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More "Parsimony" Quotes from Famous Books



... And while on the subject of "Works," I cannot help noticing the extreme carelessness and inattention which, on visiting properties, the works and buildings present to our view. It is utterly impossible to manufacture good produce unless the machinery and buildings are kept in good order; and the parsimony which is thus displayed in this necessary outlay is fallacious, when one thinks of the result of one or two shillings per 100 lbs. lost on ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... Burns, Campbell, Hemans, and Scott. In the conversation between Archdeacon Hare and Landor, the latter says: "I believe there are few, if any, who enjoy more heartily than I do the best poetry of my contemporaries, or who have commended them both in private and in public with less parsimony and reserve." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... he made money hand over hand, became a rich and mighty man, and exalted his cocked hat upon "Change." He built himself, as usual, a vast house, out of ostentation, but left the greater part of it unfinished and unfurnished, out of parsimony. He even set up a carriage in the fulness of his vain-glory, though he nearly starved the horses which drew it; and, as the ungreased wheels groaned and screeched on the axle-trees, you would have thought you heard the souls of the poor ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... succeeded the niggardly parsimony which counts the grains of salt in the pot-au-feu, which weighs the soap for the washing, and measures ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau

... which was now the prevailing topic of conversation in the family. She listened in silence to gossiping discussions of his desertion of his wife, his heartless indifference to her decease, his violence and bad language by her deathbed, his parsimony, his malicious opposition to the wishes of the Janseniuses, his cheap tombstone with the insulting epitaph, his association with common workmen and low demagogues, his suspected connection with a secret society for the assassination of the royal family and blowing up of the army, his atheistic denial, ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw

... I have long noticed—or women of the best kind, I ought to add—have much more genius in finance than men. They have a much keener sense of the use of money; an excellent thing in women when it does not deteriorate into cheese-paring and sordid parsimony. They, being primitive and unsophisticated creatures, are unacquainted with the lax morals of the cheque-book; a pound is just twenty shillings to them, and each shilling is an entity, and each is spent with an indomitable aim to get ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson

... for the shoes were always thoroughly worn-out. Necessity had made the poor girl so niggardly that Grandet had grown to love her as we love a dog, and Nanon had let him fasten a spiked collar round her throat, whose spikes no longer pricked her. If Grandet cut the bread with rather too much parsimony, she made no complaint; she gaily shared the hygienic benefits derived from the severe regime of the household, in which no one was ever ill. Nanon was, in fact, one of the family; she laughed when Grandet laughed, felt gloomy or chilly, warmed herself, and toiled ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac

... baneful in its consequences, it was less disgustful in its progress than avarice; yet, insuperably averse to both, and almost equally desirous to fly from the unjust extravagance of Mr Harrel, as from the comfortless and unnecessary parsimony of Mr Briggs, she proceeded instantly to St James's Square, convinced that her third guardian, unless exactly resembling one of the others, must ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney

... which point I thought the judge's eye had a cast in my direction), was almost immaculate. There had been, he admitted, a trivial blemish or so in its rate of progress, but this was exaggerated and had been entirely owing to the "parsimony of the public," which guilty public, it appeared, had been until lately bent in the most determined manner on by no means enlarging the number of Chancery judges appointed—I believe by Richard the Second, but any other king will do ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... we could really wish to know, a point at all yet decided, wherein consist the value and importance of the human nature? Any liberal scheme for its universal cultivation is met by such a jealous parsimony toward the common people, such a ready imputation of wild theory, such protesting declamations against the mischief of practically applying abstract principles, such an undisguised or betrayed precedence given to mere interests ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... good thing to be reputed liberal, but liberality without the reputation of it is hurtful. Display necessitates the imposition of taxes, whereby the prince becomes hateful; whereas through parsimony his revenue will be sufficient. Hence we have seen no princes accomplish great results save those who ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... out from Ore City an overworked stage horse straining on a sixteen per cent. grade and more had dropped dead in the harness—a victim to the parsimony of a government that has spent millions on useless dams, pumping plants, and reservoirs, but continues to pay cheerfully the salaries of the engineers responsible for the blunders; footing the bills for the junkets of hordes of "foresters," of "timber-inspectors" ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart

... credit was to be drawn in return for the unending military expenditure. And they gave the colonists ground for complaints, sometimes just, sometimes unjust, against the home government, which was constantly accused of parsimony, of shortsightedness, of vacillation, of sentimental weakness, in sending out too few troops, in refusing to annex fresh territory, in patching up a hollow peace, in granting too easy terms ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... was compelled to arrange its meetings with reference to the appearance of the great actress." How one would have enjoyed hearing that Scotsman say, after one of her most splendid flights of tragic passion, "That's no bad!" We have read of her dismay at this ludicrous parsimony of praise, but her self-respect must have been restored when the Edinburgh ladies fainted by dozens during her impersonation of Isabella in ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... with their parsimony on so momentous an occasion, Gianobelli set to work with the aid of two skilful artisans of Antwerp to ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty

... of the strangest popular follies that has ever been seen in the world, which showed itself in Holland toward the middle of the seventeenth century. The country at that time had reached the height of prosperity; antique parsimony had given place to luxury; the houses of the wealthy, very modest at the beginning of the century, were transformed into little palaces; velvet, silk, and pearls replaced the patriarchal simplicity of the ancient costume; Holland had become ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various

... were and fish our boys must have, so you must lend an ear while Smooth relates the manner in which he got them. Deacon Hawkins kept an inn for the entertainment of man and beast. It was not the very best kind of an inn, for it was managed by the deacon's wife, whose parsimony and love of Friday evening meetings had lost her nearly all her guests and driven her children barefoot into the street. On the day following the Starlight's arrival, as luck would have it, a 'political meeting' was to be holden at ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... distributed among them; though clergymen harangue them from the pier-heads: and chaplains in the navy read sermons to them on the gun-deck; though evangelical boarding-houses are provided for them; though the parsimony of ship-owners has seconded the really sincere and pious efforts of Temperance Societies, to take away from seamen their old rations of grog while at sea:—notwithstanding all these things, and many more, the ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... son gave names. The queen's lords, as they were called, with unlimited money from France and Flanders, held Edinburgh and Glasgow; all the border line was theirs, and all the north and west. Elizabeth's Council, wiser than their mistress, barely squeezed out of her reluctant parsimony enough to keep Mar and Morton from making terms with the rest; but there her assistance ended. She would still say nothing, promise nothing, bind herself to nothing, and, so far as she was concerned, the war would have been soon enough brought to a close. But away at St. Andrews, John Knox, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... been sweet and consolatory! Surely this is but fair towards the distinguished dead. It is but just towards the memory of the departed, to believe his conduct to have been principally influenced by such considerations. All men have many faults—most men have grave faults. Is parsimony intrinsically more culpable than prodigality? Have not most of mankind a tendency towards one or the other? for how few are ennobled by the ability to steer evenly between the two! And even granting that Sir William Follett had a tendency towards the former failing, it was surely exhibited ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... away to the cutting room, and in less than five minutes Abe repented his parsimony. He went on tiptoe to the door of the cutting room, where Morris leaned over Enrico, uttering words ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass

... curious mingling of grandeur and poverty, this life in the half-ruined Castle, with its magnificent tapestries and carvings, its evidences of bygone splendour, and, alas! present-day parsimony. The little house at Passy could have been put down inside the great entrance hall, but it was a trim little habitation, where on a minute scale all the refinements and niceties of life were observed, and income ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... I took command, she was fit only for the junk pile; but the world-old parsimony of government retained her in active service, and sent two hundred men to sea in her, with myself, a mere boy, in command of her, to patrol thirty from Iceland ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... French porcelain—to dance to the beat of German drums, and sleep in the soft air of Italy? Are the ball-room, the billiard-room, and the Boulevard, the only attractions that win us into wandering, or tempt us to repose? And when the time is come, as come it will, and that shortly, when the parsimony—or lassitude—which, for the most part, are the only protectors of the remnants of elder time, shall be scattered by the advance of civilization—when all the monuments, preserved only because it was too ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... In this cardinal point of art for those who have to do with the English speech he became the teacher of Burke, who, with a lesser wealth of Saxon at his command, employed it with a more telling parsimony. ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

... This would appear incredible, were it not that the carelessness of the majority of directors of institutions where music forms a feature is well known; as are their instinctive aversion to whatever disturbs old-established customs, their indifference to the interests of art, their parsimony wherever an outlay for music is needed, and the utter ignorance of the principles of our art among those in whose hands rests the ordering ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz

... Italians who landed in Alexandria were dazzled by so many splendours, Antony ought to have been blinded; he entered Alexandria as King. He who was born at Rome in the small and simple house of an impoverished noble family who had been brought up with Latin parsimony to eat frugally, to drink wine only on festival occasions, to wear the same clothes a long time, to be served by a single slave—this man found himself lord of the immense palace of the Ptolemies, ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero

... a wrangling proctor in an Ecclesiastical Court, he had been a quarrelsome disputant rather than a statesman. His parsimony went to the extreme of meanness; his avarice was insatiable and restless. So long as he connived at smuggling, he reaped a harvest in that way; when Grenville's sternness inspired alarm, it was his study ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson

... and begged me to warn him that nothing short of the sum squandered would be deemed sufficient at Riversley. My dear aunt, good woman though she was, seemed to me to be waxing miserly. The squire had given her the name of Parsimony; she had vexed him, Janet told me, by subscribing a miserable sum to a sailors' asylum that he patronized—a sum he was ashamed to see standing as the gift of a Beltham; and she had stopped the building of a wing of her village school-house, designed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Thrift get to mean parsimony, frugality, the opposite of waste? Just in the same way as economy—which first, of course, meant the management of a household—got to mean also the opposite ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... apparently content amid the grossest domestic neglect. He had once spoilt a hundred and fifty pounds' worth of ware by firing it in a new kiln of his own contrivance; it cost him three years of atrocious parsimony to pay for the ware and the building of the kiln. He was impulsively and recklessly charitable, and his Saturday afternoons and Sundays were chiefly devoted to the passionate propagandism of the theories of liberty, equality, ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... in a methodical manner, yet there is great parsimony of language. There is no fascination in his style. It is without ornament, and very condensed. His merit consisted in great logical precision, and scrupulous exactness in the employment ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... Smith has very justly observed that nations as well as individuals grow rich by parsimony and poor by profusion, and that, therefore, every frugal man was a friend and every spendthrift an enemy to his country. The reason he gives is that what is saved from revenue is always added to stock, and is ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus

... me sincere pleasure, for which I thank you cordially. Please excuse me for not telling you oftener by letter my constant feelings of affection for you; the hindrance of occupations and cares drives me, alas! into an extreme parsimony as regards letter writing with my best friends, but I think that is my only omission towards them. To see M. de Bulow again was a real joy to me. His health is improving, and his prodigious maestria at its height. He is going to make ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... into the parish. This penny malady had originated in the parish board; for this body itself had acted as leading speculator. Down to the youth of twenty years, all were endeavoring by sharp bargains to make the one dollar, ten; extreme parsimony, in order to lay up in the beginning, was followed by an exceeding lavishness in the end: and as the thoughts of all were directed to money only, a disposition to selfishness, suspicion, and disunion had developed ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various

... earned him a high reputation for honesty, strictness, and parsimony, was, at this moment, therefore, at the climax of inward delight. His chief accomplice removed (his only other being the Dr. Polidori already mentioned) he believed he had nothing to fear. Louise Morel had been replaced by a new servant, much ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... the constitution. After all, the original design of the crown had been to get money out of parliament, and the main object of parliament had once been to make the king live of his own. A king content with parsimony might lawfully dispense with parliament; and the eleven years had shown the precarious basis of parliamentary institutions, given a thrifty king and an unambitious country. Events were demonstrating the truth of Hobbes's maxim that sovereignty is indivisible; peace could not be kept ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard

... I am content to take his state of it. The debt was and is enormous. The war was expensive. The best economy had not perhaps been used. But I must observe, that war and economy are things not easily reconciled; and that the attempt of leaning towards parsimony in such a state may be the worst management, and in the end the worst economy in the world, hazarding the total loss of all the charge incurred, and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... king, it were expedient to supply such people with their means of subsistence by instalments, that they may not squander their absolute necessaries; but, with respect to what your majesty commanded as to coercion and prohibition, though it be correct, a party might impute it to parsimony. Nor does it moreover accord with the principles of the generous to encourage a man to hope for kindness and then overwhelm him with heartbreaking distrust:—Thou must not open upon thyself the door ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... application of this system of religious faith, they inculcate a celibate life; "honesty and integrity in all words and dealings;" "humanity and kindness to friend and foe;" diligence in business; prudence, temperance, economy, frugality, "but not parsimony;" "to keep clear of debt;" "suitable education of children;" a "united interest in all things," which means community of goods; suitable employment for all; and a provision for all in sickness, infirmity, ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff

... latter, nor even smokes a pipe there, always asserting that whatever the Emir possesses has been unlawfully obtained. There are different degrees of Akal, and women are also admitted into the order, a privilege which many avail themselves of, from parsimony, as they are thus exempted from wearing the expensive head-dress and ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt

... having reached the best circles, he must live up to them, had scattered largesse lavishly. For two years after his marriage with Lady Julia, he had maintained this admirable standard, crushing his natural parsimony. He had regarded the money so spent as capital sunk in an investment. By the end of the second year, he had found his feet, and began to look about him for ways of retrenchment. His lordship's allowance ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse

... hard. For all her gipsy wildness, she had a trace of her father's parsimony, and she hated to spend money that was her very own. Some of the dimes and quarters in that little purse had been there for ages. Besides, her treasury would have to sustain her ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... a most important function of colonial governors, has been a source of incessant perplexity and discontent. Sometimes they have been granted with ridiculous parsimony, and at others with scandalous profusion. Every minister has proposed some novelty: the regulations of one year have been abandoned the next, and the emigrant who loitered on his way found the system changed, which had induced him ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... permanent residence, and he only crossed over to Antwerp when special circumstances rendered it necessary. An additional reason for the delay in carrying out Gresham's project may perhaps be found in the fact that, during his absence on the queen's business in 1563, Elizabeth had, with her usual parsimony, cut down Gresham's allowance of twenty shillings a day for "his diets." Gresham complained bitterly of this abridgment of his income in a letter to Secretary Cecil, and also in another letter couched in more guarded terms to the queen herself.(1522) ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe

... vitiating; and these two one-idea'd curs were ready to tear any one to death that should interfere with that miserable inheritance which was their thought by day and their dream by night. Their parents' parsimony was a virtue; it was accompanied by industry, and its motive was love of their offspring; but in these perverse and selfish hearts that homely virtue was perverted into avarice, than which no more fruitful source of crimes is to be ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... must record the fact that my parsimony in monetary matters survived. Mr. John, in Sussex Street, presently raised my salary to two pounds ten shillings a week; but I continued to share Mr. Smith's bedroom, and to pay only sixteen shillings weekly for my board and lodging. What was more to the point, I was equally careful in most other ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... at the expense of the British public, which is in itself a triumph, and shall, I presume, be sent back in the same way. If not, I shall have a grievance in their parsimony, which in itself will be a comfort to me; and I am sure that I shall be treated well on board. Sir Ferdinando with his eloquence will not be there, and the officers are, all of them, good fellows. I have made up my mind, and I will go. The next that you will hear ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope

... the image of the ape" ("Discourse," page 37).)) is quite new to me, and the argument in an earlier place (page 8 (281/4. At page 8 of the "Discourse" the speaker referred to the law "which Sir William Hamilton called the Law of Parsimony—or the law which forbids us to assume the operation of higher causes when lower ones are found sufficient to explain the desired effects," as constituting the "only logical barrier between Science and Superstition.")) ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... brother, who had remained a bachelor, died, leaving him forty thousand pounds—a fact which could not be concealed. Captain Turnbull had not allowed his wife to be aware of the extent of his own fortune, more from a wish to live quietly and happily than from any motive of parsimony, for he was liberal to excess; but now he had no further excuse to plead, and Mrs Turnbull insisted upon fashion. The house they had lived in was given up, and a marine villa on the borders of the Thames to a certain degree met the views of ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... no sooner recommenced his experiments than Marguerite retrenched the superfluities of the table, showing a parsimony worthy of a miser, in which Josette and Martha admirably seconded her. Claes never noticed the change which reduced the household living to the merest necessaries. First he ceased to breakfast with the family; then he only left his laboratory when dinner was ready; and at ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac

... a dinner-party of nine given by one Nasidienus, a wealthy snob, to Maecenas and others of Horace's friends. The dinner breaks down in a very amusing way, between the giver's love of display and his parsimony, which prompted him, on the one hand, to present his guests with, the fashionable dainties, but, on the other, would not let him pay a price sufficient to secure their being good. The first course consists of a Lucanian ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin

... injunction to parsimony in his personal expenses, Godefroid dined for twenty-five sous in the rue de Tournon, and was rewarded for his abnegation by finding himself in the midst of compositors and pressmen. He heard a discussion ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac

... traditions, to the nation, and to the military service which they illustrate, it nevertheless appears to the writer that the effect may be even harmful to the people at large, if it be permitted to conceal the deeply mortifying condition to which the country was reduced by parsimony in preparation, or to obscure the lessons thence to be drawn for practical application now. It is perhaps useless to quarrel with the tendency of mankind to turn its eyes from disagreeable subjects, and to dwell complacently upon those ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... deprecation, but which came to be considered a polite acknowledgement. His real name was not known in Muirtown—not because he had not given it, but because it could not be pronounced, being largely composed of x's and k's, with an irritating parsimony of vowels. We had every opportunity of learning to spell it, if we could not pronounce it, for it was one of the Count's foreign ways to carry a card-case in his ticket-pocket, and on being introduced to an inhabitant of Muirtown to offer his card with the right hand while ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren

... Wight. He asked for "powder and shot" for his squadron—"whereof we have want in our fleet, and which I have divers times given knowledge thereof." All the English commanders felt this want of ammunition and supplies. The Queen's parsimony was endangering the country. ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale

... with parsimony and he charged her with recklessness. She accused him of trying to tie them down to a village; he accused her of trying to drive him to bankruptcy. She demanded to know whether he wanted his children to be like children of their neighbors—clerks in small stores, ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... humour as a lucrative profession is a purely modern device, and one which is much to be deplored. The older humourists knew the value of light and shade. Their fun was precious in proportion to its parsimony. The essence of humour is that it should be unexpected, that it should embody an element of surprise, that it should startle us out of that reasonable gravity which, after all, must be our habitual frame of mind. But the professional humourist ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier

... few well-meaning but old-fashioned people the mere act of refusing to vote the supplies was in itself a species of treason. To more practical people this act presented itself in a different aspect. It seemed to them indicative of a niggard and ruinous parsimony. They gazed with ill-concealed envy at the marvellous prosperity of the neighbouring State of New York. Any one crossing the Canadian frontier in that direction at once became aware that he had passed from a land of comparative stagnation to a ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... consequence of his lawsuits, they were so much in the hands and power of his friend, the lawyer, that notwithstanding the plausibility and professions of the latter, he trembled when he came to reflect how much they were involved. His former parsimony had led him to hope he should leave great wealth behind him; but, when he came to consult his friend concerning his will, he had the mortification to find how much it had been diminished ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... at this local hit at the old man's parsimony, and Wise, who was clearly the privileged wit of the family, sank ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... thought Rebecca, her heart fluttering with sympathy. Mrs. Robinson leaned over and whispered significantly, "The missionaries always used to be entertained at the brick house; your grandfather never would let 'em sleep anywheres else when he was alive." She meant this for a stab at Miss Miranda's parsimony, remembering the four spare chambers, closed from January to December; but Rebecca thought it was intended as a suggestion. If it had been a former custom, perhaps her aunts would want her to do the right ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... domestic qualifications, without the least intermixture of narrowness. She knew how to distinguish between frugality, a necessary virtue, and niggardliness, an odious vice; and used to say, 'That to define generosity, it must be called the happy medium betwixt parsimony and profusion.' ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... walked in, he took a seat in front of the fire. His mother followed, bringing the sugar-bowl and the honey, which she locked in a closet in the wall: the iron in her blood was parsimony. Then she seated herself under the mantelpiece on the opposite side and looked silently across at the face of her husband. (She was his second wife. His offspring by his first wife had died young. David was ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen

... before us is an exposition of a thesis which is novel in these islands, that it was not England that was unprepared, but Germany herself. For the confusion of objectives that led to this Tirpitz blames Bethmann's peace policy, the parsimony of the Reichstag, and the Emperor's failure to attain to ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane

... and was told, that they would be sufficient, not only for the expence of his journey, but for his support in Wales for some time; and that there remained but little more of the first collection. He promised a strict adherence to his maxims of parsimony, and went away in the stage coach; nor did his friends expect to hear from him, 'till he informed them of his arrival at Swansea. But, when they least expected, arrived a letter dated the 14th day after ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber

... brother and me, he gave his consent to my returning again to Philadelphia, advis'd me to behave respectfully to the people there, endeavor to obtain the general esteem, and avoid lampooning and libeling, to which he thought I had too much inclination; telling me, that by steady industry and a prudent parsimony I might save enough by the time I was one-and-twenty to set me up; and that, if I came near the matter, he would help me out with the rest. This was all I could obtain, except some small gifts as tokens of his and my mother's love, when I embark'd again for New York, now ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin

... and though no great one, one quite enough to alarm his scrupulous and conscientious mother. She had some savings; Pen's magnificent self-denial, and her own economy, amounting from her great simplicity and avoidance of show to parsimony almost, had enabled her to put by a little sum of money, a part of which she delightedly consecrated to the paying off the young gentleman's obligations. At this price, many a worthy youth and respected reader ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... pale-faced boy with dull, peevish eyes closely set together, the long Valois nose, and a thin, obstinate mouth. His dress was severely, obstinately, contemptuously plain. Again it was as if the King said, This is not the greatness or the glory of France! But love and care had redeemed the derisive parsimony. All the lad wore was exquisitely neat and the very severity lent the little figure a dignity ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond

... Alemanni had been offended by the harsh and haughty behavior of Ursacius, master of the offices; who by an act of unseasonable parsimony, had diminished the value, as well as the quantity, of the presents to which they were entitled, either from custom or treaty, on the accession of a new emperor. They expressed, and they communicated to their countrymen, their strong sense of the national affront. The irascible ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... and his weakness in that respect was the subject of more than one smart jest by Foote. When somebody, apropos of a remark made by Garrick on the parsimony of others, asked, 'Why on earth doesn't Garrick take the beam out of his own eye before attacking the mote in other people's?'—Foote replied, 'He is not sure of selling the timber.' And again, when Garrick, after dropping a guinea and failing to find it, ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams

... the departments of la Creuse and la Haute Vienne occupy houses let out in furnished rooms exclusively to themselves, in the quarters of the Hotel de Ville, the Arsenal, Saint Marcel, and in other parts of Paris. The rigid parsimony of these men is disappointed terribly when any crisis happens. They are forced to eat their savings, to turn their clothing and their tools into food, and, by the revolution of eighteen hundred and forty-eight, were reduced to such great destitution, that in some ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie

... which would have saved her twice as much at last; or, in proverbial language, that she could not bear to pay a penny to save a pound; the consequence of which has been, that she has paid a pound for a penny. Why are there so many unpaid certificates in almost every man's hands, but from the parsimony of not providing sufficient revenues? Besides, the doctrine contradicts itself; because, if the whole country cannot bear it, how is it possible that a part should? And yet this has been the case: for those things have been had; and they must be had; but the misfortune is, that they ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... woman he had married again was pure from passion, and of an uncomfortable reluctance in the giving and taking of caresses. He forced himself to respect her reluctance. He had simply to accept this emotional parsimony as one of the many curious facts about Anne. He no longer went to Edith for an explanation of them, for the Anne he had known in Westleydale was too sacred to be spoken of. An immense reverence possessed him ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair

... illusion complete. The quondam protégé of these chiefs was too ill, too much upset, to speak. I bade him good night, and returned home, half-admiring The Giant and his troop, and abusing the foolish parsimony of the merchant, who ought to have thrown a few lumps of flesh to these hungry and wolfish sons of The Desert, and satisfied them at once. One of the party was Hateetah's brother; and Hateetah told me next day ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... Soon after Colonel Fry died suddenly, and the chief command devolved upon Washington. Innis, the commander of the North Carolina troops, was, it is true, placed over his head, but the new commander never took the field. An ill-timed parsimony had occasioned disgust among the soldiers, but Washington remained unshaken. Anticipating that a strong detachment would be sent against him from Fort Duquesne as soon as Jumonville's defeat was known there, he intrenched himself on ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... of the play there was a right Shakespearian parsimony. If all the scenery and costumes cost twenty-five pounds, I am surprised. No attempt was made to invest "lo spettro del padre del Amleto" with supernatural graces. He merely walked on sideways, a burly, very living Italian, ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... and so forth, that were crammed with homespun cloth and linen, tanned and undressed sheepskins, dried fish, and every conceivable species of produce. Nevertheless, such a phenomenon is rare in Russia, where the tendency is rather to prodigality than to parsimony. ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... small, cheap, hideous present you sent me on the occasion of my recent wedding. Were you a poor woman, that little bowl of ill-imitated Dresden china would convict you of tastelessness merely; were you a blind woman, of nothing but an odious parsimony. As you have normal eyesight and more than normal wealth, your gift to me proclaims you at once a Philistine and a miser (or rather did so proclaim you until, less than ten seconds after I had unpacked it from its wrappings of tissue paper, I took it to the open window and had the satisfaction ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... the apex, his head slanted down to his neck and forward it slanted uncompromisingly to meet a low and remarkably wide forehead. Beginning here, as though regretting her parsimony, Nature had spread his features with a lavish hand. His eyes were large, and between them was the distance of two eyes. His face, in relation to the rest of him, was prodigious. In order to discover the ...
— White Fang • Jack London

... your crowded ball-rooms and monotonous clubs will be wearisome to one who has grown fastidious before his time. J'ai vecu beaucoup dans peu d'annees. I have drawn in youth too much upon the capital of existence to be highly delighted with the ostentatious parsimony with which our great men ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... do not go forward - or not much. It is, in one way, miserable - for I can do no work; a very little wood-cutting, the newspapers, and a note about every two days to write, completely exhausts my surplus energy; even Patience I have to cultivate with parsimony. I see, if I could only get to work, that we could live here with comfort, almost with luxury. Even as it is, we should be able to get through a considerable time of idleness. I like the place immensely, though I have seen so little of it - I have only been once outside the gate since ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... ignorance that it can hardly be taken account of. We thus seem to be reduced to the conclusion that Justin's Gospel or Gospels was an unknown entity of which no historical evidence survives, and this would almost be enough, according to the logical Law of Parsimony, to drive us back upon the assumption that our present Gospels only had been used. This assumption however still does not appear to me wholly satisfactory, for reasons which will come out more clearly when from considering the matter of the ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday

... parsimony exercised by the great Monarch towards a woman who had laboured strenuously for French interests so long as her sway over Charles of England lasted, and which sway only ceased with his life. "Therein she employed unceasingly all her talent ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... into his seigniory his nature did not change." It was simply the exigencies of his critical position that forced him to restrain his natural propensities and thus to gain the undeserved reputation for parsimony. ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... birthright all the evils it engrafts upon the character. If they lived on our rocky soil, and under our inclement skies, their shrewdness would sometimes border upon knavery, and their frugality sometimes degenerate into parsimony. We both have our virtues and our faults, induced by the influences under which we live, and, of course, totally different in their character. Our defects are bad enough; but they cannot, like slavery, affect the destiny and rights ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child

... the Clarendon Press, have edited, arranged, printed, and published for the benefit of the world and the propagation of the Gospel according to Dr. Johnson are pleasant things to look upon. I hope the enterprise has proved remunerative to those concerned, but I doubt it. The parsimony of the public in the matter of books is pitiful. The ordinary purse-carrying Englishman holds in his head a ready-reckoner or scale of charges by which he tests his purchases—so much for a dinner, so much for a bottle of champagne, so much for a trip to Paris, so much for a pair of ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell

... "beastly," "stinking," and "rot;" and we must admit that they do so with justice, while we cannot assoil them altogether of the opposite tendency of a prim prudishness in the avoidance of certain natural and necessary words. For myself I unfeignedly admire the delicacy which leads to a certain parsimony in the use of words like "perspiration," "cleaning one's self," and so on. And, however much we may laugh at the class that insists upon the name of "help" instead of "servant," we cannot but respect the class which yields to the demand and looks with horror on the English ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead

... for his table were provided by himself, and prepared for his consumption by Mrs. Waring. In this regard, also, the utmost parsimony was evinced, and the daily fare consisted of the commonest articles of diet that he was able to purchase. Salt meats and fish, brown bread and cheese, seemed to be the staple articles of food. At the expiration of every week, accompanied by William, he would journey to South ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton

... recently been severely taxed, but they appear never to have the heart to deny shelter and food, although they carry economy to such a height as would be styled by many of my affluent countrymen absolute parsimony; which is perceptible in all their transactions, and is in a great degree the cause of the miserable state of their agriculture, which is also in some measure owing to the utter ignorance of the farmers, who in all that tends towards ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve

... like splinters therein. The words that head this article are part of an appeal to the people on the question of right service. The prophet was indignant with his country people, who wished to combine prayer with parsimony, and worship with worldly policy. He complained that they dare not offer to their superiors what they sent as a sacrifice to God. Might not some Christians be asked the same questions? Would the "Governor" ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness

... nation should be permitted to invade our waters at pleasure and subject our towns and villages to conflagration or pillage. Economy in all branches of the public service is due from all the public agents to the people, but parsimony alone would suggest the withholding of the necessary means for the protection of our domestic firesides from invasion and our national honor from disgrace. I would most earnestly recommend to Congress to abstain from all appropriations for objects not absolutely ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... Menedemus! you are too precipitate in either extreme, either with profuseness or with parsimony too great. Into the same error will you fall from the one side as from the other. In the first place, formerly, rather than allow your son to visit a young woman, who was then content with a very little, and to whom any thing was acceptable, ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence

... how to secure my wealth and to keep what I had got; for I had greatly added to this wealth by the generous bounty of the Prince ——, and the more by the private, retired mode of living, which he rather desired for privacy than parsimony; for he supplied me for a more magnificent way of life than I desired, if ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe

... Broglio. Yet the form and dignity of these excellent persons vanished, in a certain degree, before the prejudice that was entertained in favor of Baron von Plotho, the Brandenburg ambassador. This man, who was distinguished by a certain parsimony, both in his own clothes and in his liveries and equipages, had been greatly renowned, from the time of the Seven Years' War, as a diplomatic hero. At Ratisbon, when the Notary April thought, in the presence of witnesses, to serve him with the declaration of outlawry which had been issued against ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... genius of the great man who infused courage into the English mind, there can be no question. Marlborough, in spite of his many faults, his selfishness and parsimony, his ambition and duplicity, will ever enjoy an enviable fame. He was not so great a moral hero as William, nor did he contend against such superior forces as the royal hero. But he was a great hero, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... that the building work at S. Lorenzo is being carried forward very slowly, and money spent upon it with increasing parsimony. Still he has his pension and his house; and these imply no small disbursements. He cannot make out what the Pope's real wishes are. If he did but know Clement's mind, he would sacrifice everything to please him. ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... would be an additional expense; no doubt I was running my brother in for a good deal of money; it is becoming more and more difficult to buy original Greek sculpture! and in a moment of posthumous parsimony my thoughts turned to a copy of a Greek vase in granite, granite being more durable than marble, and I wanted the vase to last for a long time. It was delightful to take a sheet of paper and a pencil and to draw all that I remembered of the different vases I had seen, different riots ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore

... Clara always maintained that she was the meanest old thing imaginable. And Maggie had once said that she knew that Auntie Clara made her servant eat dripping instead of butter. To give inferior food to a servant was to Maggie the unforgivable in parsimony. ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... attended the banquet in Piraeus. After the libations you went your several ways. I myself, as it was not very late, walked up to town for an afternoon stroll in Ceramicus, reflecting as I went on the parsimony of Mnesitheus. When the ship was driving against the cliff, and already inside the circle of reef, he had vowed whole hecatombs: what he offered in fact, with sixteen Gods to entertain, was a single cock—an old bird afflicted with catarrh—and half a dozen grains of frankincense; ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata

... unable to bring forward any distinct proof. Grigory's description of the scene at the dinner-table, when Dmitri had burst in and beaten his father, threatening to come back to kill him, made a sinister impression on the court, especially as the old servant's composure in telling it, his parsimony of words and peculiar phraseology, were as effective as eloquence. He observed that he was not angry with Mitya for having knocked him down and struck him on the face; he had forgiven him long ago, he said. Of the deceased Smerdyakov he observed, crossing himself, that ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... merit, a great number of youths, and some useless members. Too many futile readings, too many fugitive verses, too many little rivalships. It is faulty on account of its regulations, the basis of which is weak, and it exhibits too much parsimony in its expenses. It has not enough of that public consideration which perpetuates establishments of this description. Under such circumstances, it is to be apprehended that it will not ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... battle with the world through the prodigality of a parent, whose greatest pleasure was to keep the most hospitable board in his county, and whose greatest dread was to be stigmatised with (what was to him the acme of derogation) meanness and parsimony. Though the family, through the extravagance of its head, was reduced to extreme penury, it was with the utmost difficulty the pride and prejudices of the father could be overcome, to be induced to allow his son to accept an appointment in a government ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro

... of new beets. So strong is usage. She would no more have wasted his money than she would have knifed him in the dark. She ran the household capably, but her way was the old-fashioned way. Sometimes Hugo used to protest, aghast at some petty act of parsimony. ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber

... his melancholy fireside. Why has the poetic spirit of England folded its wings, and been content to abandon its brilliant region to the butterflies of albums, but that the spirit of England has suffered itself to be fettered by the red tape of a peddling parsimony? Should we have had a Shakspeare without the smiles of an Elizabeth, and the generosity of a Southampton? No. He would have split his pen after his first tragedy; have thrown his ink-stand into the Thames; have taken the carrier's cart to Stratford, and there finished ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... of Frederic William was so ill regulated, that all his inclinations became passions, and all his passions partook of the character of moral and intellectual disease. His parsimony degenerated into sordid avarice. His taste for military pomp and order became a mania, like that of a Dutch burgomaster for tulips, or that of a member of the Roxburghe Club for Caxtons. While the envoys of the Court of Berlin were in a state of such squalid poverty as moved the laughter of foreign ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... States, to whose lot it might fall to support the necessary establishments, would be as little able as willing, for a considerable time to come, to bear the burden of competent provisions. The security of all would thus be subjected to the parsimony, improvidence, or inability of a part. If the resources of such part becoming more abundant and extensive, its provisions should be proportionally enlarged, the other States would quickly take the alarm at seeing the whole military force of the Union in the hands of two ...
— The Federalist Papers

... house; but in the Prince's house things went on more slowly, for it did not please the Doge to restore it in the form in which it was before; and they could not rebuild it altogether in a better manner, so great was the parsimony of these old fathers; because it was forbidden by laws, which condemned in a penalty of a thousand ducats any one who should propose to throw down the old palace, and to rebuild it more richly ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various

... you we would give up all we own were the glory or honour of England at stake. And yet you call us rebels, and accuse us of meanness and of parsimony. If you wish money, leave the matter to our colonial assemblies, and see how readily you will get it. But if you wish war, persist in trying to grind the spirit from a people who have in them the pride of your own ancestors. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... on the subject of the White House and its precincts, because we took occasion, in a former work, to berate the narrow-minded parsimony which left the grounds of the White House in a condition that was discreditable to the republic. How far our philippic may have hastened the improvements which have been made, is more than we shall pretend to say, but having made the former strictures, we are happy ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... example, he still turns to string. He conducts his house without enterprise, but with eminent decorum. His movements are slow, and he is a great thinker. But he has a reputation for wisdom and for a respectable parsimony in the village, and his knowledge of the roads of the South of England ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells

... thus engaged upon his book, the whole history of Oliver Twist must have been quite different. And Pepys himself, Samuel Pepys, F.R.S., was guilty. "To Paul's Church Yard," he writes, "and there looked upon the second part of Hudibras, which I buy not, but borrow to read." Such parsimony is the curse of authors. To thumb a volume cheaply around a neighborhood is what keeps them in their garrets. It is a less offence to steal peanuts from a stand. Also, it is recorded in the life of Beau Nash that the persons of fashion of his time, to pass a tedious morning ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks

... of Finance or the Head Steward, I wonder? He betrays parsimony in every shred of his garments. [Drums and the sound of presented arms is heard back of the rear entrance.] The King is coming. The King? Why should I feel so timid, so oppressed, all of a sudden? Does my ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... desires, and passions, in mutual check and limitation. It consists in shunning extremes. Thus courage stands midway between cowardice and rashness; temperance, between excess and self-denial; generosity, between prodigality and parsimony; meekness, between irascibility and pusillanimity. Happiness is regarded as the supreme good; but while this is not to be attained without virtue, virtue alone will not secure it. Happiness requires, in addition, certain outward advantages, such as health, ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody

... that thrift is not parsimony not miserliness. It often means very liberal spending. It is a perpetual protest against putting the emphasis on ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... himself, and like himself, it would appear, still a Muslim at heart—who was employed in the Spanish treasury at Malaga. This man had knowledge that a galley was fitting out for sea to convey to Naples the gold destined for the pay of the Spanish troops in garrison there. Through parsimony this treasure-galley was to be afforded no escort, but was under orders to hug the coast of Europe, where she should be safe from all piratical surprise. It was judged that she would be ready to put to sea ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... loafer or ward heeler, who, all ignorant of the law, has been "elected" county coroner, and one who is more anxious to procure free passes on the road than he is concerned for the victim murdered by the neglect or parsimony of ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... stirring. He never moved except on impulse, and then only when an occasion presented itself for some rapid and abrupt action: catching a running dog by the tail, pulling off a woman's kerchief, or jumping over a big hole. It need hardly be said that with such parsimony of movement Savka was as poor as a mouse and lived worse than any homeless outcast. As time went on, I suppose he accumulated arrears of taxes and, young and sturdy as he was, he was sent by the commune to do an old man's job—to be watchman and scarecrow in the kitchen ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... the seasonings to the Lacedaemonian banquets. And this may not only be conceived from the custom of men, but from the beasts, who are satisfied with anything that is thrown before them, provided it is not unnatural, and they seek no farther. Some entire cities, taught by custom, delight in parsimony, as I said but just now of the Lacedaemonians. Xenophon has given an account of the Persian diet, who never, as he saith, use anything but cresses with their bread; not but that, should nature require anything more agreeable, ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... the talk about the imperial cities is mere boasting. I am famous, admired and loved here, it is true, but the people are worse than the Viennese in their parsimony." ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel

... manager was baffled how the pirates were to ascend a ladder to their sleeping loft. They had no place to go. They would crack their ugly heads upon the ceiling. The costumer was positive (parsimony!) that a hole—even a little hole—should not be cut in the plaster overhead for their disappearance. If the chandelier had been an honest piece of metal they might have perched on it until the act ran out. Or perhaps the candles could be ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks

... Spanish forces in Catalonia and Biscay were wellnigh starving, the Court borrowed L160,000 to defray the expenses of the usual migration to San Ildefonso; and the British ambassador computed that the cost of a campaign could be saved by a sojourn in Madrid for the whole year. But parsimony such as this was out of the question. Accordingly the only possible alternatives were, peace with France, an issue of paper money, or a bankruptcy. Godoy inclined strongly to peace, and discovered in Anglophobia a means of betraying ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... girls liked it. I suspect in this statement a certain parsimony as to the truth. They giggled too much and were never entirely free from that haunting anxiety concerning ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... greatest experience, the difference in the thriving of the different lots upon the same keep is great. They must not be oppressed with having too many in charge, or the owner will suffer by his ill-judged parsimony. From August till November a man may take care of, and pull turnips for, thirty cattle very well, or a few more, if the cattle are loose; but when the day gets short, twenty to twenty-five is as many as one man can feed, to do them justice, ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie

... state in the Jerusalem-chamber, he was buried in Westminster Abbey, where a monument is erected to his memory by Henrietta, duchess of Marlborough, to whom, for reasons either not known or not mentioned, he bequeathed a legacy of about ten thousand pounds; the accumulation of attentive parsimony, which, though to her superfluous and useless, might have given great assistance to the ancient family from which he descended, at that time, by the imprudence of his relation, reduced ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... at Haslau, situate in Dog-street, deliver and make known this for my last will; and without many millions of words, notwithstanding I have been both a German notary and a Dutch schoolmaster. Howsoever I may disgrace my old professions by this parsimony of words, I believe myself to be so far at home in the art and calling of a notary, that I am competent to act for myself as a testator in due form, and as a ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... called by the Cretans Andria; but the Lacedaemonians styled them Phiditia, either from their tendency to friendship and mutual benevolence, phiditia being used instead of philitia; or else from their teaching frugality and parsimony, which the word pheido signifies. But it is not all impossible that the first letter might by some means or other be added, and so phiditia take place of editia, which barely signifies eating. There were fifteen persons to a table, or a few more or less. Each of ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... he often went there to recuperate from overwork. He probably did not enjoy their company, as he spoke of "having" to dine with them and he is perhaps even chargeable with ingratitude when he speaks of their parsimony. ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd

... week there was stock unused to the amount of $1.00, making $2.85 for actual board, (I did not dine out once,) and this included the most expensive meats, which one might not always care to get; for it is not parsimony that often prefers a sirloin steak at thirty cents to a tenderloin at forty cents. But this note may be added. Don't buy quails, they are all gizzard and feathers; and don't buy halibut, till you have inquired the price. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... the favour of God. Ill fortune, and losses, Dishonourable. Riches, are Honourable; for they are Power. Poverty, Dishonourable. Magnanimity, Liberality, Hope, Courage, Confidence, are Honourable; for they proceed from the conscience of Power. Pusillanimity, Parsimony, ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... There is no doubt that his denunciations approached about as near to scurrility as ever he was guilty of; and it is equally true that the French King winced under the attacks made with such acerbity upon his well-known parsimony. In due time, on April 7th, the embargo was lifted, but again in the following year an article by Thackeray, entitled "A Case of Real Distress," in which Punch offers to open a subscription for the poor ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... again concentrated his fondness on the first, as though the girl had merely been a substitute. Desnoyers was becoming indignant at his son's dissipated life. He was no longer at college, and his existence was that of a student in a rich family who makes up for parental parsimony with all ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... "His mother was so extravagant and wasteful that his father named him Chryseros Philargyrus as a sort of antidote incantation, in the hope that it might prove a good omen of his disposition and predispose him to parsimony. He certainly has turned out sufficiently close-fisted ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... all the fleet except the "Goliath," Captain Foley, which kept ahead, but outside, of the "Zealous." No close shaving was done, however, at this critical turn; and it is that steady deliberation, combined with such parsimony of time in other moments, which is most impressive in Nelson. So few realize that five minutes are at once the most important and the least important of considerations. Thus the British passed so much ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... soon after this happy event that Iris entreated from me, as a gift, a photograph of myself. I could not help being struck by this instance of feminine parsimony with regard to small disbursements, since, for the trifling sum of one shilling, it was perfectly open to her to procure an admirable presentment of me at almost any stationer's; for, in obedience to a widely expressed demand, I had already more than once ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey

... writing the Candid Examination I perceived clearly how the whole question of Theism from the side of reason turned on the question as to the nature of natural causation. My theory of natural causation obeyed the Law of Parsimony, resolving all into Being as such; but, on the other hand, it erred in not considering whether 'higher causes' are not 'necessary' to account for spiritual facts—i.e. whether the ultimate Being must not be at least as high as the intellectual and spiritual ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes

... expenditure was retrenched as much as possible, for the purpose of maintaining, in its full dignity, the hospitality of the Chieftain, and retaining and multiplying the number of his dependants and adherents. But there was no appearance of this parsimony in the dress of the lady herself, which was in texture elegant, and even rich, and arranged in a manner which partook partly of the Parisian fashion, and partly of the more simple dress of the Highlands, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... been the reflections of the young wounded American, robbed, by the parsimony of his country, of the right he had earned to serve it, and who was driven out to give his best years and his life for a strange people ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis

... age—twenty-eight, and youth always feels acutely, and expresses strongly. Some of his attacks are evidently aimed at Nero, but his principal object is to denounce the vices of the times. Hence, indolence and prurient literature are stigmatised. He ridicules the extremes of extravagance, and of that parsimony by which it is usually accompanied. "Am I on a festive day to have a nettle dressed for me, and a smoked pig's cheek with a hole in its ear, in order that that grandson of yours may be surfeited with goose liver, and indulge in patrician ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... lustreless. The carpets were old and dingy. The windows did not open on to the terrace. The furniture was hardly ancient, but yet antiquated and uncomfortable. Throughout the house, and indeed throughout the estate, there was sufficient evidence of wealth; and there certainly was no evidence of parsimony; but at Scroope Manor money seemed never to have produced luxury. The household was very large. There was a butler, and a housekeeper, and various footmen, and a cook with large wages, and maidens in tribes to wait upon each other, and a colony ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope

... half his support, as well as his delight; and common farmers provide plenty of beans, peas, and greens, for their hinds to eat with their bacon; and those few that do not are despised for their sordid parsimony, and looked upon as regardless of the welfare of their dependents. Potatoes have prevailed in this little district by means of premiums within these twenty years only, and are much esteemed here now by the poor, who would scarce have ventured to taste ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White

... before October 29, 1618: 'Leaving the arrears of recompense due for their merit to her great successor, who paid them all with advantage.' Ralegh himself, after a similar compliment to James, laments in his History the Queen's parsimony to her 'martial men, both by sea and land,' none of whom, he remembers, 'the Lord Admiral excepted, her eldest and most prosperous commander,' did she 'either enrich, or otherwise honour, for any service by them performed.' ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... little the British Government of that day, for all its professions, really cared for the advancement of knowledge. (The key to this attitude on the part of the Admiralty is to be found in the scathing description in Briggs' "Naval Administration from 1827 to 1892" page 92, of the ruinous parsimony of either political party at this time with regard to the navy—a policy the results of which were only too apparent at the outbreak of the Crimean war. I quote a couple of sentences, "The navy estimates were framed upon the lowest scale, ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley

... of the existing funds; the Samoan Government, which was to profit by the customs, now agreed to bear the expenses of collection; the President, while refusing to be limited to a specific figure, promised an anxious parsimony in the Government expenditure, admitted his recent conduct had been of a nature to irritate the councillors, and frankly proposed it should be brought under the notice of the Powers. I should not be a fair reporter if I did not praise his bearing. In the midst of men whom he had grossly deceived, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... by pleading for more careful design, and less parsimony in expenditure upon the usual church adornments. It is once more a received dogma in ecclesiastical art, one in which all religious opinions agree, that the building in the parish which is set apart for the first public duty, that of worship, should show as much beauty as the means and taste ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... of true Liberality, but this Matter concerned him too nearly to lose such a dexterous Manager, who had taken it into his Hands, by an unseasonable Parsimony. Kelirieu appear'd the next Day at the King's Levee, who took him into his Closet, and renewing their last Conversation; what a feeble Remedy, says he, do you propose for my violent Agitations! Such Sufferings as mine require something more than Words. I know a Person, ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon

... by his comrades on account of his intelligence and his bravery. He lodged at a woman's, who was, they said, a Druidess, and had the prophetic faculty. One day when he was settling his account with her, she complained of his extreme parsimony: "Thou'rt too stingy, Diocletian," said she; and he answered laughing, "I'll be prodigal when I'm emperor." "Laugh not," rejoined she: "thou'lt be emperor when thou hast slain a wild boar" (aper). The conversation got about ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... the number of things you get, not on the quantity you use. You must feel free in your use of material. There is nothing which hampers you more than parsimony in the use of things needful to your painting. If it is worth your while to paint at all, it is worth your while to be generous enough with yourself to insure ordinary freedom of ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst

... must pay it, and to pay it must make it. In fact, the doctor looked on the increase of money by compound interest as a mere arithmetical process. The world, however, finds it to be a process of working, and the making of money by toil, parsimony, and anxiety. ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various

... what can be said of it? I was without the pale of fortune, although several of my school-mates, who had established themselves in London, acquired, by dint of perseverance, parsimony and servility, affluent 23circumstances; convinced, however, that I was not destined to acquire wealth and honour, and being unsolaced even with the necessaries of life, I abandoned in London all hope of success, and emigrated ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... expense. Those who are early accustomed to calculations of this kind, will acquire so accurate a knowledge of what their establishment demands, as will suggest the happy medium between prodigality and parsimony, without in the least subjecting themselves to the ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... of Christ, which (a fact too often forgotten in these days) is the character of God. To teach us that he is an utterly bountiful God. That as in him there is no weakness, nor difficulty, so in him is no grudging, no parsimony. That he is not only able, but willing, to give exceeding abundantly, beyond all that we can ask or think. That there is a magnificence in God and in God's workings, which ought to fill us with boundless hope, if we are ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... German wars, the Hungarian insurrection, deprived of the hoped-for aid from the armies on the Rhine, was pacified. Prussia was induced by this great triumph to co-operate in a more efficient manner in the common cause; the parsimony of the Dutch gave way before the tumult of success; and the empire, delivered from invasion, was preparing to carry its victorious arms into the heart of France. Such results require no comment; they speak for themselves, and deservedly place ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... N. economy, frugality; thrift, thriftiness; care, husbandry, good housewifery, savingness^, retrenchment. savings; prevention of waste, save-all; cheese parings and candle ends; parsimony &c 819. cost-cutting, cost control. V. be economical &c adj.; practice economy; economize, save; retrench, cut back expenses, cut expenses; cut one's coat according to one's cloth, make both ends meet, keep within compass, meet one's ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... would soon have been swept aside by the putting of a single interrogation; but men on the Last Chance River get out of the habit of asking leading questions; in their parsimony over words, they prefer to watch and to wait the reading of the minds of their fellows, and the secreting of their own motives, is almost their only pastime. So Granger ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... by the aid of the faint outline of an abstract conception, by representing this being to ourselves as containing in itself, as an individual substance, all possible perfection—a conception which satisfies that requirement of reason which demands parsimony in principles, which is free from self-contradiction, which even contributes to the extension of the employment of reason in experience, by means of the guidance afforded by this idea to order and ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant

... Jerusalem-chamber, he was buried in Westminster Abbey, where a monument is erected to his memory by Henrietta, duchess of Marlborough, to whom, for reasons either not known or not mentioned, he bequeathed a legacy of about ten thousand pounds; the accumulation of attentive parsimony, which, though to her superfluous and useless, might have given great assistance to the ancient family from which he descended, at that time, by the imprudence of his relation, reduced to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... Princess de Lamballe obtains 100,000 crowns per annum, as much for the post of superintendent of the queen's household, which is revived on her behalf, as for a position for her brother.[1443] The king is reproached for his parsimony; why should he be sparing of his purse? Started on a course not his own, he gives, buys, builds, and exchanges; he assists those belonging to his own society, doing everything in a style becoming to a grand seignior, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... early left to battle with the world through the prodigality of a parent, whose greatest pleasure was to keep the most hospitable board in his county, and whose greatest dread was to be stigmatised with (what was to him the acme of derogation) meanness and parsimony. Though the family, through the extravagance of its head, was reduced to extreme penury, it was with the utmost difficulty the pride and prejudices of the father could be overcome, to be induced to allow his son to accept an appointment in a government ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro

... Such was the parsimony exercised by the great Monarch towards a woman who had laboured strenuously for French interests so long as her sway over Charles of England lasted, and which sway only ceased with his life. "Therein she employed unceasingly all her talent for politics, all her fascinations, ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... vacations, the grandfather again concentrated his fondness on the first, as though the girl had merely been a substitute. Desnoyers was becoming indignant at his son's dissipated life. He was no longer at college, and his existence was that of a student in a rich family who makes up for parental parsimony with all sorts ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... should be granted, and should a single branch decline compliance, the monarch was to wait with patience for a more favorable moment. Such had been the regular practice in the Netherlands, nor had the reigning houses often had occasion to accuse the estates of parsimony. It was, however, not wonderful that the Duke of Alva should be impatient at the continued existence of this provincial privilege. A country of condemned criminals, a nation whose universal neck might at any moment be laid upon the block without ceremony, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... us, he would give his whole strength to working up our own resources, and not trouble himself with Greek. The popular dictum—multum non multa, doing one thing well—may be plausibly adduced in behalf of parsimony ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain

... Purse turns out to be little other than the old 'vectigal of Parsimony.' Nay, he too has to produce his scheme of taxing: Clergy, Noblesse to be taxed; Provincial Assemblies, and the rest,—like a mere Turgot! The expiring M. de Maurepas must gyrate one other time. Let ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... infinitely recompensed the loss of those jewels which Miss Straddle had disposed of. He now set up again in his trade: compassion for his unmerited misfortunes brought him many customers among those who had any regard to humanity; and he hath, by industry joined with parsimony, amassed a considerable fortune. His wife and he are now grown old in the purest love and friendship, but never had another child. Friendly married his elder daughter at the age of nineteen, and became his partner in trade. As to the younger, ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding

... drawing up to the pillared portico of the hotel. A small family dismounted, and the feet of the last had hardly touched the pavement when the music again ended as abruptly as those flourishes of trumpets that usher player-kings upon the stage. Isabel could not help laughing at this melodious parsimony. "I hope they don't let on the cataract and shut it off in this frugal style; do they, Basil?" she asked, and passed jesting through a pomp of unoccupied porters and tallboys. Apparently there were not many people stopping at this hotel, or else they were all ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... "Boatswain's Mate" and other clever religious tracts in the nautical dialect are distributed among them; though clergymen harangue them from the pier-heads: and chaplains in the navy read sermons to them on the gun-deck; though evangelical boarding-houses are provided for them; though the parsimony of ship-owners has seconded the really sincere and pious efforts of Temperance Societies, to take away from seamen their old rations of grog while at sea:—notwithstanding all these things, and many more, the relative condition of the great bulk of sailors to the ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... lays down a large and generous plan, and erects a building worthy of her ancient fame, worthy to increase the love and honor in which she is held,—a building that adds a new beauty to her old beauties of hall and chapel, of quadrangle and cloister. She does not mistake parsimony for economy; she does not neglect to regard the duty that lies upon her, as the guardian and instructress of youth, to set before their eyes models of fair proportion, noble structures which shall exercise at once an influence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... being very cheap there. Pierre kept the purse-strings well tied; he would not hear of any embellishments. The old furniture, faded, worn, damaged though it was, had to suffice, without even being repaired. Felicite, however, who keenly felt the necessity for this parsimony, exerted herself to give fresh polish to all the wreckage; she herself knocked nails into some of the furniture which was more dilapidated than the rest, and darned the frayed velvet of ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... observes the amount of industry which A's profusion feeds; he observes not the far greater quantity which it prevents from being fed; and thence the prejudice, universal to the time of Adam Smith, that prodigality encourages industry, and parsimony is a discouragement ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... mind of Frederic William was so ill regulated that all his inclinations became passions, and all his passions partook of the character of moral and intellectual disease. His parsimony degenerated into sordid avarice. His taste for military pomp and order became a mania, like that of a Dutch burgomaster for tulips, or that of a member of the Roxburghe Club for Caxtons. While the envoys of the Court of Berlin were ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... of Mrs. Mason was not her forte. She had been a beauty; but if it had been her lot to be known in history, it was not as a beauty that she would have been famous. Parsimony was her great virtue, and a power of saving her strong point. I have said that she spent much money in dress, and some people will perhaps think that the two points of character are not compatible. ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... of riches arising from trade in a nation is, the proportion of what is exported for the consumption of others, to what is imported for their own. The true ground of this proportion lies in the general industry and parsimony of a people, or in the contrary of both." But the Dutch being industrious, and consequently producing much,—and parsimonious, and consequently consuming little, have much left for exportation. Hence, never any country traded so much and consumed so little. "They buy infinitely, ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... starved—and bought books,')—and he seemed unable to shake off the pinching necessity of years. A wealthy uncle who had refused to help him whilst he lived, bequeathed all his money to him when he died. But when late in life the nephew became rich, habits of parsimony were a second nature, and seemed to have grown chronic and exaggerated under the novel anxieties of wealth. He still 'starved—and bought books.' During the last years of his life he consulted my mother (and, I fancy, other people also) on the merits of various public ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... acutely, and expresses strongly. Some of his attacks are evidently aimed at Nero, but his principal object is to denounce the vices of the times. Hence, indolence and prurient literature are stigmatised. He ridicules the extremes of extravagance, and of that parsimony by which it is usually accompanied. "Am I on a festive day to have a nettle dressed for me, and a smoked pig's cheek with a hole in its ear, in order that that grandson of yours may be surfeited with goose liver, and indulge in patrician amours. Am I to be a living anatomy that his pope's ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... in Wisconsin, however, for if a school building becomes dilapidated he may condemn it, and then state aid to local education is refused until suitable buildings are provided. The law has proved an excellent deterrent to educational parsimony. ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing

... of preserving his independence, Hermann did not touch his private income, but lived on his pay, without allowing himself the slightest luxury. Moreover, he was reserved and ambitious, and his companions rarely had an opportunity of making merry at the expense of his extreme parsimony. He had strong passions and an ardent imagination, but his firmness of disposition preserved him from the ordinary errors of young men. Thus, though a gamester at heart, he never touched a card, for he considered his position did not allow him—as he said— ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne

... against both her husband's will and the 23rd Elizabeth, to which she had been privy. She complained querulously that the City did not act well. The City then began to complain with more justice of Lady Gresham's parsimony. The Bourse, badly and hastily built, began to fall out of repair, gratings by the south door gave way in 1582, and the clock was always out of order. Considering Lady Gresham had been left L2,388 a year, these neglects were unworthy ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... brother the admiral, and who, if he had been employed, would have given great proofs of it; for he was an excellent seaman, valiant and of great heart." [252] Charlevoix attributes the inaction in which Don Bartholomew had been suffered to remain for several years, to the jealousy and parsimony of the king. He found the house already too powerful, and the Adelantado, had he discovered Mexico, was a man to make as good conditions as had been made by the admiral his brother. [253] It was said, observed Herrera, that the king rather preferred to employ him in ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... name is affirmed of any other term, it can signify no more but this, that it may, or ought to be called by that name; or that these two names signify the same idea. Thus, should any one say that parsimony is frugality, that gratitude is justice, that this or that action is or is not temperate: however specious these and the like propositions may at first sight seem, yet when we come to press them, and examine nicely what they contain, ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke

... constitute the very name of schoolmaster, or pedagogue, a hissing and a by-word. And why is this? I can account for it in but one way. The school teacher is subject to the same organic laws as other men; and, either on account of the ignorance or parsimony of his employers, he has been shut up with their children several hours a day, in narrow and ill-ventilated apartments, where, whatever else they may have done, their principal business has of necessity been to poison one another to death. And, as if not satisfied ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... the reproach of England that she treats, or rather that her Government treats, her men of science, her artists, and her litterateurs with a disgraceful parsimony. It would appear from the following letter that Sir William Herschel was inadequately rewarded, and that his sister felt ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous

... experiences of this new monarch. He was a feeble fellow, but his son and successor, Frederick William I, "a shrewd but brutal boor," so Lord Rosebery calls him, and there could not be a better judge, amazed Europe by his taste for collecting tall soldiers, by his parsimony, his kennel manners in the treatment of his family and his subjects, and leaves a name in history as the first, greatest, and the unique collector of human beings on a Barnumesque scale. All known collectors of birds, beetles, butterflies, and beasts ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... was not clearly kept in view even in Germany that the volume before us is an exposition of a thesis which is novel in these islands, that it was not England that was unprepared, but Germany herself. For the confusion of objectives that led to this Tirpitz blames Bethmann's peace policy, the parsimony of the Reichstag, and the Emperor's failure to attain to clear notions about ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane

... without miraculous elements.[1828] The history of the world, so historical science holds, receives a satisfactory explanation from the character of the general laws of human nature, and the principle of parsimony demands that no unnecessary elements of action be introduced into affairs. The exclusion of miracles from the world does not exclude divine agency and government; it only defines the latter as being in accordance with man's observation ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... Magazine for February 1869; and this long hesitation seems to have been followed by an even longer repentance, for the piece was never included in any one of his volumes of essays. But the ten years of his professorship are, according to the wise parsimony of the chair, amply represented by the two famous little books—On Translating Homer, which, with its supplementary "Last Words," appeared in 1861-62, and On the Study of Celtic Literature, which appeared at the termination of his tenure in 1867. It may be questioned whether ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury

... as a means of future livelihood. Few seek an academic life in Germany who have either money to throw away on superfluities and external show, or who have such a rank to support as might stimulate their pride to expenses beyond their means. Parsimony is, therefore, in these places, the governing law; and pleasure, not less fervently wooed than at Oxford or at Cambridge, putting off her robes of elegance and ceremony, descends to grossness, and not ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... beginning to be prosperous Irving was aware; that he did not more earnestly insist upon helping his nephews stimulated their spirit of independence. They knew that they had been left penniless; Irving sometimes suspected his uncle of parsimony, yet this was a trait so incongruous with Mr. Upton's genial nature that Irving never communicated the suspicion to his brother. Irving felt, too, that his uncle cared less for him than for Lawrence. Well, that was natural; Irving ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier

... To not a few well-meaning but old-fashioned people the mere act of refusing to vote the supplies was in itself a species of treason. To more practical people this act presented itself in a different aspect. It seemed to them indicative of a niggard and ruinous parsimony. They gazed with ill-concealed envy at the marvellous prosperity of the neighbouring State of New York. Any one crossing the Canadian frontier in that direction at once became aware that he had passed from a land of comparative stagnation to a land ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... prosecuted, and on the judge. He appeared not to see any one in the court-room, though Kitty Tynan had so placed herself that he must see her if he looked at the audience at all. Kitty thought him magnificent as he told his story with a simple parsimony but a careful choice of words which made every syllable poignant with effect. She liked him in his grave mood even better than when he was aflame with an internal fire of his own creation, when he was almost wildly vivid ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... though no great one, one quite enough to alarm his scrupulous and conscientious mother. She had some savings; Pen's magnificent self-denial, and her own economy, amounting from her great simplicity and avoidance of show to parsimony almost, had enabled her to put by a little sum of money, a part of which she delightedly consecrated to the paying off the young gentleman's obligations. At this price, many a worthy youth and respected ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... day, and expressed a regret that an expose should have been made so disgraceful to the commercial establishments of this great commercial city. It only showed what was the effect on such establishments of that undue parsimony which was now one of the crying evils of the times. Having thus shortly disposed of them, he came to what all men knew was the real interest of the day's doings. 'But,' said he, 'the evidence in this case, to which your attention will be chiefly directed, will be, not that for the ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... certainly a curious mingling of grandeur and poverty, this life in the half-ruined Castle, with its magnificent tapestries and carvings, its evidences of bygone splendour, and, alas! present-day parsimony. The little house at Passy could have been put down inside the great entrance hall, but it was a trim little habitation, where on a minute scale all the refinements and niceties of life were observed, and income and ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... was baffled how the pirates were to ascend a ladder to their sleeping loft. They had no place to go. They would crack their ugly heads upon the ceiling. The costumer was positive (parsimony!) that a hole—even a little hole—should not be cut in the plaster overhead for their disappearance. If the chandelier had been an honest piece of metal they might have perched on it until the act ran out. Or perhaps the candles could ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks

... methodical manner, his writings exhibit great parsimony of language. There is no fascination in his style. It is without ornament, and very condensed. His merit consisted in great logical precision and scrupulous exactness in the employment ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord

... accounts of their married life, the bride secured the favour of her powerful uncle-in-law, who indulged her costly fancies to the full. It is, however, more probable that the Cardinal Montalto treated her follies with a grudging parsimony; for we soon find the Peretti household hopelessly involved in debt. Discord, too, arose between Vittoria and her husband on the score of a certain levity in her behaviour; and it was rumoured that even during the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... looking over the house at Ealing that, drawing upon all the appropriate resources of natural history, he had called her a little vesper Vole, because she lived in a Bank and only came out of it in the evening. What Flossie called him that time didn't matter; it was her parsimony in the item of endearments that provoked him to excesses of the kind. And now the thought of those things made him furious; furious with himself; furious with Fate for throwing Flossie in his way; furious with Flossie for ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... $9,000, about one-half of the existing funds; the Samoan Government, which was to profit by the customs, now agreed to bear the expenses of collection; the President, while refusing to be limited to a specific figure, promised an anxious parsimony in the Government expenditure, admitted his recent conduct had been of a nature to irritate the councillors, and frankly proposed it should be brought under the notice of the Powers. I should not be a fair reporter ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... private soldier, his father a petty officer of the revenue; [35] his own merit had raised him, in an advanced age, to the empire; but his merit was rather useful than shining, and his virtues were disgraced by a strict and even sordid parsimony. Such a prince consulted his true interest by the association of a son, whose more splendid and amiable character might turn the public attention from the obscure origin, to the future glories, of the Flavian house. Under the mild administration of Titus, the Roman world enjoyed a transient ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... anything" under trusted leaders; and they restored the military reputation of their country before the eyes of Europe. To have forged such an instrument of war was no mean administrative exploit. To have maintained its efficiency steadily on the whole, though sometimes with a faint-hearted parsimony, and to have loyally supported its commander against the cavils of a factious opposition superior in parliamentary ability, for a period of seven years, must be held to redeem the tory government from the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... Yet Clara always maintained that she was the meanest old thing imaginable. And Maggie had once said that she knew that Auntie Clara made her servant eat dripping instead of butter. To give inferior food to a servant was to Maggie the unforgivable in parsimony. ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... this is but fair towards the distinguished dead. It is but just towards the memory of the departed, to believe his conduct to have been principally influenced by such considerations. All men have many faults—most men have grave faults. Is parsimony intrinsically more culpable than prodigality? Have not most of mankind a tendency towards one or the other? for how few are ennobled by the ability to steer evenly between the two! And even granting that Sir William Follett had a tendency towards the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... honor but to the security of the people of the United States that no nation should be permitted to invade our waters at pleasure and subject our towns and villages to conflagration or pillage. Economy in all branches of the public service is due from all the public agents to the people, but parsimony alone would suggest the withholding of the necessary means for the protection of our domestic firesides from invasion and our national honor from disgrace. I would most earnestly recommend to Congress to abstain from all appropriations for objects not absolutely necessary; but I take ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... States-General of France, without any overt breach of the constitution. After all, the original design of the crown had been to get money out of parliament, and the main object of parliament had once been to make the king live of his own. A king content with parsimony might lawfully dispense with parliament; and the eleven years had shown the precarious basis of parliamentary institutions, given a thrifty king and an unambitious country. Events were demonstrating the truth of Hobbes's maxim that sovereignty is indivisible; peace could not be kept between ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard

... making special appropriations for incorporated villages. Such appropriations, the superintendent had observed, excited prejudice and parsimony; for the trustees of some villages had learned to expend only the special appropriations for the education of the colored pupils, and to use the public money in establishing and maintaining schools for the white children. He believed that it was wrong to argue that Negroes were any more a burden ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson

... Directors were with these demands, you may conceive, Sir, that they did not find themselves very much disembarrassed by being made acquainted that they must again exert their influence for a new reserve of the happy parsimony of their servants, collected into a second debt from the Nabob of Arcot, amounting to two millions four hundred thousand pounds, settled at an interest of twelve per cent. This is known by the name of the Consolidation of 1777, as the former of the Nabob's debts ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... of Parsimony in the weighing of evidence! So intrinsically was this slum-bred convict a scientist, that he had worked out Hamilton's law and ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... Tullius; and gave to the soldiers, out of the spoil, one hundred and two asses[3] each, and double that sum to the centurions and horsemen, who received this donative the more gratefully, on account of the parsimony ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius

... in creating man, took the most scrupulous pains to make him in the image of the ape" ("Discourse," page 37).)) is quite new to me, and the argument in an earlier place (page 8 (281/4. At page 8 of the "Discourse" the speaker referred to the law "which Sir William Hamilton called the Law of Parsimony—or the law which forbids us to assume the operation of higher causes when lower ones are found sufficient to explain the desired effects," as constituting the "only logical barrier between Science and Superstition.")) on the law of parsimony ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... now engaged. My patience, however, is now worn out, and I have come here to learn whether I am to expect the steam-vessels or not,—whether the scandalous blunders of Mr. Galloway are to be remedied by those concerned, or if an ill-timed parsimony is to doom Greece to inevitable destruction; for such will be the consequence, if Ibrahim's resources are not cut up before the period at which it is usual for him to commence operations. You know my opinions so well, that it is unnecessary to repeat them to ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald

... should this involve a breach of the main principles of decorum. With this course duly put into practice, outside, the accountancy will issue in one year four or five hundred taels less, without even the semblance of any parsimony; while, inside, the matrons will obtain, on the other hand, some little thing to supply their wants with; the nurses, who have no means of subsistence, will likewise be placed in easy circumstances; and the plants and trees in the garden ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... heeler, who, all ignorant of the law, has been "elected" county coroner, and one who is more anxious to procure free passes on the road than he is concerned for the victim murdered by the neglect or parsimony of ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... subtilty, superseded the necessity of study, and the use of sketching. Let me assure you, once for all, that photographs supersede no single quality nor use of fine art, and have so much in common with Nature, that they even share her temper of parsimony, and will themselves give you nothing valuable that you do not work for. They supersede no good art, for the definition of art is "human labour regulated by human design," and this design, or evidence of active intellect in choice and arrangement, is the essential part of the work; which so long ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... the reason of the sagacious parsimony of which the mother complained; and he was the more certain that the widow Gruget would agree ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac

... one may be as avaricious with a small fortune as with a great one; and if we are to measure M. Ramon's wealth by his parsimony, he must be a triple millionaire—such a wretched old miser!" continued Louis, contemptuously, biting into his bread with ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue

... was beginning to impede the execution of his schemes of art-philanthropy. The three travelling scholarships had been founded in the first blaze of his ardour, and before the personal management of his property had awakened in him the sleeping instincts of parsimony. But as his capital accumulated, and problems of investment and considerations of interest began to encroach upon his visionary hours, we saw a gradual arrest in the practical development of ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... contrasted with the virtuous industry of the ant in order to point a moral for mankind!—vainly, because the cigale's short life in the sunlit trees will ever seem to men a more ideal one than that of the earth-burrowing ant, with its possible longevity, its peevish parsimony, and restless anxiety for the future. I could have lain down under a tree like a gipsy in this wild spot, and let the summer dreams come to me from their airy castles amongst the leaves, if I had not made up my mind to reach St. Affrique before night. There was ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... belief! Summer, my lord, this saucy upstart Jack, That now doth rule the chariot of the sun, And makes all stars derive their light from him, Is a most base, insinuating slave, The sum[44] of parsimony and disdain; One that will shine on friends and foes alike, That under brightest smiles hideth black show'rs Whose envious breath doth dry up springs and lake And burns the grass, that beasts can get ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... intimating that, the general neglect of bathing, of which I complain so loudly, is chiefly owing to this unreasonable prejudice, though this no doubt has its sway. On the contrary, I believe it is much oftener owing to ignorance, indolence, and parsimony.] ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott

... powers of Rigby, powers remarkable in an age when to be conspicuous for conviviality demanded very unusual capacity both of head and of stomach. To be admired by Bedford was in itself a patent of dishonor, but it was a profitable patent to Rigby. The Duke, who was accused at times of a shameful parsimony, was generous to profusion towards the bloated buffoon who was able and willing to divert him, and from that hour Rigby's pockets never wanted their supply of ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... called, with unlimited money from France and Flanders, held Edinburgh and Glasgow; all the border line was theirs, and all the north and west. Elizabeth's Council, wiser than their mistress, barely squeezed out of her reluctant parsimony enough to keep Mar and Morton from making terms with the rest; but there her assistance ended. She would still say nothing, promise nothing, bind herself to nothing, and, so far as she was concerned, the war would have been soon enough brought to ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... Mere charged Pop with parsimony and he charged her with recklessness. She accused him of trying to tie them down to a village; he accused her of trying to drive him to bankruptcy. She demanded to know whether he wanted his children to be like children of their neighbors—clerks in small stores, ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... whole history of Oliver Twist must have been quite different. And Pepys himself, Samuel Pepys, F.R.S., was guilty. "To Paul's Church Yard," he writes, "and there looked upon the second part of Hudibras, which I buy not, but borrow to read." Such parsimony is the curse of authors. To thumb a volume cheaply around a neighborhood is what keeps them in their garrets. It is a less offence to steal peanuts from a stand. Also, it is recorded in the life of Beau Nash that the persons of fashion of his time, to pass a tedious morning "did divert themselves ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks

... he made money hand over hand; became a rich and mighty man, and exalted his cocked hat upon 'change. He built himself, as usual, a vast house, out of ostentation; but left the greater part of it unfinished and unfurnished out of parsimony. He even set up a carriage in the fullness of his vain-glory, though he nearly starved the horses which drew it; and as the ungreased wheels groaned and screeched on the axle trees, you would have thought you heard the souls of the ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... Uncle Gilbert would go to Dr. Leiser and have his parsimony removed he'd have more fun as he ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart

... towering high over all, Nelson's Column, the statue looking as if it had turned its back in pity on the little fountains, to look with contempt, first upon the bronze face of the unfortunate Charles, then upon Parliament, whose parsimony in withholding justice from his daughter, he would ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... which otherwise they must at once consume or allow to lie idle. Eventually, however, the minority came over to the view of the majority, who preferred to fix the maximum higher than was necessary, rather than by untimely parsimony expose the commonwealth to the danger of seeing the capital withdrawn which could be so profitably used in the equipment of production. The voting was influenced by the consideration that we, as the first, outside of Freeland, among whom capital would receive ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... has, at the same time, made the body incapable of being any longer its instrument. All care for the well-being of the bodily state seems to reach but to this epoch. It appears to me that, in the formation of our physical nature, wisdom has shown such parsimony, that notwithstanding constant compensations, decline must always keep in the ascendancy, so that freedom misuses the mechanism, and death is germinated in life as out of its seed. Matter dissolves again into its last ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... and passions, in mutual check and limitation. It consists in shunning extremes. Thus courage stands midway between cowardice and rashness; temperance, between excess and self-denial; generosity, between prodigality and parsimony; meekness, between irascibility and pusillanimity. Happiness is regarded as the supreme good; but while this is not to be attained without virtue, virtue alone will not secure it. Happiness requires, in addition, certain outward advantages, such as health, riches, friends, which therefore a ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody

... could not bear to pay a penny to save a pound; the consequence of which has been, that she has paid a pound for a penny. Why are there so many unpaid certificates in almost every man's hands, but from the parsimony of not providing sufficient revenues? Besides, the doctrine contradicts itself; because, if the whole country cannot bear it, how is it possible that a part should? And yet this has been the case: for those things have been had; and they must be had; but ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... one of the strangest popular follies that has ever been seen in the world, which showed itself in Holland toward the middle of the seventeenth century. The country at that time had reached the height of prosperity; antique parsimony had given place to luxury; the houses of the wealthy, very modest at the beginning of the century, were transformed into little palaces; velvet, silk, and pearls replaced the patriarchal simplicity of the ancient costume; Holland had ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various

... economy in rags and his liberality to the young doctor are very oddly contrasted with each other. I should not be surprised at any time to hear that he had endowed a scholarship or professorship or built a college dormitory, in spite of his curious parsimony in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... of near ten thousand pounds. Archbishop Morton, the chancellor, instructed the commissioners to employ a dilemma, in which every one might be comprehended: if the persons applied to lived frugally, they were told that their parsimony must necessarily have enriched them; if their method of living were splendid and hospitable, they were concluded to be opulent on account of their expenses. This device was by some called Chancellor Morton's ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume

... her constant intrigues, her underhand dealings with France and Spain, her grasping policy in the Netherlands, her meanness and parsimony, and the fact that she was ready at any moment to sacrifice the Netherlands to her own policy, had wholly alienated the people of the Low Country; for while their own efforts for defence were paralysed by the constant interference of ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty

... way he made money hand over hand, became a rich and mighty man, and exalted his cocked hat upon "Change." He built himself, as usual, a vast house, out of ostentation, but left the greater part of it unfinished and unfurnished, out of parsimony. He even set up a carriage in the fulness of his vain-glory, though he nearly starved the horses which drew it; and, as the ungreased wheels groaned and screeched on the axle-trees, you would have thought you heard the souls of the ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... wandered into the intricacies of Kant, Kreis reminded him that all good little German philosophies when they died went to Oxford. A little later Norton reminded them of Hamilton's Law of Parsimony, the application of which they immediately claimed for every reasoning process of theirs. And Martin hugged his knees and exulted in it all. But Norton was no Spencerian, and he, too, strove for Martin's philosophic soul, talking as much ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... cultivated in out-of-the-way districts in France. Each of the pair had an income of four or five thousand francs, which with the President's salary, reached a total of some twelve thousand. In spite of a decided tendency to parsimony, vanity required that they should receive one evening in the week. Du Croisier might import modern luxury into the town, M. and Mme. de Ronceret were faithful to the old traditions. They had always lived in the old-fashioned house belonging to Mme. du Ronceret, and had made no changes in ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac

... was their kinsman through Cadmus, had transformed them into doves. Probably the story of their transforming every thing they touched, into wine, corn, and oil, was founded solely on their thriftiness and parsimony. Bochart, however, explains the story from the circumstance of their names being, as he conjectures, Oeno, Spermo, and Elai, which, in the old Phoenician dialect, signified wine, corn, and oil; and ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... natural. Pyotr Petrovitch had despised and hated him from the day he came to stay with him and at the same time he seemed somewhat afraid of him. He had not come to stay with him on his arrival in Petersburg simply from parsimony, though that had been perhaps his chief object. He had heard of Andrey Semyonovitch, who had once been his ward, as a leading young progressive who was taking an important part in certain interesting circles, the doings of which were ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... things you get, not on the quantity you use. You must feel free in your use of material. There is nothing which hampers you more than parsimony in the use of things needful to your painting. If it is worth your while to paint at all, it is worth your while to be generous enough with yourself to insure ordinary freedom ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst

... printed, and published for the benefit of the world and the propagation of the Gospel according to Dr. Johnson are pleasant things to look upon. I hope the enterprise has proved remunerative to those concerned, but I doubt it. The parsimony of the public in the matter of books is pitiful. The ordinary purse-carrying Englishman holds in his head a ready-reckoner or scale of charges by which he tests his purchases—so much for a dinner, so much for a bottle of champagne, so much for a trip to Paris, so much for ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell

... the poor girl so niggardly that Grandet had grown to love her as we love a dog, and Nanon had let him fasten a spiked collar round her throat, whose spikes no longer pricked her. If Grandet cut the bread with rather too much parsimony, she made no complaint; she gaily shared the hygienic benefits derived from the severe regime of the household, in which no one was ever ill. Nanon was, in fact, one of the family; she laughed when Grandet laughed, felt gloomy or chilly, warmed herself, and toiled as he did. What ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac

... agents, because ignorant of what was really necessary, repeatedly changed the form of its engagements with them, and, at length, by its fluctuating policy, real wants, and imprudent parsimony, brought matters to such extremities that Washington was compelled to require the several counties of the State of New Jersey to furnish his army with certain quantities of provisions within six days in order to prevent them from being taken ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... was drawing to a close; and they had not conquered the King. They had not obtained even those advantages which they had expected from a policy obviously erroneous in a military point of view. They had wished to husband their resources. They now found that in enterprises like theirs, parsimony is the worst profusion. They had hoped to effect a reconciliation. The event taught them that the best way to conciliate is to bring the work of destruction to a speedy termination. By their moderation many lives and much property had been wasted. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... English and eight natives were candidates for the contract; three of the English far overbid the eight natives. They who consider that the natives, from their superior dexterity, from their knowledge of the country and of business, and from their extreme industry, vigilance, and parsimony, are generally an over-match for Europeans, and indeed are, and must ultimately be, employed by them in all transactions whatsoever, will find it very extraordinary that they did not by the best offers secure this dealing to themselves. It can be ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... his economy; but are sometimes suffered to run to waste, while he is only careful of the main. On the other side, he likens the mediocrity of wit, to one of a mean fortune, who manages his store with extreme frugality, or rather parsimony; but who, with fear of running into profuseness, never arrives to the magnificence of living. This kind of genius writes indeed correctly. A wary man he is in grammar, very nice as to solecism or barbarism, judges to a hair of little decencies, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden

... the Government to be in full readiness to guard against a revengeful invasion of England by her old enemy. He had thought out the whole situation, he had planned the defences of England by land and sea, and his new favour at Court had enabled him to put pressure on the royal parsimony, and to insist that things should be done as he saw fit. He was perfectly right in thinking that Philip II. would rather suffer complete ruin than not try once more to recover his position in Europe, but he ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... pages are covered with writing on the back, an instance of his parsimony in the matter of paper{24}. This matter consists partly of passages marked for insertion in the text, and these can generally (though by no means always) be placed where he intended. But he also used ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin

... which had occurred suddenly, had followed quickly upon that of Frank; but, amid all the widow's affliction, she never forgot the sorrow that Charles's selfish disposition occasioned her. There was no longer even the shadow of an excuse for parsimony, as the inheritance which would have been divided between the two brothers would now devolve on the only son. Charles knew this: he knew that he was provided with a sufficient fortune to finish his education admirably, to send him ...
— The Young Lord and Other Tales - to which is added Victorine Durocher • Camilla Toulmin

... personages by bleeding the life's blood out of the British public, though it is fair to say that the Government did not carry out to the full the benevolent suggestions Nelson consistently urged in their behalf. "His heart was always breaking" at some act of parsimony on the part of the Government in so tardily giving that which he pleaded was an urgent necessity for them to have. He frankly avowed that he would prefer to resign if any distinction were to be drawn ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... they could be well content to live on bread or potatoes, to drink water, to make the stones of the street their bed, and to sleep in their clothes, with no covering but the canopy of heaven." "How vast," says Cicero, "is the revenue of Parsimony!" and, by a thousand degrees more striking, how celestial is the strength that descends upon ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... attention while they were incubating "The Ogallallas." No sooner had Waller read it than the quatrain of Old Billy Bones took possession of him and converted itself into music. The two of them, as so many other thousands had done, bewailed the parsimony of Stevenson in the use and development of the grisly suggestion and Waller declared that if Allison would complete the verse he would set it to music. That same night Allison composed three ragged but promising verses, at white heat, while walking the floor in a cloud of ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock

... longer over that preposterous telegram? If my friend Talbert was in any kind of trouble under the sun, there was just one thing that I wanted—to get to him as quickly as possible. Find when the first train started and arrived—send a lucid despatch—no expensive parsimony in telegraphing: ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo

... Kennedy Square began; each door-step had its habitues and each veranda its traditions. There was but one single porch, in fact, facing its stately trees whereon no flocks of birds, old or young, ever alighted, and that belonged to Peter Skimmerton—the meanest man in town—who in a fit of parsimony over candles, so the girls said, had bared his porch of every protesting vine and had placed opposite his door-step a glaring street gas-lamp—-a monstrous ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... Sometimes it belonged to one of the Cossacks, but oftener was lent to him by his aid-de-camp, Tichinka. He was without servants, keeping but one attendant to wait upon himself, and employing some of the soldiers in the service of his house. This mode of living arose not from parsimony, but from an utter indifference to any kind of indulgence, which he considered beneath a soldier's attention. He had a contempt for money as a means of procuring gratification, but valued it as often affording him the pleasure of being generous ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various

... made a good pecuniary bargain for India, but a bad political bargain, if we have saved three or four millions to the finances of that country, and given to it, at the same time, pernicious institutions, we shall indeed have been practising a most ruinous parsimony. If, on the other hand, it shall be found that we have added fifty or a hundred thousand pounds a-year to the expenditure of an empire which yields a revenue of twenty millions, but that we have at the same time secured to that empire, as far as in us lies, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... making it; I will not contest this, although I doubt, on seeing what passes among ourselves, whether we have the right to cast the stone at them; especially as American liberality, as I shall presently show, is of a nature to put our parsimony to shame. As to the bankrupt acts, of which American creditors have many times complained, nothing can justify them; yet here again the role of pedagogue scarcely becomes us. If more than one American railroad company have taken advantage of a crisis ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin

... without worrying about the waste of half a quarter. Olivier was more prudent, though not less ardent in their friendship, and thought it better to wait until their respective tenancies had expired. Christophe could not understand such parsimony. Like many people who have no money, he never worried about losing it. He imagined that Olivier was even worse off than himself. One day when his friend's poverty had been brought home to him he left him suddenly and returned ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... too many straitjackets, hobbles, muffs, leg-locks, bodybelts, &c. &c. Hence half her patients were frequently kept out of harm's way by cruel restraints administered, not out of hearty cruelty, but female parsimony. Mrs. and Miss Dodd invaded the house one day when the fair economist was out, and found seven patients out of the twelve kept out of mischief thus: one in a restraint chair, two hobbled like asses, two chained like dogs, and two in ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... estimates themselves would have been enough to cause dismay even if the estimates of other departments, upon which the Indian public looks with more favour, had not clearly been pruned down with more than usual parsimony to meet the large increase in military expenditure. But Lord Rawlinson, who had done his utmost to reduce them to the extreme limit of safety as he conceived it in existing circumstances, wisely decided to take the Assembly as far as possible into his confidence, and to explain the requirements ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... essence of Aryan aeons down into an attar of no greater volume than the capacity of the Biblical period—admits that Europe now possesses 10,000 of our Sanscrit texts; and considering that we have, or have had, many other tens of thousands which the parsimony of Karma has hitherto withheld from the museums and libraries of Europe, what a ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... said on the subject of the White House and its precincts, because we took occasion, in a former work, to berate the narrow-minded parsimony which left the grounds of the White House in a condition that was discreditable to the republic. How far our philippic may have hastened the improvements which have been made, is more than we shall pretend to say, but having made the former strictures, we are happy to have an occasion to say (though ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... about the imperial cities is mere boasting. I am famous, admired and loved here, it is true, but the people are worse than the Viennese in their parsimony." ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel

... simplicity. So in Paradise Regained Milton has carried simplicity of dress to the verge of nakedness. It is probably the most unadorned poem extant in any language. He has pushed severe abstinence to the extreme point, possibly beyond the point, where a reader's power is stimulated by the poet's parsimony. ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... influence of agricultural depression, and at present he found himself, if not seriously embarrassed, likely to be so in a very short time. He was not a good economist; he despised everything in the nature of parsimony; his ideal of the clerical life demanded a liberal expenditure of money no less than unsparing personal toil. He had generously exhausted the greater part of a small private fortune; from that source there ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing









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