"Prodigal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you left such a resolve till now? Why, like that other prodigal, have you waited till everything else has failed, till your own resources and cunning have been exhausted to the last dregs, before you turn and ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... Haman, saith in his heart, To whom would the king delight to do honour more than to myself? Where is the man that so pleaseth God, and, consequently, that in equity and reason should be beloved of God like me? Thus like the prodigal's brother, he pleadeth, saying, "Lo, these many years do I serve thee; neither transgressed I at any time thy commandments," Luke xv. 29. O brave Pharisee! but go on in thine oration—"Nor yet ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... then a good and dear wife to me, because I was to her a good, just, and faithful husband. What she would have been had she married a harsh, envious, careless man—a profligate, a prodigal, a drunkard, or a tyrant—is another question, and one which I once propounded to her. Her answer, given ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... upon the poor, all that they in their ignorance and inexperience of values accept without complaint, fancying they are getting money's worth and never dreaming they are more extravagant than the most prodigal of the rich. However, as their poverty gives them no choice, their ignorance saves them from futilities of angry discontent. Susan had bought this dress because she had to have another dress and could ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... measure also (and with reservations), and it would have been impossible to him, of all men, to confess himself beaten, and return to them for assistance of any kind. He could never have enacted the part of the prodigal son. He knew this in earlier days, when husks were for the most part all he had to sustain him. But the mind requires not even the material husk, it lives on better food than that, and in his case mind had triumphed over body, ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... said Mrs Prothero submissively; for Owen, though a prodigal, was the eldest son, and generally ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... the girl would be found improved from these years of discipline and training, and be rational and like other people. Wherefore he came home one dry dull day in October, and the neighborhood welcomed him, if not as their prodigal returned, yet as their lunatic restored ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... pounds, only a hundred pounds; a bagatelle, a thing that to many men was as small an affair as a stray sixpence; and here was this man, as good, so to speak, as any—well educated, full of gifts and accomplishments, well born, well connected, not a prodigal nor open sinner, losing himself in the very blackness of darkness, feeling that a kind of moral extinction was the only prospect before him, for want of this little sum. It seemed incredible even to himself, as ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... recovered, and new, downy hair clothed the wounds and the scratches on his muzzle and throat. Sleek and strong once more, he was welcomed as a penitent prodigal by the relenting vixen, and, having in the period of his solitary wanderings learned much about the habits of the woodland folk, was doubtless able to assist his mother in the ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... hall at Harby was justly celebrated in Oxfordshire and in the neighboring counties as one of the loveliest examples of the rich domestic architecture which adorned the age of Elizabeth. "That prodigal bravery in building," which Camden commends, made no fairer display than at Harby which had been designed by the great architect Thorp. Of a Florentine favor externally, it was internally a magnificent illustration of what Elizabethan decorators could do, and the great hall gave the note ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... at once. Szilard hustled the rediscovered "prodigal son" off the boards and never let him stop for an instant till he had got him safe and sound into his own private room. There he embraced him again, held him at arms' length and had a good look at him. The lad seemed to be twenty years old at the very least, yet really ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... the plain; Some did the song, and some the choir maintain, Beneath a laurel shade, where mighty Po Mounts up to woods above, and hides his head below. Here patriots live, who, for their country's good, In fighting fields, were prodigal of blood: Priests of unblemish'd lives here make abode, And poets worthy their inspiring god; And searching wits, of more mechanic parts, Who grac'd their age with new-invented arts: Those who to worth their bounty did extend, And those who knew that bounty to commend. ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... that, sooner or later, these riches, so laboriously amassed by the miser, will almost inevitably shower magnificences of all sorts; for the proverb says: A miserly father makes a prodigal son." ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... have attained the prodigal fulness of thought and imagery which distinguishes this poem, and especially the last canto, without his style ever becoming overloaded, seldom even confused, is perhaps one of the greatest marvels of the whole production. The songs ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... over the Plover Slough to see Mrs. Paine. She noticed the quantity of machinery which stood in the yard, some under cover of the big shingled shed, and some of it sitting out in the snow, gray and weather-beaten. The yard was littered, untidy, prodigal, wasteful—every sort of machine had evidently been bought and used for a while, then discarded. But within doors there was a bareness that struck Pearl's heart with pity. The entrance at the front of the house was banked high with snow, and evidently had not been ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... and situation of hundreds of quadroon females in this city, soon attracted my attention, and deserve notice. I saw numbers of them not only at the bazaars or shops making purchases, but riding in splendid carriages through the streets. So prodigal are these poor deluded creatures of their money, that, although slaves and liable to immediate sale at the caprice of their keepers, they have often been known to spend in one afternoon 200 dollars in a shopping excursion. ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... prodigal in her gifts to my father beyond measure, and had sown the seeds of verbal criticism as deep within him, as she had done the seeds of all other knowledge—so that he had got out his penknife, and was trying experiments upon the sentence, to see if he could not scratch some better sense into ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... power in the eloquence of forgiving love than in the terrors of retribution; hence, with tears and burning sentiments of sympathy for the erring children of men, he led his hearers as it were by the hand to the Father of the prodigal—to that Jesus who forgave and ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... viewing. We could not but compare this abode with the President's house, and certainly, so far as taste and elegance are concerned, the comparison is entirely to the disadvantage of us Americans. It is easy to write unmeaning anathemas against prodigal expenditures, and extorting the hard earnings of the poor, on such occasions, but I do not know that the castle of Biberich was erected by any means so foul. The general denunciation of everything ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... loneliness was upon me, and a consciousness of the uncandid and cruel turn I had done my father brought me almost to the verge of suicide. On Sunday morning I entered a church in Toronto, and tears flowed down my face as I heard the minister read the parable of the Prodigal Son. It seemed to me as a voice from home, and I determined to go to my father. Without hesitating, or stopping an hour, I took all the money I had to pay my way, and in about six days afterward, sitting beside the driver on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... principle of all the actions of a young man's life; a love as high, as pure as the skies when blue; a love without hope and to which men bind themselves because it can never deceive; a love that is prodigal of unchecked enjoyment, especially at an age when the heart is ardent, the imagination keen, and the eyes of a man see ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... Estimates—especially the latter—point by point, and stubbornly hampered the most necessary military provision, on whom, little as they intended or foresaw it, a tragic responsibility for the prolongation of the war, and the prodigal loss of life it involved, must always rest. Lord Haldane, indeed during his years of office as the War Minister of the Liberal Government, made a gallant fight for the Army. To him we owe the Expeditionary Force, the Territorials, the organisation of the General ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with pleasure, and put them in the place of the violets which before had perfumed her bosom. I could not help thinking about my old mathematical master. I did not then see any difference between him and his pupil, than that which exists between a frugal man and a prodigal, little thinking that he of the two who seemed to calculate the better, actually calculated the worse. The luncheon went off merrily. Very soon, seated in a little drawing-room newly decorated, before a cheerful fire which gave warmth and ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... the faults of young men are often grave and serious, as gluttony, and robbing their fathers, and dice, and revellings, and drinking-bouts, and deflowering of maidens, and seducing of married women. Such outbreaks ought to be carefully checked and curbed. For that prime of life is prodigal in pleasure, and frisky, and needs a bridle, so that those parents who do not strongly check that period, are foolishly, if unawares, giving their youths license for vice.[34] Sensible parents, therefore, ought during all that period to guard and watch and ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... nothin' on earth an Indian can do as well as a white man, given the same chance to learn it. Indians know the outdoors because they have to know it to live. The desert's no prodigal mother. Her sons have to rustle right smart to keep their tummies satisfied. If the 'Paches and the Kiowas didn't know how to cut sign an' read it, how to hunt an' fish an' follow a trail, they'd all be in their happy huntin' grounds long ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... are absolutely without a decent friend, others will have, on that higher level of respectability they once occupied, some relative, or friend, or employer, who occasionally thinks of them, and who, if only satisfied that a real change has taken place in the prodigal, will not only be willing, but delighted, to ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... uttered. In some way or other I ought to take some notice of them. To assert myself thus traduced is not vanity or arrogance. It is a demand of justice; it is a demonstration of gratitude. If I am unworthy, the ministers are worse than prodigal. On that hypothesis, I perfectly agree with ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... thriving trade; the proprietors of the two rival boarding-houses—the "Wee Drop" and the "Mariner's Home"—hasten down to the landing to secure lodgers; and the female population of Anchor Lane turn out to a woman, for a ship fresh from sea is always full of possible husbands and long-lost prodigal sons. ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... must be admitted, was by no means an easy one. The ablest statesman might have shrunk from coping with the financial difficulties that beset her. The crown was almost hopelessly involved. Henry the Second had in the course of a dozen years accumulated, by prodigal gifts and by needless wars, a debt—enormous for that age—of forty-two millions of francs, besides alienating the crown lands and raising by taxation a larger sum of money than had been collected in eighty years previous.[981] The Venetian ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... of many a desperate battle; there was Sir Martin Frobisher, one of the earliest explorers of the Arctic seas in search of that North-West Passage which is still the darling object of England's boldest mariners. There was the high-admiral of England, Lord Howard of Effingham, prodigal of all things in his country's cause, and who had recently had the noble daring to refuse to dismantle part of the fleet, though the Queen had sent him orders to do so, in consequence of an exaggerated report that the enemy had been driven back and ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... father's arrest on a charge of horse and cattle-stealing, and Tom, the prodigal, turned up unexpectedly. He was different from his father and eldest brother. He had an open good-humoured face, and was very kind-hearted; but was subject to peculiar fits of insanity, during which he did wild and foolish things for the ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... half-remembered, half-fabulous oriental scene. The romance of English rule in India, the romance of India itself, its variety, its complexity, the multitude of its gods, the multitude of its peoples, hung before her as a mirage, prodigal in marvels, reaching back and linking up through the centuries with the hidden wisdom, the hidden terror ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... practise the conventional moral proprieties of the time, and men transformed into the image of inexorable, unmerciful moral ideas, men in whom moral maxims appear organized as moral might. There are thousands who are prodigal of moral and benevolent opinions, and honestly eloquent in loud professions of what they would do in case circumstances called upon them to act; but when the occasion is suddenly thrust upon them, when temptation, leering into every corner and crevice of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... the stairs. He was disappointed. There was that within him which would have been more satisfied if she had been moved to throw herself upon his breast. But he was generous and indulgent. Winnie was always undemonstrative and silent. Neither was Mr Verloc himself prodigal of endearments and words as a rule. But this was not an ordinary evening. It was an occasion when a man wants to be fortified and strengthened by open proofs of sympathy and affection. Mr Verloc sighed, and put ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... hundreds of young firs in the markets, and the enormous numbers of wreaths and other designs, it would seem as if the forests and swamps had been stripped to such an extent that nothing would be left for another year; but so prodigal is Nature of her beautiful club-mosses and her aromatic pines, that what is gathered for holiday trimming amounts to little more than a weeding out of superfluous growth. Many of the greens sold in the New York market come from New Jersey. ...
— Harper's Young People, December 23, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... made, He never rested, but ran evermore. And with his coming he did use his trade; A heap of names within his cloak he bare, And in the river did them all unlade; Or, to say truth, away he cast them all Into this stream, which Lethe we do call. This prodigal old wretch no sooner came Unto this cursed river's barren bank, But desperately, without all fear of blame, Or caring to deserve reward or thank, He hurl'd therein full many a precious name Where millions soon unto the bottom sank: Hardly in every thousand one was found That was not in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 528, Saturday, January 7, 1832 • Various
... you; once more I have come to you; you are blood of my blood; you are mine. Like the prodigal son, I left you to pursue the shadows that passed by the wayside. But I have come back to you; give me welcome. We are one; one life is ours, both the living and the dead; where I am there are you also. Now I bear you in my soul, O mother, who bore me. You, too, ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... courtier who ruins his fortune for the attainment of a title which can do him no good, or power of which he can make no suitable or creditable use, the miser who hoards his useless wealth, and the prodigal who squanders it, are all marked with a certain shade of insanity. To criminals who are guilty of enormities, when the temptation, to a sober mind, bears no proportion to the horror of the act, or the probability ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... bountiful patron towards them, even above his fortune; of which, in those administrations, he was such a dispenser, as, if he had been trusted with it to such uses, and if there had been the least of vice in his expense, he might have been thought too prodigal. He was constant and pertinacious in whatsoever he resolved to do, and not to be wearied by any pains that were necessary to that end. And therefore, having once resolved not to see London, which he loved above all places, till he had perfectly learned the Greek tongue, he went ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... the form of worship, and in that form it was returned—returned by relatives, friends and the servants of her household. It was a strange combination which wrought into one individual, so to speak, by marriage—her disposition and character and mine. She poured out her prodigal affections in kisses and caresses, and in a vocabulary of endearments whose profusion was always an astonishment to me. I was born reserved as to endearments of speech and caresses, and hers broke upon me as the summer waves break upon Gibraltar. I was reared ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... faithfully following those early impressions of duty. I was not faithful in the little, consequently more was withheld. My great mistake was the lack of faith, in not fully returning to my Father's house, where the little wandering prodigal would have been received, and the new best robe again granted, and the rough way would have been made smooth, and the impassable mountain that seemed to rise so high would have melted away before the life-giving beams of the Sun of righteousness. But I yielded ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... delicious eyes Have power to perfect nature's privy wants, Even when the sun in greatest pomp did rise, With pretty tread did press the tender plants. Each stalk whilst forth she stalks, to kiss her feet Is proud with pomp, and prodigal of sweet. Her fingers fair in favouring every flower That wooed their ivory for a wished touch, By chance—sweet chance!—upon a blessed hour Did pluck the flower where Love himself did couch. Where Love did couch by summer toil suppressed, And sought ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... that even an Indian would be so prodigal of time and labor as to make the necessary quantity of well-twisted cord or thread, and weave it into shape for the mere purpose of serving as a mold which must be destroyed ...
— Prehistoric Textile Fabrics Of The United States, Derived From Impressions On Pottery • William Henry Holmes
... started down the road weeping. What a bitter day that was for me! I dreaded to face my aunt and uncle. Coming through the grove down by our gate I met Uncle Peabody. With the keen eyesight of the father of the prodigal son he had seen me coming "a long way off" ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... operations." Suiting the action to the word, Mr. Gibney grasped the whistle cord and a strange, sad, sneezing, wheezy moan resembling the expiring protest of a lusty pig and gradually increasing into a long-drawn but respectable whistle rewarded his efforts. For once, he could afford to be prodigal with the steam, and while it lasted there could be no mistaking the fact that here was a steamer in ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... praise her soul (temerarious if!), All must be mystery and hieroglyph. Heaven, which not oft is prodigal of its more To singers, in their song too great before; By which the hierarch of large poesy is Restrained to his once sacred benefice; Only for her the salutary awe Relaxes and stern canon of its law; To her alone concedes pluralities, ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... with her to America with all his savings, that desertion of his wife and children! But what delicious delirium that one year in New York, prodigal, reckless, ere, with the disappearance of his funds, she, too, disappeared. And now, here he was—after nigh seven apathetic years, in which the need of getting a living was the only spur to living on—glad to take a woman's place when female labour ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... peace and content her brother appeared with a flag of truce. He was hailed as a prosperous prodigal, for he too was a lad of metal, but he brought one with him that made poor Lassie start and tremble. It was a lady, young and beautiful, clad in deep mourning. Although sad and retiring, there was that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... victims. You can't expect the fatted calf to share the enthusiasm of the angels over the prodigal's return. Another darling weakness of the Academy is that none of its luminaries must 'arrive' in a hurry. You can see them coming for years, like a Balkan trouble or a street improvement, and by the time they have painted a thousand or so square yards of canvas, their ...
— Reginald • Saki
... look?" she asked; and before she could be answered she flew at Mrs. Mortimer with a gentle roughness, clasping her arms around her waist until the matron gasped. "You look too good to be true—both of you—if you are such lazybones that you wouldn't go to the station to meet the prodigal daughter!" ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... regarding the latent union between covetousness and prodigality, involving a proof that the discourse about the rich man was applicable to the Pharisees who were not of prodigal habits, although very good in itself, is scarcely relevant; inasmuch as it is not the parable of the rich man, but the reproofs intervening between it and the unjust steward that are expressly addressed to ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... day—warm enough to dine with the windows open. The faintest air seemed to waft sunlight from corner to corner of the room; numberless birds sang on the near boughs and hedges; the flowers on the table were like a careless gift of gold-hearted prodigal summer. Richard transferred himself in spirit to a certain square on the borders of Hoxton and Islington, within scent of the Regent's Canal. The house there was now inhabited by Emma and her sisters; ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... Innocent as the famed Lucrece, but a Mind as Wild as the more famed Cleopatra. Her Face speaks a Vestal, but her Heart a Messalina. Who that beheld Omnamante's negligent unobserving Air, would believe that she hid under that regardless Manner the witty Prostitute, the rapacious Wench, the prodigal Courtesan? She can, when she pleases, adorn those Eyes with Tears like an Infant that is chid! She can cast down that pretty Face in Confusion, while you rage with Jealousy, and storm at her Perfidiousness; she can wipe her Eyes, tremble and look frighted, till you ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... trial. Seven years of development followed, to be broken by the long struggle between England and France, which the splendid genius of Pitt inspired and directed. He not only "conquered America in Europe" by the prodigal carelessness with which he poured subsidies into the treasury of Prussia, but he conceived and delivered in America itself a death-blow to French ambition. In 1758 Amherst and Wolfe, with a fleet of 150 vessels, were sent to attack ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... Prodigal!" came the answer. Yes, the voice of his father—and Jean's boyhood memories flashed. He hurried his horse those last few rods. No—dad was not the same. His hair ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... sin—the nun agonising in the cloister; the settler struggling for his life in Transatlantic forests; the pauper shivering over the embers in his hovel and waiting for kind death; the man of business striving to keep his honour pure amid the temptations of commerce; the prodigal son starving in the far country and recollecting the words which he learnt long ago at his mother's knee; the peasant boy trudging afield in the chill dawn and remembering that the Lord is his Shepherd, therefore he will not want—all shapes of humanity have found, and will find to the end of ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... garden, in an arbor stripped of all its green, the prodigal son in stooping down found among the autumn leaves a bluish bead that had lain there since the time he had played in ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... Jane developed a most prodigal pride, freely expending upon them the little patrimony which had been put in the Trinidad bank against her old age. Her usual good judgment quite failed her; and she who, patternless and guideless, slashed brown denim fearlessly into ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... a twofold dignity, one in respect of God, the other in respect of the Church. In respect of God he again loses a twofold dignity. One is his principal dignity, whereby he was counted among the children of God, and this he recovers by Penance, which is signified (Luke 15) in the prodigal son, for when he repented, his father commanded that the first garment should be restored to him, together with a ring and shoes. The other is his secondary dignity, viz. innocence, of which, as ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... visiting-card—it was nearly as big as the illuminated address presented to me by the electors of a Scottish constituency which I once wooed and never won—wherewith she reminded me that my billet at No. 131 rue Robert le Frisson would always be waiting for me, the night-light burning as for a prodigal son, and steam up in ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... throw doubt on that statement, unless, indeed, one were a bitter, eccentric character like Dr. Monygham—for instance—whose short, hopeless laugh expressed somehow an immense mistrust of mankind. Not that Dr. Monygham was a prodigal either of laughter or of words. He was bitterly taciturn when at his best. At his worst people feared the open scornfulness of his tongue. Only Mrs. Gould could keep his unbelief in men's motives within due bounds; but ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... herself. He knew himself well: he could never ask for a thing. No! but could he get her to ask for something? Ah, then she might find out whom she had married! A man, he judged, of spendthrift generosity, a prodigal of himself. Yes, that was how it must be, if to be at all. He kept his eyes wide, and followed her every movement, with a longing to help which was incessant, like toothache. At the same time he was ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... are undismayed, Though whirled through space for countless centuries, And told not why or wherefore: and the sea With everlasting ebb and flow obeys, And leaves the purpose with the unseen Cause. The star sheds radiance on a million worlds, The sea is prodigal with waves, and yet No lustre from the star is lost, and not One drop is missing from the ocean tides. Oh! brother to the star and sea, know all God's opulence is held in trust for those Who wait serenely and ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... a passion with his brother before, and I got the advantage of it. Since that he has paid his brother's debts for the fifteenth time, and of course is ready to fight any battle for the forgiven prodigal. Things are not as they were, and my father tells me that he ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... They're most prodigal with sighs, Or they laugh; Or they cast adoring eyes As they quaff. They exert their every wile Her attention to beguile. Do they ever win ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... fine painted one, borne by two gayly dressed negroes, and escorted by a trio of beribboned young gentlemen, prodigal of gallant speeches, amorous sighs, and languishing glances. Mistress Stagg looked, started up, and, without waiting to raise from the floor the armful of delicate silk which she had dropped, was presently curtsying upon ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... Christianity with its marvellous parable of the Prodigal Son to teach us indulgence and pardon. Jesus was full of love for souls wounded by the passions of men; he loved to bind up their wounds and to find in those very wounds the balm which should heal them. Thus he said to the Magdalen: "Much shall be forgiven thee because thou hast loved much," ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... bone, 450 And cells, whose echoes only learn to groan; Where no kind bars a whispering friend disclose, No sunbeam enters, and no zephyr blows, HE treads, inemulous of fame or wealth, Profuse of toil, and prodigal of health; 455 With soft assuasive eloquence expands Power's rigid heart, and opes his clenching hands; Leads stern-ey'd Justice to the dark domains, If not to fever, to relax the chains; Or guides awaken'd Mercy through the ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... Meliadus, as set forth in the Paris printed edition of 1528, which gives us to understand that Rusticien de Pise had received as a reward for some of his compositions from King Henry III. the prodigal gift of two chateaux. I gather, however, from passages in the work of Paulin Paris that this must certainly be one of those confusions of persons to which I have referred before, and that the recipient of the chateaux was in reality Helye ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... full pay, but to induce his companion to serve for some time as a volunteer. He afterwards obtained a commission, and nothing could be more strikingly different than was the conduct of the young Laird of St. Ronan's and of Lieutenant Mowbray. The former, as we know, was gay, venturous, and prodigal; the latter lived on his pay, and even within it—denied himself comforts, and often decencies, when doing so could save a guinea; and turned pale with apprehension, if, on any extraordinary occasion, he ventured sixpence a corner at whist. This meanness, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... the whole opera of a passion. Lousteau, regarding this adventure with Dinah as a mere temporary connection, was eager to stamp himself on her memory in indelible lines; and during that beautiful October he was prodigal of his most entrancing melodies and most elaborate barcarolles. In fact, he exhausted every resource of the stage management of love, to use an expression borrowed from the theatrical dictionary, and ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... make him the more interesting to her. Girls of her age think little of where the next meal is to come from, and dote on the young prodigal." ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... of the prodigal to Auchinleck would seem at first to have been attended with some satisfaction to both father and son. The father might now believe that he was entitled to consideration from the son, as a reward for his long-continued indulgence to the traveller, who might ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... you in misery and pain? No matter that you may have brought it on yourselves; it is no less God's way of bringing you back to him, for he decrees that suffering shall follow sin: it is just then you most need it; and, if it drives you to God, that is its end, and there will be an end of it. The prodigal was himself to blame for the want that made him a beggar at the swine's trough; yet that want was the greatest blessing God could give to him, for it drove him home ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... Indian salary ought to be given to those who go into the tropics. I have a very strong desire to go and reduce the new language to writing, but I cannot perform impossibilities. I don't think it quite fair for the Churches to expect their messenger to live, as if he were the Prodigal Son, on the husks that the swine do eat, but I should be ashamed to say so to any ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... with glitter and awe, And lapses swiftly in the dismal maw Of darkness, 'mid the din of thunder dire. But to relieve the sad night's sullenness, And clear the heavens for the timid moon, The straight-descending rain riots like hail For a fierce hour, in prodigal excess; Anon the clouds unmuffle, and the pale, Thin crescent of ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... so much. As he might not do that, he begged his mother to come very often to Little Market Street and to become intimate with Robin. But when he saw her with Robin he was generally embarrassed, although she was obviously enchanted with that gentleman, for whose benefit she was amazingly prodigal of nods and becks and wreathed smiles. It was a pity, he thought, that his mother was at moments so apparently elaborate. He felt her elaboration the more when it was contrasted with the transparent simplicity of Rosamund. Even Robin, he fancied, was at moments ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... series of years pass through a succession of punishments, often for trifling infractions of the penal code—to see them display the utmost facility in penmanship, and to hear at every movement the rattle of chains. Yet these prodigal sons of many a desolated house, were not so much objects of compassion, as those whose peace they had blighted with an incurable affliction. No one could imagine how many families, distinguished for rank, benevolence, and piety—known at home as the fortunate and happy—had in ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... for one little violet of a bygone spring when the prodigal wealth of a whole wonderful summertime is being poured out for one? So when Phil said again musingly, "It does seem strange, how we've always belonged to each other, doesn't it?" Mary looked up with a ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... imperative and miserably provided for necessity eventually compelled. Maintaining as we did a large body of wild and reckless warriors, together with their families, it may be naturally supposed the excesses of these people were not few; but it would have required one to have seen, to have believed, the prodigal waste of which they were often guilty. Acknowledging no other law than their own will, following no other line of conduct than that suggested by their own caprice, they had as little respect for the property of the Canadian inhabitant as they would have entertained for that of the American ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... them. But it is undeniable that our bill of fare is greatly more varied than it used to be, and that the way in which the table is arranged is much more attractive. At the great hotels in the neighbourhood of London where rich, or at all events prodigal people, go to dine in the summer months, this is especially the case. All these establishments affect fine dinners, yet how seldom it is they give you good ones! Their wines, though monstrously dear, are very fair; indeed, of the champagnes at least you may make certain by looking at the corks; ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... before? Never mind, we would make amends for lost time by spending more money! In very truth the years following the Centennial witnessed an extraordinary awakening of worship of beauty, almost religious in its fervor. Passionate pilgrims ransacked Europe and the Orient; a prodigal horde of their captives, objects of luxury and of art, surged into galleries and museums and households. No cold, critical taste weeded out these adorable aliens. The worst and the best conquered, together. Our architecture, our furniture, our household ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... consequence; he said she would but court impostors from every corner of the kingdom, called Albany a lunatic, whom she should rather avoid than obey; and insinuated that if a report was spread of her proceedings, a charity so prodigal, would excite such alarm, that no man would think even her large and splendid fortune, would ensure him from ruin in ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... influence of absinthe in dreams, denotes that you will lead a merry and foolish pace with innocent companions, and waste your inheritance in prodigal lavishness ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... uncreate, Imperial June, magnificent, elate Beholding all the ripening loves that stray Among her blossoms, and the golden time Of the full ear and bounty of the boughs,— And the great hills and solemn chanting seas And prodigal meadows, answering to the chime Of God's good year, and bearing on their brows The glory of processional mysteries From dawn to dawn, the woven shadow and shine Of the high moon, the twilight secrecies, And the inscrutable wonder of the stars Flung out along the reaches ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... When the prodigal got to his feet, the door stood open and his wife was waiting to receive him. At sight of her, dressed as she had been when he left her, a sudden flame of guilt and shame burned through him; but it served only to clear his brain and strengthen his will-power, which all ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... people and all boys demand food. They feasted the returned prodigal behind drawn curtains, cut off in their great happiness, while the trains roared in and out around them. Harvey ate, drank, and enlarged on his adventures all in one breath, and when he had a hand free his mother fondled it. His voice was thickened ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... part of what I purpose is untold: Consider, then, it on your part remains, When I have broke, not to resume your chains. Like an indulgent father, I have paid All debts, which you, my prodigal, have made. Now you are clear, break off your fond design, Renounce Benzayda, and be ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... very well, and I need not tell you that I long to see you. I really do not perceive any thing so formidable in a Journey hither of two days, but all this comes of Matrimony, you have a Nurse and all the etceteras of a family. Well, I must marry to repair the ravages of myself and prodigal ancestry, but if I am ever so unfortunate as to be presented with an Heir, instead of a Rattle he shall ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... also another kind of illusive advertisement which I answered in prodigal numbers in the greenness of these early days. These were those deceitfully worded requests for "bright, intelligent ladies—no canvassing." And not less prodigal were the returns I got. They came in avalanches by every mail, from patent-medicine ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... we have lately seen advertised, so great is the carelessness of his agents. But this man lately was not content with giving poison to his sister's son, he actually drenched him with it. But it is impossible for these men to live in any other than a prodigal manner, who hope for our property while they are squandering their own. I have seen also an auction of the property of Publius Decius, an illustrious man, who, following the example of his ancestors, devoted ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... reason," and at that moment she seemed to feel the need of seeking aid from a higher power, and for the first time the prayer for guidance and direction went up to God, in earnest supplication, and our Father, who pitieth his children and seeth the returning prodigal afar off, breathed peace into her troubled spirit, and thus commenced the first dawnings of a new and better life in the heart of this poor ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... real enjoyment in proportion to his wealth and who uses it for purely selfish purposes. We may find this in the almost insane extravagance of vulgar ostentation by which the parvenu millionaire tries to gratify his vanity and dazzle his neighbours; in the wild round of prodigal dissipation and vice by which so many young men who have inherited enormous fortunes have wrecked their constitutions and found a speedy path to an unhonoured grave. They sought from money what money cannot give, and learned too late that ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... though he hurled questions at her, and hardly remembered afterward what they were. He was of an impression that he begged her to love him, to marry him, though Dick, prodigal as he was of great words in his verse, scarcely believed he used them in the direct address of love-making. But certainly he did beg her, and Nan was gentle with him, though always, like Tira, as she remembered afterward, repeating, "No! no!" At the end, his passion softened into something appealing, ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... "You have planned to marry. It is time the prodigal marry and settle down, is it not? So long as we were in England it did not matter, except to that Faroy girl you seduced and flung out into ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... to hear that your children are promising; I think it is the greatest comfort a parent can enjoy in this world. I have a large share of it in my three daughters; but my prodigal is not come to himself; he still feeds on husks, nor thinks of the plenty in his Father's house. I had great hopes last winter; I heard he had been very ill in consequence of very severe treatment from his captain. ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... the campaign, where there was a chance of danger, whether in the plains of Italy, in the defiles of Tesino, or on the glaciers of Mount Pragal, he was the first to throw himself into it, and his name had frequently been mentioned as worthy of distinction. Souvarow was too brave himself to be prodigal of honours where they were not merited. Foedor was returning, as he had promised, worthy of his noble protector's friendship, and who knows, perhaps worthy of Vaninka's love. Field-Marshal Souvarow had made a friend of him, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... postponement, deference, and modesty. Nor can the prodigality of the meadows in May be quoted in dispute. For Nature has something even more severe than moderation: she has an innumerable singleness. Her butter-cup meadows are not prodigal; they show multitude, but not multiplicity, and multiplicity is exactly the disgrace of decoration. Who has ever multiplied or repeated his delights? or who has ever gained the granting of the most foolish of his wishes—the prayer for reiteration? It is a curious slight ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... pastures. Indeed, it was a fine sight to see this pale, handsome, elegantly dressed young fellow lounging along between a blue-checkered pinafored girl on one side and a barefooted boy on the other. The ranchmen turned and looked after him curiously. One, a rustic prodigal, reduced by dissipation to the swine-husks of ranching, saw fit ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... are thinking of your unworthiness; like the Prodigal Son you are ready to say "Father, I have sinned again and again, I am not worthy to be called Thy son." God knows just what you are and what you have been, and He Himself has asked the question, "How shall I put you among the children?" It is a question which none but the Lord ...
— The One Great Reality • Louisa Clayton
... unhappy condition, many of his friends and acquaintance having died in the plague time, and those of his family having long since been in disorder and in a kind of mutiny against him. For the eldest of his sons, Xanthippus by name, being naturally prodigal, and marrying a young and expensive wife, was highly offended at his father's economy in making him but a scanty allowance, by little and little at a time. He sent therefore, to a friend one day, and borrowed some money ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... is a man of the woods and fields, who draws his living from the prodigal hand of Mother Nature herself. If the book had nothing in it but the splendid figure of this man, with his sure grip on life, his superb optimism, and his almost miraculous knowledge of nature secrets, it would be notable. But when the Girl comes to his "Medicine Woods," ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... viscount was the last and perhaps the least of his race; yet, because of his name and the lingering charm—like the sad perfume of pot-pourri clinging to a broken jar—he would have been given the prodigal's welcome at Monte Carlo (that agreeable pound for lost reputations) but for one drawback. The stumbling block was the woman he had made ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Nature is prodigal in the means she employs to pursue her great object, reproduction, by aid of the sexual appetite. The apiary raises hundreds of male bees. As soon as the single queen-bee takes wing for its nuptial flight all the males follow, but a single male only, the strongest and most nimble, ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... the German painters at the beginning of the sixteenth century succeed in representing with perfect mastery these scenes of country life, as, for instance, Albrecht Durer, in his engraving of the prodigal son. But it is one thing if a painter, brought up in a school of realism, introduces such scenes, and quite another thing if a poet, accustomed to an ideal or mythological framework, is driven by ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... trouble, and we got back to the Legation by a little before five. Everyone poured out to meet us, and greeted us as prodigal sons. When we had not come back the day before, they had about made up their minds that something dreadful had happened to us, and the rejoicing over our return was consequently much greater than if we had not whetted ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... Philadelphia, according to his Custom, sent her Steward to relieve all the poor Prisoners about Town; among the rest he visited those in the common Side of the King's Bench, where he heard 'em call Sir William Wilding to partake of his Lady's Charity. The poor Prodigal was then feeding on the Relief of the Basket, not being yet able to get his Bread at his new Trade: To him the Steward gave a Crown, whereas the other had but Half a Crown apiece. Then he enquir'd of some of ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... Ascending Arc of the Circle of Life is the Return from its lowest point, or the Full Consciousness of Personal Distinctness, gained through the Material Body, back to its highest point or the Originating Life itself. This is the truth embodied in the parable of the Prodigal Son. It is a Cosmic truth, and this return journey is technically called by the Green name "Anaktorion." It is the Rising-again, that is from matter to Spirit, and is the ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... on false principles, but to get false rogues for their principal agents and managers. The fall of this Bank brought much calamity on the country; but two things are remarkable in its history: First, that under its too prodigal, yet beneficial influence, a fine county (that of Ayr) was converted from a desert into a fertile land. Secondly, that, though at a distant interval, the Ayr Bank paid all its engagements, and the loss ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... those who have felt such bliss, can imagine the joy with which this heavenly visitation fills the soul. The Father receives the poor penitent with, "Thy sins be forgiven thee." The Son clothes him with a spotless righteousness. "The prodigal when he returned to his father was clothed with rags; but the best robe is brought out, also the gold ring and the shoes; yea, they are put upon him to his rejoicing" (Come and Welcome, vol. 1, p. 265). The Holy Spirit gives ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... England has one artist who might show it to us on canvas, who would be able to catch the feeling of such a scene—of that mysterious, passionless tragedy of nature—I refer to J. M. Swan, the painter of the "Prodigal Son" and the ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... Christ he writes for himself under that character which, once taken up by Jacob Behmen, is never for one day laid down. Behmen's favourite Scripture, after our Lord's promise of the Holy Spirit to them that ask for Him, was the parable of the Prodigal Son. In all his books Behmen is that son, covered with wounds and bruises and putrefying sores, but at last beginning to come to himself and to return to his Father. The Way to Christ is a production of the very greatest depth and strength, but it is the depth and the strength ...
— Jacob Behmen - an appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... domains to ruin must succeed, Fresh cities sink in flame, fresh thousands bleed! What want'st thou more, thou prodigal of guilt! Oppression's sword is buried to the hilt In unoffending blood—what want'st thou more, Thou sanguinary pest of an unhappy shore? Far as thy sight can stretch, look round, and see All Sweden piled with monuments ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... the recovered weapon in his pocket, almost fondling it, though with mingled feelings, as the Prodigal Son of his small possessions; suddenly it leapt out like a live thing in his hand, and clattered on the table between the girl and boy. It was a wonder neither of them was shot dead in his excitement. ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... inclined to think that it has brought him less than no good. It has only provided Gerald with an excuse, which to an American father is no excuse, for neglecting his profession. Further, it has enabled the young man to spend money in a prodigal fashion over what even he now acknowledges to have been a hopeless quest, though even at the present moment detectives in every capital in Europe are watching for a clue which may afford some notion as to the whereabouts of ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... and conditionally for you," said Hartley cheerfully. "Now I will ring up Wilder and tell him that the prodigal has reappeared, and ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... a moral walk and conversation. It was as profligate a court in reality, with all its masses and monks, as the gay and atheist circle of the Regent of Orleans. Even Philip, the Inquisitor King, did not confine his royal favor to his series of wives. A more reckless and profligate young prodigal than Don Carlos, the hope of Spain and Rome, it would be hard to find to-day at Mabille or Cre-morne. But he was a deeply religious lad for all that, and asked absolution from his confessors before attempting to put in practice his intention of killing his father. Philip, forewarned, shut him up ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... enemy, the gendarme, each silently waiting his turn to explain his situation. To the credit of the gendarme and all those in authority, it must be said that contrary to their usual custom they acted like loving fathers with these prodigal sons of the Republic—possible information without the sign of a grumble, and advising those who were still streaming in at the door to come back towards five o'clock, when the line should have advanced a little. It was then ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... back and back and back with a savage and glorious persistence. They were too small, too individual, and pinned the imagination down too closely. This dagger dance let in upon her a larger atmosphere, in which one human being was as nothing, even a goddess or a siren prodigal of enchantments was a little thing not without a narrow ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... a more prodigal employer of spies than Napoleon. Did he or any other conqueror ever acknowledge a success due to the despised outcasts who brought him information? No. The brilliance of combinations, the stroke of genius of the swift march and the decisive ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... taken, and that there would be more spoil than had been obtained in all previous wars taken together, that he might not incur either the resentment of the soldiers from a parsimonious partition of the plunder, or displeasure among the patricians from a prodigal lavishing of it, he sent a letter to the senate, "that by the kindness of the immortal gods, his own measures, and the perseverance of the soldiers, Veii would be soon in the power of the Roman people." What did they think should be done with respect ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... now included Argensola. . . . "A very interesting fellow, that Argensola!" And as he thought this, he forgot completely that, without knowing him, he had been accustomed to refer to him as "shameless," just because he was sharing his son's prodigal life. ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the column. Certain formal orders are read out by the adjutant. There is something about the unexpended portion of the day's rations. There cannot be much "unexpended" at 10 o'clock at night; but the military machine, recklessly prodigal of large sums of money, is scrupulously niggardly about trifles. But it does not matter. No one at the moment is concerned about the unexpended portion of his ration. There is a stern injunction against travelling on the roof of railway carriages. "Men," the order explains, "have been killed owing ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... indications of a kind of luxury. The animalism of the man, however, had developed so early in life that it had obliterated all strong markings of character. The flaccid, rather fleshy features were those of the sensual, prodigal young American, who haunts hotels. Clean shaven and well dressed, the fellow would be indistinguishable from the thousands of overfed and overdrunk young business men, to be seen every day in the vulgar luxury of Pullman cars, hotel ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... new-fashioned talk about education and work for women, which then had just begun, nice girls were not quite so sure as they used to be that to reclaim a prodigal, or consolidate a penitence, was their mission in life. Perhaps they were right; but the old idea was good for the race, if not for the individual woman, human sacrifices being a fundamental principle of natural religion, if not of the established creed. ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... but, on the other hand, I often came off worst when the "Fouberies de Scapin," and others of the sort, were in the bill; and I was forced to bear reproaches for the delight felt by the public in the deceits of intriguing servants, and the successful follies of prodigal young men. Neither party was convinced; but my father was very soon reconciled to the theatre when he saw that I advanced with incredible ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... whose youth has been spent amongst the prodigal sons and daughters of the world's great family, who has wasted his moral patrimony, and served masters and mistresses whom he despised, is not easily brought to believe that he can be happy again in ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... those of men who knew him well. Were we seeking to set his good traits against his bad, we should style him, in one column, brave, steadfast, daring, ambitious of greatness, far-sighted in policy; and in the other, prodigal, boastful, haughty, unfair in argument, ruthless in war. This method of portraiture, however, is not very helpful. We can form a much better idea of Frontenac's nature by discussing his acts than ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... the most of them were young men who had once been in better circumstances, but who now were reduced to get their living by calling papers about the streets. A few fine characters might have been picked out amongst those prodigal sons, as they stood warming their backs, or grouped together in this ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... he cried, excitedly, "the prodigal has had good cause to lag behind. He has found the lost ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... to express. One editor bewailed the "Hundred-Million-Dollar-Millstone" which the governor proposed to hang about the people's neck; another attacked the consistency of the man who would to-day scatter like a prodigal what he had scrimped yesterday to save; while a third pertinently inquired whether such a spendthrift were fit timber to put in Washington as a check upon the waxing extravagance of Congress? By dint of repetition these things attained ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... mask was thrown off in the list of contributors given at the end of the third volume. In The Etonian it was attached to "Godiva," the poem which attracted the warm admiration of Gifford of the Quarterly Review, a man not prodigal of praise, and the "Godiva" of Moultrie may still fearlessly unveil its charms beside the "Godiva" of Tennyson. His longest poem in Knight's Quarterly was "La Belle Tryamour," which has since been republished in a volume of collected poems with his name to them, many ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various
... four days, every moment of which we enjoyed. Grand Rapids Island is prodigal in wild flowers,—vetches, woodbine, purple and pink columbines, wild roses, several varieties of false Solomon's seal, our persisting friend dwarf cornel, and, treasure-trove, our first anemone,—that beautiful buttercup ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... as well as droll in the anxiety of every true American to prove himself or herself an offshoot from some old British root of honour or nobility. It would be cruel to laugh at this instinct, for after all it is only the passionate longing of the Prodigal Son who, having eaten of the husks that the swine did eat, experienced such an indigestion at last, that he said 'I will arise and go to my father.' And it is quite possible that an aspiring Trans-Atlantic millionaire yearning for descent more than dollars, would have managed to find tracks of ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... is the story of the Prodigal Son. We look over the fence of goodness into the mystery of the great unknown world beyond and in that unknown realm ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... temper; as one who does not scatter kindnesses and cruelties alternately, impartially, and in order, but heartless severities or overwhelming generosities in lawless caprice. Man's case is always that of the prodigal's favourite or the miser's pensioner. In her unfriendly moments there seems a feline fun in her tricks, begotten by a foretaste of her pleasure in swallowing ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... No prodigal ever received such an ovation. There was literally a fight for his person. Jill snatched him from me and pressed his nose to her face; Berry dragged him from her protesting arms and set him upon his knee; Daphne tore ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... those old days was not what it is now,—one glance, one smile was sufficient to set the soul on fire and draw another soul towards it to consume together in the suddenly kindled flame! And women veiled their faces in youth, lest they should be deemed too prodigal of their charms; and in age they covered themselves still more closely, in order not to affront the Sun-God's fairness by their wrinkles." She smiled, a dazzling smile that drew Gervase yet a few steps closer unconsciously, as though he were being magnetized. "But ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... through the dank and rotten jungle, and they knew no villages would be encountered till rising ground was gained. They plodded on, panting and sweating in the humid, stagnant air. They were immersed in a sea of wanton, prodigal vegetation. All about them the huge-rooted trees blocked their footing, while coiled and knotted climbers, of the girth of a man's arm, were thrown from lofty branch to lofty branch, or hung in tangled masses like so many monstrous snakes. Lush-stalked plants, larger-leaved ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... were wrong in opposing—his true vocation. The Church received her own again. Rome did not smile at him at first. A de Hausee, however, never yet tapped long at any gate. The family—which had been stirred to fury by his father's trespass—welcomed the son as a prodigal manque. His aunt, the Princess Varese, left him half of her large fortune. He lived himself in great seclusion and simplicity, and died, as you are aware, of over-work last year. The one friend he corresponded ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... "Wicked prodigal! What shall we do to reform him, Mr. Douglas? He has not been to see us for three years past, and during that time we have had ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... notice what life and power the Holy Scriptures have, when well read? Have you ever heard of the wonderful effects produced by Elizabeth Fry among the hardened criminals of Newgate, by simply reading to them the parable of the Prodigal Son? Princes and peers of the realm, it is said, counted it a privilege to stand in those dismal corridors, among felons and murderers, merely to share with them the privilege of witnessing the marvellous pathos which genius, ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... patriot brave who, side by side, Stood to their arms and dashed the foeman's pride: Firm in their valor, prodigal of life, Hades they chose the arbiter of strife; That Greeks might ne'er to haughty victors bow, Nor thraldom's yoke, nor dire oppression know, They, fought, they bled, and on their country's breast (Such was the doom of Heaven) these warriors rest: Gods never lack success, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... dilapidation and waste of the goods, revenues, and possessions of the said monastery, and of certain other enormous crimes and excesses hereafter written. In the rule, custody, and administration of the goods, spiritual and temporal, of the said monastery, you are so remiss, so negligent, so prodigal, that whereas the said monastery was of old times founded and endowed by the pious devotion of illustrious princes of famous memory, heretofore kings of this land, the most noble progenitors of our most serene Lord and King that now is, in ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... with a sigh, thinking of his old comrade and the son he had left behind him, 'but there's the prodigal anes!' ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... noblest in the battle meet their doom— To die a bitter, yea, a cruel death— Tortured with thirst, and under horses' hoofs, A doubler, sharper, bitt'rer meed of pain Than ever, sinner on the gallows-tree, And sickness daily takes our best away; For God is prodigal with human life; Should we be timid, then, where his command, His holy law, which he himself has giv'n, Demands, as here, that he who sins shall die? Together then, we will request the King To move from out ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... No prodigal was ever given a warmer welcome than I was when I left the area of the Great Western Railway; but the problem of how to finish my education remained and I was determined that I would not make my debut till I was eighteen. What with reading, hunting and falling in love ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... the bridge and stood in the opening of the hedge there was no one on the porch in the inviting shade of the prodigal bougainvillea vines. So he hitched his way up the steps. Feeling that it was a formal occasion, he searched for the door-bell. There was none. He rapped on the casing and waited, while he looked at the cool, quiet interior, with the portrait ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... have been mainly attained by spiritual means. I have boldly asserted that whatever his peculiar character or circumstances might be, if the prodigal would come home to his Heavenly Father, he would find enough and to spare in the Father's house to supply all his need both for this world and the next; and I have known thousands nay, I can say tens of thousands, who ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth |
