was nothing of joy or glory to which he could look forward either on behalf of his country or his family. His nephew,—and alas, his heir,—was a needy spendthrift, with whom he would hold no communication. The family settlement for his wife and daughters would leave them but poorly off; and though he did struggle to save something, the duty of living as Sir Alured Wharton ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... Long ago Miss Hannah had a brother who ran away from home. It was before their father and mother died. Ralph Walworth was as wild a young scamp as ever was in Prospect and a spendthrift in the bargain. Nobody but Hannah had any use for him, and she just worshipped him. I must admit he was real fond of her too, but he and his father couldn't get on at all. So finally he ups and runs away; it was generally supposed he ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... bafflement, of the futility of all human endeavor, which surged through Kate Kildare at that moment. The waste of it! The utter, insensate waste of so much passion and hope and tenderness, of such desperate agony, of such courage to bear...! There is no spendthrift so prodigal as Nature. For one perfected product that pleases her, hundreds of preciously guarded lives, such as this, thrown aside like so many pot-shards, useless, done for—and all to what purpose?... For the moment Kate visualised Nature as some incredible, insatiable goddess, a female Moloch, ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... confessed, laughing, that he had made a fool of the "captain." He was a cold, spiteful and sarcastic man, liable to violent antipathies. Whether it was the "captain's" excited face, or the foolish conviction of the "rake and spendthrift," that he, Samsonov, could be taken in by such a cock-and-bull story as his scheme, or his jealousy of Grushenka, in whose name this "scapegrace" had rushed in on him with such a tale to get money which worked ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... ostentatious religion. What is difficult to some, may prove comparatively easy to others, whose constitutional tendencies or mental prepossessions are of another description. The sacrifice, for example, of a spendthrift to religion must be of a different kind from that of a miser; otherwise the one may obtain undue credit for splendid charities, and the other for pious scrupulosity. In estimating, therefore, the characters of men, or apportioning their duties, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... he may have; his vices are known to all the world. He is a libertine, a gambler, a rake, a spendthrift. They say he is one of the King's favourites, and that his monstrous extravagances have earned for him the title of 'Magnificent'." He uttered a short laugh. "A fit servant for such a master as Louis ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... them certainly murmured that a Drakestail would make a fine King; those who knew him replied that a knowing Drakestail was a more worthy King than a spendthrift like him who was lying on the pavement. In short, they ran and took the crown off the head of the deceased, and placed it on that of Drakestail, ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... for one deed asked me I ever gave them twain; Spendthrift of glory I was, and great was ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... college authorities had charge of it. They doled it out to the growing boy and youth in amounts that could neither spoil nor starve him. It was good for Orville that the guardian had been thus wise and the college authorities thus prudent. He himself was generous and kind-hearted; by nature a spendthrift, but by training just a bit of a miser. He had learned a little about values during ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... The stage a world—was what he meant to say. The outside world's a blunder, that is clear; The real world that Nature meant is here. Here every foundling finds its lost mamma; Each rogue, repentant, melts his stern papa; Misers relent, the spendthrift's debts are paid, The cheats are taken in the traps they laid; One after one the troubles all are past Till the fifth act comes right side up at last, When the young couple, old folks, rogues, and all, Join hands, SO happy at the curtain's ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... never thought of anything but what he was—never of what he might have been. For having thrust him unfinished upon a thoughtless rather than a heartless world he had been trying to punish fate, and had punished only himself. A wastrel, a roisterer by night, a spendthrift, ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... grounds just beyond the Willows, as its owner, Sir Edmund Wildacres had, by racing and other gambling proclivities, managed to run through and overdraw his cash account at his bankers, so that his landed property had to come to the hammer, and, the young spendthrift was about to retire to some cheap Continental watering place until some of his antiquated relatives should be condescending enough to shuffle off this mortal coil and resign their purses and property to his careful control. And with Edith and Arthur settled at Vellenaux, there would ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... thought of the strange difference of fate that gave to this Charlotte Halliday, with her rich stepfather and comfortable surroundings, a penniless soldier of fortune for a lover, while to her, the spendthrift adventurer's daughter, came ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... to the station in Kensington High Street could not help thinking that this way of putting it was lofty. Even Mrs. Arbuthnot, spendthrift of excuses for lapses, thought Mrs. Fisher might have used other words; and Mrs. Wilkins, by the time she got to the station, and the walk and the struggle on the crowded pavement with other people's umbrellas had warmed her blood, actually ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... in Boston a young man by the name of Collins, a reckless, dissipated spendthrift, of very considerable personal attractions. He had been quite an intimate friend of Franklin; and was so pleased with his descriptions of Philadelphia that he decided to remove there. This proved one of the calamities of ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... province, but in that brief time, Verres-like, have used their opportunities so well as to return home oppressed with a wealth which life proves not long enough to spend, notwithstanding the aid of dissolute and spendthrift sons. Here have we a single source of evil equal to the ruin of any people. The morals of no community could be protected against such odds. It is a mountain torrent tearing its way through the fields of the husbandman, whose trees and plants possess no strength of branch or root ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... gold Spendthrift Summer flung; Then was the real song Bird or Poet sung! There was never censure then,— Only honest praise— And all things were worthy of ...
— Riley Songs of Home • James Whitcomb Riley
... reflecting on his embarrassing position, searching his imagination to secure some means of obtaining the sum necessary to satisfy those creditors who were most importunate, the new spendthrift sought distraction in work, and went to his desk at five o'clock in the morning in order to drive away his painful thoughts; not thinking that at this hour any one would hear him, and while working began to whistle La Linotte with all his might. ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... history that the action can be understood. Coming from one of the oldest families of Virginia, an heir to wealth and an honored name, he is but another example of the many who have sold their birth-right for a mess of pottage. A drunkard and a spendthrift, he wasted his youth in gambling and betting on the races while honest men were ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... us through a haunted world in which something worse than a ghost may spring on us out of the darkness. Ironical, sad, a spectator, he is nevertheless a writer who exalts rather than dispirits. His genius moves enlargingly among us, a very spendthrift of treasure—treasure of recollection, observation, imagery, tenderness, and humour. It is a strange thing that it was not until he published Chance that the world in general began to recognize how great a writer was enriching our time. Perhaps his own reserve ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... unexpected visit had caused her so much alarm. "This sky-watching, and turning of night into day, will be the destruction of thy beauty, niece; and then we shall see how plenty Patroons are for husbands! A bright eye and a blooming cheek are thy stock in trade, girl; and she is a spendthrift of both, who is out of her bed when ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... incurred By endless riot, vanity, the lust Of pleasure and variety, despatch, As duly as the swallows disappear, The world of wandering knights and squires to town; London engulfs them all. The shark is there, And the shark's prey; the spendthrift, and the leech That sucks him. There the sycophant, and he That with bare-headed and obsequious bows Begs a warm office, doomed to a cold jail And groat per diem if his patron frown. The levee swarms, as if in golden pomp Were charactered on every ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... which was precisely like what he had seen in his dream. He turned them over, and looked at them for some minutes. His imagination recalled up all the tales he had heard of hidden hoards, cabinets with secret drawers, left by ancestors for their spendthrift descendants, with firm belief in the extravagance of their life. He pondered this: "Did not some grandfather, in the present instance, leave a gift for his grandchild, shut up in the frame of a family portrait?" Filled with romantic fancies, he began to think whether this had not some secret ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... spendthrift, had run through all his patrimony and had but one good cloak left. One day he happened to see a Swallow, which had appeared before its season, skimming along a pool and twittering gaily. He supposed that summer had come, ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... said, as soon as he had partially recovered breath; "I am the proprietor of the Holmford property—bought it for fifty-six thousand pounds of that young scant-grace and spendthrift, Palliser—fifteen thousand pounds less than what it cost him, with the outlay he has made upon it. Signed, sealed, delivered, paid for yesterday. Ha! ha! ho! Leave John Linden alone for a bargain! It's worth seventy thousand pounds if it's worth a shilling. ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... that the blow had fallen one morning when Phineas Everton came unannounced into my private office and asked me to send the stenographer away. The debacle had arrived, and I was no more ready to meet it than any other spendthrift of good repute ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... years, Mr. Fox was as remarkable for carelessness in dress and personal appearance, as he had been for the opposite in his youth. He possessed many pleasing traits of character, but his morals were not commendable; he was a gambler and a spendthrift. Yet he exercised a powerful influence on the politics of his times. This extract is from a speech delivered during a truce in the long war between England ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... bristling head of hair, and thick sarcastic lips. This man wore, winter and summer alike, a yellow nankin coat of German cut, but with a sash round the waist; he wore blue pantaloons and a cap of astrakhan, presented to him in a merry hour by a spendthrift landowner. Two bags were fastened on to his sash, one in front, skilfully tied into two halves, for powder and for shot; the other behind for game: wadding Yermolai used to produce out of his peculiar, seemingly inexhaustible cap. ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... fades slowly out. The flush in the East faints and fails and the evening star shines like a gem. It is hot and still in the broad Piazza Santa Maria; they are lighting the lamps; the swarm grows of the eager, shabby, spendthrift crowd of young Italians, so light-hearted and fluent, and so prodigal of this old Italy of theirs—and ours. All this I have been watching as I might. Nature clings to the city, playing her rhythmic dance at the end of ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... swine. Indeed from my youth I have been devoted to agriculture, so that I am perhaps as well acquainted with that animal as is any of you great stockmen: for who of us cultivates a farm but keeps hogs, and who has not heard his father say that that man is either lazy or a spendthrift who hangs in the meat house a flitch of bacon obtained from the butcher rather than ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... Knight, as the evening progressed, assumed the burden of entertainment. He, too, adopted a spendthrift gaiety and encouraged Wharton's libations, although he ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... fishermen would tell you as they waited for a bite that the German was fichu, their faith in the credit of France unimpaired as they lived on the income of the savings of their industry before they retired. You asked gardeners about business, which you knew was good with that ever-hungry and spendthrift British Army "bulling" the market. One day while taking a walk, Beach Thomas and I saw a diver preparing to go down to examine the abutment of a bridge and we sat down to look on with a lively interest, when we might have seen hundreds of guns firing. It was a change. Nights, ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... there is a certain school of young ladies who do not stand upon trifles in the way of their flirtations, but extract fresh reasons for glorifying the object of their preference, from facts which the unwary lay before them by way of warnings. If he is a spendthrift, it is so noble to be free and generous; if he is a gambler, he is of such a fine unsuspecting disposition, he is only the dupe of the designing. In short, whatever you say to put them on their guard, only makes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... explain what riotous living is. I only know, from hearsay, that it is an excellent way to get rid of money. And so this spendthrift king ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... with a smile, that smile of all resigned women which might melt a granite rock. "Do not be astonished at my frank confidence; it shows you life as it is, not as your imagination pictures it. We all have our defects and our good qualities. If I had married a spendthrift he would have ruined me. If I had given myself to an ardent and pleasure-loving young man, perhaps I could not have retained him; he might have left me, and I should have died of jealousy. For I am jealous!" she said, in a tone of excitement, which was like the thunderclap ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... dignus Apollineis lachrymis, a sweet, a loving, a fair, a witty child, of great hope, another Eteoneus, whom Pindarus the poet and Aristides the rhetorician so much lament; but who can tell whether he would have been an honest man? He might have proved a thief, a rogue, a spendthrift, a disobedient son, vexed and galled thee more than all the world beside, he might have wrangled with thee and disagreed, or with his brothers, as Eteocles and Polynices, and broke thy heart; he ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... of great profligacy of character, and perfectly prodigal in squandering, in ostentatious pomp, all the revenues within his reach. He had been sent an embassador to the court of Vienna. Surrounding himself with a retinue of spendthrift gentlemen, he endeavored to dazzle the Austrian capital with more than regal magnificence. Expending six or seven hundred thousand dollars in the course of a few months, he soon became involved in inextricable embarrassments. In the extremity of his distress, he took advantage ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... they go I know not, for that little and grudging is spent on my clothes, and though Sam'l goes very noble still it is not possible but much is saved, though he do lament himself in very high wordes of our spendthrift way of life and ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... fired the students of Bryn Mawr College with the justifiable ambition to see this great actress in all her finer roles. Those who had money spent it royally. Those who had none offered their possessions,—books, ornaments, tea-cups, for sale. "Such a chance to buy bargains," observed one young spendthrift, who had been endeavouring to dispose of all she needed most; "but unluckily everybody wants to sell. We know now the importance of the consuming classes, and how useful in their modest way some idle rich ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... were not to die, and yet be 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. ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... grandmother presented him every birthday after his majority with a copy of The History of the de Lacorfes, knew and cared nothing about their glorious and stormy past, didn't suspect the Gorndyke rat in the de Lacorfe granary. Spendthrift Richard, who is always getting urgent blue envelopes from Samuel & Samuel, is bent on marrying for money the very Diana that George loves for her blue hyacinth eyes. There is a misunderstanding between George and Diana ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various
... wealth, and above all the quest of the superfluous on the part of those who have the greatest need of taking thought for the necessary. The lavishness of a Maecenas could not have the same effect in a society as that of a common spendthrift who astonishes his contemporaries by the magnificence of his life and the folly of his waste. In these two cases the same term means very different things—to scatter money broadcast does not say it all; there are ways of doing it which ennoble men, ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... Shakespeare Sheridan Sibbern Sickness unto Death Signe's Story Sigurd Slembe Slesvig Snoilsky, Carl Snorre Socrates Sofus Sommer, Major Sophocles Soul after Death, A Spang, Pastor Spang, The Sisters Spencer, Herbert Spendthrift, A Spinoza Stebbins Steen, Bookseller Stockholm Stuart, Mary Student, The Studies in Aesthetics Style, Le Subjection of Women Supplice d'une Femme, ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... Kent. At this astounding news, the unhappy woman swooned outright, and, being taken back to her kinsman's, she lay grievously ill for many days, during which time, by letters from Kent, it was ascertained that this Rumsey was a graceless young spendthrift, who had left his wife and his two children three years before, and gone to ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... thy luck will depart.' When the man got home he found the purse filled with dollars; and by virtue of its magical property he became the richest man in the parish. As soon as he found the purse always full, whatever he took out of it, he began to live in a spendthrift manner, and frequented the alehouse. One evening as he sat there he beheld the stranger, with a bottle in his hand, going round and gathering the drops which the guests shook from time to time out of their glasses. The rich ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... whole, the Duke of Alva was inferior to no general of his age. As a disciplinarian, he was foremost in Spain, perhaps in Europe. A spendthrift of time, he was an economist of blood; and this was, perhaps, in the eye of humanity, his principal virtue.... Such were his qualities as a military commander. As a statesman, he had neither experience nor talent. ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... property at the commencement of the Reformation. Many more were broken up and sold during the Civil Wars. In the eighteenth century another danger awaited them. They were not converted into money for spendthrift courtiers, nor disposed of for State necessities, nor cast into cannons and other implements of war; but they came to be considered a useful fund which the guardians of churches could fall back upon. 'Very numerous were the ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... story. He was the natural son of a spendthrift aristocrat, who, after educating him decently had died and left a will which seemed to assure Kite a substantial independence. Unfortunately, the will dealt, for the most part, with property no longer in existence. Kite's income was to be paid by one of ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... Charles Churchill. The cleric who first became famous for most unclerical assaults upon the stage, the satirist who could be the most devoted friend, the seducer who could be so loyal to his victim, the spendthrift who could be generous, the cynic who could feel and obey the principles of the purest patriotism, was one of those strangely compounded natures in which each vice was as it were effaced or neutralized ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... dear Netta. Then you do not hate me, although they have done their best to make you do so, by calling me gambler, spendthrift, drunkard, and ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... No more I'll ask you to depart with me, I'll go alone: but this remember still— Gay have I been, a spendthrift and an idler, A brilliant fly that buzzed about the bloom. But I had that in me deep down, and still, Of which you, you alone, possess the key, A sullen nobleness to you disclosed E'en then with shame: and by no other guessed. This you well know: betray not ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... a little care and foresight, even without thrift, I had enough to live as well as I ought; but a reckless dash of the old spendthrift blood I came of would master me now and then, and I'd launch out into some extravagance that would leave me penniless for ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... contrived to scorch his heart with a double dose of jealousy, for he found two young men visiting the clergyman, each of whom seemed to be a friend of the family. One was a spendthrift named Rentworth—a young traveller of that loose, easy-going type which is occasionally met with in foreign parts, squandering the money of a rich father. He was a decidedly handsome young fellow, but with the stamp of dissipation already on his countenance. The other was a telegraph engineer, ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... with the servants, and took their part against my parents. My family looked more askance at me for upholding the rights of our inferiors than they had done at the idiot who tore everything to pieces, or the spendthrift who made scandals and got into debt. And I dare say with good reason! Mother gave me plenty of money to amuse myself with, probably to counteract my plebeian tendencies; but I had soon done with the pleasures and ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... deception and keep up the illusion by calling it Miracle or "Special Providence," and so prevent man from entering his birthright, to possess it; and so we sell our birthright for a mess of pottage. It is like the dissipated, poverty-stricken spendthrift, who shuts his eyes and refuses to believe that any, by industry, economy, integrity and hard work have secured a competency. And so he cries, "Come on, boys! let's have another drink, and then rob this bond-holder, who has ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... their eyes, why they ever were born. Or will it be worth while? No. They are hardly important enough; the public don't heed them. But the four hundred pounds is remarkably important—to any one looking forward to having an extravagant spendthrift of a wife on his hands, and so you see, Linn, everything promises well. And I will say good-night to you now—though I am not leaving the house yet—oh, no!—you can send the nurse for me if ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... time there was a man named Du Dsi Tschun. In his youth he was a spendthrift and paid no heed to his property. He was given to drink and idling. When he had run through all his money, his relatives cast him out. One winter day he was walking barefoot about the city, with an empty stomach and torn clothes. Evening ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... shillings out of his salary, so that she might attend the sales at the big drapery shops in the West End and inspect the windows containing expensive articles that she could not hope to buy. Mr. Mattingford was an exceedingly thrifty man, and his wife possessed some of the qualities of a spendthrift. Thus it came about that Mr. Mattingford kept up the fiction that he had no savings and that each week's salary must see him through till the next week. Mrs. Mattingford knew that her husband had saved money, and theoretically she would have given a great deal to know how much. She repeatedly accused ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... the dinner the padre had watched and listened. Faces were generally books to him, and he read in this young man's face many things that pleased him. This was no night rover, a fool over wine and women, a spendthrift. He straightened out the lines and angles in a man's face as a skilled mathematician elucidates an intricate geometrical problem. He had arrived at the basic knowledge that men who live mostly out of doors are not volatile and irresponsible, but are more inclined to reserve, ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... perfect salad, there should be a spendthrift for oil, a miser for vinegar, a wise man for salt, and a madcap to stir the ingredients up, and mix them well together." — ...
— Recipes Tried and True • the Ladies' Aid Society
... me almost everything. But I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease. I amused myself with being a flaneur, a dandy, a man of fashion. I surrounded myself with the smaller natures and the meaner minds. I became the spendthrift of my own genius, and to waste an eternal youth gave me a curious joy. Tired of being on the heights, I deliberately went to the depths in the search for new sensation. What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... interest,—and who are generally very keen in looking after their principal,—have no mercy whatsoever for the Davises of creation, and very little for their customers. To have had dealings with a Davis is condemnation in their eyes. Mr. Bolton would not, therefore, have opened his gates to this spendthrift had not his feelings for the father been very strong. He had thought much upon the matter, and had tried hard to dissuade the Squire. He, the banker, was not particularly attached to the theory of primogeniture. He had divided his wealth equally between his own sons. ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... you wish to prevent this marriage; and why, pray? I have heard that Mademoiselle de Mussidan was formerly engaged to M. de Breulh-Faverlay. How comes it that the Count and Countess de Mussidan prefer a ruined spendthrift to a wealthy and strictly honorable man? It is for you to answer this question. It is perfectly plain to me that they hand over their daughter to De Croisenois under pressure of some kind, and that means that a terrible secret exists with ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... master! if thou may, What wretched soul is this, on whom their hand His foes have laid." My leader to his side Approach'd, and whence he came inquir'd, to whom Was answer'd thus: "Born in Navarre's domain My mother plac'd me in a lord's retinue, For she had borne me to a losel vile, A spendthrift of his substance and himself. The good king Thibault after that I serv'd, To peculating here my thoughts were turn'd, Whereof I give account in this dire heat." Straight Ciriatto, from whose mouth a tusk Issued on either side, as from a boar, Ript him ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... face! radiant,—I should think so. Too much by half!" exclaimed Vance. "Ten shillings! Spendthrift!" "Too much! she looked as you might look if one offered you ten shillings for your picture of 'Julius Caesar considering whether he should cross the Rubicon.' But when the manager had declared her to be his property, and appointed you to call to-morrow,—implying that he was to be ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Governor of Galicia, and of the Archduchess Henrietta d'Este, a cousin of the Emperor of Austria. She was also a great heiress, and an extremely handsome woman. But the Duke of Zeln was a bad lot, a viveur, a gambler, a spendthrift. His wife, like a fool, made her entire fortune over to him, and he proceeded to play ducks and drakes with it. By the time their son was born he'd got rid of the last farthing. Their son wasn't born till '63, five years after their marriage. Well, and then, what do you suppose the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... one to excite in him strong feelings of revolt, and he had inherited a profligate and passionate nature. His father was a gambler and a spendthrift. His mother was eccentric to a degree. Byron himself, throughout his boyish years, had been morbidly sensitive because of a physical deformity—a lame, misshapen foot. This and the strange treatment which his mother accorded him left him headstrong, wilful, almost from the first ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... hill-brook after The beat of the noon sets in! Gentlemen even in jollity— Certainly people of quality!— Waifs and estrays no less, Roofless and penniless, They are the wayside strummers Whose lips are man's renown, Those wayward brats of Summer's Who stroll from town to town; Spendthrift of life, they ravish The days of an endless store, And ever the more they lavish The heap of the hoard is more. For joy and love and vision Are alive and breed and stay When dust shall hold in derision The misers ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... City Madam, is the exact opposite. He was at first a poor spendthrift, but coming into a ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... it is true, he did not see him any more than I did. Drimdarroch, by all accounts, was a spendthrift, a player, a bavard, his great friends, Glengarry and another ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... sandy soil, with a porous or gravelly subsoil, is of a very different type, and requires different treatment. It is a spendthrift. No matter how much you give it one year, it very soon requires just so much more. You can enrich it, but you can't keep it rich. Therefore you must manage it as one would take care of a spendthrift, giving what is essential at the time, ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... strong and there were five healthy children. He used the ordinary farm implements and his livestock consisted of only a horse and a few hens. The home farm was five miles from the station. The outlying farms were scattered in five villages—"there are always spendthrift lazy fellows willing to sell their land." "I have a firm belief," the speaker added complacently, "that agriculture is the most honest, the most sincere, the most interesting, the most secure and the ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... still soberly, "a miser like Mr. Peabody for instance is a very unpleasant person. But a spendthrift often does even more harm in the world than a miser. I don't want my Betty-girl to be ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... which I shall reserve for a hearty laugh when we meet. The company continued to increase with the appearance of morning; and here might be seen the abandoned profligate, with his licentious female companion, completing the night's debauch by the free use of intoxicating liquors—the ruined spendthrift, fresh from the gaming-table, loudly calling for wine, to drown the remembrance of his folly, and abusing the drowsy waiter only to give utterance to his irritated feelings. In a snug corner might be ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... Demonstrations". Mr. Bradlaugh called a meeting to support Messrs. Taylor, Macdonald, Wilfrid Lawson, Burt, and the other fourteen members of the House of Commons who voted in opposition to the grant, and to protest against burdening the workers to provide for the amusement of a spendthrift prince. I did not go into the meeting, but, with Mr. Bradlaugh's two daughters, hovered on the outskirts. A woman is considerably in the way in such a gathering, unless the speakers reach the platform in carriages, for she is physically unfitted ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... remarkable even among Tacitean portraits for its extraordinary brilliance. 'His days he passed in sleep, his nights in the business and pleasures of life. Indolence had raised him to fame, as energy raises others, and he was reckoned not a debauchee and spendthrift, like most of those who squander their substance, but a man of refined luxury. And indeed his talk and his doings, the freer they were, and the more show of carelessness they exhibited, were the better liked for their look of a natural simplicity. Yet as proconsul of Bithynia ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... passion. Rarely as we saw each other, she had taken no pains to conceal the affection with which she answered mine. Though she was not like me utterly dead to all joy, yet a shade was cast over her whole existence, and heavy clouds covered it. She has suffered enough since. Her husband was a profligate spendthrift; he squandered thousands from vanity, and for paltry, contemptible purposes. It would look as if a number of ill-starred men bore a kind of malice and hatred against money, so that they have recourse to the strangest devices to drive ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... of the careful, the hoarder, differeth not from the grave of the debauched, the spendthrift: A hillock of earth covers this and that, with a few flat stones ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... us, is the parable of Germany and Prussia. The Germans are the gifted, generous, and spendthrift heirs to an illustrious domain. Prussia is the alien, upstart, unpopular, unsympathetic, bullying factor and manager. But to this bullying factor Germany owes the consolidation and prosperity ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... disdainful laugh, Had quaffed the cup of pleasure to its dregs, And now, grown old, must pay the penalty In wrinkles and uncourted loneliness; The widow, who, but newly desolate, Would grasp a hand, then start to find it gone; The spendthrift and the sordid usurer, Who knew no sentiment save lust for gold; The bloated drunkard, sinking 'neath the weight Of wassail inclination dissolute; The youth, who, following his baleful steps, Reeled for the first time ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... to confirm the boy in his belief that this failing is part of his nature, and that no effort of his own can correct it. If one subject only has escaped the condemnation of his master, then it may be to that study alone that he returns with zest and enjoyment. Spendthrift sons are manufactured by those fathers who many times a day proclaim that the boy has no notion ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... comparative poverty he speedily rose to wealth; and, as his means increased, so his avaricious schemes were multiplied and extended. His earlier days were passed in complete obscurity, none but the neediest spendthrift or the most desperate gambler knowing where he dwelt, and every one who found him out in his wretched abode near the Marshalsea had reason to regret his visit. Now he was well enough known by many a courtly prodigal, ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth |
