"Small change" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... keys, his small change and his sovereign purse, his silver cigarette-case—all the articles, in fact, that he was accustomed to stuff into his pockets—with one exception, were where he had left them. But the leather envelope containing the portrait ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... that," Fox said. "The man is a fool ... But anyhow Mersch don't count for much in this particular show. He's no money in it even, so you may put your pride in your pocket, or wherever you keep it. It's all right. Straight. He's only the small change." ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... worn little boots, and his trousers were patched. This was all the better for Cecile's hidden treasure, and as she was a wise little girl, she took the hint given her by the coffee-man, and not only hid her money, but next time she wanted anything offered very small change. This was rendered easy, for the man at the coffee-stall had given her mostly sixpences ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... that the dominant note in table-talk should be light and humorous is going too far; but conversation between dinner-companions should tend strongly to the humorous, to the light, to the small change of ideas. There should be an adroit intermixing of light and serious talk. I noted once with keen interest a shrewd mingling of serious talk and small talk at a dinner given to a distinguished ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... appears, made now a small change in the site of his capital, but did not move to Fang, ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... in Shakspeare's characters, as in his language, there is surplusage, superabundance; the measure is heaped and running over. From his sheer wealth, he is often the most undramatic of writers. He is so frequently greater than his occasion, he has no small change to suit emergencies, and we have guineas in place of groats. Romeo is more than a mortal lover, and Mercutio more than a mortal wit; the kings in the Shakspearian world are more kingly than earthly sovereigns; Rosalind's laughter was never heard save in the Forest of Arden. His madmen ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... is like small change; it flows A thousand different ways, and throws Thoughts into circulation, Of trivial value each, but which Combin'd, make social converse ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various
... necessarily distant, when the balance of expediency may turn in favour of its adoption. They suggest "that some need may become felt which can only be satisfied by proportional representation in some form or another," and I do not think I misrepresent their attitude in believing that a very small change of circumstances might suffice to precipitate a reversal of their present conclusion. All who are familiar with the conduct of political controversies must recognize the situation thus revealed. Again and again have proposals of reform ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... which perhaps would otherwise not have occurred. I considered how little man is, yet, in his own mind, how great. He is lord and master of all things, yet scarce can command any thing. What well laid, and what better executed scheme of his is there, but what a small change of nature is entirely able to defeat and abolish. If but one element happens to encroach a little upon another, what confusion may it not create in his affairs, what havoc, what destruction: the servant destined to his use, confines, menaces, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... housewives feeding poultry. Willie Todd, the best man, who had never come out so strong in his life before, slipped through the back window, while the crowd, led on by Kitty McQueen, seethed in front, and making a bolt for it to the "'Sosh," was back in a moment with a handful of small change. "Dinna toss ower lavishly at first," the smith whispered me nervously, as we followed Jess and Willie into ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... The servant—a colored man—told the judge that there was no occasion for cutting down the tree, but just to back the buggy. Pleased at the good sense of the fellow, Judge Marshall told him that he would leave him something at the inn hard by, where he intended to stop, having then no small change. In due time the man applied, and a dollar was handed him. Being asked if he knew who it was that gave him the dollar, he replied: "No, sir: I concluded he was a gentleman by his leaving the money, but I think he is the biggest fool I ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... belongs to the beauty of that nation. The extreme delicacy of his features and the varied animation of his countenance made him appear even younger than his years—an illusion which the total absence of everything studied in his manners seemed to confirm. Time had wrought no small change in me, alike in mind and spirits; but in the case of O'Connor it seemed to have lost its power to alter. His gaiety was undamped, his generosity unchilled; and though the space which had intervened between our parting and reunion ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... went quietly to the bench, took up his overcoat, put it on without a word, and went out of the hut. He did not find the forester in the next room; there was no one there. He took fifty kopecks in small change out of his pocket and put them on the table for his night's lodging, the candle, and the trouble he had given. Coming out of the hut he saw nothing but forest all round. He walked at hazard, not knowing ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... forget the Mark Twain who kissed the Hawaiian stranger for his mother's sake, the while robbing him of his small change; who was so struck by the fine points of his Honolulan horse that he hung his hat on one of them; who rode glaciers as gaily as he rode Mexican plugs, and found diverting programmes of the Roman Coliseum, in the dust and rubbish of ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... seasons; he the man of definite conquering tasks, the familiar of wide horizons, and in his very repose holding aloof from these agglomerations of units in which one loses one's importance even to oneself. They had no common conversational small change. They had to use the great pieces of general ideas, but they exchanged them trivially. It was no serious commerce. Perhaps she had not much of that coin. Nothing significant came from her. It could not be said that she had received ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... climate, than in Europe.[478] The guinea-fowl has become thoroughly feral in Jamaica and in St. Domingo,[479] and has diminished in size; the legs are black, whereas the legs of the aboriginal African bird are said to be grey. This small change is worth notice on account of the often-repeated statement that all feral animals invariably revert in every character to their ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... me to be careful my father placed a little small change in my charge and required me to keep an account of it. He also entrusted me with the duty of winding his valuable gold watch for him. He overlooked the risk of damage in his desire to train me to a sense of responsibility. When we went out together for ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... of tobacco. Failing any or all of these, it was in vain that the Factor displayed before them the wares of John Bull, Uncle Sam, or Johnny Canuck, or any seductive lure made in Germany. Ig-ly-o-bok and Nan-a-sook-tok bought what they found to their liking, took small change out of two silver-fox skins, and put the remaining six pelts back into the wooden box which formed at once their savings bank and letter of credit for the season to come. The hungry-eyed H.B. man confided to us that two of these ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... so they must; very proper indeed!' rejoined Miss Knag with that sort of half-sigh, which, accompanied by two or three slight nods of the head, is pity's small change in general society; 'and that's what I very often tell my brother, when our servants go away ill, one after another, and he thinks the back-kitchen's rather too damp for 'em to sleep in. These sort of people, I tell him, are ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... could not be made at the appointed time, because there were not sufficient coining machines; and as the few new cents that did circulate, were said not to contain their real value, the distress became greater than ever. The merchants refused to receive copper, and there was no silver or small change. In the mean time, in many of the large haciendas, the proprietors have given checks to the workmen, with which they have been able to buy what they required at the shops, which ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... when it became profitable to withdraw the dollar-pieces and substitute gold, it gave exactly the same profit to withdraw two halves or four quarters in silver. For this reason all the subsidiary silver had gone out of circulation, and there was no "small change" in the country. The legislation of 1853 rectified this error: (1) by reducing the quantity of pure silver in a dollar's worth of subsidiary coin to 345.6 grains. By making so much less an amount of silver equal to a dollar ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... and made a second exposure, which was no better than the first. Had there been time, I would have made a third to be sure, for plates are no object when a study is at all worth while. As a rule each succeeding effort enables you to make some small change for the better, and you must figure on always having enough to lose one through a defective plate or ill luck in development, and yet end with a picture ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... scrubber, if small change is n't pretty much the contents; the fourpences and dimes lie pretty near together, friend Bill." "But," continued Harry, "'t is best to secrete yourself, box and all, till the law dogs are silenced. If they come here, I will throw them a ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... himself on the sidewalk with his wife, rejoicing in the knowledge that he had at least justified his existence and joined the ranks o' canny married men—the while he strove to appear as scornful of the future as he had been fearful of it five minutes before. He jingled less than three dollars in small change in his vest pocket, and while he strove to appear jaunty, away inside of him he was a worried man. ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... and almost daily drain of small change for liquor, had nearly exhausted all the money in the house long before the winter was over. The accommodating landlord seemed to discover, as by instinct, this condition of things, and encouraged Warburton ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... have seen the expression of her face in the darkness it would have satisfied him that she did not receive that style of compliment like many of the belles of his acquaintance, who would take the small change of flattery with the smiling ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... a double row of glistening ivories. "No, indeedy! Hawss got to show me befo' I leggo my small change! This Faro, he can't seem to win no mile races, so the boss he thinks he might do betteh in a long one. But me, I ain't bettin' on ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... perhaps circuitously expresses it, go to walk on horseback on a donkey,—dar um passeio a cavallo n'um burro. The beggars, indeed, are numerous; but one's expenditures are always happily limited by the great scarcity of small change. A half-cent, however, will buy you blessings enough for a lifetime, and you can find an investment in almost any direction. You visit some church or cemetery; you ask a question or two of a lounger in a black cloak, with an air like an exiled Stuart, and, as you ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... melting ice. The exact value of this constant is unknown; but the mean value as determined by Joule and Thomson, in their celebrated experiments with porous plugs, was 492.66 deg. F. This value would slightly change his result. It will be seen from the above that a small change in the constants used may affect by several units the computed value of the mechanical equivalent. I have computed it, using 1.406 for the ratio of the specific heat of air at constant pressure to that at constant volume, 491.13 deg. F. as the temperature of melting ice above the zero of the air ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... doubt about Milly Flaxman's goodness; in fact, some of the girls at Ascham complained that it "slopped over." Her clothes were made on hygienic principles which she treated as a branch of morals, and she often refused to offer the small change of polite society because it weighed somewhat light in the scales of truth. But these were foibles that the young people's friends were sure Ian Stewart would never notice. As to him, although only four and thirty, he was already a distinguished man. A scholar, a philosopher, ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... dissipation, and your passion or you will perish in it. Intemperance, my dear fellow, commands all forms of death. Does she not wield the thunderbolt of apoplexy? Apoplexy is a pistol-shot that does not miscalculate. Orgies are lavish in all physical pleasures; is not that the small change for opium? And the riot that makes us drink to excess bears a challenge to mortal combat with wine. That butt of Malmsey of the Duke of Clarence's must have had a pleasanter flavor than Seine mud. When we sink gloriously ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... direction. If we're allowed to develop, to reinvest our profits, we'll become the nucleus of independent asterite enterprise. If, on the other hand, we're wiped out by an unfortunate accident, there's no nucleus; and a small change in the banking laws is all that's needed to prevent others ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson
... On the dressing table, together with a bunch of keys and some small change, lay a brown leather pocketbook. Evidently Sir Thomas did not share Lady Blunt's impression that the world was waiting for a chance to rob him as soon as ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... Turkey on the whole are moderate, but the Turkish coinage is somewhat confusing, and even a Scotch Jew, who had been brought up in New York, would find it a matter of difficulty to hold his own with the unspeakable Turk when it came to a question of small change. ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... sorry, but I have no small change—nothing but sovereigns and half crowns. Could any ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... Sam took his small change from his pocket to give his son Tom money enough to buy a half-bushel of corn-meal in the village. As he held a few pieces of silver in one hand, touching them rapidly with the forefinger of the other, ...
— All He Knew - A Story • John Habberton
... somewhere in a back room, till he thrust him on the platform at the matinee. But Lebyadkin got drunk quickly and unexpectedly. Then came the scandalous scene you know of, and then they got him home more dead than alive, and Liputin niched away the two hundred roubles, leaving him only small change. But it appears unluckily that already that morning Lebyadkin had taken that two hundred roubles out of his pocket, boasted of it and shown it in undesirable quarters. And as that was just what Fedka was expecting, and as he had heard something at Kirillov's ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... post-office order for five bob, enough to prove that he was kept in mind, enough to keep him in hope, beer, and tobacco. 'But what would you have?' thought Morris; and ruefully poured into his hand a half-crown, a florin, and eightpence in small change. For a man in Morris's position, at war with all society, and conducting, with the hand of inexperience, a widely ramified intrigue, the sum was already a derision. John would have to be doing; no mistake of that. 'But then,' asked the hell-like voice, ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... arrived first, and Jurgis found him examining the "swag." There was a gold watch, for one thing, with a chain and locket; there was a silver pencil, and a matchbox, and a handful of small change, and finally a cardcase. This last Duane opened feverishly—there were letters and checks, and two theater-tickets, and at last, in the back part, a wad of bills. He counted them—there was a twenty, five tens, four fives, and three ones. Duane drew a long ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... the cleverest; a little, perhaps, too much japanned by preferment in the church and the tuition of youth, as well as inoculated with the disease of domestic felicity, besides being over-run with fine feelings about woman and constancy (that small change of Love, which people exact so rigidly, receive in such counterfeit coin, and repay in baser metal); but, otherwise, a very worthy man, who has lately got a pretty wife, and (I suppose) a child by this time. Pray ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... entered the narrow gate of the vast city of more than a million souls. Immediately we were greeted by the "wailers" and lepers,—this was my first sight of the loathsome leprosy. Our guide had supplied himself with a quantity of small change. Twenty-five cents of our money made about a quart of their small change. A moment later we met the funeral cortege of a rich merchant. First came wailers and then men beating on drums; then sons of the deceased dressed in white ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... parents wished him to make a figure in the world, and only blamed himself for his failure, magnanimously forgetting that they had crushed out the faculties which enable a man to mint the small change of every-day society, in the exclusive cultivation of such as fit him for smelting its ponderous ingots. With that merciful blindness which alone prevents all our lives from becoming a horror of nerveless self-reproach, ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... direction of uptown. "Probably Madison Square Garden. You could see it from here easily if there weren't about two thousand buildings in the way including the Empire State." He was wondering if they had the right place. "This calls for a small change ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... 'What amount of small change, Missis,' he said, with an abstracted air, after a little meditation, 'might you call a ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... neatness and dispatch. Their work was expedited for them by reason that already they knew where you carried your valuables. Once Marr ran his swift and practiced fingers over your body he knew where your watch was, your wallet, your purse for small change, your ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... the futility of differing with the one man who had it in his power to make me comfortable; and with whose help it was possible that I might eventually escape from the crater. I gave him all the money in my possession, Rs. 9-8-5—nine rupees eight annas and five pie—for I always keep small change as bakshish when I am in camp. Gunga Dass clutched the coins, and hid them at once in his ragged loin-cloth, his expression changing to something diabolical as he looked round to assure himself that no one had ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... medley is commoner than people think. Dinah, who was ridiculous from the perversity of her cleverness, had really great qualities of soul, but circumstances did not bring these rarer powers to light, while a provincial life debased the small change of her wit from day to day. Monsieur de la Baudraye, on the contrary, devoid of soul, of strength, and of wit, was fated to figure as a man of character, simply by pursuing a plan of conduct which he was ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... trade coins were put out by coffee-house keepers and other tradesmen in the seventeenth century as evidence of an amount due, as stated thereon, by the issuer to the holder. Tokens originated because of the scarcity of small change. They were of brass, copper, pewter, and even leather, gilded. They bore the name, address, and calling of the issuer, the nominal value of the piece, and some reference to his trade. They were readily redeemed, on presentation, at their face value. They were passable in ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... pays a penny for a postage stamp. When he has paid it, he is simply allowed to take his own property where he wishes to take it, and do with it what he wishes to do. It is quite likely that this octroi may have something to do with the disinclination of the common people in France to part with small change as readily as do the Americans, and even the English. They must always have 'money in the pocket' if they want to bring a sausage and a bottle of beer through a 'barrier,' whereas an American is never called upon to pay cash down to his Government except at a custom-house when he returns to ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... wor young, in my ears? and your step that 'ud not bend the flower of the field—Kathleen, I can't, indeed I can't, bear to think of what you wor, nor of what you are now, when in the coorse of age and natur, but a small change ought to be upon you! Sure I ought to make every struggle to take you and these sorrowful crathurs out of the state ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... taking lodgers, washing, or by any other means which they can find. All must live on insufficient food; and this, with constant exposure to the weather and enforced idleness much of the time, is a constant temptation to drinking-habits. Beer-shops are numerous near the cab-stands; and the small change in the cabman's pocket often goes into their coffers, when it should be saved for the poor wife and ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... fellow I had come to me recommended as one of the best bar-keepers in New Orleans; he was posted up in all the fancy drinks and fancy names, he wore fancy clothes and had a fancy dog, and I fancied pretty soon that the rascal had taken a fancy to my small change, so I discharged him ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... matters of the people are conducted in this way. They have gold in rods which they weigh, and they reckon its value by its weight in saggi, but they have no coined money. Their small change again is made in this way. They have salt which they boil and set in a mould [flat below and round above],[NOTE 4] and every piece from the mould weighs about half a pound. Now, 80 moulds of this salt are worth one saggio ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... snatches of song, joked with the horse, and when the horse nickered laughed a young horse-laugh to keep him company. It did me good to see the rascal so cheery. I gave him an extra shilling at Braendhagen for his lively spirit, at which he grinned all over wider than ever, put the small change in his pocket, and with his red night-cap in one hand made a dodge of his head at me, as if snapping at a fly, and then held out his spare hand to give me a shake. Of course I ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... become lost to view, and business houses resorted to the use of their own notes as a convenience. The government stamps were not well adapted to circulate as currency, and they soon gave way to notes of handsome design which came into universal use as the "small change" of the country. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... realised truth, warming always and inspiring the hearts of our preachers and giving confidence and authority to their word. The oft-quoted prayer, "Lord, give us a good conceit of ourselves," might well be offered with some small change of terms. We do need a "good conceit" of our office. From such a conceit so many great thoughts would flow, such a sense of the importance of our task! We should hear less complaint concerning "poor appointments"; we should hear less criticism ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... be ashamed to set down all he poured out to me in this beggarly vein, or the very short and grudging answers that I made to him. There were times when I was tempted to stop his mouth with some small change; but whether it was from shame or pride—whether it was for my own sake or Catriona's—whether it was because I thought him no fit father for his daughter, or because I resented that grossness of immediate falsity that clung about the man himself—the thing was clean beyond me. And I was still being ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... introduced by the president of the club, who, quoting from the Mark Twain autobiography, recalled the day when the distinguished writer came to New York with $3 in small change in his pockets and a $10 bill sewed in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... what it is—if people can't talk they had better sell their tongue to the surgeons and live only through their eyes. What's the use of existing without talk—ay, and small talk too. Small talk is (as somebody I believe says, although I am not certain, but no matter) the small change of society, and who hasn't the small change, ten chances to one hasn't the large. However, we'll change ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... the match-box and the bag refused to fill up; after three weeks of the most rigid economy they contained but eighteen dollars and some small change. What was that compared with four hundred? Trina told herself that she must have her money in hand. She longed to see again the heap of it upon her work-table, where she could plunge her hands into it, her face ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... public house where these rascals congregate; and, sure enough, there was your fine gentleman partaking of a good dinner washed down by a bottle of good wine at your expense. Your gold-piece is safe and one of the dollars. He used the other and the small change for his refreshments. Here, take your pocketbook, and I wish to say that there are not many grown people who could observe and describe so well the ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... to know a friend? Certainly not by the duration of acquaintance. Neither can friendship be bought or sold by service rendered. Nor can it be coined into acts of gallantry or phrases of flattery. It has no part in the small change of courtesy. It is outside all these, containing them all and superior to ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward |
