"Miser" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... strange pleasure he feels in them must have some good reason in the nature of things, he yields to his destiny, enjoys his dark canal without scruple, and mourns over every improvement in the town, and every movement made by its sanitary commissioners, as a miser would over a planned robbery of his chest; in all this being not only innocent, but even respectable and admirable, compared with the kind of person who has no pleasure in sights of this kind, but only in fair facades, trim gardens, and ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... small blessings, is found in all his work. His God is so difficult to content, so scrupulous, so meddling, that no one would ever get to heaven if they believed what he said. This God of his is the fault-finder of eternity, the miser of paradise. ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... abstract manifestation of force or form; but the monstrous in man himself and in his works immediately offends, for here everything is expected to symbolise its moral relations. The irrational in the human has something about it altogether repulsive and terrible, as we see in the maniac, the miser, the drunkard, or the ape. A barbaric civilisation, built on blind impulse and ambition, should fear to awaken a deeper detestation than could ever be aroused by those more beautiful tyrannies, chivalrous or religious, against which past revolutions ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... of courts and trials, The miser hides his hoard, new treasures finds: The hunter's horn and hounds the forests wake, The shipwrecked sailor from his hulk is swept. Or, washed aboard, just misses perishing. Adultresses will bribe, and harlots write To lovers: dogs, in dreams their hare ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... glass, whilst each himself survey'd, He sat with pleasure, though himself was play'd: The miser grinn'd whilst avarice was drawn, Nor thought the faithful likeness was his own; His own dear self no imag'd fool could find, But saw ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... mulcting me in rum and cloth, and my only wish was naturally to expend as little as possible in mere preliminaries. The name of Manbuku Prata was duly thrown at him with but little effect: these demands are never resisted by the slave-dealers. After much noise and cries of "Mwendi" (miser, skin-flint) on the part of the myrmidons, I was allowed to proceed, having given up a cloth twenty-four yards long, and I felt really grateful to the "trade" which had improved off all the other riverine settlements. ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... "a curse rests upon it,—the curse which Andvari the ancient laid upon it when Loki tore it from his hand. A miser's heart—selfish, cold, snaky—is bred in its owner's being; and he thenceforth lives a very serpent's life. Or, should he resist its influence, then death through the guile of pretended friends is sure to be ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... old habits of customary expense will re-establish themselves in a few weeks. He must cut his family off from all society, and with regard to himself he must do what is far more difficult—cut himself off from all domestic affection, behave like a heartless miser, and, at the very time when he most needs a little solace and peace in his own home, constitute himself the executor of the pitiless laws that ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... all life's story you will find The miser—with his hoarded gold— A hermit, dreary and unkind, An outcast from the human fold. Men hold him up to view with scorn, A creature by his wealth enslaved, A spirit craven and forlorn, Doomed by ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... second in the Grand National. You will notice that Prudence had progressed considerably during the interval. Her early ignorance was due to the fact that she had only just developed from a slum factory-girl into a landed proprietress. The father of Prudence had been a miser; and, when he died in the attic where he and the girl had miserably lived, he left her a fortune, and instructions to spend it on real estate. So Mr. W. F. HEWER starts us on a pretty problem—how, in these circumstances, will Prudence ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... when from the shore goes out the ship Wherein is set the treasure that I hold Closer than miser all his hidden gold, Dearer than wine Zeus carried ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... had Elma examined that little packet, getting up early in the morning to gloat over it, looking at it the last thing at night; but always taking care that Carrie should be sound asleep. It gave her comfort, the comfort almost of a miser to gaze at her gold. She used to forget at these supreme moments that the gold was in reality not hers at all. She used to forget everything but the delightful sense of possession. She felt as if she could never spend the money, as if she must hoard it and hoard it just for the mere pleasure ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... front of me! It is my library. Henri and Jeanne have not even the faintest suspicion about it; and the fact is I am commonly believed to be much richer than I am. I have the face of an old miser. It is certainly a lying face; but its untruthfulness has often won for me a great deal of consideration. There is nobody so much respected in this world as a ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... assume his disguise and enter on his business. As he arrived almost exactly opposite to the spot where Haroun and Giafer were standing in the obscurity of the great gateway, there approached from the right or opposite direction that same old beggar and miser who had accosted the Caliph on the previous evening. On perceiving some one before him he began immediately to solicit alms in the whining tone common ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... cheats for being right in {94} advance of their slow aid, by guesswork or by hook or crook, what shall we say of them? Were all of Clifford's works, except the Ethics of Belief, forgotten, he might well figure in future treatises on psychology in place of the somewhat threadbare instance of the miser who has been led by the association of ideas to prefer his gold to all the goods he might ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... place. She had bidden Hillyard look at the Weald of Sussex, that he might carry the smell of its soil, the aspect of its blooms and dark woodlands and brown cottages away with him as a treasure to which he could secretly turn like a miser to his gold; and she herself, with them ever before her eyes, had forgotten them altogether. To sink back into the rank and file—how fine she had thought it, and how little she had heeded it! Now she had got ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... be entitled to me or not I cannot yet say. Now I will tell you something of myself. My father's father came to New York as a labourer from Holland, and worked upon the quays in that city. Then he built houses, and became rich, and was almost a miser;—with the good sense, however, to educate his only son. What my father is you see. To me he is sterling gold, but he is not like your people. My dear mother is not at all like your ladies. She is not a lady in your sense,—though with her unselfish devotion to others she is something ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... you what you are,' says I. 'You're a plain, contemptible miser. You preach supply and you forget demand. Now, supply,' I goes on, 'is never anything but supply. On the contrary,' says I, 'demand is a much broader syllogism and assertion. Demand includes the rights of our women and children, ...
— Options • O. Henry
... to a drawer. He counted over, with the eagerness of a miser, all the dollars which were kept there,—the few which had remained after the expenses of the last fortnight. For some time past he had devoted all his energies so entirely to the construction of the clock, that the ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... without the beggar's outstretched palm, the miser's heartless, stony stare, the piteous wail of want, the livid lips of lies, the cruel ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... and the good, and refused to admit the ugliness of unpleasant facts. Indeed, the young man's position was even more awkward than his father's. As grandson and heir of Richard Herresford much was expected of him. Everybody did not know that the rich old man was such a miser that, after paying for his grandson's education, at his daughter's persuasion, he allowed him only a thousand dollars a year, and persistently refused to disburse this sum until it was dragged from him by ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... And makes wry faces in her glass; Drinks from the sick man's trembling cup; Delves in the miser's golden mass. ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... of them, and trying to cheer them in a joyful excitement. "I tell 'em it's goun' to add ten years to both their lives," she said. "The voyage 'll do their healths good; and then, we're gittun' away from that miser'ble pack o' servants that was eatun' us up, there in New York. I hate the place!" she said, as if they had already left it. "Yes, Mrs. Mandel's goun', too," she added, following the direction of Mrs. March's eyes where ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... none of us popular; every one is quite contented to see us represented in a vaudeville, or described in an essay. Charity, indeed, has her name often taken in vain at a bazaar or a subscription; and the miser as often talks of the duty he owes to me, when he sends the stranger from his door or his grandson to jail: but still we only resemble so many wild beasts, whom everybody likes to see but nobody cares to possess. Now, I propose that we should ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... never so happy as when he was alone with his riches, and it was all he could do to tear himself away from them when the time came to go back to his shady corner. In fact he was becoming a selfish miser instead of the holy man the people of Sravasti thought he was. By the time the siesta was over he was always back again in his place beneath the tree, holding out his bowl and looking as poor and thin as ever, so that nobody had the least idea ...
— Hindu Tales from the Sanskrit • S. M. Mitra and Nancy Bell
... founded on a real character—a miser—who by various means acquired a considerable property, and was the first person who ever left "tocher," that is fortune, to daughter in Man. His name was Mollie Charane, which words interpreted are "Praise the Lord." ...
— Mollie Charane - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise
... experience that his old miser of an aunt would send him to bed supperless, but, with childlike faith and certain of having been, all the year, as good and industrious as possible, he hoped that the Christ-Child would not forget him, and so he, too, planned to place his wooden shoes ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... chagrined, for his very action, when aroused so unexpectedly, would, of itself, have turned suspicion to the satchel, which he snatched up like a startled miser. This action, united with what Captain Bergen had said, and with what the young man himself had witnessed the preceding night, could not have failed to tell him that that rusty-looking valise—about which the owner was so careful—contained ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... payment of his debts. The act was a noble one if the motive was pure; but that demands a doubt. His majesty had before been declaimed against as parsimonious and harsh; and he was now represented as an unnatural parent and a merciless miser, who was hording up millions, which he had neither the taste nor the spirit to employ; while, on the other hand, the prince was held up as a living miracle of honour, and a martyr to his high principles and delicate feelings. The ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... power o' interest ye hev paid that old miser, John Keene, since McVeigh took over ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... of the strongest, Small drink is out of date; Methinks I shall fare like a prince And sit in gallant state: This is no miser's feast, Although that things be dear; God grant the founder of this feast Each Christmas keep ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... the bells of the church. No one took the slightest notice of any offer he might make, and the poor man was in despair, when one day, as he was standing at his house door, a youth known in the village as Clever Hans came up to him. 'I am tired of living with a miser who will not give me enough to eat and drink,' said he, 'and I am ready to do all you want.' 'Very good, my son,' replied the minister, 'you shall have the chance of proving your courage this very night. To-morrow we will settle what ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... During the recent Liberty Loan campaigns, for example, when it was of the most crucial practical importance that bonds be bought, the stimuli used were not in the form of reasoned briefs, but rather emotional admonition: "Finish the lob," "Every miser helps the Kaiser," "If you were out ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... desire pleasure does not help us a whit in dealing with men, unless we know what things will give pleasure to this man or to that. All men may desire pleasure; but it remains true that what gives pleasure to the spendthrift gives pain to the miser; what appeals to the glutton disgusts a man of refined tastes. If all men were alike and precisely alike, and if their natures were very simple and remained unchanged, the problem of the distribution of pleasures would be ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... supposed to be his daughter. They had been living here several years—from before the time, indeed, that the portier had occupied his present position. In all these years the old man was known to have been out of his room only twice. He was certainly an eccentric person, and was said to be a miser and extremely wealthy. The portier further averred that his property—except such small portion of it as was invested and on the income of which he lived—was realized in the form of diamonds and other ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... — N. parsimony, parcity^; parsimoniousness^, stinginess &c adj.; stint; illiberality, tenacity. avarice, greed &c 817.1. miser, niggard, churl, screw, skinflint, crib, codger, muckworm^, scrimp, lickpenny^, hunks, curmudgeon, Harpagon, harpy, extortioner, Jew, usurer; Hessian [U.S.]; pinch fist, pinch penny. V. be parsimonious &c adj.; grudge, begrudge, stint, pinch, gripe, screw, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... a certain similarity with "Jack Hannaford" (No. viii.). Halliwell's story of the miser who kept his money "for luck" (p. 153) is of the same type. Halliwell remarks that the tale throws light on a passage in ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... Mother Tongue will be; forasmuch as nothing is useful except inasmuch as it is used; nor is there a perfect existence with inactive goodness. Even so of gold, and pearls, and other treasures which are subterranean, those which are in the hand of the miser are in a lower place than is the earth wherein the treasure was concealed. The gift truly of this Commentary is the explanation of the Songs, for whose service it is made. It seeks especially to lead ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... up is old Miser, you'll see; She heaps up her white and her yellow money; She wears her old rags till she starves and she begs; And she's come here to ask for a dish of pace eggs. Fal ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... is inscribed: "[Symbol: cross]MCCCLXII de Settembrio in lo tempo del nobele Miser Andrea Contarini Doxe di Vanesia e Miser Francesco Contarini Conte de' Grado fo fatta questa palla e Donado Macalorso da Vinesia me fece." It is of silver-gilt, 4 ft. 7 in. high and 7 ft. 4 in. long, with twenty-one divisions, in three rows of seven panels, the ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... this sort of thing personal, I'm not a bit of a dandy or fop; But the seed it is constantly sowing, is worse than all Others, and bears a most plentiful crop; For it all goes to strengthen the popular fallacy That, because a man lives in a "brown stone palace" he Must be a miser, a rogue and a knave, Without soul enough to condemn or ...
— Nothing to Say - A Slight Slap at Mobocratic Snobbery, Which Has 'Nothing - to Do' with 'Nothing to Wear' • QK Philander Doesticks
... watched her in silence for some time. Then he said, "Honey-Bee, the most beautiful treasures will be safe in your keeping. You will possess them and they will not possess you. The miser is the prey of his gold, only those who despise wealth can be rich without danger; their souls will always be greater than ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... mind it being a fine treat when I and my sisters had a new gown apiece, though of the commonest serge, and all but bare necessaries were cut off from our board. Walter laid it so to heart that of a spendthrift he became a miser. I would not have thee so to do, but I bid thee mind that we have very little to live on, owing all we yet have, and have brought withal, to the goodness of my dear Aunt Joyce; and if thou fall ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... to work more cheerfully for this burst of fun. The stalks rustled, the corn flashed downward, the golden heap grew and swelled to the light, slowly and surely, like a miser's gold. All went merrily on. Among those who worked least and laughed loudest, was the little constable that had taken so deep an interest in the affair that morning. Never did two ferret eyes twinkle so brightly, or peer more closely into every ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... what title could he present himself? Under that of a poet? The court and the city overflowed with them; they had already filled every avenue. To consult his fellows would be to consult his rivals; to ask their praises would be to ask a miser for his treasures. Besides, so many books appeared, that people did not care to read. However, Osmyn's works were published, but they were not even noticed in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 495, June 25, 1831 • Various
... is the vintage, when the showering grapes In Bacchanal profusion reel to earth, Purple and gushing: sweet are our escapes From civic revelry to rural mirth; Sweet to the miser are his glittering heaps, Sweet to the father is his first-born's birth, Sweet is revenge—especially to women, Pillage ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... is to reputation, so heaven is to an estate, or immediate advantage. The difference is, that the self-love of the former cannot exist but by a complete suppression and habitual supplantation of immediate selfishness. In one point of view, the miser is more estimable than the spendthrift;—only that the miser's present feelings are as much of the present as the spendthrift's. But caeteris paribus, that is, upon the supposition that whatever is good or lovely in the one coexists equally in the other, then, doubtless, ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... imagined Ariadne with child, and she seemed disgusting to me, and all the women I saw in the trains and at the stations looked to me, for some reason, as if they too were with child, and they too seemed disgusting and pitiable. I was in the position of a greedy, passionate miser who should suddenly discover that all his gold coins were false. The pure, gracious images which my imagination, warmed by love, had cherished for so long, my plans, my hopes, my memories, my ideas of love and of woman—all ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... resembling the claws of a crab. His faded hair, scanty and slight, like the down on a young duck, allowed his scalp to be plainly seen. The brown, crimpled skin of his neck showed the big veins which sank under his jaws and reappeared at his temples. He was regarded in the district as a miser and a ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... he see the broken watch on the floor, and he stoop, with a laugh, and pick up the pieces; then he get a candle and look on the floor everywhere for the jewels, and he pick them up, and put them away one by one in his purse like a miser. He keep on looking, and once the fire of the candle burn his beard, and he swear, and she stare and stare at him. He sit down at the table, and look at the jewels and laugh to himself. Then she draw herself up, and shake, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a day, when he was digging for roots, his poor sustenance, his spade struck against something heavy, which proved to be gold, a great heap which some miser had probably buried in a time of alarm, thinking to have come again, and taken it from its prison, but died before the opportunity had arrived, without making any man privy to the concealment; so it lay, doing neither good nor harm, in the bowels of the earth, its mother, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... sacrifices his humanity and his life merely to prevent anybody else getting it. This contrast is true to human nature; but it shunts The Ring drama off the economic lines of the allegory. In real life, Fafnir is not a miser: he seeks dividends, comfortable life, and admission to the circles of Wotan and Loki. His only means of procuring these is to restore the gold to Alberic in exchange for scrip in Alberic's enterprises. Thus fortified with capital, Alberic exploits ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... slept? Who cared for us when we were at work, or at play, or engaged in all those countless things wherein we had no care for ourselves? Indeed, how much of our time is there in which we have the care of ourselves? Even the miser, careful as he is to gain riches, must perforce put by his care in the midst of all his getting and gaining. And so we see that, whether we will or no, all our care falls back on God alone, and we are scarcely ever ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... on the other hand, was such a miser that he heaped up great treasures. When he died, his wife and mother were said to have more gold than the city and people together. The miser king was succeeded by his son, but this young man's sole ambition was to restore ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... not make a miser of Mr. Dangler. On the breaking out of the rebellion, he entered with all his native enthusiasm into the home duties of the war. In August, 1862, he took a prominent part in the organization of ward committees for raising recruits and providing for the familles of soldiers. A large part ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... might easily have been so, as witness these advertisements of the plays being shown in George Town in 1790, for on July 21 this appears: "The Theatre of this Town was opened by Mr. McGrath's Company of Comedians, with the celebrated comedy The Miser. This Company is by far the best that ever visited this town." Then on August 12 there was "The Beggars Opera and A Comedy of two acts, Barnaby Brittle or a Wife at her Wits End. Also in August Mr. McGrath's Company of Comedians gave The Tragedy of ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... summed up in the three vices of avarice, cowardice, and cruelty. A miser in the extreme, he had saved up much money by his having had the command of a vessel for so many years, during which he had defrauded and pilfered both from the men and the government. Friends and connections he had none on this side of the water, and, when on shore, ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... invariable. Money attracted money, accumulating always in the same places, going by preference to the scoundrelly and the mediocre. When, by an inscrutable exception, it heaped up in the coffers of a rich man who was not a miser nor a murderer, it stood idle, incapable of resolving itself into a force for good, however charitable the hands which fain would administer it. One would say it was angry at having got into the wrong box and avenged itself by ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... practised alchymy is equally certain, as he left behind several works upon the subject. Those who knew him well, and who were incredulous about the philosopher's stone, give a satisfactory solution of the secret of his wealth. They say that he was always a miser and a usurer; that his journey to Spain was undertaken with very different motives from those pretended by the alchymists; that, in fact, he went to collect debts due from Jews in that country to their brethren in Paris, and that he charged a commission of fully cent per cent in ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... whom Richard personally disposed of felt as might ones who had escaped from some malignant providence which they did not think it wise or fitting to further tempt. As for number three, he was pleased to find himself a block away, and did all he might to add to it, like a miser to his hoard. ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... was a shark! Susan Clegg, your father was a skinflint! Susan Clegg, your father was a miser! Susan Clegg, your father was a thief!' 'n' all this with me where I c'dn't but hear, Mrs. Lathrop, 'n' he must 'a' known it too. 'Susan Clegg, I was a young man in difficulties,' he says, ''n' I wanted a hunderd dollars bad,' he says, ''n' 'f I'd had ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... at all going into other folks' houses in this manner; I have never got any good from it. If I got inside a miser's house, straightway he would bury me deep underground; if some honest fellow among his friends came to ask him for the smallest coin, he would deny ever having seen me. Then if I went to a fool's house, he would sacrifice me as a prey ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... Dominion of Canada, shipped off, or sold, the very shot and shell to any one, friend or foe, who chose to buy: and the few guns and mortars Canada demanded were charged to her "in account" with the ruth of the miser. If the Duke of Newcastle had been a member of that Cabinet such a miserable policy never could have been put in force; but he was dead. I venture to think that the whole people of England, who knew of the transaction, were ashamed of it. Certainly, I saw, a few years ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... Hence, BE MEEK. He who is without expectation cannot fret if nothing comes to him. It is self-evident that these things are so. The lowly man and the meek man are really above all other men, above all other things. They dominate the world because they do not care for it. The miser does not possess gold, gold possesses him. But the meek possess it. "The meek," said Christ, "inherit the earth." They do not buy it; they do not conquer ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... in this process had been intense; his satisfaction with the result was complete. Perhaps after every act of successful banking there takes place in the mind of man, spendthrift and miser, a momentary lull of energy, a kind of brief Pax vobiscum my soul and stomach, my twin masters of need and greed! And possibly, as the lad deposited his earnings, he was old enough to enter a little way into this adult and despicable joy. Be this as it may, he was not the next instant ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen
... feast you lay, To mock me, of your beauty. That you might Be lover for one space, and make essay What 'tis to pass unsuppered to your couch, Keep fast from love all day; and so be taught The famine which these craving lines avouch! Ah! miser of good things that cost thee naught, How know'st thou poor men's hunger?—Misery! When I go doleless and unfed ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... back, and Mr. Burnside shook hands with becoming coldness, as having just given a lesson in manners. He was not a bad man, nor a miser, nor a Scrooge, but he was a great stickler for manners, especially with people who had nothing to give him. Besides, he had already lent Overholt money; or, to put it nicely, he had invested a little in his invention, and he did not see any reason why ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford
... very mysterious," said Mrs. Lively. "That money went just as the other did in Chicago. We must be haunted by the spirit of some burglar or miser." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... community have seen many a blown-out bubble soaring and glittering, and then collapsing into a drop of soapsuds, and on the other hand, we are always hearing of notes and bank-books being found stowed away in some wretched hovel where a miser ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... pay every man his own is the common law of honesty: but to do good to all mankind, is the chancery law of honesty: and this chancery court is in every man's breast, where his conscience is a Lord Chancellor. Hence it is, that a miser, though he pays every body their own, cannot be an honest man, when he does not discharge the good offices that are incumbent on a friendly, kind, and generous person: for, faith the prophet Isaiah, ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... doubly in knowing that you suffered. I fled from you and hid my heart as a miser would buy his treasure. But your letters, forwarded from Paris, followed me. O Philidor! I did not read them—not at first. I saw Olga telling that story at the dinner table and my pride revolted. I put them away—unopened, and kept them concealed—from others, ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... The miser denies himself every comfort, and spends his whole life in hoarding up riches; and yet he dies and leaves his gold to be ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... which he thought the wife should give him after Durer was dead, but Agnes thought otherwise and would not give them up. Then, full of rage, the old man wrote the most outrageous letters about poor Agnes, saying that she was a shrew and had compelled Durer to work himself to death; that she was a miser and had led the artist an awful dance through life. This is the only evidence against her, and that so sane and sensible a man as the artist lived with her all his life and cherished her, is evidence enough that Pirkheimer didn't tell the truth. When Durer died ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... the retributive reflex or return of disarranged order experienced when in the hieriarchy of man higher grades of faculty and motive are subordinated to lower ones. The miser who gives himself up to a base greed for money, separated from its uses, is thereby degraded into a mechanized, self fed and self consuming passion, having no pleasure, except that of accumulating, hoarding and gloating ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... heart began to expand to human affections; for we have seen, how fond he became of the society, first, of Faith, and, finally, of his brother; deriving, possibly, a sort of insane gratification from even the concealment of his relationship, as a miser gloats over the security of his hoard. It is, indeed, probable, that, but for the discovery of his son, he would have died without betraying the secret, but, that discovery awakened anew feelings which ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... forgot, for a moment, all earthly concerns. Then, suddenly starting from their lethargy, they began to look after their wealth, the merchandise they had in small ventures, utterly regardless of the elements which threatened them. The miser, thinking of the gold contained in his coffers, hastening to put it in a place of safety, either by sewing it into the lining of his clothes, or by cutting out for it a place in the waistband of his trousers. The smuggler was tearing ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... large Acquisitiveness will exhibit more sense in acquiring property, and the man with large Caution and Secretiveness more sense in economizing, than those having these organs small. It is curious to observe the different phases of financial sense in different individuals. One man will be a miser, eager to get and anxious to hold property; another will be close and cautious in taking care of the property he inherits, but will exhibit no special ability in increasing his riches; another displays great ability in making money, but spends ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... was as one distraught. He had no joy left to him. He was as one without energy or hope; a miser robbed of his gold, suddenly and cruelly. He gave his two boys into the charge of Geoffrey of Nottingham, and went on a journey to London, there to beg of the King that he might find him active employment, instead of being but one of a guard of honor, as he and his men ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... floor? The money he devoted to his collection is sufficient to show how small a fancy he had for hoarding; upon it a princely fortune had been squandered. To his own people in Leyden, when times were hard, he had not been slow to hold out a generous hand. It was because he was not enough of a miser, because he gave too little heed to business matters, that difficulties at length overwhelmed him. It is too sad a story to tell in detail. Perhaps the beginning was when he bought a house for which he had not the ready money to pay, and borrowed a large sum for the purpose. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... said that he was becoming rich, and that he had ready money to spend,—a position in which no Lord De Guest had found himself for many generations back. His father and grandfather had been known as spendthrifts; and now men said that this earl was a miser. ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... couch, he shook the monk vigorously, but the latter only held his piece of money tighter like a miser whose treasure is threatened, and snored the louder. Again the fool essayed to waken him, and this time he opened his eyes, felt for his beads and commenced to mutter a prayer in Latin words, strung together in ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... Voltaire's friendship was a possession which must be cemented with gold, if you did not wish to lose it. The king who, a few months before, had compared him to Cicero, Plinius, and Agrippa, now said to Jordan, "The miser, Voltaire, has still an unsatisfied longing for gold, and asks still thirteen hundred dollars! Every one of the six days which he spent with me cost me five hundred and fifty dollars! I call ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... the seasons become delightful and free from evil. The voice, pronunciation, and minds of all men become clear and cheerful. Diseases disappear and all men become long-lived. Wives do not become widows, and no person becomes a miser. The earth yields crops without being tilled, and herbs and plants grow in luxuriance. Barks, leaves, fruits, and roots, become vigorous and abundant. No unrighteousness is seen. Nothing but righteousness exists. Know these to be the characteristics, O Yudhishthira, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... Satan is shlicker than a weasel, an' has a mem'ry like a miser's box that takes in everything an' lets nothin' go out. When ye do anything, sorra a bit av it 'scapes the divil, an' he hugs it clost till a time comes when he can make a club av it to bate ye wid, an' so he does. The owld felly remimbered all that passed betune Kathleen an' the blessed ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... you damned farmers, and see if you can't get more out of those jibs. Faster! faster! You're as slow as the grace of God at a miser's funeral.... If I only had ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... a brown thrasher's nest; it is not a nest you are likely to stumble upon in your walk; it is hidden as a miser hides his gold, and watched as jealously. The male pours out his rich and triumphant song from the tallest tree he can find, and fairly challenges you to come and look for his treasures in his vicinity. But you will not ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... the hermit came to the door of a paltry house inhabited by a rich miser, and begged the favor of an hospitable reception for a few hours. An old servant, in a tattered garb, received them with a blunt and rude air, and led them into the stable, where he gave them some rotten olives, moldy bread, and sour beer. The hermit ate and drank with as ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... the mall, and so he might have continued till he came to the end of the world; for, though several words stood at the end of the serjeant's lips, there they were likely to remain for ever. He was, indeed, in the condition of a miser, whom a charitable impulse hath impelled to draw a few pence to the edge of his pocket, where they are altogether as secure as if they were in the bottom; for, as the one hath not the heart to part with a farthing, so neither had the other the heart ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... century, an illumination representing Church-Consecration, illustrating the words, "Fundata est domus Domini supra verticem montium," surrounded for the purpose of contrast, by a grotesque, consisting of a picture of a miser's death-bed, a demon drawing his soul out of his mouth, while his attendants are searching in his chests ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... were run over by a motor-trolley ten days ago," announced the woman in the next stall; "she was terribly old and blind and a real wicked miser. There was no one belonging to her. Her clothes were just lined with bank-notes, and there was a whole lot of papers and bonds in her mattress, and a lovely silver tea-set up the chimney. She grudged herself a penn-'orth o' milk, ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... literary productions. Unless such activity reacts to enlarge the imaginative vision of life, it is on a level with the busy work of children. It has the letter without the spirit of activity. It readily degenerates itself into a miser's accumulation, and a man prides himself on what he has, and not on the meaning he finds in the affairs of life. Any study so pursued that it increases concern for the values of life, any study producing greater sensitiveness to social well-being and greater ability to promote ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... alarm!" suddenly yelled a voice from the bushes that lined the roadway. "I sent it in, you old miser, to get even with you! Maybe you'll say 'Thanks' next time, Mr. Muchmore, when we put out a real fire in your place," and a lad, whom Bert recognized as rather an undesirable character about the village, dashed from the shrubbery, ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster
... he hid cunningly, as a miser does his gold. For his warped, cruel brain was planning death to these two men. After that, another plunge into the North for life ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... the back. The voracious crab held on, not liking to lose his prey, till he found himself borne upwards from the ground, and in unpleasant propinquity to the frigate bird's sharp beak. He must have felt that if he did not let go at once, he would be dashed to pieces; still, as a miser clutches his bags of gold, did Mr Crab the snake. Fortunately for him, the frigate bird had flown seaward, so that when he did let go, he fell into the water, and, probably, however his temper might have suffered, he was not much the worse ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... Richer than miser with perishing treasure, Served with a service no conquest could bring, Happy with fortune that words cannot measure, Light-hearted I on the hearthstone can sing, King, King, crown me the King! Home is the Kingdom, and Love ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... individual; the long calenture to which the Lover is subject; the blast, like the blast of the desart, which sweeps perennially through a frightful solitude of its own making in the mind of the Gamester; the slowly quickening but ever quickening descent of appetite down which the Miser is propelled; the agony and cleaving oppression of grief; the ghost-like hauntings of shame; the incubus of revenge; the life-distemper of ambition;—these inward existences, and the visible and familiar ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... 153. That the conduct of men, with respect to Riches, can only be accounted for by the Order of Providence, which works the general good out of extremes, and brings all to its great End by perpetual Revolutions, v.161 to 178. How a Miser acts upon Principles which appear to him reasonable, v.179. How a Prodigal does the same, v.199. The due Medium and true use of Riches, v.219. The Man of Ross, v.250. The fate of the Profuse and the Covetous, in two examples; both miserable in Life and in Death, v.300, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... slow clock, as they were miser's gold, Counts and recounts the mornward steps of Time, The darkness thrills with conscience of each crime By Death committed, daily grown more bold. Once more the list of all my wrongs is told, And ghostly hands stretch to me from my prime Helpless farewells, as from an alien clime; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... period, you walk very comfortably with your wife on your arm, without pressing hers against your heart with the solicitous and watchful cohesion of a miser grasping his treasure. You gaze carelessly round upon the curiosities in the street, leading your wife in a loose and distracted way, as if you were towing a Norman scow. Come now, be frank! If, on passing your wife, an admirer were gently to press ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... hard work, he had been known to trouble with its sweet sounds the horrible stillness of battlefields, given over to silence and the dead. The solacing hour of his daily life was approaching, and in peace time he held on to the minutes as a miser to his hoard. ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... arms in it. Why should I so befool myself and seem A laughable bundle in each woman's eyes, Wearing such things as no one ever wore, Useless ... no head-cloth ... too unlike my fellows. Yet he turns miser for a tiny coif. It would cut into many golden coifs And dim some women in their Irish clouts— But no; I'll shape and stitch it into shifts, Smirch it like linen, patch it with rags, to watch His silent anger when he sees my answer. Give ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... practitioner submits to a servitude Great privilege of old age was the getting rid of responsibility Habits are the crutches of old age He did not know so much about old age then as he does now Hoard your life as a miser hoards his money Homo unius libri—the man of one book Hypocrisy of kind-hearted people I dressed his wound, and God cured him I told you so Intellectual Over-Feeding and its consequence, Mental Dyspepsia It is time to be old, To take in sail Know enough of a wide range ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of Oliver W. Holmes, Sr. • David Widger
... miserable miser," affirmed the hotel-keeper with great force. "The meat here is not so good as at home—of course. And dear too. But look at me. I only charge a dollar for the tiffin, and one dollar and fifty cents for the dinner. Show me anything cheaper. Why am I doing it? There's little profit in this ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad |
