"Improvident" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Celtic and improvident! Patrick's visions had shown him only the triumphant arrival of his host and the beatific joy of Eva as she floated by his side on the most "fancy" of boat-birds. Of the return journey he had taken no thought. And so the saving and planning had to be done all ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... scent out of the grass, while two or three little children tumbled over him, and crept about him, as kittens or puppies frolic with their parents, "if that's all, we'll have a subscription of eatables for them improvident folk as have eaten their dinner for their breakfast. Here's a sausage pasty and a handful of nuts for my share. Bring round a hat, Bob, and see what ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... multitude be supplied? I see a selfish man in that crowd pulling a luncheon out of his own pocket, and saying: "Let the people starve. They had no business to come out here in the desert without any provisions. They are improvident, and the improvident ought to suffer." There is another man, not quite so heartless, who says: "Go up into the village and buy bread." What a foolish proposition! There is not enough food in all the village ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... 24, 1836; he was twenty-three and she somewhat younger. Kind, gentle, loving, she was quite unable to understand she was linked with a genius. Wagner was burdened with debts, begun in Magdeburg and increased in Koenigsberg. She was almost as improvident as he. They were like two children playing at life, with fateful consequences. It was indeed her misfortune, as one says, that this gentle dove was mismated with an eagle. But Minna learned later, through dire necessity, to be more economical and careful, which is more than can be said ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... many people call "Nature's methods" and "Nature's laws," though, indeed, they are no more than the methods and laws of the beasts. By such expedients we may hope to see, first, a certain fall in the birth-rate, a fall chiefly in the birth-rate of improvident, vicious, and feeble types, a continuation, in fact, of that fall that is already so conspicuous in illegitimate births in Great Britain; secondly, a certain, almost certainly more considerable fall in the death-rate of infants ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... build, but of graceful and vigorous bearing. They are perhaps the most courageous and intelligent of the peoples; pugnacious, but less quarrelsome than the Sea Dayak; more energetic and excitable than the Kayan; hospitable and somewhat improvident, sociable and of pleasant manners; less reserved and of more buoyant temperament than the Kayan; very loyal and obedient to their chiefs; more truthful and more to be depended upon under all circumstances than any of the other ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... thousand of the youth of Scotland added to the adult community in an untaught, uninformed condition. Nor need we say in how frightful a ratio their numbers must increase. The ignorant children of the present will become the improvident and careless parents of the future; and how improvident and careless the corresponding class which already exists among us always approves itself to be, let our prisons and workhouses tell. Our country, with all its churches, must inevitably founder among the nations, ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... apples, peaches, and cherries, the growth of trees planted here by those who first took possession of the island. In 1823, however, these resources had all but disappeared, through the wasteful practices of improvident whalers. At no great distance might be seen the two round eminences which mark the mouth of the river Bio-Bio, the small island of Quebra-Ollas, and that of Quiriquina, and, these passed, the Bay of Conception opened to view, where was a solitary ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... robberies, and two of these afterwards suffered death for their offences, while another, who had gone into the woods, was proclaimed an outlaw. For want of any overseers or police, except those taken from their own class, the convicts were getting beyond all discipline; and so utterly reckless and improvident were some of them, that they would consume their weekly allowance of provisions by the end of the third or fourth day, and trust for their supply during the rest of the week to the chance of being able to ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... receiving his select society of epicureans. For some time past the host had met with some terrible trials. Every one in the house was aware of and felt the minister's distress. No more magnificent or recklessly improvident reunions. Money had been the pretext assigned by Fouquet, and never was any pretext, as Gourville said, more fallacious, for there was not the slightest appearance ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... landlady once arrested him for rent, but Dr. Johnson came to his relief, took from his desk the manuscript of the "Vicar of Wakefield," and sold it for three hundred dollars. He spent two years revising "The Deserted Village" after it was first written. Generous to a fault, vain and improvident, imposed on by others, he was continually in debt; although for his "History of the Earth and Animated Nature" he received four thousand dollars, and some of his works, as, for instance, "She Stoops to Conquer," had a large sale. But in spite ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... had not, without the assistance of the Romans, art of masonry sufficient to raise a stone rampart for their own defence; yet the Monkish historians [x], who treat of those events, complain of the luxury of the Britons during this period, and ascribe to that vice, not to their cowardice or improvident counsels, all their subsequent calamities. [FN [x] Gildas. Bede, lib. ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... proper place. Those good and discreet ladies have a notion that their conduct is full of propriety and discretion and sound sense; but how they make their sisters suffer—ah, how they make the poor things suffer! I believe that, if any improvident man could see, in a keenly vivid dream, a vision of his wife's future after his death, he would stint himself of anything rather than run the risk of having to reflect on his death-bed that he had failed to do his best for those who loved him. Women sometimes out ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... contributions. As a young cowboy, Landy had had his fling. He came into the game as the cattle-sheep wars were at their peak and he played it strenuously. But with it all, Landy Spencer kept his moral slate fairly clean. Then as the sober days of manhood came, and Landy witnessed the finish of the improvident and foolish, he began to save and skimp. "Hit's the pore house fer a cow hand," was his terse aphorism on the subject, and Landy had never seen a ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... of this class were scattered throughout the northwest territories. Some of them retained a little of the thrift and forethought of the civilized man, and became wealthy among their improvident neighbors; their wealth being chiefly displayed in large bands of horses, which covered the prairies in the vicinity of their abodes. Most of them, however, were prone to assimilate to the red man in ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... schemes broached by as many wild heads of the excited crowd, in which were now lined up for any lawlessness all the idlers, floaters, the improvident, and the reckless elements of a frontier gambling town, one caught the popular fancy. Some one proposed a jail delivery to release Rebstock and Seagrue, persecuted by the railroad company. The idea spread like wildfire, ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... grow angry over the least trifle; he was quick to see and speak of the faults in others; he was demanding more of those he associated with in the way of consideration and justice than he was willing to give, and he was untidy in his person and improvident in ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... thoroughness with which the country was covered by the police in order to prevent danger and catastrophe to the rather improvident gold-seekers, a patrol was made by Inspector (later Assistant Commissioner) W. H. Routledge a distance of 1,100 miles or so from Fort Saskatchewan away north to Fort Simpson. This patrol was of ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... first won my regard. I sought his acquaintance, found him easy of access, friendly and communicative, and always anxious to oblige every one as far as lay in his power. Commanding an excellent income, he was always ready to assist the improvident who had expended theirs, and with such a disposition, you may be certain that the calls upon his purse were by no means few. He formed a strong attachment to me, and we usually spent ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... by all the Indian tribes of the Hudson's Bay territory; and were it not for them these people would be confined to one place for months together, and could not follow the deer or other game. As almost all savages are improvident, and none more so than the North American Indians, were they prevented for a season from going out to hunt, whole tribes would starve. Indeed, many individuals of them perish with hunger as it is; and the life of all these ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... they are lazy, they are improvident. They are not content in the station in which it has pleased God to place them. I know all about these people. They are turbulent, they are rebellious; they want to get their good, kind landlords out of the country, and to seize on their property. It is horrid you know, horrid!" and ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... training I committed the blunder of advancing small sums of money to a number of men, who, of course, immediately got drunk. My ignorance of popular manners and customs had made me unable to realize the lamentable fact that if you pay five shillings to a man in the improvident class he will at once invest it in five shillings' worth of intoxication. I was still in Padiham at two in the afternoon, finishing accounts, and I had to be in Burnley with my men in time to get them off by the evening trains. When we ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... strength and his weakness the boy beside him, but this enwrapped attitude, this eloquent, still, unconscious face, which spoke of thoughts and feelings familiar only to the eye of God, seemed to lift Louis into another sphere; he knew the people kneeling about, the headlong, improvident, roystering crowd, but knew them not in this outpouring of deeper emotions than spring from the daily ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... anxious to assist his fellow-subjects of King George as he was to promote the British policy of building up the Canadian territories as a counterpoise to the United States. While there was undoubtedly some distress among immigrants of the improvident class, those who came here with the determination to work generally found work before long at much better compensation than they could have earned in England, while those who proceeded to the new regions of the West had no difficulty in ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... scandalous conduct on your part, by the fruitless promise of a hidden treasure, to lead an honest man, who has hitherto faithfully followed his calling, into ruin—to induce him to neglect his business—and to bring misery upon his wife and children, by rendering him improvident and idle. Begone! and delude them no longer with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 482, March 26, 1831 • Various
... 1787, legitimate son of Adelaide Fouque, was a thrifty, selfish lad who saw that his mother by her improvident conduct was squandering the estate to which he considered himself sole heir. His aim was to induce his mother and her two illegitimate children to remove from the house and land, and in this he was ultimately successful. Having sold the property for fifty thousand francs, he induced his mother, ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... improvident that a parting a year away is no more feared than death, and a month's end seems dim and distant. But a week,—a week only,—that even to love is short, and the beginning of the end. The chilling mist that rose from the gulf of separation so near before them overshadowed all the brief remnant of ...
— Lost - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... of school-life always showed the dreamer at the foot of her class, and Miss Gordon grew apprehensive. Mrs. Jarvis might arrive any day, ready to repeat the glorious offer she had already made to that improvident child. But if she found her dull and far behind her classmates, how could she be expected to offer anything in the way ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... Passed from his dying hand to the cold virtuoso, who let it slumber in its case for a generation, till, when his hoard was broken up, it came forth once more, and rode the stormy symphonies of royal orchestras, beneath the rushing bow of their lord and leader. Into lonely prisons with improvident artistes; into convents from which arose, day and night, the holy hymns with which its tones were blended; and back again to orgies, in which it learned to howl and laugh as if a legion of devils were shut up in it; then, ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... grand-aunts had invited their niece to pay them a visit—an aunt of mine, who had made what they considered a very imprudent marriage, and where considerable pecuniary privations were too likely to accompany the step she had taken. The poor niece had to bear many a taunt directed against her improvident union, as for example:—One day she had asked for a piece of tape for some work she had in hand as a young wife expecting to become a mother. Miss Nelly said, with much point, "Ay, Kitty, ye shall ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... all, as the Count often observes, if it had not been for Ferdinand's scrapes they would not have known each other. Nor was Lord Catchimwhocan passed over. Ferdinand Armine was not the man to neglect a friend or to forget a good service; and he has conferred on that good-natured, though somewhat improvident, young nobleman, more substantial kindness than the hospitality which is always cheerfully extended to him. When Ferdinand repaid Mr. Bond Sharpe his fifteen hundred pounds, he took care that the interest should appear in the shape of ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... they, with bended knees entreated him not to let the Romans, with an improvident disregard of all safety (they whose fortune their everlasting good faith had raised to the skies), now be misled by a base error to trample all former agreements under foot, and attempt an act ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... "instructions" provided for that item and he could have justly taken advantage of it (a thing which I would have done with more than lightning promptness if I had been Secretary myself). But the United States never applauded this devotion. Indeed, I think my country was ashamed to have so improvident a person in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... said De Laveleye,[256] criticising Spencer, "the fate of each creature is determined by its individual qualities; whereas in civilised societies a man may obtain the highest position and the most beautiful wife because he is rich and well-born, although he may be ugly, idle or improvident; and then it is he who will perpetuate the species. The wealthy man, ill constituted, incapable, sickly, enjoys his riches and establishes his stock under the protection of the laws." Haycraft in England and Jentsch in Germany have strongly emphasised these "anomalies," which nevertheless are ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... the majority are sailors of the ordinary type, careless, light-hearted, improvident, never looking beyond the present moment—content to accept the first job that "turns up," and quite satisfied with a day's food and a shirt to their backs. Some are coiled up on lockers and spare sails, others sleeping off their last night's "spree" on the bare planks, and rolling over and over ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... father is still, in the eyes of the tenants and of the country round, the owner of Castle O'Shanaghgan; but, after consulting with me, your Uncle George felt that he must not have the reins. His Irish nature, my dear—But I need not discuss that. You know as well as I do how reckless and improvident he is." ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... times of old, he plays, as Holy Writ tells us, on a ten-stringed instrument; on the contrary, he brings the most powerful, the most wonderful, and the most heart-rending tones from one string. His name is Paganini; he is very improvident and very poor. The D——s, and the Impressario of the theatre got up a concert for him the other night, which was well attended, and on which occasion he electrified the audience. He is a native of Genoa, and if I ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... women becoming domestic servants and the men the unskilled laborers that were needed in the construction camps. They built roads, dug canals, and laid the first railways. Complaint was made that they lowered the standards of wages and of living, that their intemperate, improvident ways tended to complicate the problem of poverty, and that their Catholic religion made them dangerous, but they continued to come until the movement reached its climax, in 1851, when 272,000 passed through the gates of the Atlantic ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... week. A manufacturing gentleman informed me that the very men whom he had been paying L8 a week to were the first to apply for relief when distress came and the mills stopped. It is not low wages, then, which causes improvident habits. The only result of deporting agricultural labourers to different counties is to equalise the wages paid all over England. This union-assisted emigration affords the improvident labourer a good ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... altogether improvident. He had hoped great things of Bill Siddall's wine-cellar—this despite an almost unbroken series of bitter disillusionments and disappointments in experience with those who had the wealth to buy, if they had had the taste to select, the fine wines he ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... do with the representation; and even Murphy and Lady Mary are scarcely persons whom one would select as ideal biographers. The latter is probably right in comparing her cousin to Sir Richard Steele. Both were generous, kindly, brave, and sensitive; both were improvident; both loved women and little children; both sinned often, and had their moments of sincere repentance; to both was given that irrepressible hopefulness, and full delight of being which forgets to- morrow in to-day. That Henry Fielding was wild and reckless ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... conclusion. It showed more fore-thought and provision, and higher purpose in the conservation of food than some human beings ever display, even at their best. The plains Indians and the buffalo hunters were horribly wasteful and improvident. The impulse of that grizzly was to make good use of every pound of that meat, and ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... remembered that the Friendly societies exist solely among the freed negroes, and that the moneys are raised exclusively among them. Among whom? A people who are said to be so proverbially improvident, that to emancipate them, would be to abandon them to beggary, nakedness, and starvation;—a people who "cannot take care of themselves;" who "will not work when freed from the fear of the lash;" who "would squander the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Thibetan borders of China have been converted into uninhabitable, sandy desert, where centuries ago were fertile and well-watered pastures supporting rich cities, in consequence of the reckless destruction of forest. In fact, whether it is due to man's improvident action or to natural climatic change, it appears that the formation of "desert" is due in the first place to the destruction of forest, the consequent formation of a barren, sandy area, and the subsequent spreading of what we may call the ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... moment he was undergoing a revulsion of feeling. His state of mind was like that of an improvident debtor who, while knowing that the note must be paid some time, does not quite realize it for a while after an extension. At last the cigar was finished. There had been but little said ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... of struggle and effort. The application of an accumulated fund by the Government to the payment of its running expenses is a duty. An individual living beyond his income and embarrassing himself with debt or drawing upon his accumulated fund of principal is either unfortunate or improvident. The distinction is between a government charged with the duty of expending for the benefit of the people and for proper purposes all the money it receives from any source, and the individual, who is expected to manifest a natural desire to avoid debt or to accumulate as much ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... that he really saw anything in his old age, but they were all certain that he saw things when he was a young man. His brother said, "Old he is, and it's all in his brain the things he sees. If he was a young man we might believe in him." But he was improvident, and never got on with his brothers. A neighbour said, "The poor man, they say they are mostly in his head now, but sure he was a fine fresh man twenty years ago the night he saw them linked in two lots, like young slips of girls walking together. It was the night they took away ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... generation, till, when his hoard was broken up, it came forth once more and rode the stormy symphonies of royal orchestras, beneath the rushing bow of their lord and leader. Into lonely prisons with improvident artists; into convents from which arose, day and night, the holy hymns with which its tones were blended; and back again to orgies in which it learned to howl and laugh as if a legion of devils were shut up in it; then again to the gentle dilettante who calmed it down ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... their kindness and forbearance? He thought of his neglect of his patient devoted wife, whom he was leaving, with her little ones, to struggle with poverty and dependence; he thought of his children growing up to know him only as the improvident selfish father, who had doomed them to difficulties, and without one tender word or kind look to grace his memory. No wonder he turned, unable to brook the sight of his unconscious babe; and that, when with morning ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... early that morning, but not with a view to discovery. A leak in his cabin roof—quite consistent with his careless, improvident habits—had roused him at 4 A.M., with a flooded "bunk" and wet blankets. The chips from his wood pile refused to kindle a fire to dry his bedclothes, and he had recourse to a more provident neighbor's to supply the deficiency. This was nearly opposite. Mr. Cassius crossed ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... with correctness, though without method. His horror of the sound of the trumpet in childhood, and the early passion he displayed for arithmetic, are well known; to the last he was fond of figures, and was extremely clever in making calculations; though very improvident in his pecuniary affairs. The peculiar delicacy of Mozart's organization is displayed in the fine sense of hearing which he evinced at a tender age. Schachtner, a trumpeter, who used to visit his father, had a violin ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... brave and alert, but cruel and revengeful, preferring treachery and cunning to open battle. At home, he was lazy, improvident, and an inveterate gambler. He delighted in finery and trinkets, and decked his unclean person with paint and feathers. His grave and haughty demeanor repelled the stranger; but he was grateful for favors, and his wigwam stood ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... of her and did not reply. The wind of a keen clear winter morning had put colour into her cheeks. Overhead, the creamy- yellow smoke-clouds were thinning away one by one against a pale-blue sky, and the improvident sparrows broke off from water-spout committees and cab-rank cabals to clamour of ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... themselves to work except as the hirelings and servitors of white men; no idea of building a church, or accomplishing any other serious enterprise, except through beggary of the whites. As a class, the blacks are indolent, improvident, servile and licentious; and their inveterate habit of appealing to white benevolence or compassion whenever they realize a want or encounter a difficulty, is eminently baneful and enervating. If they could never more obtain a dollar until they shall ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... really great musician," Mrs. Vanderlyn said, speculatively. "They go everywhere in Germany. No doors are closed to them. It wouldn't be at all surprising for a musician to travel as he's doing. Such people are eccentric, and often so foolishly improvident. Something about music makes them so. But they worship them in Germany. They know the ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... cynically, as though he were two separate persons, one of whom was cool and calculating, while the other was improvident and scape-grace. How Lady Dawn would despise him, were he to reveal to her the stupid commotion of his mind! His excuse for blundering his way into her privacy had been sufficiently fantastic: that her late ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... raised but did not! Our vast domains of wooded mountains, hills and valleys lie practically untenanted by big game, save in a few exceptional spots. We lose because we are lawless. We lose because we are too improvident to conserve large forms of wild life unless we are compelled to do so by the stern edict of the law! The law-breakers, the game-hogs, the conscienceless doe-and-fawn slayers are everywhere! Ten per cent of all the grown men now in the United States are to-day poachers, thieves and law-breakers, ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... that, if it could have been traced, they had enjoyed an ancestry of paupers as long as the pedigree of Sir Roger Rockville himself. In the days of the most perfect villenage, they had, doubtless, eaten the bread of idleness, and claimed it as a right. They were numerous, improvident, ragged in dress, and fond of an alehouse and of gossip. Like the blood of Sir Roger, their blood had become peculiar through a long persistence of the same circumstances. It was become pure pauper blood. ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... in sore straits for food, for they were improvident, and managed badly, Pocahontas, always generous and friendly, learning of their needs, came with her brother Nantaquaus and her Indians bringing corn, and kept them from starving, while their own was growing. Captain John in return gave her ...
— The Story of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith • E. Boyd Smith
... for the magazines; for flirting with the muse, while their wives are wanting shoes, or perpetrating puns, while their children cry for "buns"! Suppose that, pointing every line with wit, I should hold them up to contempt as careless, improvident lovers of pleasure, given to self-indulgence; taking their Helicon more than dashed with gin; seekers after notoriety, eccentric in their habits and unmanly in all their tastes! After this, should I very handsomely make an ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... than to the "Prodigal Father," as Dickens later called him. This father, whom Dickens long afterward described, in David Copperfield, as Mr. Micawber, was, as his son was always most willing to testify, a kind, generous man; but he was improvident to the last degree; and when in difficulties which would have made melancholy any other man, he was able, by the mere force of his rhetoric, to lift himself above circumstances or to make himself ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... of fresh meat, I find it impossible to make the men take any care of it, or use it with the least frugality, though I expect that necessity will shortly teach them this art." We shall see, later on, that the men, who were really as improvident of food as the Indians, had hard lessons ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... around me, whose bones will whiten the prairie if they make the attempt. There are great guns which can send their shot nearly as far as this camp, and each man has as many rifles as he can fire, while the women and boys load them. As to provisions, the whites are not like the improvident red-skins, who gorge themselves with food one day and starve for many afterwards. I have spoken. What is it you would have ...
— The Trapper's Son • W.H.G. Kingston
... "I'm so improvident that I'm afraid I'd marry you on nothing. I haven't a copper of my own, remember. You will have a penniless bride. Oh, I wish more than ever that Uncle Bernard had left me something, so that ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... for us to vanish, for he will next propose to buy the Hortensian villa from the improvident prodigal who holds it, and will make you settle down here in spite of yourself, and so make a respectable heathen out of you; for of course you have not the courage to whisper in his ear that you are a Christian: his oven is not yet ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... of Arts. After wasting his property in Italy and Spain, he returned to London to earn his bread by the pen. As a pamphleteer, as a poet, and especially as a dramatist, Greene achieved a considerable reputation. But his improvident habits and a life of constant debauchery brought his career to a close, amidst poverty and remorse, at the early age of thirty-two. He died in a drunken brawl, leaving in his works the evidence of talents and qualities which ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... better—notable hunters who never shot swimming deer nor does with fawn nor any game unaware; who prayed permission of the Wuld before they went to hunt, and left offal for their little brothers of the Wilderness. Indians know. But Greenhow, being a business man, opined that Indians were improvident, and not being even good at his business, fouled the waters where he camped, left man traces in his trails and neglected to put out his ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... master, that confidence is complete. The white man's duties are in his mind clearly defined. His job is to see that the black man is fed, is watered, is taken care of in every way. The ordinary porter considers himself quite devoid of responsibility. He is also an improvident creature, for he drinks all his water when he gets thirsty, no matter how long and hot the journey before him; he eats his rations all up when he happens to get hungry, two days before next distribution time; he straggles ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... delighted, now to gain his enemies, and now to gratify his friends. With Gay, also, Parnell was intimate; and the latter, himself independent by his fortune, is said to have bestowed on this needy and improvident genius the price of ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... account that he gives of our affairs is most discouraging. My father, it seems, has been living beyond his income for some years. The estates have all been heavily mortgaged to supply the wants of the passing hour, while no provision has been made for the future by their improvident possessor. Creditors are clamorous for their money, and there is no money to answer their demands. Mr. Haydin, the principal mortgagee, threatens to foreclose with my father, if the interest, which has been due upon the ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... It is easy to understand how Filipino respect for Europeans must be diminished by the numbers of these uneducated, improvident, and extravagant Spaniards, who, no matter what may have been their position at home, are all determined to play the master in the colony. [Social Standing of Filipinos thus enhanced.] The relative standing of the Filipinos naturally profits ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... horrors which often threatened the newcomers in the wilderness, as it had often beset its improvident red children. In the first year of the settlement at Conneaut, James Kingsbury was forced to leave his family and go some distance into New York state. He fell sick, and was unable to return before winter set in. Then he hurried homeward as fast ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... aware of the precipice, to the verge of which his improvident passion had drawn him, watched them out of the corner of his eye, uncertain how far their comprehension of the scene had gone. He trembled to think how nearly he had betrayed his secret; and took the more shame ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... smaller number, and to make each individual egg much larger and richer in proportion than their rivals. This plan, of course, enables the young to begin life far better provided with muscles and fins than the tiny little fry which come out of the eggs of the improvident species. For example, the cod-fish lays nine million odd eggs; but anybody who has ever eaten fried cod's-roe must needs have noticed that each individual ovum was so very small as to be almost indistinguishable to the naked eye. Thousands of these ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... of virtue or manliness. He loves idleness, he has little conception of right and wrong, and he is improvident to the last degree of childishness. He is a creature,—as some of our own people will do well to keep carefully in mind,—he is a creature just forcibly released from slavery. The havoc of war has filled his heart with confused longings, and his ears with confused ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... property recognized by custom during a long course of years, although ignored by the law and exposed to confiscation by the reckless Whig legislation of 1850-2. The Land Act of 1881 was an arbitrary attempt to remedy the misfortunes of an improvident agricultural interest by legislative interference with contract. Contracts were readjusted and finally settled for fifteen years to come. Political economy was bidden to take itself off, but prices varied quite regardless of Mr. Gladstone's arrangements, and the weather ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... universe. This was in my thoughts entirely when I suggested to a man of old George's headstrong and undisciplined nature that he would do well to investigate the habits of a sober and industrious insect like the ant. He has led an improvident life, and I thought that as he neared his end, whatever would promote a philosophic cast of mind would inevitably ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... pencil dashing its excess of shades, Improvident of wealth, till every bough Burns with ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... the little gods of the improvident, I was lured into the backwoods of the Ozarks by such a name as "Mountain Home," which caught my fancy on the map; and with no definite "stories" in mind I would go sauntering from Nowhere-in-Particular ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... half a million pounds sterling, by mortgaging his different estates and giving his promissory notes to money-lenders. Of course, he did not spend this vast sum immediately. He might have lived in comparative luxury upon his income; but he was a restless, eager, improvident nobleman, and his extravagances were prompted by the urgings ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... time was permitted to France between two convulsive efforts, and the Revolution as yet knew not whether it should maintain the constitution it had gained, or employ it as a weapon to obtain a republic, Europe began to arouse itself; egotistical and improvident, she merely beheld in the first movement in France a comedy played at Paris on the stage of the States General and the constituent Assembly—between popular genius, represented by Mirabeau, and the vanquished genius of the aristocracy, personified ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... very advanced suffragette, joined these scientists in the new Eden. Owen had issued a universal invitation to the "industrious and well disposed," but his project offered also the lure of a free meal ticket for the improvident and the glitter of novelty ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... ordered the largesses which Nero had made to actors and wrestlers and such like to be strictly required again, allowing only the tenth part to be retained; though it turned to very small account, most of those persons expending their daily income as fast as they received it, being rude, improvident livers; upon which he had further inquiry made as to those who had bought or received from them, and called upon these people to refund. The trouble was infinite, the exactions being prosecuted far, touching a great number of persons, bringing disrepute on ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Commander in the Wars A Vainglorious Coward in Command A Pirate An Ordinary Fence A Puny Clerk A Footman A Noble and Retired Housekeeper An Intruder into Favour A Fair and Happy Milkmaid An Arrant Horse-Courser A Roaring Boy A Drunken Dutchman resident in England A Phantastique: An Improvident Young Gallant A Button-Maker of Amsterdam A Distaster of the Time A Mere Fellow of a House A Mere Pettifogger An Ingrosser of Corn A Devilish Usurer A Waterman A Reverend Judge A Virtuous Widow An Ordinary Widow A Quack-Salver A Canting Rogue A French Cook A Sexton A Jesuit An Excellent Actor A ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... cellars above ground. This, besides being extremely inconvenient for passage out of, and into the house, often fails to make a dry cellar, for the water from the roof runs in, and causes a flood. And such accidents, as they are mildly termed by the improvident builders, often occur by the failure ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... purchasing him an ensign's commission, that is to say, provided he could raise the money, or procure it by interest, either of which clauses was rather to be wished than hoped for by him. On no better a plan, however, had his improvident father suffered this youth, a youth of great promise, to run up to the age of manhood, or near it at least, in next to idleness; and had, besides, taken no sort of pains to give him even the common premonitions against the vices of the town, and the dangers ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... whose optics, besides being somewhat dazzled with ale and brandy, were speedily engaged in contemplating a half-crown which Joshua held between his finger and his thumb, saying, at the same time, 'Friend, thou art indigent and improvident. This will, well employed, procure thee sustentation of nature for more than a single day; and I will bestow it on thee if thou wilt sit here and keep me company; for neither thou nor I, friend, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... coarseness of all their implements and furniture, the unambitious homeliness of all their goods and chattels, except the axe, the rifle, and the horse—these being invariably the best and handsomest which their means enable them to procure. But he is mistaken in supposing them indolent or improvident; and is little aware how much ingenuity and toil have been exerted in procuring the few comforts which they possess, in a country without arts, ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... who claimed to succeed his father, but Canute sailed away, only to return next year, when the traitor Edric joined him and Wessex submitted. Together Canute and Edric harried Mercia, and were preparing to reduce London, when AEthelred died there on the 23rd of April 1016. Weak, self-indulgent, improvident, he had pursued a policy of opportunism to ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... power rested on their ability to stimulate religious fears, and who were supported by such contributions as they were able to extort from the superstitious and ignorant people,—by nature brave and generous and joyous, but improvident and reckless. It was the wonder of O'Connell how they could remain cheerful amid such privations and such wrongs, with the government seemingly indifferent, with none to pity and few to help. Nor could they vote for the candidates for any office whatever unless ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... before the long-expected supplies came, by which time our necessities had almost conquered my resolution not to take by force of the abundance I might see around, however well I might afterwards pay. It is but fair to state that the improvident villagers throughout Sikkim are extremely poor in vegetable food at this season, when the winter store is consumed, and the crops are still green. They are consequently obliged to purchase rice from the lower valleys, which, owing to the difficulties of transport, is very dear; and to obtain ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... the columns of the local papers were filled with letters from all sorts of cranks who suggested various remedies. One individual, whose income was derived from brewery shares, attributed the prevailing distress to the drunken and improvident habits of the lower orders. Another suggested that it was a Divine protest against the growth of Ritualism and what he called 'fleshly religion', and suggested a day of humiliation and prayer. A great number ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... burning wood and charcoal daily, a country where not only the houses but most of the things in common use are made of wood; and there seems to be no end to the trees that remain. It is little wonder that in many parts there has been and is improvident use of wood. Happily every year the regulation of timber areas and wise planting make progress. But for many square miles of hillside I saw there is ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... property as security, without a prospect, as far as we could judge, of their being able to pay us without allowing the mortgage to be foreclosed. That you may not think ill of me on that account, I may say that we thus had an opportunity of being of considerable service to many of these improvident gentlemen. Our trade throve, and I soon found that it would be convenient to establish a store at the principal place at which the steamer called. Arthur took charge of it, and the flourishing condition of the concern showed that we were right ...
— The Log House by the Lake - A Tale of Canada • William H. G. Kingston
... please, Captain. But it's sorry I am to come troubling you about such things, when I know you are thinking of other matters. And, as I said before, the money does not signify to me; the times, thank God, are good, and I've never been very improvident." ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... Impress (print) presi. Impression (printing) presajxo. Impression impreso. Impressionable impresebla. Impressive impresa. Imprison malliberigi. Improbable neversxajna. Improper nedeca. Impropriety nedececo. Impromptu senprepara. Improve plibonigi. Improvement plibonigo. Improvident malspxarema. Improvise improvizi. Imprudent nesingardema. Impudent senhonta. Impulse pusxo. Impure malpura. Impurity malpureco. Impute alkalkuli. In en. In front antauxe. In place of, to put anstatauxi. In that manner tiamaniere. Inability neebleco. Inaccessible ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... accounts for his location of the scene in his comedy "The Cherry Garden," where a business-like man, who had once been a serf, just like the dramatist's own father, has prospered sufficiently to buy the orchard from the improvident and highly educated owners; and for all the details about fruit-gardening given in the powerful story "The Black Monk." This story infallibly reminds one of Gogol. A man has repeatedly a vision of a black monk, who visits him through the air, with whom ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... evil, taking as was the superficial evidence to the contrary. No cruelty could make the slave work like a free man, while his power to consume was enormous. Infants, aged, and weak had to be supported by the owner. Even the best slaves were improvident. Everywhere slave labor tended to banish free. Upon slave soil scarcely an immigrant could be led to set foot. Poor whites grew steadily poorer, their lot often more wretched than that of slaves. Invention, care, forethought were as good ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... shou'd shew ourselves, as provident as the Republick of Ants, and keep something to preserve Life and Soul together, when Want and Winter come. We seem to be quite uninfluenced by Hopes or Fears, the two great ruling Passions of the Soul; and as merry and improvident, as so many Grass-hoppers. In other Countries if Sheep eat up Men, the Men have their Revenge and eat up Sheep; but in Ireland, wretched, thoughtless Ireland, Sheep eat up more Men than all the Wolves on the ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... author is to draw the most aggravated, hideous and deformed picture of the state of this country, which his querulous eloquence, aided by the arbitrary dominion he assumes over fact, is capable of exhibiting. Had he attributed our misfortunes to their true cause, the injudicious tampering of bold, improvident, and visionary ministers at one period, or to their supine negligence and traitorous dissensions at another, the complaint had been just, and might have been useful. But far the greater and much the worst part of the state which he exhibits is owing, according ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... miser abstinet, ac timet uti; Vel quod res omnes timide gelideque ministrat, Dilator, spe lentus, iners, pavidusque futuri; The beardless Youth, at length from tutor free, Loves horses, hounds, the field, and liberty: Pliant as wax, to vice his easy soul, Marble to wholesome counsel and controul; Improvident of good, of wealth profuse; High; fond, yet fickle; ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... America, until no tract there was left uninhabited but—frozen wastes and arid plains. What of the fruitful regions which lay in the vast interior? It was thither that the government should turn the thoughts of the homeless and the improvident. Leading to this temperate and fertile area was {16} an excellent northern highway—the waters of Hudson ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... worrying about it, Sidney? It cannot be helped now. Besides, if your father saved money, and the others were improvident, he deserved to make ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... with a sound heart and upright spirit, one attains; it is something unknown to flesh and blood and to simple reason, it is a kind of innocent and pure exaltation, freed from rule and superior to law, holily improvident, a stranger to all calculation, to all positive prevision, unreservedly reliant on Him who sees and knows all things, and as a last reward counting on the coming of that kingdom of God, the promise of which ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... remembered. Like all enthusiasts, Radisson could not have been a hero, if he had not been a bit of a fool. If he had not had his faults, if he had not been as impulsive, as daring, as reckless, as inconstant, as improvident of the morrow, as a savage or a child, he would not have accomplished the exploration of half a continent. Men who weigh consequences are not of the stuff to win empires. Had Radisson haggled as to the means, he would have missed or muddled the end. He went ahead; and when the way did not open, ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... circuit riders made their appearance in the West, the people were little better than heathen. The law had scarcely any hold upon these frontiersmen. They were wild and untamed, and personal freedom was kept in restraint mainly by the law of personal accountability. They were generous and improvident, frank, fearless, easy-going, and filled with an intense scorn for every thing that smacked of Eastern refinement or city life. They were proud of their buckskin and linsey-woolsey clothes, their squirrel caps, and their horny hands and rough faces. ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... about 70,000, near of kin to the Zulus, but for many years hostile to them. Both the Boers and Cetewayo had formerly claimed supremacy over this region. The British government had never admitted the Boer claim, but when the head chief of the Swazis had, by a series of improvident concessions, granted away to adventurers, most of them Boers, nearly all the best land and minerals the country contained, it was found extremely difficult to continue the system of joint administration by the High Commissioner and the Transvaal government which had been provisionally ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... college to learn, it seems, not to think. When one enters the portals of learning, one leaves the dearest pleasures—solitude, books and imagination—outside with the whispering pines. I suppose I ought to find some comfort in the thought that I am laying up treasures for future enjoyment, but I am improvident enough to prefer present joy to hoarding ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... the professor, "never put anything by. They are wasteful and improvident, almost to a man; and they learn nothing by experience, though they know as well as we do that it is simply a question of demand and supply, and that the day of overproduction is sure to come, when their work must stop ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... They follow the apostolic example, and minister to their necessities by their own hands, and exhibit a pattern to their infant establishments, not only of industry to procure the means of personal livelihood, but to enable them to assist those improvident heathen by whom they are surrounded, even when their exertions are attended with danger and repaid by insult; and by these means they often acquire an influence over the most savage minds, which it were ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... equality of opportunity, "self-determination." No man is a greater slave than one who is bound and driven by financial necessity. By thrift the mind is "unfettered by the petty annoyances that result from improvident ways." Thrift means providing for the future. There is nothing in the world that will so establish one's faith in the future and that will, therefore, give that freedom of spirit upon which democracy depends, as the wise use of to-day ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... usual thoughtless improvidence, threw about their money so carelessly, that, soon after their arrival, every article of household consumption doubled and trebled in price, the remuneration for labour rising in proportion. This improvident expenditure has had the effect of making the people discontented. Imagining our resources to be inexhaustible, they do not know how much to ask for their commodities or their services, and it will require great firmness and discretion, on the part of ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... The advocates for the large estates tell us, that the masses are too ill-educated to be trusted with independence; that without authority over them, these small proprietors become wasteful, careless, improvident; that the free spirit becomes a democratic and dangerous spirit; and finally, that the resources of the land cannot properly be brought out by men without capital to cultivate it. Either theory ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... clerk—as they did—and gave her the annuity to which a wife would have been entitled—but of which he could not feel assured. Living among literary men, some less distinguished and less discreet than those whom we have mentioned, he was constantly importuned to relieve distresses which an improvident speculation in literature produces, and which the recklessness attendant on the empty vanity of self-exaggerated talent renders desperate and merciless—and to the importunities of such hopeless petitioners he gave too largely—though he used ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... Court for Insolvent Debtors, to the gaols, the work-houses, and the hospitals. If you are rich and childless, and want heirs, look to the same assemblages of misfortune; for all are not culpable who appear in the Bankrupt and Insolvent Lists; nor all criminal who are found in gaols; nor all improvident who are inmates of work-houses and hospitals. On the contrary, in these situations, an alloy of vice is mixed with virtue enough to afford materials for as deep tragedies as ever poet fancied or stage exhibited; and visiters of relief would act the part of angels descending from Heaven among ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... Happiness crowned the night; I too, Laughing and looking, one of all, I watched the quivering lamplight fall On plate and flowers and pouring tea And cup and cloth; and they and we Flung all the dancing moments by With jest and glitter. Lip and eye Flashed on the glory, shone and cried, Improvident, unmemoried; And fitfully and like a flame The light of laughter went and came. Proud in their careless transience moved The ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... will contaminate an entire basket, one drop of ink cloud a full glass of clear water. It was so in the case of the strikers at the Rathbawne Mills. Their unwonted idleness, the long succession of empty hours, already, among the more improvident, the preliminary pressure of privation's teeth,—all these made them easy prey for the sophistries of men like McGrath and his associates. At first they simply laughed at the arraignments of Peter Rathbawne as a plutocrat, a slave-master, and an oppressor ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... created, "for the purpose," as old Lord Ardmore was fond of fulminating, of "pillaging loyal Peter in order to pamper rebel Paul!" The opinion of very old, and intolerant, and indignant peers cannot always be taken seriously, but it is surely permissible to feel a regret for kindly, improvident Dick Talbot-Lowry, his youth and his income departing together, and the civic powers that he had once exercised, reft from him. Such power as he had had, he had exercised honourably and with reverent ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... proffering advice as to how the vessel should be navigated, who only holds out a cold and steady hand after the catastrophe has happened, or, if no catastrophe supervenes, is content to walk away in that silent wonder which the care of Providence for the improvident must ever evoke. ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... daughter of Adam, and which, submitted to a woman's culture, has yielded a harvest of unknown flowers. Let us permit Madame Sand to produce these perilous marvels till the approach of winter; she will sing no more when the North wind has come. Meanwhile, less improvident than the grasshopper, let her make provision of glory for the time when there will be a famine of pleasure. The mother of Musarion was wont to repeat to her child: "Thou wilt not always be sixteen; will Choereas always remember his oath, his ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... be considered. Every man, he said, acquainted with the state of Ireland would agree with him, that in a time of profound peace, under the exclusive laws, 25,000 men was but a scanty garrison for Ireland. In the event of war, or even of the rumour of war, that would be an improvident government which did not immediately add a force of 15,000 men to the previous military force. It could not be a question that both France and America wished to do us injury; and in the case of any collision with either of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... call last night to excuse himself from dining with Lockhart's friends to-day. I really fear he is near an actual standstill. He has been extremely improvident. When I first knew him he had an excellent estate, and now he is deprived, I fear, of the whole reversion of the price, and this from no vice or extreme, except a wasteful mode of buying pictures and other costly trifles at high prices, and selling them again for nothing, besides an extravagant ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... difficulties of defending her questionable behaviour to me, which I should have been at pains to excuse. This produced a salutary calm in my soul, which had so recently been a prey to the worst anxieties. All that had driven me with such passionate haste to an improvident and premature marriage, all that had consequently weighed on me so ruinously, now seemed set at rest, leaving peace in its stead. And although the ordinary cares of life still pressed on me for many years, often in a most vexatious and troublesome form, yet the anxieties attendant on my ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... pounds which good Mr. Larkin had procured for the improvident vicar, bore interest, I am almost ashamed to say, at thirty per cent. per annum, and ten per cent. more the first year. But you are to remember that the security was altogether speculative; and Mr. Larkin, of course, made the ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... and one a spendthrift and one a dissipator and one over-ambitious they watch over 'em and curb these different traits of theirn and adjust 'em to the good of all and the honor of their pa and ma. They spur on the indolent and improvident, hold back the greedy and ambitious, watch and see that the careless and good-natured don't git trod on, nor the strong make slaves of the weaker. The feeble are protected, temptations are kept out of the way of the feeble wills; the honest, industrious ones hain't ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... proved disastrous. Whatever temporary relief it afforded to indigent and improvident debtors, was far outweighed by the blow given to credit generally, and by the indignation excited among creditors. The Bakufu owed much of the stability of their influence to the frugality of their lives and to their unsullied administration of justice. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... words of Christ, what could be expected of those whom supreme Goodness has destined to a subordinate lot? No! material improvement was not the first thing, even for those unhappy people (victims for the most part of their own improvident or vicious habits) who had scarcely bread to eat and raiment wherewith to clothe themselves. Let them seek the kingdom of God, and these paltry, temporal things shall surely ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... who had spent much time in Buenos Ayres and was presently thinking of New York; and we had some friendly discourse together concerning the English. His ideas of them were often so parallel with my own that I hardly know how to say he thought them an improvident people. I owned that they spent much more on state, or station, than the Americans; but we neither had any censure for them otherwise. He was of that philosophic mind which one is rather apt to encounter in the Latin races, and I could well wish for his further ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... dwell upon these miserable details, it is not (God forbid!) to insult laborious poverty, or talent forced to struggle against the hardships of life or the embarrassments of improvident, careless youth. No,—but there was here, and this is the reason I speak of it, the trade-mark of that literary living-by-the wits which had taken entire possession of Henry Murger, against which he had struggled in vain all his life long, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... company—in every squad room—who always spend their pay within a few days after receiving it from the paymaster. As soon as his money is gone, and he needs or wants more, the improvident soldier turns to some comrade who saves and lends his money. The loan is five dollars, but by all the traditions the borrower must return six ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... drowned and parted in the sea of sleep; the death of the year, when winter lies heavy on the graves of the children of summer, when the leafless trees moan in the blasts from the ocean, when the beasts even look dull and oppressed, when the children go about shivering with cold, when the poor and improvident are miserable with suffering or think of such a death of disease as befalls us at times, when the man who says, 'Would God it were morning!' changes but his word, and not his tune, when the morning comes, crying, 'Would ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... St. Clare was not, nor her mother before her. Indolent and childish, unsystematic and improvident, it was not to be expected that servants trained under her care should not be so likewise; and she had very justly described to Miss Ophelia the state of confusion she would find in the family, though she had not ascribed it ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... continual, and it did not end with their lives. He tried to manage their successions; he thought no pains too great to arrange between a widow and a son who had succeeded his father; he was often harassed and perplexed by tales of hardship; and I find him writing, almost in despair, of their improvident habits and the destitution that awaited their families upon a death. "The house being completely furnished, they come into possession without necessaries, and they go out NAKED. The insurance seems to have failed, and what next is to be tried?" While they lived he wrote behind ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fourth volume of his works [page 289. in a pamphlet intitled a Vindication of his Excellency John Lord Carteret, from the charge of favouring none but Tories, High-Churchmen, and Jacobites.] So that here I need only tell you, that this ill-starred, good-natur'd, improvident man returned to Dublin, unhinged from all favour at court, and even banished from the Castle: But still he remained a punster, a quibbler, a fiddler, and a wit. Not a day passed without a rebus, an anagram, or a madrigal. His pen ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... interest decides. Vermont would not keep African slaves, because they were not valuable to her; neither will any population, whose density is so great as to trade rapidly on the supply of bread, be willing to keep and maintain an improvident population, to feed them in infancy, to care for them in sickness, to protect them in age. And thus it will be found in the history of nations, that, whenever population has reached that density in the temperate zones, ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... Although in later times it has been a very different place from the sink of filth and dirt it once was, even its improved condition holds out but little temptation to the extravagant, or consolation to the improvident. The condemned felon has as good a yard for air and exercise in Newgate, as the insolvent debtor in the Marshalsea Prison. [Better. But this is past, in a better age, and the prison exists ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... in the arts of peace, Alfred did not for an instant neglect the military defences of his kingdom, without which, indeed, he would have been like an improvident husbandman, who should carefully cultivate his land, but leave it unhedged and unprotected. One of his most efficient measures for this purpose, was the building of a new kind of galleys, which "were twice as long, twice as high, sailed ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... that formidable power, which, in the time of Marcus Antoninus, had spread terror to the gates of Rome. But they still possessed arms and courage; their courage was animated by despair, and they obtained the usual reenforcement of the cavalry of their Sarmatian allies. So improvident was the assassin Marcellinus, that he chose the moment when the bravest veterans had been drawn away, to suppress the revolt of Firmus; and the whole province was exposed, with a very feeble defence, to the rage ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... previously determined, as soon as his health would permit, to commence the study of law. During the four years he was in public service, his patrimony was greatly impaired. Towards his brethren in arms he had acted with liberality. Naturally of an improvident character, he adopted no means to preserve the property which he inherited. The cardinal vices of gaming and drinking he avoided. But he was licentious in the extreme, and regardless of consequences in the gratification of his ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... and revolting as it may appear to those who are happily beyond the influence of "the wish," was far more easily formed than executed; for Nature—although improvident herself of her children, swallowing them up in thousands by earthquakes, tearing them by machinery, and drowning them in the sea by shiploads—is very careful to defend one of them against another. Every scheme the husband ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... emancipation, and the consequent disorganisation of their social life, could not but involve a good deal of suffering. In regard to the general condition of the coloured people at the time in question, Mr F. J. Loudin says: "They were homeless, penniless, ignorant, improvident—unprepared in every way for the dangers as well as the duties of freedom. Self-reliance they had never had the opportunity to learn, and, suddenly left to shift for themselves, they were at the mercy of the knaves who were everywhere so ready to cheat them out of their honest earnings." ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... my past, but do not seem to think much about it. I live in the present. I brood neither over past nor future. I am careless, improvident, uncautious, happy out of sheer well-being and overplus of physical energy. Fish, fruits, vegetables, and seaweed—a full stomach—and I am content. I am high in place with Raa Kook, than whom none is higher, not even Abba Taak, who is highest ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... impetuosity of young Baronets, who, knowing nothing of the tenure on which they hold their estates, cannot at least wait till they consult wiser people before they throw them away. The entail of nearly two centuries ago had, it seems, been set aside in little more than one, by an improvident father and son, who had in fact greatly diminished the very fine property so entailed, though most of it had been since recovered by the care of their successors. The intelligence thus conveyed to him who was now once more Sir Horace ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... 6s. 6d. for attending a confinement, which, if paid, is generally collected in instalments of 3d. or 6d. a week. Often, however, it is not paid, and the charge remains a mere formality. She added that many of these poor people are most improvident, and make no provision whatsoever for these events, even if they can afford to do so. The result is that the Army has to lend them baby garments and ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... river in canoes. A heavy shower fell this morning. My improvident men have torn all their waterproof cloaks and blankets just as we have arrived in a country where they will be ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... possible. But prudence and self-restraint are the characteristic attributes of the best citizens. They are conspicuous by their absence in the worst; and it is a matter of common observation that the hopelessly poor, the drunken and improvident, the criminal and the defective have the largest families, while those in the higher walks of life rejoice in smaller numbers. The very qualities, therefore, that make the social unit a law-abiding and useful citizen, who could and should raise the best progeny for ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... phenomena, the social revolution made the old social arrangements more inadequate. Great aggregations of workmen were formed in towns, which were still only villages in a legal sense. Fluctuations of trade, due to war or speculation, brought distress to the improvident; and the old assumption that every man had a proper place in a small circle, where his neighbours knew all about him, was further than ever from being verified. One painful result was already beginning to show itself. Neglected children in great towns had already excited compassion. ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... organised until the second condition is fulfilled as well, and here nature has as yet been more remiss. Family life, as Western nations possess it, is still regulated in a very bungling, painful, and unstable manner. Hence, in the first rank of evils, prostitution, adultery, divorce, improvident and unhappy marriages; and in the second rank, a morality compacted of three inharmonious parts, with incompatible ideals, each in its way legitimate: I mean the ideals of passion, of convention, and of reason; add, besides, genius and religion thwarted by family ties, single lives ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... rice for storage, according to the numbers of the family. Every village contains the great Store Barn of plaited palm leaves, so that, in case of need, the confiscated rice can be doled out to the improvident native, who thus contributes to the support of his family in times of scarcity. This regulation relieves want without pauperising, the common garner merely serving as a compulsory savings bank. Many salutary laws benefit the Malay, ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... for the most part, nervous and irritable people, ignorant, and improvident, who could think of nothing but the grey earth and black bread; a people who were crafty, but were stupid about it, like the birds, who, when they want to hide themselves, only hide their heads. They would not do the mowing for you for twenty rubles, but they would ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... quite forgot to be just: he forgave injuries so readily that he might be said to invite them; and was so liberal to beggars that he had nothing left for his tailor and his butcher. He was vain, sensual, frivolous, profuse, improvident. One vice of a darker shade was imputed to him, envy. But there is not the least reason to believe that this bad passion, though it sometimes made him wince and utter fretful exclamations, ever impelled him to injure by wicked arts the reputation of any of ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... journeyman tailor named Henry Somers was the successful wooer. A year or two after the wedding, Mr. and Mrs. Somers emigrated and came to the city of New York, settling over on the east side, about Oliver street. Somers was lazy, improvident and a tippler, and after a short sojourn in America Mrs. Somers found herself a young and blooming widow, with one child, a girl, to provide for. She had all along industriously supplemented her husband's earnings by her needle. She was now wholly dependent ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... they had discovered anything. In that way the night passed. In the morning everybody was exhausted and, to make matters worse, many of the men ran short of provisions. Some of them had neglected to bring the amount ordered; others had been improvident and wasted their rations. So to the discomforts of cold and wet, were added the pangs of hunger. The little bag of coffee had proven a precious boon. Whenever the column would halt for a few minutes, and it was possible to find anything ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... a day; they had to be very fast in order to make a decent week's wages. Cigar making was a rather independent trade; the men went to work when they pleased and knocked off when they felt like doing so. As a class the workmen were careless and improvident; some very rapid makers would not work more than three or four days out of the week, and there were others who never showed up at the factory on Mondays. "Strippers" were the boys who pulled the long stems from the tobacco leaves. After they had served at that work for a certain ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... dresses, and things like that. No, little girl; you and I are too proud—too proud of the cloth—for that. We will never give a handle to the people who are always waiting to have a fling at the improvident clergy—not if it breaks our hearts, ...
— Scally - The Story of a Perfect Gentleman • Ian Hay
... by Lord Dorset, were read largely, and even by the King himself; but there was then no great demand for books, and authors had to look to patrons, and eat the uncertain bread of dependence. We may suppose, however, that he was an improvident man, for during his life he held several offices, and was at one time steward ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... will sufficiently vindicate my Scottish friends from M.L.B.'s aspersion. Scotchmen improvident! never: for workhouses are as scarce among them as bundle-wood, or intelligent travellers. Recollect that I am not in a passion; but this I will say, though the gorge choke me, that M.L.B. strongly reminds me of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... had horse-meat in abundance. At Solutre, a little north of Lyons, a heap of food-refuse 100 yards long and 10 feet high largely consists of the bones of horses, most of them young and tender. This shows that the old hunters knew how to enjoy the passing hour in their improvident way, like the equally reckless Bushmen, who have left similar Golgothas behind them in South Africa. Yet apparently palaeolithic man did not tame the horse. Environment, in fact, can only give the hint; and man may not be ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... and dull of hearing on the second of these points as any member of Parliament; but they had some glimmerings of the first. They would not hear of improvement on their part, but wished the world made over again in a crack, so that they might remain improvident and idle and debauched, and yet enjoy the comfort and respect that should accompany the opposite Virtues; and it was in this expectation, as far as I could see, that many of them were now on their ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... my father, and her beauty and sweetness will do the rest. She will live like a queen and have servants to wait on her. There are many rich people up North, and, though the winters are long, no one suffers except the improvident. And I think I have loved Mam'selle from a little child. Then, too," with an easy smile, "there is a suspicion that some Indian blood runs in Mam'selle's veins. On that ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... of Scotland, p. 75. Lord Eldon said that Lee, in the debates upon the India Bill, speaking of the charter of the East India Company, 'expressed his surprise that there could be such political strife about what he called "a piece of parchment, with a bit of wax dangling to it." This most improvident expression uttered by a Crown lawyer formed the subject of comment and reproach in all the subsequent debates, in all publications of the times, and in everybody's conversation.' Twiss's Eldon, iii. ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... very sure of it." Mrs. Burnham's laugh was half a sigh. "Poor people make us dreadfully mad at times, and we call them shiftless and improvident and lazy, and some of them are. They are ignorant and untrained. But the woman who is doing the hardest, bravest work in the world to-day is the wife of the workingman, struggling to be respectable and make her children so on wages that often aren't human, much less Christian. When I build a ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... entirely different. At any rate, you should make it plain to him that he will get nothing but you,—absolutely nothing but you. Men of his kind do not love long. They love violently—but not long. Idle, improvident men, such as he is, are able to crowd a whole lot of love into a very short space of time. That is because they have nothing much else to do. They run through with love as they run through with money,—quickly. ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... and ammunition must be first of all provided. These were essentials, and woe to the hapless immigrant who neglected these provisions. To be stranded a thousand miles from the "settlements" was a fate none but the most improvident and reckless cared ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... of the fifteenth, or beginning of the sixteenth century, the old house seems to have fallen into bad ways. The brethren were accused of having squandered its belongings, of having granted improvident leases, of having even sold the holy vessels ...
— St. John's College, Cambridge • Robert Forsyth Scott
... guests have proved such uncongenial companions, that the kind old man has himself faced the bad weather rather than prolong the acquaintance, paying the hackney-coachman for setting down the stranger at the end of his fare. At lottery times, he used to be troubled with begging visits from certain improvident hangers-on, who had risked their all in buying shares of an unlucky number. About the time the numbers were being drawn, there would be a ring at the gate-bell, perhaps at dinner time. His spectacles would be elevated, an anxious expression would steal over his face, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... equalized centralization, in heaving or stagnant crowd of disintegrated individuals lacking any spontaneous, central, rallying point, and who, failing natural leaders, simply push and jostle each other or stand still, each according to personal, blind, and haphazard impressions—a hasty, improvident, inconsistent, superficial opinion, caught on the wing, based on vague rumors, on four or five minutes of attention given each week, and chiefly to big words imperfectly understood, two or three sonorous, commonplace phrases, of which the listeners fail to catch the sense, but the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine |
