"Thriftless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... property from the shrewd and careful. "Riches make themselves wings; they fly away." If for any cause the borrower fails there is scant sympathy from the usurer. He charges him with being deficient in business management and thriftless. If the yoke of bondage galls and becomes so painful that in his distress the debtor turns from the struggle in one direction to struggle in another in hope of relief, he calls him fickle; and if at last, after a long and hard service, he is unable to return the loan in full, he calls him dishonest. ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... their lives like their betters? Why don't they save something, when they are getting good wages? I am not going to encourage the thriftless, or help those who might help themselves, if ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... existence—into abnormal condition by the ultra radicals. The negro rapidly changed; "equality" frittered away what good instincts he had and developed all the worst, innate with him. It changed him from a careless and thriftless, but happy and innocent producer, into a mere consumer, at best; often indeed, into a besotted and criminal idler, subsisting in part upon Nature's generosity in supplying cabbage and fish, in part upon the thoughtlessness of his neighbor ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... usual, leading, and the shirt-makers being a large per cent of the number, there are in London nearly a million women, self-supporting and self-respecting, and often the sole dependence of a family. This excludes the numbers of thriftless and otherwise helpless poor whose work is variable, and who, at the best, can earn only the lowest possible wages as unskilled laborers. For the skilled ones, doing their best in long days of work, never less than twelve hours, the average earnings, after all ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... second marriage was no marriage, then his son, Lord Blandamer, who was drowned in Cullerne Bay, had been illegitimate, and his grandson, Lord Blandamer, who now sat on the throne of Fording, was illegitimate too. And Martin's dream had been true. Selfish, thriftless, idle Martin, whom the boys called "Old Nebuly," had not been mad after all, but had been ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... not deem it prudent to make any reply. That jug was the evil genius of the little household. It had transformed Ezekiel Taylor from an honest, industrious, and thriving man, into a mean, lazy, and thriftless drunkard. It had brought misery and contention into the little house which he had bought and paid for before his marriage. He was a cooper by trade, and had set up in business for himself; but his ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... they purchase from the sutlers at the forts or the merchants at Salt Lake City. Some of the more considerable among them have the means of sending to the States for an annual supply of blankets, beads, vermilion, and other stuff for Indian traffic; but the most are thriftless, and all are living in concubinage or marriage with squaws, and surrounded by troops of unwashed, screeching half-breeds. Once in from three to six years, they will make a journey to St. Louis, and gamble away so much of their savings ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... be examined, and that one of the several and slow processes by which a poisonous, repugnant, and intractable nut was wont to be converted into food should be cited to the credit of the economic forethought of the most thriftless ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... principally into protection—protection of life, liberty, and property. Laws, wisely administered, will secure men in the enjoyment of the fruits of their labour, whether of mind or body, at a comparatively small personal sacrifice; but no laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober. Such reforms can only be effected by means of individual action, economy, and self-denial; by better habits, ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... well worth looking at," said Mr. Borden. "A bit of Europe on one of our islands and really a lesson to our own thriftless poor." ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... nature; undressed; in dishabille, en deshabille[Fr]. unqualified, disqualified; unfitted; ill-digested; unbegun, unready, unarranged[obs3], unorganized, unfurnished, unprovided, unequipped, untrimmed; out of gear, out of order; dismantled &c. v. shiftless, improvident, unthrifty, thriftless, thoughtless, unguarded; happy-go-lucky; caught napping &c. (inexpectant) 508[obs3]; unpremeditated &c. 612. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... references to him, especially as he was in earlier years. He speaks of Morier's 'prodigious fund of spirits that made him the most entertaining, but not always the safest, of companions'; 'of his imperious, not over-tolerant disposition'; 'of the curious compound that he was of the thoughtless, thriftless Bohemian and the cool, calculating man of the world'; of his 'exceptionally powerful brain and unflagging industry'. Elsewhere he recalls Morier's journeys among the Southern Slavs, in which he opened up a new field of knowledge, and adds, 'since then he has made himself ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... might be found some wretched-looking, thriftless, or lazy negroes, of the vagabond order. These miserable beings formed the lowest caste, and were despised and often persecuted by those of their fellow-slaves who were orderly and industrious, and cherished habits of ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... Oh, youth's a thriftless squanderer, It's easy come and spent, And heavy is the going now Where once the light foot went. The hawthorn bush puts on its white, The throstle whistles clear, But Spring comes once for every man Just once in all ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... sand and sandy loam and low bare hills. In Rewari the skill and industry of the Hindu Ahirs have produced wonderful results considering that many of the wells are salt and much of the land very sandy. The lazy and thriftless Meos of the southern part of the district are a great contrast to ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... leave their beautiful farms, because of the pestilential swarthy swarms.—What were these wretches fit for? Nothing. They cooked our victuals and shampooned us; but who would not rather that these duties should be performed by white men? The blacks were a worthless, useless, thriftless set of beings—they were too indolent, lazy and ignorant to work, too proud to be taught; and not only that, if the criminal calendars of the country were examined, it would be found that they were a majority of the criminals. They were so detestable that unless some method ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... general character, however, there seems to be a considerable difference. The people on this island are more advanced than their neighbours, and the families here are gradually forming into different ranks, made up of the well-to-do, the struggling, and the quite poor and thriftless. These distinctions are present in the middle island also, but over there they have had no effect on the people, among whom there ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... Indeed who is there that walks London streets, but can point out a half-dozen of men riding by him splendidly, while he is on foot, courted by fashion, bowed into their carriages by tradesmen, denying themselves nothing, and living on who knows what? We see Jack Thriftless prancing in the park, or darting in his brougham down Pall Mall: we eat his dinners served on his miraculous plate. "How did this begin," we say, "or where will it end?" "My dear fellow," I heard ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in Brandenburg History is his recovery of the Province called the Neumark to that Electorate. In the thriftless Sigismund times, the Neumark had been pledged, had been sold; Teutsch Ritterdom, to whose dominions it lay contiguous, had purchased it with money down. The Teutsch Ritters were fallen moneyless enough since then; they offered to pledge the Neumark to Friedrich, who accepted, and ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... contradictions. Mr Plan was likewise a source of great tribulation to me; for he was ever and anon coming forward with some new device, either for ornament or profit, as he said, to the burgh; and no small portion of my time, that might have been more advantageously employed, was wasted in the thriftless consideration of his schemes: all which, with my advanced years, begat in me a sort of distaste to the bickerings of the council chamber; so I conferred and communed with myself, anent the possibility ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... acquired some common-sense in roving about the world. The women of California are admirable in every way,—chaste, strong of character, industrious, devoted wives and mothers, born with sufficient capacity for small pleasures. But what are our men? Idle, thriftless, unambitious, too lazy to walk across the street, but with a horse for every step, sleeping all day in a hammock, gambling and drinking all night. They are the natural followers of a race of men who came here to force ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... wis, was not at home; Anther had payd his gold away; Another call'd him thriftless loon, And bade him ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... bumblebee makes haste, Belated, thriftless vagrant, And goldenrod is dying fast, And lanes with ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... and to oblige him Barnet had put his name to a bill; and, as he had expected, was called upon to meet it when it fell due. It had been only a matter of fifty pounds, which Barnet could well afford to lose, and he bore no ill-will to the thriftless surgeon on account of it. But Charlson had a little too much brazen indifferentism in his composition to be altogether ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... wealth inherits ten thousand acres of real estate: it is not his duty to divide it among his poor neighbors and tenants. If he took this course, it is probable, that most of them would spend all in thriftless waste and indolence, or in mere physical enjoyments. Instead, then, of thus putting his capital out of his hands, he is bound to retain, and so to employ, it, as to raise his neighbors and tenants to such a state of virtue and intelligence, that they can secure ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... a great part of the south and east, at least, of England,—though never so well off, for several generations, as they are now—are growing up thriftless, shiftless; inferior, it seems to me, to their grandfathers in everything, save that they can usually read and write, and their grandfathers could not; and that they wear smart cheap cloth clothes, instead ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... of unenclosed commons and common fields had been accompanied by very poor farming, very thriftless and shiftless habits. The improvement of agriculture, the application of capital to that occupation, the disappearance of the domestic system of industry, and other changes made the enclosure of common land and the accompanying changes ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... Robin. "Sir, I much wonder that your clothing is so thin. Tell me one thing, I pray. I trow you must have been made a knight by force, or else you have squandered your means by reckless or riotous living? Perhaps you have been foolish and thriftless, or else have lost all your money in brawling and strife? Or possibly you have been a usurer or a drunkard, or wasted your ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... better than a dozen English and Scottish houses I could name), was prouder of his post about the Court than of his ancestral honors, and valued his dignity (as Lord of the Butteries and Groom of the King's Posset) so highly, that he cheerfully ruined himself for the thankless and thriftless race who bestowed it. He pawned his plate for King Charles the First, mortgaged his property for the same cause, and lost the greater part of it by fines and sequestration: stood a siege of his castle by Ireton, where his brother Thomas capitulated (afterward making terms with the Commonwealth, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... away—useless, or almost useless, charities established to carry out some silly fad or to gratify some silly vanity; sectarian charities intended to further ends which, in the eyes of all but the members of one sect, are not only useless but mischievous; charities that encourage thriftless marriages, or make it easy for men to neglect obvious duties, or keep a semi-pauper population stationary in employments and on a soil where they can never prosper, or in other ways handicap, impede or divert the natural ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... to curry favour with the craven crowd," burst out the now thoroughly angry King, always jealous of the popularity of this brave young Prince of Wales. "And am I, sirrah, to be badgered and browbeaten in my own palace by such a thriftless ne'er-do-weel as you, ungrateful boy, who seekest to gain preference with the people in this realm before your liege lord the King? Quit my presence, sirrah, and that instanter, ere that I do send you to spend your Christmas where your great-grandfather, ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... acquired by conquest or diplomacy, and that the aboriginal Natives have been ousted by the white man: that being so, I cannot see any reason why the Native should not be allowed to buy back what he has lost; in my opinion he should be encouraged to do so. . . . He is a better citizen than the thriftless European who lives from hand to mouth and makes no effort to better his circumstances. . . . Legislation should be carefully watched lest endeavours be made to deprive deserving Natives of the privilege of acquiring ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... with their laziness and vice, the inevitable concomitants of the anomalous relation in which they stand to society, the authorities of those States are seeking to get rid of what they find, too late, to be a curse to any settlement of whites—a thriftless race of vagabonds, whose footsteps are the sure precursors of indigence and crime. One of the most intelligent gentlemen of Ohio, (Mr Charles Hammond,) in a recent notice of this subject, says, "This dangerous ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... thriftless when you eagerly seize the first opportunity to fritter away your time over old clothes. You precipitate yourself unnecessarily against a disagreeable thing. For you are not going to put your stockings on. Perhaps you will not need your buttons for a week, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... thought and investigation. He said that every now and then it would occur to him that precious time was passing, but that he'd been so busy he'd not had time to go at it right. He said that most of the women on any list of the kind he'd seen was fussy and looked lazy and thriftless. Then he come right out and asked me if I happened to know a suitable candidate, and—well, Dixie, I couldn't hold in. I talked as earnest as a preacher at a ranting revival. I had his eye and I helt it clean through. I described you ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... and Anna, just then impatient of the objections the princess made to every applicant, quickly decided to accept this one, against whom not a word had been said. So Fraeulein Kuhraeuber, who had spent her life in shirking work, who was quite thriftless and improvident, who had never felt particularly unhappy, and whose father had been a postman, found herself being welcomed with an enthusiasm that astonished her to Anna's home, being smiled upon and patted, having beautiful ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... be; but the circumstances which make so many of our farmers at this day, coarse in speech, vulgar in manners, untidy in dress and in the arrangement of their farms and their habitations, ignorant, thoughtless, thriftless, indifferent, wasteful, lazy, are not arbitrary circumstances, but pliant and yielding, willing instruments, in the hands of good workmen, to raise, elevate, and instruct all who can ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... year,—we're such healthy, normal specimens!" She laughed heartily at this admission of her powers of maternity. "And it wasn't eighteen months before Alice was coming.... Oh, I know that we belong to the thriftless pauper class that's always having children,—more than it can properly care for. We ought to be discouraged! But somehow we have fed and clothed 'em all, and we couldn't spare one o' the kiddies. There's James, too, you know. He came last winter, just after Steve had the grippe and pneumonia; that ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... Roman Catholics they found themselves the social inferiors of the ruling Protestant class—the laws had placed them in that invidious position. They were practically without any defence. They were ignorant, poor, and half-starved. Thriftless, like their landlords, they ate up in the autumn what harvests they gathered, and begged for their winter's support. Adultery and incest were common and bred a body of lawless creatures, who herded together like wild beasts and became ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... tenderly, and with a shrug of the shoulders to express resignation, that she might have been a cleverer housekeeper and just a thought more economical in expenditure! but considering her happy-go-lucky upbringing under the most thriftless of fathers, the darling really deserved more praise for what she accomplished than blame for what ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... speedily began to recollect him as a school-companion, a townsman, or so forth. On the other hand, two or three grave, sedate-looking persons shook their heads, and left the inn, hinting that, if Giles Gosling wished to continue to thrive, he should turn his thriftless, godless nephew adrift again, as soon as he could. Gosling demeaned himself as if he were much of the same opinion, for even the sight of the gold made less impression on the honest gentleman than it usually doth ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... he had been half as smart as she was, prosperity would have smiled upon the family. As it was, her life was filled up with struggles to make the ends meet; but, though she had the worst of it, she did not complain, and did all she could to comfort and encourage her thriftless husband. ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... their new masters than it was under their old ones, they had less care of selection, and their originality was weakened by diffusiveness. They indulged themselves but sparingly in the luxury of composing verse, which was too thriftless an occupation to be continued long. They used it, perhaps, as the means of attracting notice to themselves at their first entrance on the world, but not as the staple on which they were afterwards to depend. When the song had drawn a band of hearers around ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... beginning pastoral society and tribal government develop among savages primarily through the domestication of animals. The young of the animals slain in the hunt are kept first as pets: then, when as a result of the thriftless nature of the savages supplies at times become scarce, the pets are slain for food. As pets become more common and population increases, the advantage of breeding for use is apparent, and private property, in distinction from community ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... flatlands near to Schenectady, from the bush settlements scattered back on Aries Creek, from the rich farms and villages of Johnstown, and Caughnawaga, and Spraker's. There were among them all sorts and conditions of men, thrifty and thriftless, cautious and imprudent, the owners of slaves along with poor yokels of scarcely higher estate than the others' niggers. Here were posted thick in the roll-call such names as Fonda, Starin, Yates, Sammons, Gardenier, ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... courage for to rule. A weatherbeaten, bankrupt ass it is That scatters and consumeth all he hath: Each one do pluck from him without control. He is not hot nor cold; a silly soul, That fain would please each part[106], if so he might. He and the Spring are scholars' favourites: What scholars are, what thriftless kind of men, Yourself be judge; and judge of him by them. When Cerberus was headlong drawn from hell, He voided a black poison from his mouth, Call'd Aconitum, whereof ink was made: That ink, with reeds first laid on dried barks, Serv'd me awhile ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... virtue be his vice's bawd, And he shall spend mine honour with his shame, As thriftless sons their scraping fathers' gold. Mine honour lives when his dishonour dies, Or my sham'd life in his dishonour lies: Thou kill'st me in his life; giving him breath, The traitor lives, the true man's put ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... never be regained. We forget that almost invariably these girls have the habit of thrift. They have never known anything else. Thrift as a principle is ingrained in them. But the American household is notoriously thriftless. As a rule it destroys the quality in the untrained immigrant girl. It is American not to care for expense—and she accepts the method—as far as her mistress' goods are concerned—if not ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... teacher, because they know that their parents are on the side of order, and, even if the children are inclined to be rebellious, they dare not defy the united authority of parents and teacher. But the child of the thief, the costermonger, the racecourse swindler, the thriftless labourer, is now practically emancipated through the action of sentimental persons. He may go to school or not, as he likes; and, while the decent and orderly poor are harried by School Board regulations, the rough ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... the mine, where a system of pitiless infant slavery prevailed, side by side with the employment of women as beasts of burden, "in an atmosphere of filth and profligacy." The condition of too many toilers was rendered more hopeless by the thriftless follies born of ignorance. The educational provision made by the piety of former ages was no longer adequate to the needs of the ever-growing nation; and all the voluntary efforts made by clergy and laity, by Churchmen and Dissenters, did ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... done that thriftless man a good turn, and now was the moment when Beaucock had chosen to remember it in his own way. During his absence in town with Melbury, the lawyer's clerk had naturally heard a great deal of the timber-merchant's family scheme of justice to Giles, and his communication was to inform Winterborne ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... society; and twice he had a little holiday to Glenmorven, where, as may be fancied, he was the delight of the Highlanders. One of his last pleasures was to arrange his dining- room. Many and many a room (in their wandering and thriftless existence) had he seen his wife furnish with exquisite taste, and perhaps with 'considerable luxury': now it was his turn to be the decorator. On the wall he had an engraving of Lord Rodney's action, showing the PROTHEE, his father's ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lucrative offices and forfeited manors and abbeys. And in the native population and native interests, he saw nothing but what called forth not merely antipathy, but deep moral condemnation. It was not merely that the Irish were ignorant, thriftless, filthy, debased and loathsome in their pitiable misery and despair: it was that in his view, justice, truth, honesty had utterly perished among them, and therefore were not due to them. Of any other side to the picture, he like other good Englishmen, ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... which are committed whilst the culprit is either in a state of intoxication or else just recovering from such a state. To detect and trace its indirect influence a much closer study is required. The inconsequent, lazy and thriftless life of the criminal demands some sort of stimulant, and this is found readily at hand in alcohol. Alcohol is not the cause of the crimes of these people but it is closely associated with such cause. The man who stabs another in a saloon is not then guilty of his first ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... labor is for the most part very thriftless. In the purchase and in the preparation of food—the chief item of expense in the workingman's family and that wherein economic habits count for most—men and women are alike improvident. The art of making money go the farthest in food is comparatively unknown. Workingmen will turn ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... a living soul looked in—not even those thriftless fellows who lived by chance jobs in the village and met in daily conclave at the store. We had often cursed their lengthy visits, but now that they had hired themselves out during the haymaking, we suddenly realized that they had often ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... been making that great miracle of mercy teach stinginess! How often I had heard it explained to polished audiences in New England in the same way, and not a criticism offered. Yet the one who pointed out this strangely-common error was a child belonging to one of the most thriftless of these frontier families. His name is Jones; and he is, I think, a lad of promise, in whom I am becoming much interested, as also in his father, a restless, singular being, but who is more of a man, in my judgment, than ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... husband, but was bound to do whatever Murray commanded, to ask no questions, and to be profoundly ignorant of the real objects of the expedition. This pliant auxiliary had, like many thrifty—or more probably thriftless—persons of that time, a double occupation. He was amphibious in his habits, and lived equally on land and water. At home he was a tailor, and abroad a seaman, frequently plying his craft as a skipper on the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... and its guards withdrew, and Queen Victoria's son and daughter-in- law were summoned by acclamation to the vacant throne. Our pride was perhaps a little modified when we were joined on our high places by a certain thriftless loafer of a white; and yet I was glad too, for the man had a smattering of native, and could give me some idea of the subject of the songs. One was patriotic, and dared Tembinok' of Apemama, the terror of the group, to an invasion. One mixed the planting of taro and the harvest-home. Some ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the House Farm, the only remaining portion of the wide demesne of farmlands once tributary to the House. And by the thrift which she learned from her South Country nurse in the care of her poultry and her pigs, and by her shrewd oversight of the thriftless, doddling Highland farmer and his more thriftless and more doddling womenfolk, she brought the farm to order and to a basis of profitable returns. And this, too, with so little "clash and claver" that her father only knew that somehow things were more comfortable about the place, ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... stimulated. My doctor tells me I ought not to work late, it is not fair on my nerves, but I think every writer has to live more or less on his or her nervous capital, it is the way of the reckless, squandering, thriftless tribe we are. ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... subordinate to the principal figure, but in their way they are no less life-like; the braggart—that inevitable foil to the hero in a saga—was never better represented than in the Gisli of our tale; the thrall Noise, with his carelessness, and thriftless, untrustworthy mirth, is the very pattern of a slave; Snorri the Godi, little though there is of him, fully sustains the prudent and crafty character which follows him in all the Sagas; Thorbiorn Oxmain is a good specimen of the overbearing and sour chief, as is Atli, on the other ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... anything aristocratic. Mrs. Briggs, nee Van Duysen, has nothing Dutch about her but her name. The Knickerbockers of New York were famous for their thrift, their economy, their neatness, and, above all, their housewifely virtues. Mrs. Briggs is thriftless, extravagant, dowdy in her old age, although she had been a beauty in her youth, and knows as little about keeping a house as she does about keeping a horse. During the war, at a fair given for the benefit of the Sanitary ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... woman, "a hut by the way-side, it may be a mile from hence; but four men of Belial, called dragoons, are lodged therein, to spoil my household goods at their pleasure, because I will not wait upon the thowless, thriftless, fissenless ministry of that carnal man, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of a lazy man to get an impression of something essentially contemptible and {109} cowardly. On the other hand the man that loves work and throws himself into it with energy is winning more than material rewards. The thriftless and the extravagant, whether rich or poor, are often mean and self-indulgent, lacking the first quality of the unselfish in lacking self-control. In teaching industry and thrift, therefore,—though these virtues, ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... who has the heartache. I knew one man—a most steady and industrious fellow, in constant work which kept him from home all day—whose wife became a sort of parasite on him in the interest of her own thriftless relatives. In his absence her brothers and sisters were at his table eating at his expense; food and coals bought with his earnings found their way to her mother's cottage; in short, he had "married the ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... one, I wis, was not at home; Another had payd his gold away; Another call'd him thriftless loone, And bade ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... we are made of, such we be. How will this fadge? my master loves her dearly; And I, poor monster, fond as much on him, And she, mistaken, seems to dote on me. What will become of this? As I am man, My state is desperate for my master's love; As I am woman— now, alas the day!— What thriftless sighs shall poor Olivia breathe! O time, thou must untangle this, not I; It is too hard a knot for ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... sixteenth president of the United States, a country which once stretched south of the Forty-ninth Parallel from the Atlantic to the Pacific. I have been traveling extensively in what is left of Lincoln's nation. 'Dukes,' remarked Chesterton, 'don't emigrate.' This country was settled by the poor and thriftless and now few more than the poor and ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... the bush, in a slanting line between Caraquet and Lac Tremblant: a nest of thriftless evil stuck in a hollow you might pass within twenty yards of, and never guess held a house. Once there I had no choice but to stay and nurse the boy's sickening pain, till his mother came home from some place where she was fishing eels for the winter; for none of the rest of the population of ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... jubilant at the thought that the havoc done was only partial, not irrevocable;—a few months of incessant labour, said they, would bring back the holdings to their former state of perfection. Yet a general opinion prevails among foreigners that the Neapolitans are lazy, thriftless and helpless! They indeed rely to a certain extent upon St Januarius to protect their crops from the efforts of Nature, over which, they argue, the Saint is more likely to possess control than his human applicants, ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... furthered his research, however unreliable he might prove in the humdrum occupation of earning a livelihood, was calculated to impress the boy who realized that his matter-of-fact neighbors had long before catalogued him as a thriftless ne'er-do-well. The great man's hardships, his persistence, and his prosperous and honored old age, made up a fascinating story. Peggy, noticing the effect upon her listener, was ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... and poet; was of the Cockney school, a friend of Keats and Shelley; edited the Examiner, a Radical organ; was a busy man but a thriftless, and always in financial embarrassment, though latterly he had a fair pension; lived near Carlyle, who at one time saw a good deal of him, his household, and its disorderliness, an eyesore to Carlyle, a "poetical tinkerdom" ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... sorts of rancorous abuse and hostility, as Otho called for his mirror in the Illyrian field. One good thing is, that this evil, in some degree, cures itself; and when a man has been nearly ruined by a herd of these sycophants, he finds them leaving him, like thriftless dependants, for some more eligible situation, carrying away with them all the tattle they can pick up, and some left-off suit of finery. The same proneness to adulation which made them lick the dust before one idol makes them bow as low to the rising Sun; they ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... tools before Lent is over the five thousand dollars are gone. But he writes cheerfully. It is his nature to be sanguine, and to hope loudly, vaingloriously; and he writes it honestly enough to his merchant—and draws. The labor gets worse and worse. In the indolent summer days the negro, careless, thriftless, ignorant, works only at intervals. Perhaps the June rise catches him, and there is a heavy expense in ditching and damming to save the Rottenbottom crop. Maybe the merchant hears of the army-worm and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... And so, when some thriftless, distant relation, whose debts he had paid a dozen times over, gave him an overhauling on the subject of liberality, and seemed inclined to take him by the throat for further charity, he calmed himself down ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... first, they were gradually crowded out by the competition of the large slaveholders, who bought up their lands and forced them to occupy the foothills to the north of the "black belt" in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi which were ill adapted to the plantation slave system. Next came the thriftless and impecunious whites, variously known as the "pine-landers" and "crackers" in Georgia, the "sand-hillers" of South Carolina, or the "red-necks" of Mississippi. The lowest stratum was composed of slaves with a ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... people living at Palacaguina were half-breeds with a large infusion of Negro blood; and the weed-covered streets and plaza and dilapidated church compared unfavourably with the not far distant Indian town of Totagalpa. The Mestizos are a thriftless, careless people, but I care not here to dilate on their shortcomings. Let only the hospitality and kindness I experienced in Palacaguina live in my mind, and let regret draw a veil over their failings, ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... she screamed. "Never! I have said it, and my words will come true. Think'st thou a witch like thee can bless an union, Alice Nutter? Thy blessings are curses, thy wishes disappointments and despair. Thriftless love shall be Alizon's, and the grave shall be her bridal bed. The witch's daughter shall share the ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... while the speaker is speaking a conventionality which he would feel had he the ability. The sick man mentally resolves that all the mistakes of his life shall be corrected if he shall survive, and yet there are few who are able to fulfill the programmes thus formulated—frequently the thriftless man is more prodigal after an illness which has stabbed his pride with an advertisement of his indigence than he was before his great vow of future economy was recorded ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... possibility of losing their lives, or of being transported after conviction, it cannot be said that these men were any too well paid. Carelessness of danger led to recklessness; recklessness led on to a life that was dissolute and thriftless. And in spite of the fact that these tear-stained appeals were usually signed by all the respectable inhabitants of the seaside village—the rector, the local shipbuilder, Lloyds' shipping agent, the chief landowners and ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... success, the consequent improvement in her father, the power to pay off his indebtedness—all these had turned that day into a day of thankfulness. The happiness that was in her rippled her face into smiles. When the door creaked on its hinges as it swung open, she laughed. It was a thriftless old door, such as bachelors kept, she murmured. Her brother's face, gloomy behind the iron screen, tickled her fancy. "You're like a caged bear, Alan," she cried, with a smile of impertinence; ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... weaknesses which gave inferiors advantage over them? Men of letters cannot lay their hands on their hearts, and say, "No, the fault was fortune's, and the indifferent world's, not Goldsmith's nor Fielding's." There was no reason why Oliver should always be thriftless; why Fielding and Steele should sponge upon their friends; why Sterne should make love to his neighbors' wives. Swift, for a long time, was as poor as any wag that ever laughed: but he owed no penny ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of charity, that showed symptoms of a true Christian grace, had it been properly cultivated; but her morals had been greatly neglected in her youth, and she would waste her precious time in the long winter nights, playing at the cards with her visitors; in the which thriftless and sinful pastime, she was at great pains to instruct Kate Malcolm, which I was grieved to understand. What, however, I most misliked in her ladyship, was a lightness and juvenility of behaviour altogether unbecoming her years; for she was far past three-score, having been long married ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... liked him better than the farm-bailiff. The farm-bailiff was thrifty, and sensible and faithful, and Thomasina was faithful and sensible and thrifty, and they each had a tendency to claim the monopoly of those virtues. Notable people complain, very properly, of thriftless and untidy ones, but they sometimes agree better with them than with rival notabilities. And so Thomasina's broad face beamed benevolently as she bid the cowherd "draw up" to the fire, and he who (like Thomasina) was a native of the country, would confirm the marvels she related, with a proper ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... overweening power; be it mine to enlist his interest on behalf of his merchandise; be it Margaret's to move his heart by soft tears for the bold Charolois; and ere a month be told, Warwick shall find his embassy a thriftless laughing-stock, and no shade pass between the House of Woodville and the sun ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... chasing niggers" has left a grandson who is illiterate, uncultured and thriftless. He despises manual labor, but is too poor and too ignorant to live without doing it. Unfit to be the associate of the new Southerner, and feeling himself too superior to mingle with Negroes, he broods over his hardships and bemoans his fate. ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... belied, My manner chill'd, restrain'd my love! E'en at the time my spirit died With aching tenderness, my eye, Encountering thine, was cold and dry! To maim intention, fondness,—came The sudden impotence of shame. Thy happiness was thriftless wealth, For I could only hoard by stealth! Affection's brightly-glowing ray Shone with such strong, o'erpowering sway, That ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... of the cornfield, "the heaven of blue inwoven with a heaven of green." One tall corn captain becomes to his mind the symbol of the poet-soul sublime, who takes from all that he may give to all. The picture of the thriftless and negligent Southern farmer, "a gamester's cat'spaw and a banker's slave," shows Lanier's keen insight into Southern conditions, which he had, while living in Macon, studied with much care and which he ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... indication of life presents a very different aspect from any thing in our own country. The people have a slow, slouching, shabby appearance; and the traveler is forcibly reminded, by the strange costumes he meets at every turn—the thriftless and degenerate aspect of the laboring classes—the great lumbering wagons that roll over the stone-paved streets—the droskies rattling hither and thither with their grave, priest-like drivers and wild horses—the squads of filthy soldiers lounging idly at every corner—the markets and ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... thriftless people, and can make nothing for themselves. The country abounds in grapes, yet they buy bad wines made in Boston and brought round by us, at an immense price, and retail it among themselves at a real (121/2 cents) by the small ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... face, till it was like one of those faces which look out of Fra Angelico's pictures, and express what we are fond of talking about—adoration and beneficence: "Could I paint for the potteries, Master Locke?" For, in his noble thriftless way, he had initiated her into some of the very secrets of his tinting, and Dulcie was made bold by the feats she ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... temperately. "You always were a thriftless fellow; you must have been wasting your fire. Oh, I say, what's the row ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... she cried. "You'll have all the thriftless loons in the town bringing you their boots ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... case of the Quarterly these untraced effusions may be assigned, with fair confidence, to the principal originators of the magazine: Wilson himself, Lockhart, and William Maginn (1793-1842), a thriftless Irishman who helped to start Fraser's Magazine in 1830, and stood for Captain Shandon in Pendennis; author of Bob Burke's Duel with Ensign Brady, "perhaps the raciest ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... other portraits. "It was they who compounded our inheritances, Rudolph—all that we were to have in this world of wit and strength and desire and endurance. We know their histories. They were proud, brave and thriftless, a greedy and lecherous race, who squeezed life dry as one does an orange, and left us the dregs. I think that it is droll, but I am not sure it places us under any obligation. In fact, I rather think God ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... to hospitality, to load his table with plate, and his shelves with learning; power to adorn his church with chandeliers and painted windows; to make glad the cottages of his poor; to grant a loan, to a tottering farmer; to rescue from want a forlorn patriot, or a thriftless scholar. Whether misfortune, or mismanagement, or folly, or vice, had brought its victim low, his want was a passport to Parr's pity, and the dew of his bounty fell alike upon the evil and the good, upon the just and the unjust. It is told of Boerhaave, that, whenever he saw a criminal led out ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various
... the exports of sugar and spices from the West Indies have diminished since emancipation,—and that the negroes, having worked, as they believed, quite long enough without wages, now refuse to work for the planters without higher pay than the latter, with the thriftless and evil habits of slavery still clinging to them, can afford to give,—the author considers himself justified in denouncing negro emancipation as one of the "shams" which he was specially sent into this world to belabor. Had ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... than pressing his vengeful advantage at that time. He went out into Emmaus and engaging the unemployed of the thriftless town sent them broadcast into the hills in search of a pagan who was young, yet gray ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... morning sunshone down on the discoloured thatch and mud-plastered walls of the sordid-looking building, while all about wherever I cast my eyes they rested on weeds, old bones, broken bottles, and other rubbish—eloquent witnesses of the dirty, idle, thriftless character of the inmates. Meanwhile my sweet, angelic child-wife, with her violet eyes dim with tears, was waiting for me far away in Montevideo, wondering at my long absence, and even now perhaps shading her face with her lily hand and looking out on the white ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... was an influence in character as well as a stimulus in business to those around him. He taught them to save part of their earnings, to secure as early as possible a piece of land and a home. In few but pointed words he reproved thriftless and idle ways, and his respect and approbation were sought and valued. What Colonel Toppan said upon any matter was quoted and remembered as if it decided the question, long after men left his employment, and had ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... property. On his father's death, he had succeeded to about three thousand a-year, and he left about one; and he would have spent or mortgaged this, had he not, on his marriage, put it beyond his own power to do so. It was not only by thriftless extravagance that he thus destroyed a property which, with care, and without extortion, would have doubled its value in the thirty-five years during which it was in his hands; but he had been afraid to come to Ireland, and had been duped by his agent. When he came to the title, Simeon Lynch ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... decided; and, though startled and aroused, the untamed spirits of those who crowded the, menaced pile were rather in a state of uneasiness, than of that fierce excitement to which they were so capable of being wrought, and which was in some degree necessary to induce even them, thriftless and destitute as they were, to be the agents of effecting so great a destruction of properly. The project of the cool and calculating Maso would therefore have failed entirely, but for another wheeling of those airy squadrons, and a second wave which lifted the groaning bark ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... diseases of this age is the multitude of books. It is a thriftless and a thankless occupation, this writing of books: a man were better to sing in a cobbler's shop, for his pay is a penny a patch; but a book-writer, if he get sometimes a few commendations from the judicious, he shall be ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... that I might not express aloud my weariness of my aunt's favorite subject. I had been in want of just such an article as an "efficient person" ever since I had taken charge of my father's menage; and after undergoing almost martyrdom with slip-shod, thriftless, good-for-nothing "help," as we Americans, with such delicate consideration, term our serving maids, I had come to the conclusion that indifferent "help" was an unavoidable evil, and that the best must be made of the poor, miserable instruments ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... fatherless child, the aged, blind, and lame, and the diseased person that is judged to be incurable; the second are poor by casualty, as the wounded soldier, the decayed householder, and the sick person visited with grievous and painful diseases; the third consisteth of thriftless poor, as the rioter that hath consumed all, the vagabond that will abide nowhere, but runneth up and down from place to place (as it were seeking work and finding none), and finally the rogue and the strumpet, which are not possible to be divided in sunder, ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... resumed the old man, 'that in their private and domestic life, as well as in their labouring career, the lower classes of this country are improvident, thriftless, and extravagant. ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... lenient judges, we have nowhere such vivid glimpses of Hunt's peculiar weaknesses as in the memoirs of Carlyle and his wife. Why Leigh Hunt was always in such difficulties is not at first obvious, for he was the reverse of an idle man; he seems, though thriftless, to have been by no means very sumptuous in his way of living; everybody helped him, and his writing was always popular. He appears to have felt not a little sore that nothing was done for him when his political friends came into power after the Reform Bill—and ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... never meant to say what I am going to say just now," he declared. "I had meant to wait until there was something successfully accomplished to my credit. I am, you see, a thriftless, wandering adventurer—one who has taken things as they came, and never has been serious. When I have shown that I can also be something else, I shall ask you formally if you will marry me. Until then the thing is, of course, out ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... of Mr. Kruger to Johannesburg was the famous one of 1890, when the collapse of the share market and the apparent failure of many of the mines left a thriftless and gambling community wholly ruined and half starving, unable to bear the burden which the State imposed, almost wholly unappreciative of the possibilities of the Main Reef, and ignorant of what to do to create an industry and restore prosperity. This, at least, the ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... evaded the question,—wished to leave the subject. Perhaps he did not regard the poor old school-master as a practical judge of practical matters. All his life he had called him thriftless and unready. ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... who pine in pride or in revenge, Or think that ill for ill should be repaid, Who barter wrong for wrong, until the exchange Ruins the merchants of such thriftless trade, Visit the tower of Vado, and unlearn 5 Such bitter ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... any rate for the silences that preceded the French, and for their own riparian architecture. The busy towns along the streams I have known have turned their faces from these streams toward the railroads. They have left the riverside to the thriftless men and the truant boys. Stables and outhouses look upon their waters, and the sewers pollute them. And if on some especially eligible bluff better buildings do stand, their owners or builders show no appreciation of what the bluff or river cares for, but reproduce the lines of some pretentious ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... same time discovered a province where it might be employed in all its splendour. We have the mortification to learn, from the Dedication of "Aureng-Zebe," that Dryden only wanted encouragement to enter upon the composition of an epic poem, and to abandon the thriftless task of writing for the promiscuous audience of the theatre,—a task which, rivalled as he had lately been by Crowne and Settle, he most justly compares to the labour of Sisyphus. His plot, he elsewhere explains, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... nature and abhorrence of flattery, and my condescension in visiting you shows I take you to be open, fair enemies, not likely to engage in conspiracies, or desirous of renewing the times of confusion. But I would ask, What hope have you left, or what portion, even in its best days, did your thriftless loyalty acquire you? Eusebius Beaumont it found an obscure rector, and so it left you; for you could only boast simplicity of life and doctrine; but court-chaplains, drivellers in learning, and lewd knaves in manners, were rewarded with stalls and mitres. You, Allan Neville, were ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... the inner history of an English town we find the same peaceful revolution in progress, services disappearing through disuse or omission, while privileges and immunities are being purchased in hard cash. The lord of the town, whether he were king, baron, or abbot, was commonly thriftless or poor, and the capture of a noble, or the campaign of a sovereign, or the building of some new minster by a prior, brought about an appeal to the thrifty burghers, who were ready to fill again their master's treasury at the price of the strip of parchment which gave them freedom ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... looking down into the enchanting valley of Chimbo. This romantic and secluded spot is one of those forgotten corners of the earth which, barricaded against the march of civilization by almost impassable mountains, and inhabited by a thriftless race, has been left far behind in the progress of mankind. Distance lends enchantment to the view. We are reminded of the pastoral vales of New England. Wheat takes the place of the sugar-cane, barley of cacao, potatoes of plantains, and turnips of oranges. Bamboo sheds have given way to neatly ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... so gazed on now, Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held: Then, being ask'd where all thy beauty lies, Where all the treasure of thy lusty days, To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes, Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise. ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... share his life. Had he contemplated marriage for some time, and been prevented from it by stress of circumstances? It was not easy to picture the suitable partner for Grail. Clearly she must be another than the thriftless, shiftless creature too common in working-class homes. Yet it was not likely that he had met with any one who could share his inner life. Had he, following the example of many a prudent man, chosen a good, quiet, modest woman, whose first and last anxiety would be to keep ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... small legacy of about 700 pounds fell into my hands, and had I contented myself with this farm, and purchased two adjoining cleared farms containing two hundred acres of land of the finest quality which were sold far below their value by the thriftless owners, I should have done well, or at all events have invested my money profitably. But the temptation to buy wild land at 5s. an acre, which was expected to double in value in a few months, with the example of many instances of similar ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Verity often talks about her old life to me. Neither of them make any secret about it. She was only seven or eight when he first saw her; she had just lost her mother. Her father's name was Westbrook; he was a scene-painter, a thriftless ne'er-do-weel, whose intemperate habits had brought them to poverty and broken his wife's heart; but in his sober moments he was good to the child, and she certainly ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... haste, Belated, thriftless, vagrant, And golden-rod is dying fast, And lanes with grapes ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... is assuredly one of the marvels of history. No land but America has produced his like. This destined chief of a nation in its most perilous hour was the son of a thriftless and wandering settler. He had a strong and eminently fair understanding, with great powers of patient thought, which he cultivated by the study of Euclid. In all his views there was the simplicity of his character. Both as an advocate and as a politician he was "Honest Abe." As an advocate he would ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... rises among the Bull Run Mountains, and flows southeast through Fairfax County. Just beyond the stream, as you go west from Washington, are the plains of Manassas,—level lands, which years ago waved with corn and tobacco, but the fields long since were worn out by the thriftless farming of the slaveholders, and now they are overgrown with thickets of pine ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... meanwhile turning his endeavors to the thousand-fold immeasurable interests of men and gods,—dismissing the one extremely contemptible interest of scoundrels; sweeping that into the cesspool, tumbling that over London Bridge, in a very brief manner, if needful! Who are you, ye thriftless sweepings of Creation, that we should forever be pestered with you? Have we no work to do but drilling Devil's regiments of ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... he cannot catch. He is not careful to catch all that he could. His purpose is to draw the largest possible revenue per day from his claim. He does not intend to spend many years in mining, or if he does, he has become thriftless and improvident. In either case, he wishes to derive the utmost immediate profit from his mine. If his claim contain a dollar to the ton, and he can save five dollars by slowly washing only six tons ...
— Hittel on Gold Mines and Mining • John S. Hittell
... that for ages the principal use of the dog which dwelt about the camps of the primitive people was found in the reserve food supply which they afforded their thriftless masters. When the hunting was successful the poor brutes had a chance to wax fat, and even in times of scarcity they managed to pick up enough food to keep them alive. When their masters were brought to a state of famine ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... appears that those who came on free transportation were largely men who had no permanent interests or who could afford to venture into strange fields. This indiscriminate method of many of the transporting agencies undoubtedly made it possible for a great number of indigent and thriftless negroes simply to change the scene of their inaction. Yet it is unquestionably true that quite a large proportion of those who went North in this fashion were men honestly seeking remunerative employment, or persons who left through sheer desperation. In the ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... over to the Bennet place, and called the husband aside before mentioning his errand. He had long waited for some chance to secure an advantage over his thriftless neighbor, and now that it had come he drove it home with all the solemnity and earnestness that he could command. Bennet listened with eyes staring at the earth, and the veins throbbing in his bared neck, until the talk had reached a ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... judging from the specimens still treasured in Haworth, his natural talent on a level with that of the average new student in any school of art. His tawny mane, his pose of untaught genius, his verses in the poet's corner of the paper could not for ever keep afloat this untaught and thriftless portrait-painter of twenty. Soon there came an end to his painting there. He disappeared from Bradford suddenly, heavily in debt, and was lost to sight, until unnerved, a drunkard, and an opium-eater, he came back to home ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... built, the "Black Bull" stood just at the top of Holborn Hill, that difficult ascent which good citizens found too long, and bad ones too short. "Sirrah, you'll be hanged; I shall live to see you go up Holborn Hill," says Sir Sampson Legend to his thriftless son in Congreve's ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... Rome was not a desirable place for medical practice, for the lower classes were degraded and thriftless, and the relatively small upper classes were tyrannical, debauched, superstitious, selfish and cruel. The younger Pliny, who was one of the best type of Romans, tried to investigate the purity of the lives of the Christians, and did not hesitate to put to torture two women, ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... and condition, would cause me to tremble for these United States, should a war ever ensue between the English and American governments, which I pray may never occur. These fugitives may be thought to be a class of poor, thriftless, illiterate creatures, like the Southern slaves, but it is not so. They are no longer slaves; many of whom have been many years free men, and a large number were never slaves. They are a hardy, robust class of men; very many of them, men ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... possession, lies the secret of enjoyment; a fact which nature illustrates in a thousand ways, and to which every man's experience gives affirmation. "Very good doctrine for the idle and thriftless," said Mr. Henry Steel, a gentleman of large wealth, in answer to a friend, who had advanced the ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... nook in his park-wall. Ye may e'en tell him he has mair than he makes good use of; he gangs up and down drinking, roaring, and quarrelling, through all the country markets, making foolish bargains in his cups, which he repents when he is sober; like a thriftless wretch, spending the goods and gear that his forefathers won with the sweat of their brows: light come, light go, he cares not a farthing. But why should I stand surety for his contracts? The little ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... thriftless squanderer, It's easy come and spent, And heavy is the going now Where once the light foot went. The hawthorn bush puts on its white, The throstle whistles clear, But Spring comes once for every man Just once in ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... steady-going and respectable enough; others were idle, thriftless fellows, who could not settle to farming in the colony, and even in the chase were lazy, bad hunters. The women were there for the purpose of attending to camp duties—cooking, dressing the buffalo skins, making bags from the animals' green ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... destroyed my Scottish poem. I mean to remodel it, and infuse into it something more of the spark of living life. But my pen has of late strayed into the regions of prose. Poetry is too much its own reward; and one cannot always write for a barren smile, and a thriftless clap on the back. We must live; and the white bread and the brown can only be obtained by gross payment. There is no poet and a wife and six children fed now like the prophet Elijah—they are more likely to be devoured by ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... character of the people is still unspoiled by contact with the outer world. Here, also, the pervading aspect is of well-being and contentment. 'Everybody can live here,' we were told by an intelligent resident; 'only the idle, the drunkard, and the thriftless ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... past. The crowds have gone, The diligent to their accustomed round Of works and days, works to each day assigned, The thoughtless and the thriftless multitude To meet their tasks haphazard as they come, But all the same old story to repeat Of cares and ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... thunderclap Where I heard noise and you saw flame, Some one man knew God called his name. For me, I think I said, "Appear! "Good were it to be ever here. "If thou wilt, let me build to thee "Service-tabernacles three, "Where, forever in thy presence, "In ecstatic acquiescence, "Far alike from thriftless learning "And ignorance's undiscerning, "I may worship and remain!" Thus at the show above me, gazing With upturned eyes, I felt my brain Glutted with the glory, blazing Throughout its whole mass, over and under Until ...
— Christmas Eve • Robert Browning
... his ride from New York to Richmond, with various criticisms of sleeping-car accommodation, heartily endorsed by all American travelers who have read them. Arriving at Richmond he asked the usual question: "Is not the negro idle, thriftless and thievish?" From time immemorial it has been asserted that the laws of meum and tuum have no meaning for the colored man. It is a joke current in more than one American city, that the police have standing orders to arrest every negro seen carrying a turkey or a chicken along the street. In other ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... four thriftless youths returned home to their father, who in his just indignation had urged their disgrace upon the Pandits and Gurus, otherwise these dignitaries would never have resorted to such extreme measures ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... sounds thriftless; but in Finland, in the summer, it is very hot and dry; in fact, the three or four months of summer are really summer in all its glory. It is all daylight and there is no night, so that June, July, and August seem one perpetual midsummer day. ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... as Hattiwala. Bhils also serve as village watchmen in Nimar and the adjoining tracts of the Berar Districts. Captain Forsyth, writing in 1868, described the Bhils as follows: "The Muhammadan Bhils are with few exceptions a miserable lot, idle and thriftless, and steeped in the deadly vice of opium-eating. The unconverted Bhils are held to be tolerably reliable. When they borrow money or stock for cultivation they seldom abscond fraudulently from their creditors, and this simple honesty of theirs tends, I fear, to keep numbers of them still ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell |
