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Improvident

adjective
1.
Not provident; not providing for the future.
2.
Not given careful consideration.  Synonyms: ill-considered, ill-judged, shortsighted.  "An ill-judged attempt"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Improvident" Quotes from Famous Books



... robberies, and two of these afterwards suffered death for their offences, while another, who had gone into the woods, was proclaimed an outlaw. For want of any overseers or police, except those taken from their own class, the convicts were getting beyond all discipline; and so utterly reckless and improvident were some of them, that they would consume their weekly allowance of provisions by the end of the third or fourth day, and trust for their supply during the rest of the week to the chance of being able to steal from others that were more provident.[85] One of these degraded creatures is stated ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden

... risks of the wrong food or drink, the imprudent revelations, or the mistaken stimulants. Heigh-ho!' said he at last, 'we come through storm and shipwreck, forlorn-hopes, and burning villages, and we succumb to ten drops too much of a dark-brown liquor, or the improvident rashness that reads out ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... and destruction which the reduced ration had occasioned among the birds frequenting Mount Pitt had so thinned their numbers, that they were no longer to be depended upon as a resource. The convicts, senseless and improvident, not only destroyed the bird, its young, and its egg, but the hole in which it burrowed; a circumstance that ought most cautiously to have been guarded against; as nothing appeared more likely to ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... must always be scarce with those who have neither wherewithal to buy it, nor credit to borrow it. Those who have either, will seldom be in want either of the money, or of the wine which they have occasion for. This complaint, however, of the scarcity of money, is not always confined to improvident spendthrifts. It is sometimes general through a whole mercantile town and the country in its neighbourhood. Over-trading is the common cause of it. Sober men, whose projects have been disproportioned to their capitals, are as likely to have neither ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... repudiated the words of Christ, what could be expected of those whom supreme Goodness has destined to a subordinate lot? No! material improvement was not the first thing, even for those unhappy people (victims for the most part of their own improvident or vicious habits) who had scarcely bread to eat and raiment wherewith to clothe themselves. Let them seek the kingdom of God, and these paltry, temporal things shall surely be ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing

... wig, for the air was warm, and an improvident impulse made him cast the latter object overboard. The statoscope responded with a vigorous swing ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... him he could leave him nothing, so the son was accustomed to look forward to this situation. Therefore, when he realized it, he was neither surprised nor revolted by the improvident egotism of which he was the victim. His reverence for his father continued unabated, and he did not read with the less respect or confidence the singular missive which figures at the beginning of this story. The moral theories which this letter advanced were not new to him. They ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet

... burdened with his name, we shall now take his measure. He belonged to that part of the population called "poor whites." His parents had come to the settlement when Sam was a little boy. They were poor, shiftless, improvident, ignorant, and, worse than all, apparently contented with their lot. They dwelt in a log cabin in the hills, and in a haphazard way cultivated a few acres of half-barren land, raising a little corn, tobacco, hay, fruit, and a few vegetables. There were six children ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick

... Clemens," Adrian answered. "An improvident cuss but good company. He writes for the Carson Appeal under the ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... was a better place after the college settled permanently above it. Some improvident citizens took a new hold on life, while some undesirables who had lived in lawless infamy skulked across the Walnut and disappeared in that rough picturesque region full of uncertainties that lies behind the west bluffs of the stream. All this, after the college had found an abiding ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter

... nearly every case the efforts of to-day, whether in commerce, trade, or science, have for their purpose the making of fortunes. Nor should this spirit be condemned, for fortune in the hands of the right men is a blessing to the world and particularly to those who are more improvident. ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon

... put in his way by the obvious malevolence of men. As a shipowner everyone had conspired to make him a nobody. How could he have been such a fool as to purchase that accursed ship. He had been abominably swindled; there was no end to this swindling; and as the difficulties of his improvident ambition gathered thicker round him, he really came to hate everybody he had ever come in contact with. A temper naturally irritable and an amazing sensitiveness to the claims of his own personality had ended by making of life for him a sort of inferno—a place where his lost soul had been given ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad

... of this class were scattered throughout the northwest territories. Some of them retained a little of the thrift and forethought of the civilized man, and became wealthy among their improvident neighbors; their wealth being chiefly displayed in large bands of horses, which covered the prairies in the vicinity of their abodes. Most of them, however, were prone to assimilate to the red man in their heedlessness of ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving

... soon—he might have got I dare say—fourteen hundred pounds. And how came he not to have settled that matter before this person's death? Now indeed it would be too late to sell it, but a man of Colonel Brandon's sense!—I wonder he should be so improvident in a point of such common, such natural, concern!—Well, I am convinced that there is a vast deal of inconsistency in almost every human character. I suppose, however—on recollection—that the case may probably ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... have known better than to take it from you," Aunt Maria said. "She is nothing but a little thief, and you are a very improvident child. To-morrow I'll take you to church ...
— Five Happy Weeks • Margaret E. Sangster

... arousing ill-feeling and jealousy, the farmer's only remedy is to get rid of the slackers. Inefficiency and slacking are often due to a man's enfeebled mental and physical condition, owing to neglect in his bringing up as a child, or to insufficient or unwholesome food provided by an improvident ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... much chance to be improvident!" said Herbert "We have had to spend all our income, but we are not in debt—that is, we have no debts that ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... taper, sealed the end of the scabbard with his family crest and motto—Denique Coelum? How the Purser in due time mustered his money-bags, and paid us all off on the quarter-deck—good and bad, sick and well, all receiving their wages; though, truth to tell, some reckless, improvident seamen, who had lived too fast during the cruise, had little or nothing now standing on the credit side of their ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... Brail stone was but doing the spiriting required of him, and would have to pay the penalty unrewarded, let him Italianize as much as he pleased. Not many months longer, and there would be the bit of an outburst, the whiff of scandal, perhaps a shot, and the rupture of an improvident alliance, followed by Henrietta's free hand to the moody young earl, who would then have possession of the only woman he could ever love: and at no cost. Jealousy of a man like Brailstone, however infatuated the man, was too ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... read an article written by a cynical woman who has lived in the Islands only a few months. I read part of it to father, the part which says that "the Filipinos are a worthless, shiftless, lazy people; improvident, untrustworthy and immoral!" After I had read that he thought a ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

... 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 in a day, while he might make ten dollars by rapidly washing fifteen ...
— Hittel on Gold Mines and Mining • John S. Hittell

... vessel should be navigated, who only holds out a cold and steady hand after the catastrophe has happened, or, if no catastrophe supervenes, is content to walk away in that silent wonder which the care of Providence for the improvident must ever evoke. ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman

... pressing need was for something to eat. To be sure, every man had gone into action that morning carrying his day's rations. But the British soldier, improvident as the grasshopper, carries his day's rations in one place, and one place only—his stomach. The Hairy Jocks had eaten what they required at their extremely early breakfast: the residue ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)

... unproductive nature of some of the regions occupied; but there appears to have been a most rapid succession of human beings, and as fast as some were mowed down by the scythe of war or of famine, others rose in increased numbers to supply their place. Among these bold and improvident Barbarians, population was probably but little checked, as in modern states, from a fear of future difficulties. A prevailing hope of bettering their condition by change of place, a constant expectation of plunder, a power even, if distressed, of selling their children as slaves, added to the ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus

... been entitled—but of which he could not feel assured. Living among literary men, some less distinguished and less discreet than those whom we have mentioned, he was constantly importuned to relieve distresses which an improvident speculation in literature produces, and which the recklessness attendant on the empty vanity of self-exaggerated talent renders desperate and merciless—and to the importunities of such hopeless petitioners he gave too ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall

... inactively, than it is to take a proper amount of food for several days, and then withdraw this supply for a day. The industrious mechanic and the studious minister suffer as surely from undue confinement as the improvident and indolent. The evil consequences of neglect of exercise are gradual, and steal slowly upon an individual. But sooner or later they are manifested in muscular weakness, dyspepsia, and ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter

... "I'm so improvident that I'm afraid I'd marry you on nothing. I haven't a copper of my own, remember. You will have a penniless bride. Oh, I wish more than ever that Uncle Bernard had left me something, so that I might help you! ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... much offence by the general levity of his conduct, and especially to the Tories by the occasional flippancy or severity of his attacks upon them, that as it was clear that any Conservative Government must depend upon the great body of the Tory party for support, it was improvident in him to make himself obnoxious to them, and that he would do well to exert his influence over Stanley for the purpose of restraining those sallies in which he was too apt to indulge, and showing him the expediency of conciliating that not very wise but still powerful body. He asked in ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... to "skirmish" or go hungry until the next supply was issued. Most, however, soon learned the necessity as well as the benefit of restricting their appetites to the supply. But there were always some improvident ones, who never had a supply ahead, but were always in straights for grub. They were ready to black boots, clean guns, in fact, do any sort of menial work for their comrades for a snack to eat. Their improvidence made them the drudges ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock

... habits and pursuits to the restraints of society. They readily admit the superiority of foreigners, but cling tenaciously to their forest homes and rude lives of unfettered freedom. In character they are cruel and vindictive, improvident and thievish; and they seem almost devoid of gallantry in the treatment of their women, wooing their wives with blows, and often inflicting death upon women and children for the slightest offences. Yet they have some ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various

... them with pins; but there was no calculation in the scheme; and though I have read of boys, especially in English books, who made a profit out of their fellows, I never knew any boy who had enough forecast to do it. They were too wildly improvident for anything of the kind, and if they had any virtue at all it was scorn of ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells

... he is," the mother answered, feelingly; "for, know that he has this day given up to thee, his sister, one half of his heritage, and more—unwise and improvident ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks

... which Harry had not calculated. He began to think that he had been very improvident. The professor would readily have left him a hundred dollars more, and as it would have been repaid with his own money, he was sorry he had not ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger

... the arts of civilized life; but it must be added, that, denying him the inalienable rights of manhood, denying him the right to the product of his labor, it left him no noble incentive to labor at these arts, and thus tended to render him improvident, careless, shiftless, in short, to ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... faults. I do not deny that he is improvident. I do not deny that he has kept me in the dark as to his resources and his liabilities both,' she went on, looking at the wall; 'but I ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... the money, but the wines, equipages, and furniture which the money purchased; and, these having been destroyed without return, society collectively is poorer by the amount. In proportion as any class is improvident or luxurious, the industry of the country takes the direction of producing luxuries for their use; while not only the employment for productive laborers is diminished, but the subsistence and instruments which are the means ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... specie? Of course there would be some decline in merchandise, but the loss would fall on declining stocks, often sold in advance, and would not reach stocks in bond, the price of which is to be paid in specie. The improvident might suffer a little; but when the first shock was past, would not a strong impulse be given to industry? Would not enterprise be at once directed to the erection of the houses, factories, ships, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... to see it, do me the pleasure to say, lest he should take on (pigliarsi) with me about it: 'Thanks, but we saw the Tarantella at Pompeii!'" It was the last place in Italy where we were likely to have seen the Tarantella; but these simple people are improvident in lying, ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... Pembroke College, Oxford. His parents died when he was young, leaving to him a very considerable estate, which fortunately some relative administered for him, until, owing to this supervisor's death, it lapsed into the poet's improvident hands. Even then a sensible tenant of his own name, and a distant relative, managed very snugly the farm of Leasowes; but when Shenstone came to live with him, neither house nor grounds were large enough for the joint occupancy of the poet, who was trailing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... this hankering after the woods and the freedom of the chase, they are a people easily instructed, quick to learn, (when they like to do so), and very submissive and grateful. But they are very, very improvident. So long as they have enough for to-day, let to- morrow look out for itself. Even upon great festivals such as Christmas, when my husband would give them a double allowance of rations, they would come before ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney

... in cutting and depositing upon the bottoms of the waters and ingeniously fastening there vast quantities of the birch or willow, the bark of which was to serve as food during the long winter months, was far ahead of the habits of the improvident people, who literally took "no thought for the morrow," and so were often at starvation point, while the industrious beavers in their warm, cozy homes had enough and ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young

... the saver can not furnish nine hundred dollars he will lose his home. In this case he must either borrow or use his reserve, so he takes nine hundred dollars from the savings bank and keeps his home. The improvident man loses his home under similar circumstances, for his credit is not good and he has no balance to ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker

... country. It is they, with their roving and pastoral habits, who have done the mischief, changing arable land into pasture, which grows ever poorer, and finally desert. The fertility of these regions may be said to have been annihilated by the goats of a nomad race, whose faith has made it improvident and mentally sterile.[1] ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... Lyons, a heap of food-refuse 100 yards long and 10 feet high largely consists of the bones of horses, most of them young and tender. This shows that the old hunters knew how to enjoy the passing hour in their improvident way, like the equally reckless Bushmen, who have left similar Golgothas behind them in South Africa. Yet apparently palaeolithic man did not tame the horse. Environment, in fact, can only give the hint; and man may not be ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett

... exhibit of ursine thought, reasoning and conclusion. It showed more fore-thought and provision, and higher purpose in the conservation of food than some human beings ever display, even at their best. The plains Indians and the buffalo hunters were horribly wasteful and improvident. The impulse of that grizzly was to make good use of every pound of that meat, and ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... life is spent in the bare process of procuring a living. He consumes a large amount of oleaginous food, and breathes a damp heavy atmosphere, and is, consequently, of a dull phlegmatic temperament. Notwithstanding his uncertain supplies of food, he is recklessly improvident, and indifferent to all the lessons of experience. Intellectual pursuits are all precluded. There is no motive, no opportunity, and indeed no disposition for mental culture. But in a temperate climate man is stimulated to high mental ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... find it difficult to get three now whom they could depend upon. Living in a climate where clothing beyond the demands of decency is scarcely needed, and where the products of labor for two days will support the careless negro for one week, naturally improvident, he takes no heed for the morrow, and becomes lazy, idle, and intemperate; and when he can be persuaded to work, with the prospect of high wages, wherewith to purchase that necessary stimulus which has already nearly deprived ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay

... disadvantages, of the undertaking, entertained doubts which clouded the brightness of their hopes, and warned the commercial world against the indulgence of too sanguine anticipation of the immediate and unqualified realization of the project. They counseled caution and reserve against an improvident investment of extensive capital in schemes which still be only regarded as experimental, and which might prove its grave. But the voice of remonstrance was drowned amid the enthusiasm excited by the promise of an immediate practical realization of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various

... often charged against free governments that they have neither the foresight nor the virtue to provide at the proper season for great emergencies; that their course is improvident and expensive; that war will always find them unprepared, and, whatever may be its calamities, that its terrible warnings will be disregarded and forgotten as soon as peace returns. I have full confidence that this charge so far as relates ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... discovered anything. In that way the night passed. In the morning everybody was exhausted and, to make matters worse, many of the men ran short of provisions. Some of them had neglected to bring the amount ordered; others had been improvident and wasted their rations. So to the discomforts of cold and wet, were added the pangs of hunger. The little bag of coffee had proven a precious boon. Whenever the column would halt for a few minutes, and it ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd

... was permitted to France between two convulsive efforts, and the Revolution as yet knew not whether it should maintain the constitution it had gained, or employ it as a weapon to obtain a republic, Europe began to arouse itself; egotistical and improvident, she merely beheld in the first movement in France a comedy played at Paris on the stage of the States General and the constituent Assembly—between popular genius, represented by Mirabeau, and the vanquished ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... another side to the question, however. If the details be many, and if each be long, they would be more than the mind could carry without great effort; and instead of economy of attention, there is improvident waste. The mind will carry a long, carefully arranged period at intervals; but a succession of periods is sure to result in its absolute refusal to do so any longer. There is a limit to the length of a period that economizes attention; and ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... of India are being oppressed and ruined by village shop-keepers and money-lenders. These men advance money at a most exorbitant rate of interest, taking as security the crops and occupancy rights of the cultivators of the soil. The latter are ignorant, improvident, and in some matters, such as the marriage ceremonies of their families, inordinately extravagant. The result is that a small debt soon swells into a big one, and eventually the aid of the law courts is invoked to ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... for giving one prudence and patience, never was such a mentor as travel. The tender, the effeminate, the cowardly, were hardened by contention with unwonted cold or rain or sun, with hard seats, stony pillows, thieves, and highwaymen. Any simple, improvident, and foolish youth would be stirred up to vigilancy by a few experiences with "the subtelty of spies, the wonderful cunning of Inn-keepers and baudes and the great danger of his life."[56] In short, the perils and discomforts of travel made a mild prelude ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard

... which the former is so closely followed, is of a new descent of these Western nations, more formidable than any which we or our fathers have yet seen. This consists not of the ignorant or of the fanatical—not of the base, the needy, and the improvident. Now,—all that wide Europe possesses of what is wise and worthy, brave and noble, are united by the most religious vows, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... for death," bore fitful and variable witness to her first sense of a heavier yoke than yet had galled her spirit and her pride. At other times her affectionate gayety would give evidence as trustworthy of a fearless and improvident satisfaction. They rode out in state together, and if he kept cap in hand as a subject she would snatch it from him and clap it on his head again; while in graver things she took all due or possible care to gratify ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... thou done, O daughter of devils? Thou art bleeding! Thou hast cut thyself! Alack, mayhap thou wilt die, and then we shall be ruined! Improvident! Careless one! Cursed be thy folly! Hast thou no regard? And I dare not send for Doctor Koury, the veterinary, for then thy presence would be discovered and the gendarmes would come and take thee away. Would ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train

... headlong. Butler! Butler! You are my evil genius, wherefore must you Announce it in their presence? It was all In a fair way. They were half won! those madmen With their improvident over-readiness— A cruel game is Fortune playing with me. The zeal of friends it is that razes me, And not the hate ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... his dying hand to the cold virtuoso, who let it slumber in its case for a generation, till, when his hoard was broken up, it came forth once more, and rode the stormy symphonies of royal orchestras, beneath the rushing bow of their lord and leader. Into lonely prisons with improvident artistes; into convents from which arose, day and night, the holy hymns with which its tones were blended; and back again to orgies, in which it learned to howl and laugh as if a legion of devils were shut up in it; then, again, to ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart

... before the Parliamentary Committee. Very little that was new emerged. The contract looked worse than ever after Cecil Chesterton's Counsel, Ernest Wild, had examined witnesses, but Mr. Justice Phillimore insisted that it had nothing to do with the case "whether the contract was badly drawn or improvident." ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... Shall foul Antiquity with rust and drought And famine vex the radiant worlds above? Shall Time's unsated maw crave and engulf The very heav'ns that regulate his flight? And was the Sire of all able to fence His works, and to uphold the circling worlds, But through improvident and heedless haste Let slip th'occasion?—So then—All is lost— 20 And in some future evil hour, yon arch Shall crumble and come thund'ring down, the poles Jar in collision, the Olympian King Fall with ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton

... condition is fulfilled as well, and here nature has as yet been more remiss. Family life, as Western nations possess it, is still regulated in a very bungling, painful, and unstable manner. Hence, in the first rank of evils, prostitution, adultery, divorce, improvident and unhappy marriages; and in the second rank, a morality compacted of three inharmonious parts, with incompatible ideals, each in its way legitimate: I mean the ideals of passion, of convention, and of reason; add, besides, genius ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... call "Nature's methods" and "Nature's laws," though, indeed, they are no more than the methods and laws of the beasts. By such expedients we may hope to see, first, a certain fall in the birth-rate, a fall chiefly in the birth-rate of improvident, vicious, and feeble types, a continuation, in fact, of that fall that is already so conspicuous in illegitimate births in Great Britain; secondly, a certain, almost certainly more considerable fall in the death-rate of infants and young children, ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... they, with bended knees entreated him not to let the Romans, with an improvident disregard of all safety (they whose fortune their everlasting good faith had raised to the skies), now be misled by a base error to trample all former agreements under foot, and attempt an act ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... belligerents had not been far too afraid of one another to face the situation sensibly. Germany, having failed to provide for the war she began, failed again to surrender before she was dangerously exhausted. Her opponents, equally improvident, went as much too close to bankruptcy as Germany to starvation. It was a bluff at which both were bluffed. And, with the usual irony of war, it remains doubtful whether Germany and Russia, the defeated, will not be the gainers; for the victors are already busy fastening ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw

... after hour, becoming more and more oppressed at every step. The improvident among them drank up the precious water too fast, and towards evening began to sigh for relief, and to regard with longing eyes the supplies of their more self-denying companions. They consoled themselves, however, ...
— Digging for Gold - Adventures in California • R.M. Ballantyne

... rental. They were modest in structure, but they could be made inviting and neat if the occupants were thrifty. No one was allowed to sell liquor on the property owned by the Gordons, but outside of this limit was a fringe of low saloons which did a thriving business off the improvident miners. ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter

... Protective Tariff of 1828, yet there were some Southerners willing to concede—as did Mr. Hayne, in the Senate (1832)—that there were "other causes besides the Tariff" underlying that condition, and to admit that "Slaves are too improvident, too incapable of that minute, constant, delicate attention, and that persevering industry which are essential to manufacturing establishments," the existence of which would have made those States prosperous. But such admissions were unwilling ones, and the Cotton-lords held only with ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... gardening. This, perhaps, accounts for his location of the scene in his comedy "The Cherry Garden," where a business-like man, who had once been a serf, just like the dramatist's own father, has prospered sufficiently to buy the orchard from the improvident and highly educated owners; and for all the details about fruit-gardening given in the powerful story "The Black Monk." This story infallibly reminds one of Gogol. A man has repeatedly a vision of a black monk, who visits him through the air, with whom he carries on long conversations, ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps

... burning wood and charcoal daily, a country where not only the houses but most of the things in common use are made of wood; and there seems to be no end to the trees that remain. It is little wonder that in many parts there has been and is improvident use of wood. Happily every year the regulation of timber areas and wise planting make progress. But for many square miles of hillside I saw there is no fitting word ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... the Prince gave him a commission, under an express promise that when he could not shew it, he was no longer to enjoy his royal favour. This commission was afterwards lost by the improvident possessor, and going to call on the donor one morning, who espying him on his way, he threw up the sash and called out, "Well, George, commission or no commission?" "No commission, by G——, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... in mind then we may state the Crees to be a vain, fickle, improvident, and indolent race, and not very strict in their adherence to truth, being great boasters; but on the other hand they strictly regard the rights of property,* are susceptible of the kinder affections, capable of friendship, very hospitable, tolerably ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin

... the settlers were in sore straits for food, for they were improvident, and managed badly, Pocahontas, always generous and friendly, learning of their needs, came with her brother Nantaquaus and her Indians bringing corn, and kept them from starving, while their own was growing. Captain John in return gave her beads and trinkets to deck herself, and called her his child, ...
— The Story of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith • E. Boyd Smith

... of marrying the others; nor in the higher, to find a young man, whose estates have, during a long minority, under the careful management of Government officers, been freed from very heavy debts, with which an improvident father had left them encumbered, the moment he attains his majority and enters upon the management, borrowing three times their annual rent, at an exorbitant interest, to marry a couple of sisters, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... gold the month the Indians were paid. It came in kegs from Washington, under the escort of soldiers, to the United States Agency, and was weighed out to each red heir despoiled of land by white conquest, in his due proportion, and immediately grasped from the improvident by merchants, for a little pork, a little whiskey, a little calico. But this was an old coin with a hole in it; a jewel worn suspended from neck or ear; the precious trinket of a girl. On one side was rudely scratched the outline of ...
— The Cobbler In The Devil's Kitchen - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... most fatal to West Indian prosperity, is that exuberance of advantages which they enjoy from serenity of climate and fertility of soil—causes which, in the absence of proper stimulus to industry and improvement, have led to an improvident system of cultivation, and to a blind and ignorant adherence to ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... except the honour of a man whose interest it is to appropriate the fruits of your labours, which he can legally do. Now, in every class and profession, there are failures,—persons that are good for nothing, indolent, improvident, and thriftless. If such a man has a long lease at a low rent, he may be overwhelmed in debt, and leave his land in very bad condition. Others may imitate their aristocratic superiors in their contempt for labour and their habits of expenditure, and so get into a state of hopeless ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... were omitted, would be imperfect to the extent of misrepresentation; and it must be acknowledged that, where he loved, he loved more entirely, and more exclusively, than was well for himself. It was improvident in him to concentrate such intensity of feeling upon relations who, however deeply they were attached to him, could not always be in a position to requite him with the whole of their time, and the whole of their heart. He suffered much for that improvidence; ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... stagnant crowd of disintegrated individuals lacking any spontaneous, central, rallying point, and who, failing natural leaders, simply push and jostle each other or stand still, each according to personal, blind, and haphazard impressions—a hasty, improvident, inconsistent, superficial opinion, caught on the wing, based on vague rumors, on four or five minutes of attention given each week, and chiefly to big words imperfectly understood, two or three sonorous, commonplace phrases, of which the listeners fail to ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... birth. It so happened that, about a month previous to the date on which our story has now entered, a paralytic affection had disabled Bernardi from the duties of his calling. He had been always a social, harmless, improvident, generous fellow—living on his gains from day to day, as if the day of sickness and old age never was to arrive. Though he received a small allowance for his past services, it ill sufficed for his wants,; neither was he free from ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... turned towards his client, whose optics, besides being somewhat dazzled with ale and brandy, were speedily engaged in contemplating a half-crown which Joshua held between his finger and his thumb, saying, at the same time, 'Friend, thou art indigent and improvident. This will, well employed, procure thee sustentation of nature for more than a single day; and I will bestow it on thee if thou wilt sit here and keep me company; for neither thou nor I, friend, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... no model of virtue or manliness. He loves idleness, he has little conception of right and wrong, and he is improvident to the last degree of childishness. He is a creature,—as some of our own people will do well to keep carefully in mind,—he is a creature just forcibly released from slavery. The havoc of war has filled his heart with confused longings, and his ears with confused sounds of rights and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... soupe au vin, madam, I will degust, and gratefully.' Not only would this have been but common civility—a virtue no perfect commander is wanting in—but not to have done it would have proved him a shallow and improvident person, unfit to be trusted with the conduct of a war; for men going into a battle need sustenance and all possible support, as is proved by this, that foolish generals, bringing hungry soldiers to blows with full ones, have been defeated, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... hunting, pioneer life. Joel Renton had made money, by good luck chiefly, having held land here and there which he had got for nothing, and had then almost forgotten about it, and, when reminded of it, still held on to it with that defiant stubbornness which often possesses improvident and careless natures. He had never had any real business instinct, and to swagger a little over the land he held and to treat offers of purchase with contempt was the loud assertion of a capacity he did not possess. So it was that stubborn vanity, beneath which was his angry protest ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker

... the face broad, the forehead low, the eyes black, the cheekbones prominent, the chin retreating, the mouth large, the lips thick, and the beard scanty. In common with most of the Asiatic races, they are apt to be indolent, improvident, greedy, intemperate, servile, cruel, vain, inquisitive, superstitious, and cowardly; but individual variations from the more repulsive types are happily not rare. In public they are scrupulously polite and decorous according to their own notions of good ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... unto them,—'Verily, I say unto you, that this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury: for all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living.'" In the world's estimation nothing could be more improvident or more improper than her conduct; and I fear that few of us would have the heart to commend one who should go and do likewise. But how does our Blessed Lord judge, who judges not according to appearance, but righteous judgment? Observing ...
— Christian Devotedness • Anthony Norris Groves

... aware of the precipice, to the verge of which his improvident passion had drawn him, watched them out of the corner of his eye, uncertain how far their comprehension of the scene had gone. He trembled to think how nearly he had betrayed his secret; and took the more shame ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman

... food and trade. They might draw from the waters, which cover a very small part of the fertile valley, fish enough to support, with the nelumbium nuts, nearly the whole of the present population; but then they are lotus-eaters, and as such improvident and indolent by all rules of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... poor careless and filthy, you can obtain no good servants: if you leave them profligate, they make your sons profligate also: if you leave them tempted by want, your property is unsafe: if you leave them uneducated, reckless, improvident, you cannot get your work properly done, and have to waste time and money in watching your workmen instead of trusting them. Why, what are all poor-rates and county-rates, if you will consider, but God's plain proof to us, that the poor are members of the same body as ourselves; ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley

... these people know no restraint when they have the means of gratifying them; they have no idea of temperance or prudence, and are equally regardless of the evil resulting from excess as they are improvident in preparing for the necessities of the morrow—"sufficient (literally so to them) for the day is ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... of the many occasions when Miss Mitford writes to her trustee imploring him to sell out the small remaining fragment of her fortune, she says, 'My dear father has, years ago, been improvident, is still irritable and difficult to live with, but he is a person of a thousand virtues... there are very few half so good in this mixed world; it is my fault that this money is needed, entirely my fault, and if it be withheld, ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford

... than in a republic, and less strength than in a monarchy. A monarchy is indeed the most powerful of any, all the sinews of government being knit together, and united in the hand of the prince; but then there is imminent danger of his employing that strength to improvident or ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... community often has meager social life and lack of proper recreations; the city-dweller is made restless and improvident by an excess of opportunities for certain sorts ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson

... extent of the South Sea," says Robert Louis Stevenson, "from one tropic to another, we find traces of a bygone state of over-population, when the resources of even a tropical soil were taxed, and even the improvident Polynesian trembled for the future."[938] He calls the Gilbert atolls "warrens of men."[939] One of them, Drummond's Island, with, an area of about twenty square miles, contained a population of 10,000 in 1840, and all the atolls were ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... gain that might give them a master. The duller of those who were the life-seekers of old would have told you how some chance, trivial, unlooked-for, foiled their grand hope at the very point of fruition; some doltish mistake, some improvident oversight, a defect in the sulphur, a wild overflow in the quicksilver, or a flaw in the bellows, or a pupil who failed to replenish the fuel, by falling asleep by the furnace. The invisible foes seldom vouchsafe ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... of the villagers had already received their spring tillage; but the garden and the allotment of the Durbeyfields were behindhand. She found, to her dismay, that this was owing to their having eaten all the seed potatoes,—that last lapse of the improvident. At the earliest moment she obtained what others she could procure, and in a few days her father was well enough to see to the garden, under Tess's persuasive efforts: while she herself undertook the allotment-plot which they ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... its productions; and if they do not receive it, then it is they who are injured, and it is not the "pauper"—oh, inexpressibly wicked word!—it is the well-to-do, who are the criminal classes. It matters not in the least if the poor be improvident, or drunken, or evil in any way. Food and drink, roof and clothes, are the inalienable right of every child born into the light. If the world does not provide it freely—not as a grudging gift but as a right, as a son of the house sits down to breakfast—then is the world mad. But the world is ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies

... in the present; and, proceeding from the historic fact that the countries which in the palmy days of the Roman Empire were the granary and the wine-cellar of the world have been given over by the improvident destructiveness of man to desolation and desert, he enters into a thorough study of the fact, that, no sooner does man recede from the barbaric state than he commences a career of destructiveness, cutting off, in a manner reckless and criminally wasteful, ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... a little stumpy in build, but of graceful and vigorous bearing. They are perhaps the most courageous and intelligent of the peoples; pugnacious, but less quarrelsome than the Sea Dayak; more energetic and excitable than the Kayan; hospitable and somewhat improvident, sociable and of pleasant manners; less reserved and of more buoyant temperament than the Kayan; very loyal and obedient to their chiefs; more truthful and more to be depended upon under all circumstances than any of the other ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... personal habits and on those of his wife than on the actual amount he receives in wages. Social reform, to be effective, must be assisted in the home. The worker must aid the social reformer. Outside assistance alone will little benefit wasteful and improvident men who refuse to ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... save time, trouble, and firing, these are generally sent to the oven to be baked, the nourishing parts are evaporated and dried up, the weight is diminished nearly one third, and what is purchased with a week's earnings is only sufficient for a day or two's consumption. If instead of this improvident proceeding, a cheap and wholesome soup were at least occasionally substituted, it would banish the still more pernicious custom of drinking tea two or three times a day, for want of something more supporting ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... the passing Indian, certainly as much in a state of savage nature as the lower class of Mexicans were when Cortes first traversed these plains—with the same character, gentle and cowardly, false and cunning, as weak animals are apt to be by nature, and indolent and improvident as men are in a fine climate; ruins everywhere—here a viceroy's country palace serving as a tavern, where the mules stop to rest, and the drivers to drink pulque— there, a whole village crumbling to pieces; roofless houses, broken down walls and arches, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... was actually indispensable to make the negro work. If negroes, idlers or refugees crawling about the towns, applied to the authorities for subsistence, it was quoted as incontestably establishing the point that the negro was too improvident to take care of himself, and must necessarily be consigned to the care of a master. I heard a Georgia planter argue most seriously that one of his negroes had shown himself certainly unfit for freedom because he impudently refused ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz

... had died but recently), their aunt, a staid, elderly matron, who seemed installed as housekeeper, and a fat, careless gentleman in shirt sleeves, with a cigar in his mouth, who impressed me as an indolent and improvident poor relation of my host, as, indeed, he proved. There was present, also, the child of a neighbor, a little fair-haired girl, called Nelly, who, hearing my nationality mentioned, would not approach ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... much less any of his "protogenes." As the famous Mrs. Glass would say, in her "hand-book of cookery," if you want a delightful "curry," first catch your hare. But our ingenious professor of Jena dispenses with both the hare and the curry, in serving up his pabulum to the "protamoebA|." The improvident pabulum "evolves" its own eaters, and then, spider-like, is eviscerated by them, as was Actaeon by his own hounds. As Life, therefore, begins in the tragedy of Mount CithA|ron, it is to be hoped it will end in the delights of Artemis and her ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... industry of my worthy and excellent friend, Colonel Talbot. Forty years ago, while exploring the about-to-be province, on the staff of its governor, General Simcoe, he was struck with the beauty and fertility of this tract; and afterwards observing that, from the improvident grants of the colonial government to friends and favourites, this fertile country, if left in their hands, would continue for ages a howling wilderness, he procured from the authorities at home ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various

... writing to their friends: how peaceful, light-hearted, and obliging. They are charmed by their simplicity; they sleep among them without fear: but these notes soon change; and passing from censure to hatred, they speak of them as improvident, importunate, and instrusive; as rapacious and mischievous; then as treacherous and blood-thirsty—finally, as devils, and beasts of prey. Their appearance is offensive, their proximity obstructive: their presence renders everything insecure. Thus the muskets ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... and whom they rarely or never see—is it a wonder that they stoop to plead and whine for coppers around every carriage that traverses their country? That they fare miserably, their scanty rags and pinched faces sufficiently attest; that they are indolent and improvident I can very well believe: for when were uneducated, unskilled, hopeless vassals anything else? Italy, beautiful, bounteous land! is everywhere haggard with want and wretchedness, but these seem nowhere so general and chronic as in the Papal territories. Every political division of Italy ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... and his friend Solomon would not have been much impressed with the expenditure of a few pounds by an improvident youth; but the former was well aware that the guests of Carew of Crompton were almost without exception very wealthy men, and he judged of Richard's social position accordingly. He had no idea that his landscape-painting was any thing else than an amusement—as it was practiced by half the ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn

... brother let a veil be drawn. Suffice it to say that the banker told him that he had missed the one great chance of his life, and quoted Scripture about the ways of the improvident man to such an extent that Denison forgot himself, and said that the bank and its infernal ducks could go and be damned. Thereupon his sister-in-law (who was a clergyman's daughter, and revered the Bank as she did the Church) swooned, and his brother told him he was a heartless ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke

... learning, one leaves the dearest pleasures—solitude, books and imagination—outside with the whispering pines. I suppose I ought to find some comfort in the thought that I am laying up treasures for future enjoyment, but I am improvident enough to prefer present joy to hoarding riches ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller

... the near future held some great good fortune for him—a deadly epidemic perhaps, which would send all the people of Ballymoy flocking to his surgery, or a post under the new Insurance Act The very qualities of mind which made him improvident made him also immensely popular. Everybody liked him. Even his creditors found it hard to speak harshly to him. He owed money to Doyle; but Doyle, though as keen as any man living on getting what was due to him, refrained from hurrying Dr. O'Grady over much. He grumbled a great deal, but he ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham

... the past whom the present still regards affectionately, Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) holds a high place. At least five of his works—a novel, a poem, a play, a book of essays, a nursery story—rank as classics. He had many faults; he was vain, improvident almost beyond belief, certainly dissipated throughout a part of his life. But with all these faults he had the saving grace of humor, a kind heart that led him to share even his last penny with one in need, a genius ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... fawn nor any game unaware; who prayed permission of the Wuld before they went to hunt, and left offal for their little brothers of the Wilderness. Indians know. But Greenhow, being a business man, opined that Indians were improvident, and not being even good at his business, fouled the waters where he camped, left man traces in his trails and neglected to put ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... beside him, but this enwrapped attitude, this eloquent, still, unconscious face, which spoke of thoughts and feelings familiar only to the eye of God, seemed to lift Louis into another sphere; he knew the people kneeling about, the headlong, improvident, roystering crowd, but knew them not in this outpouring of deeper emotions than spring from the daily chase for bread ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... youth:' Robert Lloyd, the friend and imitator of Churchill—an ingenious but improvident person, who died of grief at ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... Master of Arts. After wasting his property in Italy and Spain, he returned to London to earn his bread by the pen. As a pamphleteer, as a poet, and especially as a dramatist, Greene achieved a considerable reputation. But his improvident habits and a life of constant debauchery brought his career to a close, amidst poverty and remorse, at the early age of thirty-two. He died in a drunken brawl, leaving in his works the evidence of talents and qualities which the degradation ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... for Insolvent Debtors, to the gaols, the work-houses, and the hospitals. If you are rich and childless, and want heirs, look to the same assemblages of misfortune; for all are not culpable who appear in the Bankrupt and Insolvent Lists; nor all criminal who are found in gaols; nor all improvident who are inmates of work-houses and hospitals. On the contrary, in these situations, an alloy of vice is mixed with virtue enough to afford materials for as deep tragedies as ever poet fancied or stage exhibited; and visiters ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various

... front of her and did not reply. The wind of a keen clear winter morning had put colour into her cheeks. Overhead, the creamy-yellow smoke-clouds were thinning away one by one against a pale-blue sky, and the improvident sparrows broke off from water-spout committees and cab-rank cabals to clamour of the ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... calculate upon improving very poor land without manure of some description, unless plaster will act with effect; nor is this generally the case without the land possesses naturally, some particular source of fertility, not wholly exhausted by bad or improvident tillage. ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson

... Colonel Delany, was the daughter of an officer in the British army. Mr. Raymond was the youngest son of an old, wealthy and haughty family in Dorsetshire, England. At a very early age he married the youngest sister of Colonel Delany. Having nothing but his pay, all the miseries of an improvident marriage fell upon the young couple. The same hour that gave existence to Alice, deprived her of her mother. The facilities to ambition offered by America, and the hope of distracting his grief, induced Mr. Raymond to dispose of his commission, and embark ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes

... frequently a continuous scene of gambling, brawling, and fighting, so long as the improvident trapper's money lasted. Seated around the large camp-fires, cross-legged in Indian fashion, with a blanket or buffalo-robe spread before them, groups were playing cards—euchre, seven-up, and poker, the regular mountain ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... be put to live along with me; nay, I can live, though burdened with impositions beyond what at present I labor under: but to have my liberty, which is the soul of my life, ravished from me to have my person pent up in a jail, without relief by law, and to be so adjudged,—O, improvident ancestors! O, unwise forefathers! to be so curious in providing for the quiet possession of our lands, and the liberties of parliament; and at the same time to neglect our personal liberty, and let us lie in prison, and that during pleasure, without redress ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume

... journeyman tailor named Henry Somers was the successful wooer. A year or two after the wedding, Mr. and Mrs. Somers emigrated and came to the city of New York, settling over on the east side, about Oliver street. Somers was lazy, improvident and a tippler, and after a short sojourn in America Mrs. Somers found herself a young and blooming widow, with one child, a girl, to provide for. She had all along industriously supplemented her husband's earnings by her needle. She was now wholly dependent upon ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... and improvident births," admitted the publisher. "Hasty births, premature births, secret births, morganatic births, illegitimate births, and every variety of infelicitous intrusion upon your planet. The rash are born too early, the cautious too late; some even repent on the very brink of birth ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... her "sanctimonious freaks." Sometimes she affected not to notice the impediments, sometimes frankly acknowledged their magnitude and climbed right over them, on to her work. Among the factory operatives she found the greatest need of ameliorating touches of every kind. Improvident, illiterate, in some cases, almost brutalized, she occasionally found herself puzzled as to the proper plan to pursue; but her womanly heart, like the hidden jewelled levers of a watch, guided ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... undergoing a revulsion of feeling. His state of mind was like that of an improvident debtor who, while knowing that the note must be paid some time, does not quite realize it for a while after an extension. At last the cigar was finished. There had been ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott

... from home a supply of oil in separate vessels, found it easy to make the flame of their torches burn up as brightly as ever; but those who had neglected to provide such a supply could not with all their efforts revive the dead or dying light. "Give us," said the five improvident maidens, "give us of your oil, for our lamps are gone out." The more thoughtful, and therefore more fortunate watchers, while they pitied their sisters, were afraid to part with any portion of their own stores, lest they should be left in the same hapless condition ere the ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... appropriately be called a bread-fruit, since, during the long winter months, it furnishes bread to many tribes of Indians; indeed, not bread alone, but subsistence—as it is the only food these improvident people have.' ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... indeed, he knew not whether any degree of explicitness would confute the charges that were made against him; whether, by trampling on his sacred promise, he should not multiply his perils instead of lessening their number. A difficult part had been assigned to him; by much too difficult for one young, improvident, and ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... to be rented, which was accordingly done December 5, to Nicholas A. Den and Daniel Hill for $1200 per year, the property being valued at $20,288. Padre Duran was growing old, and the Indians were becoming more careless and improvident; so, when Pico wrote him to give up the Mission lands and property to the renters, he did so willingly, though he stated that the estate owed him $1000 for money he had advanced for the use of the Indians. The Indians were to receive one third of the rental, but there is no record ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James

... neither lazy nor superstitious, appear too big for your abilities to wield? Had you no way of using the men, but by converting monks into pensioners? Had you no way of turning the revenue to account, but through the improvident resource of a spendthrift sale? If you were thus destitute of mental funds, the proceeding is in its natural course. Your politicians do not understand their trade; and therefore they sell ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... created, "for the purpose," as old Lord Ardmore was fond of fulminating, of "pillaging loyal Peter in order to pamper rebel Paul!" The opinion of very old, and intolerant, and indignant peers cannot always be taken seriously, but it is surely permissible to feel a regret for kindly, improvident Dick Talbot-Lowry, his youth and his income departing together, and the civic powers that he had once exercised, reft from him. Such power as he had had, he had exercised honourably and with reverent confidence in precedent, and when he had damned Parnell, and had ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... said firmly. "How badly we manage, how improvident we are, how Papa ought to rouse himself and I ought to manage better, and how foolish it is to let the boys go into the Army instead of banks and things ... And yet, you know, it hasn't cost much for ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker

... novel—his plots seldom are—and, in parts as well as plots, any one who cared for rag-picking and hole-picking might find a good deal of indebtedness. It is the old jealousy of a clever and unscrupulous self-made man towards an improvident seigneur and his somewhat robustious son. The seigniorial improvidence, however, is not of the usual kind, for M. le Marquis de Clairefont wastes his substance, and gets into his enemy's debt and power, by costly experiments ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... whole city has been formed into a line of skirmishers. You are startled by a noise on the front pavement, which sounds like an energetic drummer beating the long roll on a barrel-head; and you have an indistinct idea that some improvident urchin (up since the dawn) has just ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong

... everybody as a generous, warm-hearted, and harmless man; but he was thought to be equally improvident. The poor had a constant friend in him. No beggar ever asked the Captain for a shilling without getting it, if the Captain had a shilling anywhere about him. Sometimes he had plenty of money, yet when at home he always lived in a frugal, homely way. Great was ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes

... idle you know, they are lazy, they are improvident. They are not content in the station in which it has pleased God to place them. I know all about these people. They are turbulent, they are rebellious; they want to get their good, kind landlords out of the country, and to seize on their property. It is horrid you know, horrid!" and the little old ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall

... been for Ferdinand's scrapes they would not have known each other. Nor was Lord Catchimwhocan passed over. Ferdinand Armine was not the man to neglect a friend or to forget a good service; and he has conferred on that good-natured, though somewhat improvident, young nobleman, more substantial kindness than the hospitality which is always cheerfully extended to him. When Ferdinand repaid Mr. Bond Sharpe his fifteen hundred pounds, he took care that the interest ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli

... cicatrized that you ought to speak this language at this time, to men who are too much disposed to think that in this very emancipation they have been saved from their own Parliament by the humanity of their Sovereign? Or, do you wish to prepare them for the revocation of these improvident concessions? Do you think it wise or humane at this moment to insult them, by sticking up in a pillory the man who dared to stand forth as their advocate? I put it to your oaths; do you think that a blessing of that kind, that a victory ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... resignation—would the world which was created to receive the beings which we now are have been this unpleasant little park for small game, this salad patch, this wooded, rocky and spherical kitchen garden where your improvident Providence had destined us to live naked, in caves or under trees, nourished on the flesh of slaughtered animals, our brethren, or on raw vegetables nourished by the ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... of sick, helpless people to our hospitals and dispensaries... from them also comes a host of paupers and charity seekers. Most terrible of all... the fact that, mingled with the drunken, the dissolute, the improvident, the diseased, dwell the great mass of the respectable workingmen of ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... first won my regard. I sought his acquaintance, found him easy of access, friendly and communicative, and always anxious to oblige every one as far as lay in his power. Commanding an excellent income, he was always ready to assist the improvident who had expended theirs, and with such a disposition, you may be certain that the calls upon his purse were by no means few. He formed a strong attachment to me, and we usually spent most of ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie

... their usual thoughtless improvidence, threw about their money so carelessly, that, soon after their arrival, every article of household consumption doubled and trebled in price, the remuneration for labour rising in proportion. This improvident expenditure has had the effect of making the people discontented. Imagining our resources to be inexhaustible, they do not know how much to ask for their commodities or their services, and it will require great firmness and discretion, on the part of the persons ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts

... has a ditch all round, and a bamboo-fence inside the outer walls. It is of great extent, but not formidable against well-provided troops. The greater part of the houses in the town are in ruins, and Seobuksh has the reputation of being a reckless and improvident landholder. He is said not only to take from his tenants higher rates of rent than he ought, but to extort from them very often a property tax, highly and capriciously rated. This is what the people call the bhalmansae, of which ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... anchors himself to a little pebble to prevent being dashed about by the waves; of birds, who change their dwellings when winter draws nigh; of beasts, who adapt their lair to the time of year. And shall man alone be improvident? Shall he not imitate that higher Providence by which the ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... George as he was to promote the British policy of building up the Canadian territories as a counterpoise to the United States. While there was undoubtedly some distress among immigrants of the improvident class, those who came here with the determination to work generally found work before long at much better compensation than they could have earned in England, while those who proceeded to the new regions of the West had no difficulty in ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... without the absolute unanimity of all the States. Does not the thirteenth article of the confederation expressly require, that no alteration shall be made without the unanimous consent of all the States? Can any thing in theory be more perniciously improvident and injudicious than this submission of the will of the majority to the most trifling minority? Have not experience and practice actually manifested this theoretical inconvenience to be extremely impolitic? Let me ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... even my father, had any influence—good influence, of course, I mean—over him, except his mother, who was of my family; and also a woman who lived with her—a sort of governess—aunt, he called her. The way of it was this: Captain St. Leger had a younger brother, who made an improvident marriage with a Scotch girl when they were both very young. They had nothing to live on except what the reckless Lancer gave them, for he had next to nothing himself, and she was "bare"—which is, I understand, the indelicate Scottish way of expressing lack of ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker

... I believe, have adopted my plan of settlement in Huaheine, if I had not so explicitly refused to employ force in restoring him to his father's possessions. Whether the remains of his European wealth, which after all his improvident waste, was still considerable, will be more prudently administered by him, or whether the steps I took, as already explained, to insure him protection in Huaheine, shall have proved effectual, must be left to the decision of future navigators of this ocean, with whom it cannot but be ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... promised me he would, the last time he was here." She held Susy at arms' length, beaming upon her with blinking short-sighted eyes: the same old dishevelled Grace, so careless of her neglected beauty and her squandered youth, so amused and absent-minded and improvident, that the boisterous air of the New Hampshire bungalow seemed to enter with her into ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton

... the bailiffs were after him, and abused Mr. Addison for selling Dick's country-house. And yet Dick in the spunging-house, or Dick in the Park, with his four mares and plated harness, was exactly the same gentle, kindly, improvident, jovial Dick Steele: and yet Mr. Addison was perfectly right in getting the money which was his, and not giving up the amount of his just claim, to be spent by Dick upon champagne and fiddlers, laced clothes, fine furniture, and parasites, Jew and Christian, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray



Words linked to "Improvident" :   shortsighted, short, provident, imprudent, myopic, thriftless, unforethoughtful, unforesightful, wasteful, ill-considered, improvidence



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