"Stingy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... horse-dealer to buy some horses of him at a high price on credit, to sell again cheap. Brinon laughed at all these schemes, and after having had the cruelty of keeping me upon the rack for a long time, he at last extricated me. Parents are always stingy towards their poor children; my mother intended to have given me five hundred louis d'or, but she had kept back fifty, as well for some little repairs in the abbey, as to pay for praying for me. Brinon had the charge of the other fifty, with ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... the plough. He no longer suffered the produce of his extensive gardens to be consumed in the house, or given to the poor; but sold the fruit and vegetables to any petty greengrocer in the village, who thought it worth his while to walk up to the Hall, and drive a bargain with the stingy Squire. He not only assisted in gathering the fruit, for fear he should be robbed, but often acted as scarecrow to the birds, whom he reviled as noisy, useless nuisances, vexatiously sent to destroy the fruits ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... fact is I am commonly believed to be much richer than I am. I have the face of an old miser. It is certainly a lying face; but its untruthfulness has often won for me a great deal of consideration. There is nobody so much respected in this world as a stingy rich man. ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... George, for you won't get any good of it. You let me alone, and I'll let you. You were a stingy fellow about that money, so I've ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... year. I thought I was right in believing that Cavalcanti to be a stingy fellow. How can a young man live upon 5,000 francs ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... do not believe I am so stingy as that; I delight the heart of some poor little tradesman or clerk by sending him a wing of a red partridge, a slice of venison, or a slice of a truffled pasty, dishes which he never tasted except in his dreams; these are the leavings of the twenty-four-franc ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... your mind. "The very secret and essence of thrift consists in getting things into higher values. Spend upward, that is, for the higher faculties. Spend for the mind rather than for the body, for culture rather than for amusement. Some young men are too stingy to buy the daily papers, and are very ignorant and narrow." "There is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty." "Don't squeeze out of your life and comfort ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... present to my friends, so that they may have my legacy in advance in case I should die during the work. He who knows my position will again think me very extravagant in the face of this luxurious edition; let it be so; the world, properly so called, is so stingy towards me, that I do not care to imitate it. Therefore, with a kind of anxious pleasure, I have secretly (in order not to be prevented by prudent counsel) prepared this edition the particular tendency of which you will find stated in an introductory notice. Only a few ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... the fancy takes her and the exigencies of the day permit. Her morning meal will consist of coffee and rye bread without butter. In the middle of the morning she will have a second breakfast, rye bread again with cheese or sausage. In a liberal household she will dine as the family dines; in a stingy one she will fare worse than they. In an old-fashioned household her portion will be carved for her in the dining-room, because the joint will not return to the kitchen when the family has done with it, but be placed straightway in the Speiseschrank ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... have twice as good corn as other adjoining fields,' one remarked. 'How do you account for the difference,' asked the other. 'oh, I suppose the one farmer was too stingy of his ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... you should not be so stingy, you know. Just let me tell you how necessary land is to peasants! Eh, what? ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... the room made little sounds of pitying deprecation of old Isom's penury, and when Hammer drew from her, with evident reluctance on her part to yield it up, the story of her hard-driven, starved, and stingy life under Isom's roof, they put ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... old Mrs. Barter, for one. She's awful stingy. I've seen her more than once in the groceries. Always a-wantin' everything a little lower, and grumblin' because the quality wasn't good. Them grocers' clerks mostly hates her, I believe. And they don't want to wait on her, none of 'em. 'Twas her, I'm told, washed up two or three of them ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... the fretted structures of earlier generations: the Post Office with its shingle-tortured mansard, the red brick minarets of hulking old houses, factories with stingy and sooted windows, wooden tenements colored like mud. The city was full of such grotesqueries, but the clean towers were thrusting them from the business center, and on the farther hills were shining new houses, ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... he never was a stingy man, nohow. Often and often White has told me about seeing Hank, after he'd sold a piece of land, treating the hull town down in Nolan's bar-room jest as come-easy, go-easy as if it wasn't money he orter paid ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... will be dissatisfied, Think themselves slighted, think your King is stingy, Or else that you his Governors are Rogues, And keep your Master's Bounty ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers
... public duties, M. de Nailles was occupied by financial speculations—operations that were no doubt made necessary by the style of living commented on by his cousin, Madame de Monredon, who was as stingy as she was bitter of tongue. The elegance that she found fault with was, however, very far from being great when compared with the luxury of the present day. Of course, the Baronne had to have her horses, her opera-box, her fashionable frocks. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... mought 'a' made it wa'm fer Ole Nick dere fer a w'ile. But de oberseah made de yuther niggers he'p tie de noo nigger up, en den gun 'im fo'ty, wid a dozen er so th'owed in fer good measure, fer Ole Nick wuz nebber stingy wid dem kin' er rashuns. De nigger went on at a tarrable rate, des lack a wil' man, but co'se he wuz bleedzd ter take his med'cine, fer he wuz tied up en ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... nests that cling to boughs and beams As in an idiot's brain remembered words Hang empty 'mid the cobwebs of his dreams! Will bleat of flocks or bellowing of herds Make up for the lost music, when your teams Drag home the stingy harvest, and no more The feathered gleaners follow ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... to give most for least, not good to be a scab. The word has gained universal opprobrium. On the other hand, to be a non-scab, to give least for most, is universally branded as stingy, selfish, and unchristian-like. So all the world, like the British workman, is 'twixt the devil and the deep sea. It is treason to one's fellows to scab, it is ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... not contain any but ye first principles: if is enough for ye stingy price ye pay. But ye woman who buys ye first principles and fails, must then get ye larger work on ye Last Principles of Courting, with ye true account of ye mysteries which set ye principles to going: it is ye infallible guide to ye irresistible love. Ye pay more for ye Big Booke, and God knows ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... wine. None of your tobacco-juice stuff; this comes straight from Fresno. Senator Blake sent it the other day. Fill up that glass, Dell! What yuh want to be so doggone stingy fer? Think this bunch uh freaks are going to stand for that? They can't git the taste outa less'n a pint. This ain't any doggone liver-tonic ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... is to Arthur Beveridge. My father has enough money for all of us. And if he is stingy with us—oh, it's easy enough to earn money, isn't it? All men ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... involuntarily in token of approbation when a neighbor's gift was larger than its wont, and gravely dropping in his own ten cents—never more, never less—always ten cents—his weekly offering, which he knew amounted in a year to just five dollars and twenty cents. And still Uncle Ephraim was not stingy, as the Silverton poor could testify, for many a load of wood and bag of meal found entrance to the doors where cold and hunger would have otherwise been, while to his minister he was literally ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... didn't have no food troubles at Mark Lowery's like they did somewheres else. I remember mammy told me about one master who almost starved his slaves. Mighty stingy I reckon ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... work itself," said Ralph, "it's not half bad, you know. But selling vegetables in the village market, and haggling with stingy buyers over the price of cabbages and green peas, is what gets my goat!" He laughed ruefully. "I guess I'll have to be jogging on my homeward way," he added. "So long! Come over and see me on the farm, if you're ever along that ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler
... you know," Dick went on. "Such rot, to hold a girl responsible for her ancestors! Isn't it rot, now? Father says they're a bad stock, dissipated and arrogant and spendthrift and shiftless and weak—oh, and a lot more! He's not stingy with his adjectives, bless you! Picture to yourself Madge being dissipated and arrogant and—have you seen Madge?" ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... "Still, I've got to admit you've managed to cover the canvas, even if your supply of paint was a bit stingy. One thing still bothers me: how did you find out I knew ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... bar favourite so long that his absence was soon noticed, and the men he had so often entertained and treated were loud in their complaints and jeers. The ridicule was hard enough to bear, but the sneers at his stingy ways hurt him most. ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis
... seen likewise in the end curve of every word. Where these characteristics are inconstant and variable, the disposition will be found to be uncertain—liberal in some matters, while needlessly economical and stingy in others. ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... how good and brave you were!—well, I remember winding it up that night. I kissed it, and bade it good-by. But I never dreamed of not winding it up because I was going to be killed. What! am I not to be praised again, as I was on board ship? Stingy! can't afford to praise one ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... the rest of the world, and I believe with some degree of justice, to be a generous, charitable people; but the Otaheiteans could not help bestowing the most contemptuous word in their language upon us, which is, Peery Peery, or Stingy. ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... in Burney at full length. She was a sensible, most decorous woman; a very grand lady on state occasions, simple enough in ordinary life; well read as times went, and giving shrewd opinions about books; stingy, but not unjust; not generally unkind to her dependants, but invincible in her notions of etiquette, and quite angry if her people suffered ill-health in her service. She gave Miss Burney a shabby pittance, and led the poor young woman a life ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... melons. He let us have a melon patch and a cotton patch our own to work. Mother worked in moonlight and at odd times. They give that to her extra. We helped her work it. They give old people potato patches and let the children have goober rows. Land was plentiful. Dr. Palmer wasn't stingy with his slaves—very liberal. He was a man willing to live and let live so far as I can ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... he whined, "a little gen'leman like you don't know what it is to go from town to town and have every door shut in your face. You don't think that this is a hard-hearted, stingy old world, because it has given you the cream of everything. But if you'd never had anything all your life but other people's scraps and leavings, and you hadn't any home or friends or money, and was sick besides, you'd think things ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... am a changed man; outside of my health I know of nothing more necessary than money. I am certainly not a miser,—it would be difficult for me to change myself into one—and yet the people here think me more disposed to be stingy than prodigal; and for a beginning that will suffice. So far as pupils are concerned I can have as many as I want; but I do not want many; I want better pay than the others, and therefore I am content with fewer. One must ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... any old fogy like that. As far as I know anything about him, he was a mean, stingy old curmudgeon!" exclaimed ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... debt mounts up like a refuse heap or gallops like a horse; if he talks to a customer he "draws a line" and debits the conversation; when his own credit is shaky he writes up his transactions on the wall so that they can easily be rubbed out. He is so stingy that the dogs starve at his feast, and he scolds his wife if she spends a farthing on betel-nut. A Jain Baniya drinks dirty water and shrinks from killing ants and flies, but will not stick at murder in pursuit of gain. As a druggist the Baniya is in ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... but I have grown stingy. The minutes are my gold-pieces. (Takes her hand.) When I hold your hand in mine, I am happy. Before I cared for you, I did not see the sun shining, and now when it rains, all ...
— Modern Icelandic Plays - Eyvind of the Hills; The Hraun Farm • Jhann Sigurjnsson
... compact and energetic and wilful about him that she magnified ten-fold and so obtained, imaginatively, an attractive lover. She brooded her days shabbily away in Manchester House, busy with housework drudgery. Since the collapse of Throttle-Ha'penny, James Houghton had become so stingy that it was like an inflammation in him. A silver sixpence had a pale and celestial radiance which he could not forego, a nebulous whiteness which made him feel he had heaven in his hold. How then could he let it go. Even a brown penny seemed ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... age," . . . he would begin saying—but Julio would suddenly bring the dialogue to a close. He had heard his father's story too many times. Ah, the stingy old miser! What he had been giving him all these months was no more than the interest on his grandfather's legacy. . . . And by the advice of Argensola he ventured to get control of the field. He was planning to hand over the management of his ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... was generous; I never thought of it. I worked hard for what I got; and was in the same boat exactly as the rest; I was entitled to the little bit I'd worked for. But now it's different. It's like I'd won the big prize in the lottery. I can't be stingy with it and not blush. I can't sit there like a swollen wood-tick and ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... time ago, in the days of the fairies and other little folk, there lived a housewife who was very stingy indeed. She thought only of her own cupboard and meals, and never of the needs of her neighbors. When she did give alms it was a dry loaf or a scraped bone for which she had no use, and she looked for great reward because she gave ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... Don't be stingy with your thoughts about people. Always think the best about others, and believe the best, and you will grow to be open-hearted, friendly, lovable ...
— Fifty-Two Story Talks To Boys And Girls • Howard J. Chidley
... crammed black tobacco, very strong and rank, into the bowl of his pipe with a shaking hand. "It ain't much," he admitted; "folks being stingy. But if I wants more," he struck the table hard, "I can get it. D'ye ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... fairly alive, palpitated crimson; in the dark corners, under the tables and chairs, the shadows tried not to be black, and glowed into a soft maroon; even the pale walls flushed, cordial and friendly. Dode was glad of it; she hated dead, ungrateful colors: grays and browns belonged to thin, stingy duty-lives, to people who are patient under life, as a perpetual imposition, and, as Bone says, "gets into heben by the skin o' their teeth." Dode's color was dark blue: you know that means in an earthly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... always the same things were shown on it: (a) Farmhouse, (b) cottage, (c) vegetable garden, (d) gooseberry-bush. He used to live meagrely and never had enough to eat and drink, dressed God knows how, exactly like a beggar, and always saved and put his money into the bank. He was terribly stingy. It used to hurt me to see him, and I used to give him money to go away for a holiday, but he would put that away, too. Once a man gets a fixed idea, there's nothing ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... had a queerish face, His smile was most unpleasant; And though he meant it for a grace, Yet this old hen of barnyard race Was but a stingy present. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... lived a patient, homely, hard-working life. Her husband an honest, decent man enough, was a brewer, and somewhat given to over drinking, and so he was often surly and stingy and unpleasant. ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... so far as nobody knows—lives like a hermit, stays in the house all the time, and has long whiskers. Don't know whether he's rich or not, but 'spect he ain't becuz no man with money'd live like he does." He thrust a long forefinger into Mr. Birnes' face. "And stingy! He's so stingy he won't let nobody come in the house—scared they'll wear the furniture out looking ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... stupid I am!" said Mrs. Aylmer. "Well, your aunt was most agreeable to-day: not so stingy either. We had quite a nice little tea; and that young man I told you of, Mr. Trevor, he came in. He is a charming person, my dear; quite fascinating. I was much taken with him. I longed to ask him to call, ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... had spoken to Mr. Pratt. She had not liked it herself by the time she got to the road's turn. But to think of him nursing his feelings all this time ... and something she had said to Mr. Pratt ... considering that she had bought them all a new harmonium ... the lazy, stingy ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... looked up to by his comrades on account of his intelligence and his bravery. He lodged at a woman's, who was, they said, a Druidess, and had the prophetic faculty. One day when he was settling his account with her, she complained of his extreme parsimony: "Thou'rt too stingy, Diocletian," said she; and he answered laughing, "I'll be prodigal when I'm emperor." "Laugh not," rejoined she: "thou'lt be emperor when thou hast slain a wild boar" (aper). The conversation got about amongst Diocletian's comrades. He made his way in the army, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... ray of hope shot up, as an expiring candle flames in the socket. Brother Inchbald—a notoriously stingy man— whose turn came immediately before Brother Bonaday's, seemed to doubt that enough of the scrag remained to eke out a full portion; and bent towards the dish of pork, fingering his chin. Copas seized the moment to push his empty plate ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... one, because it had to be answered. But when Joyce went away she said, 'Now, Lloyd, I know I shall be homesick for Locust, and I want to hear every single thing that happens. Don't you dare send me a stingy two-page letter, half of it apologising for not writing sooner, and half of it promising to do ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... original reduction of many words of no general reception in England, but of common use in Norfolk, or peculiar to the East-Angle counties; as, Bawnd, Bunny, Thurck, Enemis, Matchly, Sainmodithee, Mawther, Kedge, Seele, Straft, Clever, Dere, Nicked, Stingy, Noneare, Fett, Thepes, Gosgood, Kamp, Sibrit, Fangast, Sap, Cothish, Thokish, Bide-owe, Paxwax. Of these, and some others, of no easy originals, when time will permit, the resolution shall be attempted; which to effect, ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... Canterbury Victorippick, he had said that Bradshaw had the tongue of a traitor and the heart of a coward. Though six weeks had elapsed between the speech and the challenge, Horsman did go out, and they exchanged shots; after which Bradshaw made a sort of stingy apology for his insults to the Queen, and the other an apology for his offensive expressions. Gurwood went out with Bradshaw, which he had better not have done.[15] He said, 'he had never read Bradshaw's speech, and was ignorant what he had said.' As Gurwood is a man of honour ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... of the Jack-o'-lantern story comes from Ireland. A stingy man named Jack was for his inhospitality barred from all hope of heaven, and because of practical jokes on the Devil was locked out of hell. Until the Judgment Day he is condemned to walk the earth with a ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... you to know he ain't stingy," sang out Larry. "Look your fill, from a distance, but ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... Jim's eyes beheld the misery that groaned out its days and nights within the stingy cells, his great heart melted with pity. For the first moments, his disposition to jest passed away, and all his soul rose up in indignation. If profane words came to his lips, they came from genuine commiseration, and a sense of the outrage that had been committed upon those who had been stamped ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... tanned little hand on the table, as if beating some soft tune. Holmes folded up the bills. Even this man could spare time out of his hard, stingy life to love, and be loved, and to be generous! But then he had no ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... stingy on his part," he said, "why did he not offer the whole? Offers cost nothing; although I have no doubt that this sweet youth would cheerfully give ten thousand francs to put the ocean between ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... whose shop they liked to haunt. His children were heard to dispute about an animal they had seen, and one of them said, "Tell ye 'twa'n't a squeerrel; 'twas a maouse;" and the boys had that for a by-word. They despised Yankees as a mean-spirited race, who were stingy and would cheat; and would not hit you if you told them they lied. A person must always hit a person who told him he lied; but even if you called a Yankee a fighting liar (the worst form of this insult), ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... felt as if her customer might think her stingy, and proceeded to explain that she couldn't think of giving her candy away. "Bless you, ma'am, I wouldn't have a ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various
... have been thus punished. Casembe sent us another large basket of fire-dried fish in addition to that sent us at Chungu, two baskets of flour, one of dried cassava, and a pot of pombe or beer. Mohamad, who was accustomed to much more liberal Casembes, thinks this one very stingy, having neither generosity nor good sense; but as we cannot consume all he ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... they're awful exciting. You can't hardly wait from week to week to get the new instalments. Trouble is, ma says, we'd ought to each of us have a copy, we're so crazy to get hold of it when it comes. Some of the girls take fashion papers, and we lend them 'round. Some lend, I mean. Some are stingy, and won't. They have patterns in them. You can get some of the patterns free, and some cost ten or fifteen cents. Say, how do ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... told him that I would pay only three hundred dollars for the Angel's stone. I'm thinking that with what he has laid up for me, and the bigness of things that the Angel did for me, it seems like a stingy little sum to him. I know he thinks I should be giving much more, but I feel as if I just had to be buying that stone with money I earned meself; and that is all I have saved of me wages. I don't mind paying for the muff, or the drexing table, or Mrs. Duncan's ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... of the kind," said the American. "Indeed, I asked the porter. I said, 'What manner of woman is Miss McTavish?' and he said, in a kind of whisper, 'The McTavish, sir, is a roaring, ranting, stingy, ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... Shridat (Gift of Fortune), had loved her in her childhood; and he came back, as men are apt to do after absence from familiar scenes, painfully full of affection for house and home and all belonging to it. From his cross, stingy old uncle to the snarling superannuated beast of a watchdog, he viewed all with eyes of love and melting heart. He could not see that his idol was greatly changed, and nowise for the better; that her nose was broader ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... been skulking round the back way, to look over the parson's garden wall, to see if there was any thing worth climbing over for on the ensuing night. He spied Dick, and began to scold him for working for the stingy old parson; for Giles had a natural antipathy to whatever belonged to ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... the custom for the midshipmen to take up provisions and spirits beyond their allowance, and pay the purser an extra sum for the same; but this Mr Culpepper would not permit—indeed, he was the most stingy and disagreeable old fellow that I ever met with in the service. We never had dinner or grog enough, or even ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... it is not good enough for the occasion," said Joseph, a little testily. "Well, never mind;" and he muttered to himself, "that is the worst of good women: they are so terribly stingy." ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... can even the land be got tilled in that way?" "We cannot work if we don't get food," said the hand laborers and slaves. "It lies in King Hakon's blood," remarked others; "his father and all his kindred were apt to be stingy about food, though liberal enough with money." At length, one Osbjorn (or Bear of the Asen or Gods, what we now call Osborne), one Osbjorn of Medalhusin Gulathal, stept forward, and said, in a distinct ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... in making one's self right with a king more powerful than any other, but also more severe and capricious, who is called God. One proves one's loyalty to him as to other sovereigns, by putting his image more or less everywhere, and punctually paying the imposts levied by his ministers. If you are stingy, if you cheat, you run the risk of being severely chastised, but there are courtiers around the king who willingly render services. For a reasonable recompense they will seize a favorable moment to adroitly make away with ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... explanation, not even a—caress," she fairly sobbed out the last word. "I can't stand it any longer. I have tried and tried and tried, and then when I've come to you for the littlest word of encouragement, you have pecked at me with those stingy little kisses, and have told me I was young and ought to finish my education. You put me in uncongenial surroundings, and go off into the woods camping yourself. You refuse me money enough to live in a three-dollar boarding-house, and you buy expensive rifles and fishing tackle for yourself. ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... that, she knew, would make the other girls angry and she prudently preferred to be on bad terms with one rather than with four. But she always offered her Saturday bonbons to Anne as to the other girls; she couldn't enjoy them herself if she were so mean and stingy as not to do that, she ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... own father, and gave me to understand, that whenever I needed money I had only to ask for it. This was a new phase of life, and it was hard for me to understand how he could afford to allow me to spend money so freely. But when he actually reprimanded me one day for being stingy, and said I ought to be ashamed to stand around on the outside of a circus tent and stare at the advertising bills when I had plenty of money in my pocket, I thought then he must be "a little off in his upper story." ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... the Clifford crest is a lion holding a shell, and the motto is a Latin one which means, 'Do not touch!' Doris said the lion was holding a purse, and the motto meant, 'What I've got I'll keep'. It was a good hit at Vera, because she's very stingy, although she has plenty of pocket money. She only gave twopence to the Waifs and Strays Fund—it was less than anybody else in the class; and she'll hardly ever lend her things, either, though she often ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... notions of political economy have as yet become popularized. There is an almost invincible prejudice that a man who gives a dollar to a beggar is generous and kind-hearted, but that a man who refuses the beggar and puts the dollar in a savings-bank is stingy and mean. The former is putting capital where it is very sure to be wasted, and where it will be a kind of seed for a long succession of future dollars, which must be wasted to ward off a greater strain on the sympathies than would have been occasioned by a refusal ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... ain't stingy. If the doctor didn't forbid, I'd buy you ten bottles, I would, if it cost twenty a bottle. I'm trying to do what the doctor ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... and you didn't let me know it, you mean, stingy thing!" said Mrs. Lively between a pout and a smile. "How much ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... were in reality guilty. This was the origin of the hostility of the great men of the country to King Olaf, that they could not bear his just judgments. He again would rather renounce his dignity than omit righteous judgment. The accusation against him, of being stingy with his money, was not just, for he was a most generous man towards his friends; but that alone was the cause of the discontent raised against him, that he appeared hard and severe in his retributions. Besides, King Canute offered great ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... fond of all sorts of tantalizing games, there was nothing really bad about her. One could see that she was hardest on those who were quarrelsome, stingy, or wicked; while honest folk and poor little children she would take under her wing. Old people say of her that, once, when Asker church was burning, Ysaetter-Kaisa swept through the air, lit amid fire and smoke on the church roof, and ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... she pays me in return—at least, I think so; for, my good fellow, you know, the absent are often in the wrong. Now, I am the more tenacious to know if I am wrong, as Alexandrine—she is called Alexandrine—has sent for some money. I have never been stingy with the fair sex; but I do not wish to be made a fool of. Thus, before playing the generous with this dear friend, I wish to know if she deserves it by her fidelity. I know there is nothing more absurd than fidelity; but it is a weakness I have. You will render me, then, a friendly service, ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... base-hearted cur, who had begrudged the sword that his father had given to Yukiye, and complained publicly and often that Yukiye had never made any present in return; and in this way Yukiye got a bad name in my Lord's palace as a stingy and ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... have money. Confound stingy parents! It's a question whether I shall get Wrexby: there's no entail. I'm heir to the governor's temper and his gout, I dare say. He'll do as he likes with the estate. I call it ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... gate, and tell the master of it that there was a crew of poor shipwrecked mariners, not far off, who had eaten nothing for a day or two save a few clams and oysters, and would therefore be thankful for a little food. And the prince or nobleman must be a very stingy curmudgeon, to be sure, if, at least, when his own dinner was over, he would not bid them welcome to the ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... the Russian postillions the "crow" is the stingy or poor traveler, who at the post-houses only pays two or three copecks a verst for the horses. The "eagle" is the traveler who does not mind expense, to say nothing of liberal tips. Therefore the crow could not claim to fly as ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... made by seemingly disinterested parties endeavoring to secure the land at a fair price. But Purdy, who was as stingy as a miser and as incisive as a rat-trap, had caught wind of the proposed tunnel scheme. He was all alive for a fine profit. "No, no, no," he declared, over and over, when approached by the representatives of Mr. Sylvester ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... short,—there can be no harm in saying it now,—Laetitia was so far from being like the name of her baptism,—and most names are so good that they are worth thinking about; no children are named after bad ideas,—Laetitia was so far unlike hers as to be stingy—an abominable fault. But, I repeat, the notion of such a fact was far from me then. And ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... I've given this year twenty-five dollars to the Orphan Asylum, to Hartford, and I've a five-dollar gold-piece in my puss,' says I, 'that I can spare, and will give that more to the same charity, for the privilege of tellin' before these ladies, that heard me accused of being stingy, why I don't give to you when you ask me to, and especially why I didn't give the last time you asked me. I would like to tell why I didn't help sew in the Dorcas Society, to buy the new carpet,' says I, 'but I don't want to hurt anybody's feelin's that ha'n't hurt mine, and I'll forbear.'—By ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... nothing else to do, for Julien had taken the entire management of the house into his hands, that he might thoroughly satisfy his longing for authority and his mania for economy. He was exceedingly stingy; he never gave the servants anything beyond their exact wages, never allowed any food that was not strictly necessary. Every morning, ever since she had been at Les Peuples, the baker had made Jeanne a little Normandy cake, ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... that enables them to win in the race. That is their good fortune and they ought to be grateful for it; and the one way they can best show their gratitude is by helping those who are less fortunate than themselves. Men endowed with any, or most, or all of these fortunate conditions ought not to be stingy in helping others who have not been so fortunate as themselves."—Mr. Lloyd George at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... hard; he's upright, and plucky. He's not stingy. But he's smothered his animal nature-and that's done it. I don't want to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... which we have but few, extravagant with those of which we have an abundance. When the Western farmer burns corn in place of coal, be assured he sees his own account in it. We husband our white pine, and are free with our hemlock; we are stingy with our hickory, and open-handed ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... to be married awful soon, and I'm going to board with him then, and that'll be nicer than with the McConkeys' and nearer the schoolhouse, and cheaper, and Teunis will build fires for me, and we'll be just as happy as we can be, and when you quit this stingy church you'll both of you live with us forever and ever, and I want you to kiss Teunis and call him your son right now, and if you don't we'll both be mad at you always—no we won't, no we won't, you dear things, but you will marry ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... the hardened swelling on the breast of society. He is my sworn enemy. He fills himself up with cheap truths, with gnawed morsels of musty wisdom, and he exists like a storeroom where a stingy housewife keeps all sorts of rubbish which is absolutely unnecessary to her, and worthless. If you touch such a man, if you open the door into him, the stench of decay will be breathed upon you, and a stream of some musty trash will be poured into the air you breathe. These unfortunate people ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... one thing to me and another to you. Aubrey bangs me over the head with it. But I'm like the Doctor in the Punch and Judy show—he thinks he's knocked me flat. He hasn't. I've a new argument every time he comes. And as for my daughters, they think me a lunatic—a stingy lunatic besides—because I won't give to their Red Cross shows and bazaars. I've nothing to give. The income tax gentlemen have ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... are stingy in another way, that brings with it its own punishment—they starve themselves. I know of several of your half million folks, not a thousand miles from where I now sit, whose table does not cost them fifty cents a day, and that too with tolerably numerous families. ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... is up to. She's a wonder, and no mistake. Only I think it was stingy of her not to let you ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... store By richer friends possessed. For poverty was there unknown, And each man counted as his own Kine, steeds, and gold, and grain. All dressed in raiment bright and clean, And every townsman might be seen With earrings, wreath, or chain. None deigned to feed on broken fare, And none was false or stingy there. A piece of gold, the smallest pay, Was earned by labour for a day. On every arm were bracelets worn, And none was faithless or forsworn, A braggart or unkind. None lived upon another's wealth, None pined with ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... bound to be such a person in every well-furnished house! They seem to be just as necessary as the sofas and easy-chairs—but not quite so comfortable to have around. We are all deathly afraid of her! She is rich, stingy, and says that she has made a will, leaving every dollar to the "Widows and Orphans' Home"—a nice way to do her relations! So of course we are on the strain; on our best behavior to effect a change in our favor. Ma says she will never, in this world, change ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... stingy the American is! He's afraid we would make him pay the admission for all of us into ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... Store. Henry was undoubtedly the Tightest Wad in the Township. Some of the Folks who had got into a Box through Poor Management, and had been Foreclosed out of House and Home by Henry and his Lawyer, used to say that Henry was a Skin, and was too Stingy to give his Family enough to Eat, but most People looked up to Henry, for there was no getting around it ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... young man had a peculiarity of which Harriet had not dreamed, or she would never have dared to ask him for a loan. He was very stingy, and he had an abnormal fear that people were going to try to make use ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane
... quite what she had expected of those people; that they were horrid and stingy and vulgar; and she should see what face they would have to ask her to take tickets when they were trying to get up something. She began to be vexed with herself, she confessed, at the joke she was playing on Mr. Homos, and I noticed that she put herself rather defiantly en evidence ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... clean; and his oats were apt to be light, or musty; the cooking, too, was somewhat indifferent: dishes were sometimes put on the table which would better have been left in the oven and it was not that he was stingy with the provisions, but just that the cook had not looked after them. On the other hand, he was ready to knock off something from the price and did not refuse to trust a man's word for payment—he was a good man and a genial host. In talking, in entertaining, ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... anxious to make me think that no one but you and your friends ever liked me, aren't you?" sneered Elfreda. "Well, just let me tell you something. Those girls may have their faults, but they aren't stingy and selfish, at all events. This letter here is an invitation to——, well, I shan't tell you what it is, but it's far from being a practical joke, I can ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... the support of those who served it. In the New Law no definite amount is assigned, but every Christian is left free to give what he can to God's Church according to his generosity. But if God left you free, should you therefore be stingy with Him? Moreover, all that we have comes from God, and should we return Him the least and the worst? For every alms you give for God's sake He can send you a hundred blessings; and what you refuse to give to His Church or poor He can take ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... stingy lot then, and quite unlike what I've read in books about the customs in Australia; but what can you expect when they ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... cow the reception the codfish to breathe stingy scanty, curtailed she was painful to look upon are you having holidays? whatever she may say, she is ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... as soon as he could speak; "I should like to know what you call being well fed! Since I have come to this hateful country, not once have I had an opportunity of filling my cheeks with grain. Man, stingy man, thinks it enough to give me a wretched pittance from day to day,— to me who have had a hundred pounds of corn packed up in my own deep hole,— to me whose delight it was to carry three ounces weight of it at once in these bags with ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... meager, poor, thin, scrimp, sparing, spare, stinted; starved, starving; halfstarved, famine-stricken, famished; jejune. scant &c. (small) 32; scarce; not to be had, not to be had for love or money, not to be had at any price; scurvy; stingy &c. 819; at the end of one's tether; without resources &c. 632; in want &c. (poor) 804; in debt &c. 806. Adv. insufficiently &c. Adj.; in default of, for want of; failing. Phr. semper avarus ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... panic comes however, the extravagance ceases; everybody gets stingy. A man with five thousand dollars doesn't buy a five thousand dollar lot. He doesn't buy anything; his wife must wear the old bonnet, and his church assessment is reduced. Then the tide turns and the country recovers from its extravagance. But when ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... that two of them bounced out and rolled across the floor. One came within reach of his foot, and he kicked it into the wood-box, and swore at it while it was on the way. "And I wisht it was Ford Campbell himself, the snoopin', stingy, kitchen-grannying, booze-fightin', son-of-a-sour-dough bannock!" he ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... home that I haven't answered yet; and they keep coming—why, I just dread to see the postman turn down our street. And one man—he wrote twice. I didn't like his first letter and didn't answer it; and now he says if I don't send him the money he'll tell everybody everywhere what a stingy t-tight-wad I am. And another man said he'd come and TAKE it if I didn't send it; and you KNOW how afraid of burglars I am! Oh what shall I do, what shall I do?" she ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... Almost, saw through his luxurious robe and his clean, washed skin, clear down into his stingy heart, and put his finger instantly on the trouble. Jesus has a way of doing that. "Having kept all the Commandments, and wanting to be perfect," said Jesus, "now go, sell your property, and give the money to these poor starving, dying ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... when you've been here a few months, you'll be too knowing to give rum to your helps. But old country folks are all fools, and that's the reason they get so easily sucked in, and be so soon wound-up. Cum, fill the bottle, and don't be stingy. In this country we all live by borrowing. If you want anything, why just send and borrow ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... his love - 'Twas loaded with powder and bullet; He trudged off to Camberwell Grove, But wanted the courage to pull it. There's Nunky as fat as a hog, While I am as lean as a lizard; Here's at you, you stingy old dog! - And he whips a long knife in his ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... in thy streets and the common people of thy grandeur. Each of thy cemeteries has a like shameful corner, hidden in the angle of a wall, where thou makest haste to bury them, and where thou castest dirt upon them in such stingy clods, that one can see the ends of their coffins protruding! One would say that thy charity stops with their last breath, that thy only free gift is the bed whereon they suffer, and that, when the hospital can do no more for them, ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... what I should get by denouncing him to the authorities," he muttered to himself. "They are stingy in rewarding informers though, and he, probably, will pay better; besides, as he says, he may get me hung by a word; and if I get him into trouble, some of his friends are certain to avenge him. After all, too, he would probably make his story ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... beautiful feet of woman. And then the church has the impudence to say that it has exalted women. I believe that marriage is a perfect partnership; that woman has every right that man has—and one more—the right to be protected. Above all men in the world I hate a stingy man—a man that will make his wife beg for money. "What did you do with the dollar I gave you last week? And what are you going to do with this?" It is vile. No gentleman will ever be satisfied with the love of a beggar and a slave—no gentleman will ever be satisfied except with the love of an ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... as indeed he grew too lazy in her arms; neglecting glory, arms, and power, for the more real joys of life; while she even rifles him with extravagancy; and grows so bold and hardy, that regarding not the humours of the stingy censorious nation, his interest, or her own fame, she is seen every day in his coaches, going to take the air out of town; puts him upon balls, and vast expensive treats; devises new projects and ways of diversion, till some of the ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... taken with us a sparing lunch of thin sandwiches and a frugal flask of modest, blushing brandy, which we diluted at a stingy little fountain spring which dropped economically through a rift in the rock, as if its nymph were conscious that such a delicious drink should not be wasted. As it was, it refreshed us, and we were resting in a blessed repose under the green leaves, when we heard ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... one or two peculiarities of this kind as we stroll about the city, and they are explained to us by our colonial friend. Some extremely dowdy females we see riding in a barouche are the wife and daughters of a high official, who is stingy to his woman-kind, so they say. Two youths we pass are in striking contrast, as they walk along arm-in-arm. One is got up according to the fullest Auckland idea of Bond Street foppery, while the other prefers ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... morning, to shut all the doors and windows to keep the dust out, and to pull down the shades to keep the sun from fading the carpets. She thought, too, that neighbors were less likely to drop in if the house was closed up. She was one of those people who are stingy without motive or reason, even when they can gain nothing by it. She must have known that skimping the doctor in heat and food made him more extravagant than he would have been had she made him comfortable. He never came home for ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... compound, the feminine character, it may easily happen that the flavor is unpleasant in spite of excellent ingredients; and a fine systematic stinginess may be accompanied with a seasoning that quite spoils its relish. Now, good Mr. Glegg himself was stingy in the most amiable manner; his neighbors called him "near," which always means that the person in question is a lovable skinflint. If you expressed a preference for cheese-parings, Mr. Glegg would remember to save them for you, with a good-natured delight in gratifying your palate, and ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... take a twist at faro-bank, or pick up a poker hand, more'n they'd mingle with t'rant'lers an' stingin' lizards. An' some of their moral sports is so onlib'ral! I tells you, son, I've met up with 'em who's that stingy that if they owned a lake, they wouldn't ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... rich Jew would pay the expenses of my opera tour," said little Sampson, ruefully. "My style of doing the thing would be improved. The people who are backing me up are awfully stingy, actually buying up battered old helmets ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... a fortune. Even three years means making something, with my 'stingy' habits. Only I must go at once. Nor is there any time left me for my decision; it must be yes or no. Which ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... pay for their places in money may do so in provisions. A fowl, a ham, or a jug of wine, will secure a seat in the first row; a pair of pigeons, a dozen eggs, or a loaf of bread, in the second, and so on down. Peasants are proverbially stingy with their money, but will be liberal enough with their provisions; and though our purse will not be replenished, our larder will, which is equally important, since our very lives depend upon it. After that we can push on to Poitiers, and I know an inn-keeper there who will give us ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... gin-and-potash. Mr. Juniper turned into the parlor, where was Mrs. Carroll with the other girls. She was still angry, as angry as she could be, with her husband, who on being informed that morning of what his wife had done had called her brother "a beastly, stingy old beau," because he had cut Amelia off with four hundred and fifty instead of five hundred pounds. Mr. Carroll probably knew that Mr. Juniper would not take his daughter without the entirety of the sum stipulated, and would allow ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... understood in a moment. The careworn face, the confused manner, told him all. Lydia would probably waste the money, and the old lady, though with perceptible hesitation, had decided to trust him rather than her daughter. It was so. Lydia considered that her mother was stingy, and that finery was indispensable ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... with, Avery Goodman—in his true nature, he's a worldly, carnal man. His religion is a cloak, a raincoat, a mere disguise. Mrs. Charity Givens, now, she's no more truly charitable than I am! She's shrewd and stingy, her lavish gifts to the poor are merely made for the sake of the praise and eulogy heaped upon her by her admiring friends. Manley Knight, renowed for his bravery in the war, is an arrant coward. His soul is a thing of whining terror, his heroism but a mask. Oh, I know—I read these people ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... make any rejoinder to Jennie's remark and that surprised them all; for they knew Ruth Fielding was not stingy. ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... in a little already, and it struck me we might work together on this deal. Your paper has considerable weight, and if that weight falls the right way you won't find me stingy. For instance, an item that this property"—he produced a slip with some legal descriptions—"has been sold for ten thousand dollars to eastern investors—very conservative investors from the East, don't forget ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... only respected those that lived with them or under the same roof, but also those that drank out of the same cup or ate out of the same dish. Let us never mind Homer's entertainments; they were good for nothing but to starve a man, and the makers of them were kings more stingy and observant than the Italian cooks; insomuch that in the midst of a battle, whilst they were at handy-blows with their enemies, they could exactly reckon up how many glasses each man drank at his table. But those that ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch |
