"Miserly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... expenditure of all kinds, even useless ones, does not constitute bad management. Such acts contribute to the movement of money, the stagnation of which becomes, especially in France, dangerous to the public welfare, by reason of the miserly and profoundly illogical habits of the provinces which hoard ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... time that Louise de La Valliere entered her household Madame Henriette was enjoying her hour of triumph. The King, who had been slow in discovering her charms, was at her feet. The death of Mazarin, the miserly, had given Louis a freedom in his own kingdom that he had never before known. Entertainment followed entertainment, all given in honor of the English bride, his own Spanish bride having been relegated to the background of this gay court, from which ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... sun with his steadfast heat Parches the river god,—whose dusty urn Drips miserly, till soon his crystal feet Against his pebbly floor wax faint and burn And languid fish, unpoised, grow sick and yearn,— Then scoop we hollows in some sandy nook, And little channels dig, wherein we turn The thread-worn rivulet, that all forsook ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... write a companion volume to this, which should deal with the operations on land. But a short examination showed that these operations were hardly worth serious study. They teach nothing new; it is the old, old lesson, that a miserly economy in preparation may in the end involve a lavish outlay of men and money, which, after all, comes too late to more than partially offset the evils produced by the original short-sighted parsimony. This might be a lesson worth dwelling on did it have any practical bearing ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... they led the old war-horse back to his stable, knowing that for the future its miserly owner would not dare to begrudge it the comfort to which it ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... he has to calculate on being part of every winter, and almost every spring, unemployed, he is compelled to practise a self-denying economy, the effect of which, when not carried to the extreme of a miserly narrowness, is always good; and Hallow-day returns him every season to the ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... words the teacher turned slightly pale, a vision of a lawsuit with damages to pay floating across his miserly mind. ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... the Rougets' sale at Issoudun, and to redecorate her rooms in various styles—Mediaeval, Louis XIV., and Pompadour. The young wife found it difficult to believe that Monsieur de la Baudraye was so miserly as he was reputed, or else she must have great influence with him. The illusion lasted ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... currently reported that M. Thiers has been guilty of treating certain members of his family with great meanness, and in society many scandalous stories have been repeated illustrating his miserly economy. ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... descent, seeing that my ancestors were all fearful prodigals. Though that reproach cannot indeed be made against my great-grandfather, Ivan Andreevitch Lutchinov; on the contrary, he had the character of being excessively careful, even miserly—at any rate, in the latter years of his life. He spent his youth in Petersburg, and lived through the reign of Elizabeth. In Petersburg he married, and had by his wife, my great-grandmother, four children, three sons, Vassily, ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... insulted with your logic and Latin verbs? She'd set her heart on that certificate. She wanted the money, not for new gowns and fooleries mind, but to help her old grandfather pay his debts. His place is mortgaged. I don't understand it; but he asked some old hunks to lend him the money, and the miserly rascal, whoever he was, refused. I wish I had it. I'd give it to him out and out. But that's nothing to do with the girl—Maddy they call her. The disappointment killed her, and she's dying—is raving crazy—and keeps talking of that confounded examination. I tell you, ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... a wicked old fraud, a miserly skinflint, a miserable land-crab. Behold, your share for the year in all our partnership has been thousands of dollars. The head clerk has given me this paper. It says that during the year you have drawn just eighty-seven dollars ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... the company now looked up from her work, showing, at the same time, the nice strips she had been cutting. "I can't believe," said she, "all the stories they tell of old Scrimp's miserly ways. They say that he almost lives ...
— Who Spoke Next • Eliza Lee Follen
... through fear of being used; the clean and empty chimney, in which a fire is just now going to be made for the first time; and the emaciated figure of the cat, strongly mark the natural temper of the late miserly inhabitant, who could starve in the midst of plenty.—But see the mighty change! View the hero of our piece, left to himself, upon the death of his father, possessed of a goodly inheritance. Mark how his mind is affected!—determined to partake of the ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... river, in which they deposited all their baggage, and then set out on their expedition. They were so fortunate as to kill a couple of fine bulls, and cutting up the carcasses, determined to husband this stock of provisions with the most miserly care, lest they should again be obliged to venture into the open and dangerous hunting grounds. Returning to their island on the 18th of May, they found that the wolves had been at the caches, scratched up the contents, and scattered them in ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... generous profits from all sales to go as a general contribution from the entire membership to the insurance fund for the helpless and the aged. As liberal wages afforded ample means, large purchases were encouraged, and all tendency toward a miserly hoarding was discouraged. It was marked that all the members were quick to appreciate the fact that the more liberal their purchases, the more generously they swelled the fund that was set apart to provide for the ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... protruding bones, had lost all its crimson, and was green, white, yellow. The mouth was wide open. His drawn features wore a terribly sardonic look—a purely physical effect of the disease; but it seemed to the two spectators that this mean and disappointed slave of a miserly habit had by one superb imaginative effort realized the full vanity of ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... dewy sweetness burned away by a droughty old sun. Abbott snatched up some books and went below. In almost every front yard there were roses. Up and down the street, they bloomed in all colors, with delicate, penetrating, intoxicating fragrance. They were not hidden away in miserly back-gardens, these roses; they smiled for the meanest beggar, for the most self- sufficient tramp, for the knowledge-burdened scholar, for the whistling driver of the grocer's wagon. They had often smiled in vain for Abbott Ashton, but that was before he ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... of funding debts; but, curiously enough, sordid capitalists and miserly landlords don't. I offered the other day to fund all my personal debts, in the shape of a long loan at three per cent, but my creditors did not take kindly to the idea. Such is the sordid meanness which is too sadly characteristic of the merely commercial ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... his fancies into the mouth of Alphius, a miserly money-lender. No one yearns so keenly for the country and its imagined peace as the overworked city man, when his pulse is low and his spirits weary with bad air and the reaction of over-excitement; no one, as a rule, is more apt ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... particular, in a city so given to careless and ostentatious profusion as New York, was most useful. We needed such an example. Nor did he appear to carry this principle to an extreme. He was very far from being miserly, ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... a widower, with one daughter, Mary, about three years older than I, and certainly she was the dearest little treasure with which Providence ever blessed a miserly father; by the time she was fifteen, five farmers, three lawyers, twelve Protestant parsons, and a lieutenant of Dragoons had made her offers: it must not be denied that she was an heiress as well as a beauty, which, perhaps, had something to do with the love of these gentlemen. ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... might have been supposed that the incessant wars and political intrigues in which he was constantly engaged would have given him no time for amusements of this kind, yet he was, nevertheless, the keenest sportsman of his day. This tyrant of the Castle of Plessis-les-Tours, who was always miserly, except in matters of hunting, in which he was most lavish, forbade even the higher classes to hunt under penalty of hanging. To ensure the execution of his severe orders, he had all the castles as well as the cottages searched, and any ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... rich were rich and the poor poor, but all were in the grip of imperial forces whose ruthless purposes or lack of them made all men ridiculous, pathetic or magnificent, as you choose. He pitied ignorance and necessity, and despised vanity and cruelty for cruelty's sake, and the miserly hoarding of anything. He was liberal, material, sensual and yet spiritual; and although he never had more than a little money, out of the richness and fullness of his own temperament he seemed able to generate a kind of atmosphere and texture in his daily life which was rich and ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... out of the room and sat down in her old place on the stairs. So this was how Sophia Jane had spent the half-crown! How differently to anything Susan had imagined. Instead of being miserly and selfish, she was generous and self-sacrificing—instead of her own pleasure, she had preferred to give pleasure to Monsieur. And why? Because he had been kind to her. He was the only person, Susan remembered, who had ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton
... frontier life. No longer sought as the belle of the soldiers' ball-rooms, she aspired to leadership among their wives and families, and was accorded that pre-eminence rather than the fierce battle which was sure to follow any revolt. She became avaricious,—some said miserly,—and Clancy miserable. Then began the downward course. He took to drink soon after his return from a long, hard summer's campaign with the Indians. He lost his sergeant's stripes and went into the ranks. There came ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... says, "Who can buy love without paying its price? When you fail to give yourself you make the whole world miserly." ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... her money! how, with more than miserly eyes, she counted it over every night, and pressed it to ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... the division thought, and he was right down to the basic root of things from the start. Coupled with the stunted growth that nature in a miserly mood had doled out to him, none knew better than himself that the name of "Toddles," keeping that nature stuff patently before everybody's eyes, damned him in his aspirations for a bona fide railroad career. Other boys got a job and ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... really touch her—when something makes her feel—that curious indecision in her nature hardens into something irresistible. There was a half-witted girl in the village, ill-treated and enslaved by a miserly old aunt. Miss Coryston happened to hear of it from her maid, who was a relation of the girl. She went and bearded the aunt, and took the girl away bodily in her pony-cart. The scene in the cottage garden—Marcia ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to the great city, without folding wing; merely stopping a moment to torment a miserly old landlord, who, the day before, had turned a poor widow, with two little children, out of his tenement house, because she was not quite ready with the rent. I put a great fly on his nose, and a great flea in his ear, and ordered them to stay there, and buzz, and bite ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... before mentioned old Nanny, who kept a marine store, and to whom I used to sell whatever I picked up on the beach. She was a strange old woman, and appeared to know everything that was going on. How she gained her information I cannot tell. She was very miserly in general; but it was said she had done kind things in one or two instances. Nobody knew her history: all that anybody knew was that she was Old Nanny. She had no kith or kin that she ever mentioned; some people said she was rich, if the ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... He spent it freely with every one; and every one spoke well of him. "What a generous, whole-souled fellow he is!" or, "What a noble heart he has!" were the expressions constantly made in regard to him. While "Mean fellow!" "Miserly dog!" and other such epithets, were unsparingly used in speaking of a quiet, thoughtful young man, named Merwin, who was clerk with him in the same store. Merwin appeared to set an undue value upon money. He rarely indulged ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur
... others by their manner of wearing and using shoes; the other by the manipulation of an umbrella; and the prudent mother advises her son how the candidate for bride behaves toward a groom lying on the floor, or how she eats cheese—the extravagant one cuts the rind away thick, the miserly one eats the rind, the right one cuts the rind away thin and carefully. Many people judge families, hotel guests, and inhabitants of a city, and not without reason, according to the comfort and ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... third and last page—and suddenly his face hardened. He had been called a jackal by the papers—but here were two who bore a clearer title to the name! He knew them both—Jake Kisnieff, better known as Old Attic in the underworld, as crooked as his own bent and twisted form, a miserly, cunning "fence," crafty enough, if report were true, to have garnered a huge, ill-gotten harvest under the nose of the police; and the other, one self-styled Henry Thorold, alias whatever occasion might require, smooth, polished, educated, the most dangerous of all ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... him at his word. He ate and drank like one who has gone hungry for three whole days, he was enchanted with the tambourine of Musli, listened with open mouth to his story of the miserly slippers, and laughed as heartily as if he had never heard it at least ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... blame,—leather and prunella! Praise and blame are here!" and he struck his hand upon his breast with almost passionate emphasis. "Take a specimen. These Hogtons were the bane of the place,—uneducated and miserly; their land a wilderness, their village a pig-sty. I come, with capital and intelligence; I redeem the soil, I banish pauperism, I civilize all around me: no merit in me, I am but a type of capital guided by ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... they think that the causes of pain and pleasure are in the body. Putting the heart on one side, they earnestly strive after the comforts of the body, and launch into extravagance, the end of which is miserly parsimony. Instead of pleasure they meet with grief of the heart, and pass their lives in weeping and wailing. In one way or another, everything in this world depends upon the heart. I implore every one of you to take heed that tears ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... fellow has a heart, after all," thought Miles, who had been disposed to look upon Ferguson ever since their first acquaintance, as rather miserly. ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... reminding us of the indefatigable worker in marbles whose file eats slowly into a block of porphyry? Would you seek to know the utmost power of language, or the strongest pressure that a phrase can bring to bear against rebellious lucre, against the miserly proprietor squatting in the recesses of his country lair?—listen to one of these great ambassadors of Parisian industry as he revolves and works and sucks like an intelligent piston ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... at last that the books of a great collection are a part, not merely of their own property, though they are only the agents for their distribution, but that they are, as it were, outlying portions of their own organization. The old Librarian was getting a miserly feeling about his books, as he called them. Fortunately, he had a young lady for his assistant, who was never so happy as when she could find the work any visitor wanted and put it in his hands,—or her hands, ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... ship, the going home; and falling into a reflective and calculating mood he mumbled between regular jets of smoke about the expense. The necessity of disbursing passage money for all his tribe seemed to disturb him in a manner that was the more striking because otherwise he gave no signs of a miserly disposition. And yet he fussed over the prospect of that voyage home in a mail boat like a sedentary grocer who has made up his mind to see the world. He was racially thrifty I suppose, and for him there must have been a great novelty in finding himself obliged ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... used to be only a baiocco apiece, and I could get one at a time. But now they are two for three baiocchi; and so I have to get two always, because there are no half baiocchi any more—nothing but centimes. That is one of the sources of my extravagance. Mariuccia says I am miserly; she was born poor, and never had to learn ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... business ended to our great satisfaction, we saying to ourselves that we had done all that man could to redeem the captives, and that it would be no harm at all to put a cheat upon the miserly steward. Whether we were any way more honest than he in shaping our conduct according to our inclinations is a question which ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... England; that the captain of her was also the owner, but where he came from, or what he was, they did not know, except that he was a Virginian,—they believed so, for that he had a tobacco estate there, which was carried on by his eldest son. He called the captain a stingy, miserly fellow, who would sacrifice any man's life to save a shilling, and that there were odd stories ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... you what I'll do," said Joe Jackson at last. "I'll put it up to some of the cowboys. They may know more about Bimbel and his outfit and about Jarley Bangs than I do. Bangs has a reputation for being a very queer and miserly man, but that's about all I ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... while he walked to and fro behind my back muttering to himself—I felt I was dying by inches, I assure you. Perhaps if I had let my teeth rattle Peter Ivanovitch might have noticed my distress, but I don't think it would have had any practical effect. She's very miserly in such matters." ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... during the first year of his cousin's marriage; but upon the birth of the son who is the hero of this history, he affected a quarrel with the city knight, and cursing him to the Prince and Poins for a miserly curmudgeon, who neither diced nor drank like a gentleman, departed, more desperately at war with fortune than ever, for his old haunts. The year 1827 found him a hardened, hopeless old man of sixty, battered in health and ruined in pocket; but who, by ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... simply to come back again on Monday morning. He spent the entire day on Sunday planning for the investment of the money he should receive, counting it over and over again in anticipation, chuckling with true miserly glee at ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... much importance to the rich," said Mademoiselle Cormon, not wishing to be thought miserly. "As for the furniture, I shall leave it as it is, and change nothing,—unless I marry; and then, of course, everything here must ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... this, sighed deeply, and wondered: "Why was my father only a miller? What favours are granted to a knight like that! But I hope the kiss won't be the end of it all; for, unless she is a miserly fairy, there ought to be much more substantial pay for his services ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... venture, nothing have; I will brave the hazard! Meanwhile, Doltimore is mine; Caroline will rule him, and I rule her. His vote and his boroughs are something,—his money will be more immediately useful: I must do him the honour to borrow a few thousands,—Caroline must manage that for me. The fool is miserly, though a spendthrift; and looked black when I delicately hinted the other day that I wanted a friend—id est, a loan! money and friendship same thing,—distinction without a difference!" Thus cogitating, Vargrave whiled away the minutes till his carriage stopped at ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... men anew that, if they would reach heaven and happiness, they must repent and shun evils as sins against God, and strive to live a life according to the commandments? Look at the fearful evils which prevail in our beloved country; the love of rule, civil and ecclesiastical; the miserly love of money, selfishness, vanity and sensualism, in their worst and most degrading forms! Customs and habits prevail which threaten the extinction of at least the Protestant portion of the community in large sections of our country. A Catholic bishop stated, a few years ago, that one ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis
... aspirations are summed up in this: to arrive at seizing a morsel—the biggest possible—of that prey which the fortunate of earth consume. And to this same category, little matter what their station in life, belong the profligate, the arrogant, the miserly, the weak, the crafty. Livery counts for nothing: we must see the heart. No class has the prerogative of simplicity; no dress, however humble in appearance, is its unfailing badge. Its dwelling need not be a garret, a hut, the cell of the ascetic nor the lowliest fisherman's ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... narrowed to the studious contemplation of a hard-earned shilling, whose leaden imaginations never soared above the prospect of a good bargain, and whose summum bonum is the inspiring idea of counting a hundred thousand: I say I have been listening to these miserly beings till the idea did not seem so repugnant of lowering my noble art to a trade, of painting for money, of degrading myself and the soul-enlarging art which I possess, to the narrow ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... red eyelids, his bald head shining from its top to the thin fringe of reddish hair above his big flaring ears, his small wizened face all screwed up into a knot, his thin lips pursed, his little ferret eyes, close-set against his mean, miserly nose, peering at me under their blinking ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... nearly as fresh as if he had not been out of his stable for the day. Never was a man more pleased with a horse than Job was with the noble animal he then bestrode, and deeply did he regret the urgent necessity which compelled him to part with him. "Had it not been for that old miserly fellow in there, I might still have kept my poor Selim," said Job to himself, as he rode by a large mansion at the verge of the town; "that L100," continued Job, "he obliged me to pay him or his attorney, for ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... of." Thorpe then said something in the loud, incoherent way to which he had often recourse, about its being a d—thing to be miserly; and that if people who rolled in money could not afford things, he did not know who could, which Catherine did not even endeavour to understand. Disappointed of what was to have been the consolation for her ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Rhetoric will put in your way. You have but to look at me. My father was an obscure person barely above a slave; he had in fact been one south of Xois and Thmuis; my mother a common sempstress. I was myself not without pretensions to beauty in my youth, which earned me a bare living from a miserly ill-conditioned admirer; but I discovered this easy short-cut, made my way to the top—for I had, if I may be bold to say it, all the qualifications I told you of, confidence, ignorance, and effrontery—, and ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... some giggling at this, as a well-deserved thrust at me for keeping back the wine that miserly fashion. But I did not know these girls, and cared nothing for them, otherwise ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... European powers, he owed to his father, Frederick William I, the resources which made his victories possible. Frederick William strengthened the government and collected an army nearly as large as that maintained by France or Austria. He had, moreover, by miserly thrift and entire indifference to the amenities and luxuries of life, treasured up a large sum of money. Consequently Frederick, upon his accession, had an admirable army ready for use and an ample supply ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... hearing I praise him to the skies. Some folks think his wife dresses too gay, but I say when she has to live with a face like that she needs something to cheer her up. You'll never hear ME condemning a woman for her dress. I'm only too thankful when her husband isn't too mean and miserly to allow it. Not that I bother much with dress myself. Women just dress to please the men, and I'd never stoop to THAT. I have had a real placid, comfortable life, dearie, and it's just because I never cared a cent ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... her bitter quarrel with the poet; the grim old Duchess of Marlborough appeared once or twice in Pope's last years; and the Princess of Wales came with her husband to inspire the leaders of the opposition to the hated Walpole and the miserly king. And from first to last, the good angel of the place was the blue-eyed, sweet-tempered Patty Blount, Pope's best ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... looks as if it were "tied in" close to the hand, the person is timid, easily frightened by both people and circumstances, narrow-minded in his views, and miserly in his habits. It is a well-established fact that the thumbs of all misers are "tied in" and cramped-looking. It is perhaps this very fear of things and people that in the end makes ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... buy for cash. Por[206] rico que sea, no tendra suficientes recursos: No matter how rich he is, he will not have sufficient means. Es demasiado avaro por ser tan rico: for such a rich man, he is too miserly. Caro por caro prefiero generos ingleses: If I have to pay a dear price, I prefer English goods. Por si o por no: In any case, should it be so or not. Ir (venir) por: To go (come) for. Enviar por el medico: To send for the doctor. ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... Automatically through the dim light he catalogued remembered objects, all intimate to his grandfather, each oddly entangled in his mind with his dislike of the old man. The iron bed; the chest of drawers, scratched and with broken handles; the closed colonial desk; the miserly rag carpet—all seemed mutely asking, as Bobby did, why their owner had deserted them the other night and delivered himself to the ghostly mystery of ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... shall it be bravely done. I will give orders at once for the cutting and sewing. I will back our white coats against Master Hampden's green coats, or Essex's swarm in orange-tawny. Have you conveyed my message to my two miserly neighbors?" ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... on Nantucket beach and outyell the Typhoons. What cares Ahab? Owners, owners? Thou art always prating to me, Starbuck, about those miserly owners, as if the owners were my conscience. But look ye, the only real owner of anything is its commander; and hark ye, my conscience is in this ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... forgotten the best instance of all—the other grandson of the Bearnais, Louis XIV., my ex-master. Well, I hope he is miserly enough, he who would not lend a million to his brother Charles! Good! I see you are beginning to be angry. Here we are, by good luck, close to my house, or rather to that of my ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... speech, untidy in appearance, loved nothing or respected nothing unless it might be her violin and her money, and lived alone in a little old house on the river-road to Springwells. Though she made shoes for a living, she was of so miserly a nature that she accepted food from her neighbors, and in order to save the expense of light and fuel she spent her evenings out. Yet she read more or less, and was sufficiently acquainted with Volney, Voltaire, and other skeptics to shock her church acquaintances. ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... so strange, so puzzling,—the beautiful, the quaint, and the faulty were so interwoven, that nobody cared to separate these elements, to take the trouble to criticize or to thank; and thus, though we all gladly enough received, we kept our miserly voices to ourselves, and she never met with any adequate recognition. After her first book, England quietly ignored her,—they could not afford to be so startled; as Sir Leicester Dedlock said, "It was really—really—"; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... talked about it. They grumbled at the restraints military discipline imposed upon them, and at the paltry shilling a day which they received for the first really hard work they had ever done. They appeared to regard England as a miserly employer, exacting their last ounce of energy for a wretchedly inadequate wage. To the casual observer, theirs was not the ardor of loyal sons, fighting for a beloved motherland. Rather, it seemed that of irresponsible schoolboys on a long holiday. They said nothing about patriotism ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... those of vanity. Philip's agitated themselves, searched about and were surprised; they missed something.... Did he not have his circle of affection which rendered unto him the customary homage—the attentive audience to which in miserly fashion he doled out his stories—his parents who brooded him under their touched admiration—the young brother?... Stop there! It was he, exactly he who was missing to ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... orphan and came to live with her miserly uncle. Her adventures and travels make stories that will hold the interest ...
— The Curlytops and Their Pets - or Uncle Toby's Strange Collection • Howard R. Garis
... instruments must be carefully handled or not handled at all. But how recklessly some people wield the judgments of God! If a man meet with business misfortune, how many there are ready to cry out: "That is a judgment of God upon him because he was unscrupulous, or arrogant, or overreaching, or miserly. I thought he would get cut down! What a clean sweep of everything! His city house and country house gone! His stables emptied of all the fine bays and sorrels and grays that used to prance by his door! All his resources ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... asking me to visit her was the first I have ever received from her. Even my mother, her own sister, does not correspond with her. I was brought up to hate her very name, as a selfish, miserly old woman. But, since she asked me to visit her, we judged she had softened and might wish to become friendly, and so I accepted the invitation. I had no ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... down into a waste of Afrik, and came upon the drought Umbool as he sat in the desert upon iron rocks, clawing with miserly grasp at the bones of men ...
— The Gods of Pegana • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... treated. His master was a man of violent temper, who, finding he possessed little aptitude for shoemaking, tried to make him love it, first by flogging, and afterwards by half-starvation; following in the last-named measure the advice of his miserly help-mate, who believed it the best way of developing genius. In vain did William try by gentleness and zeal to soften their harshness; he had no one to interfere in his behalf, and he was made boy of all work, and scolded and blamed from morning till night. ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... De Vlierbeck, but it is impossible to believe you. I did not think you were so hard in a bargain. Yet be it so: every man has his weakness; one is too miserly, another too prodigal. Now, for my part, I confess that I am extremely anxious to spare Gustave the anxiety of delay. Give your daughter twenty-five thousand francs, with the understanding that the amount of her portion is to remain a secret; for I don't want to be laughed at. Twenty-five ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... jealousy between the States and the despotic king, who loved to be called the father of the Republic and to treat the Hollanders as his deeply obliged and very ungrateful and miserly little children. The India trade was a sore subject, Henry having throughout the negotiations sought to force or wheedle the States into renouncing that commerce at the command of Spain, because he wished to help himself ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... looked at the cup as you might at that manuscript! His soul was at it, feasting upon it! Now wasn't that miserly?" ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... have to work very hard for my living, and, as I am the eldest, I look upon it that I ought to do something for mamma, and the girls into the bargain. But for all that I hope I shall never turn a miserly screw. Why, when God gives us health, food, clothing, and lodging, don't you think that hoarding and hoarding, instead of dispensing the blessings, and performing such acts of kindness as may be in ...
— The Young Lord and Other Tales - to which is added Victorine Durocher • Camilla Toulmin
... of crime was adopted strictly in subservience to the dictates of ill-regulated desires and emotions, suffering defeat in their hope of indulgence, and stimulating to a morbid action which became a disease. The references of Munro were always addressed to the petty gains; and the miserly nature, thus perpetually exhibiting itself, at the expense of all other emotions, was, in fact, the true influence which subjected him almost to the sole dictation of his accomplice, in whom a somewhat lofty distaste for such a peculiarity had occasioned a manner and habit of mind, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... them to the rock of horror, and grief insatiable tears out their broken hearts. But in their strength they are not loved. They cannot give themselves yet, for their strength hinders them, and women think them miserly of words and of love's little coin of change. If they get love at last, it is as the pity which the unhurt weak feel for the ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... of rage, for he felt her haunches move. He understood now—or thought he understood! She wanted a miserly pleasure, a sort of ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... was the drawback. Don Quixote could recall no incident in any of the many books he had read, when a knight errant had given his squire fixed wages. How could he possibly establish a precedent now? And so it became his sad and solemn duty to refuse his squire's miserly request, and inform him that his services were no longer wanted. Not only that, but our valiant hero was cruel enough to remark that there would be any number of people who would be only too eager to serve him; and, what was more, he was ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... true to religion and true to the priesthood, but firmly resolved to bear in silence the shocks of fate. Such an attitude cannot be considered that of maintaining opinions, it becomes sheer obstinacy. Action is the essence of party. Without intelligence, but loyal, miserly as a peasant yet noble in demeanor, bold in his wishes but discreet in word and action, turning all things to profit, willing even to be made mayor of Cinq-Cygne, Monsieur d'Hauteserre was an admirable representative of those honorable gentlemen on whose brow God Himself has written the word mites,—Frenchmen ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... while that man, who ought to feel bound to maintain me, should be rolling in wealth, and cottoned up in a palace. But he shall fork out. Sophy must be hunted up. I will clothe her in rags like these. She shall sit at his street-door. I will shame the miserly hunks. But how track the girl? Have I no other hold over him? Can I send Dolly Poole to him? How addled my brains are!—want of food, want of sleep. Is this the ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... frankly to Miss Wilder with the tragic story of Mary's struggle to obtain an education and the attempt her miserly uncle had made to force her to ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... maker of gold chains, who was married to Coupeau's sister. He was a little man who looked much older than his age, and suffered from a constant cough. Miserly and spiteful, he was jealous of the Coupeaus in their success, and rejoiced ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... fevered coma Cal Maggard opened his eyes weakly and had strength only to smile up at the face above him with its nimbus of bronze set about the heaviness of dark hair—or to spend his scarcely audible words with miserly economy. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... what Dick had told him about Uncle Ezra being a wealthy man, for, as subsequent events disclosed, the disappointed army officer went almost at once to Dankville. And there he laid before the miserly man a plan which Uncle Ezra eventually took up, strange as ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... poet informs us that this is not the Greater Dionysia, when strangers, tribute-bearers, and allies were present. It is the contest at the Lenaeum. In v. 1150 f. the chorus frees its mind concerning the miserly fashion in which Antimachus treated them at a previous celebration of the Lenaea. Shall we say that the poet, in order to speak of things present before the eyes of Page 74 the Athenians, steps, in these ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... of much use, I fear," said Tregarthen. "Hitchin is a tough old rascal, with a hard heart and a miserly disposition. However, it may be worth while to make the attempt, for you have a very ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... fortunes on the continent, on the part of the Whigs, are staked on the issue of our present measures. And shall disaffection only be rewarded with security? Can any thing be a greater inducement to a miserly man, than the hope of making his Mammon safe? And though the scheme be fraught with every character of folly, yet, so long as he supposes, that by doing nothing materially criminal against America on one part, and by expressing his private ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... descend from his high wagon, bought an immense dinner bell and he was hit unmercifully. A rusty old fly-catcher elicited many remarks—as "no flies on that." I bought several chests, half full of rubbish, but found, alas! no hidden treasure, no missing jewels, no money hid away by miserly fingers and forgotten. Jake Corey, who was doing some work for me, encouraged me to hope. He said: "I hear ye patronize auctions putty reg'lar; sometimes there is a good deal to be made that way, and then ag'in there isn't. I never had no luck that way, ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... to their neighbours, with whom they rarely met for any social intercourse, save at the stated times of sheep-shearing and Christmas; having a certain kind of sober pleasure in amassing money, which occasionally made them miserable (as they call miserly people up in the north) in their old age; reading no light or ephemeral literature, but the grave, solid books brought round by the pedlars (such as the "Paradise Lost" and "Regained,'" "The Death of Abel," "The Spiritual Quixote," and "The Pilgrim's Progress"), were to be found ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... law, and for the last five years he had breathed the invigorating air of The Leads. Like myself he had fifty sous a day, but he could do what he liked with the money. The monk, who was always penniless, told me a good deal to the disadvantage of the count, whom he represented as very miserly. He informed me that in the cell on the other side of the hall there were two gentlemen of the "Seven Townships," who were likewise imprisoned for disobedience, but one of them had become mad, and was in chains; in another cell, he said, there ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Seraphin. If I hear of any one, I will inform you. Good places are as difficult to find as good subjects;" then she added mentally, "Very likely I'd send you a poor girl to be starved to death in your hovel! Your master is too miserly and too wicked—to denounce, in one breath, poor Louise and poor ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... A MISERLY old farmer, who had lost one of his best hands in the midst of hay-making, remarked to the sexton, as he was filling up the grave: "It's a sad thing to lose a good mower, at a time like this—but after all, poor Tom ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... with their father. The father was a miser: he lived in the poorest manner in spite of all his wealth and hoarded all his money. His eldest daughter-in-law managed the household and she alone of the family did not approve of the miserly way in which the ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... secure to them some degree of independence when she could no longer provide for them. The daughters were good scholars and favorites in the school, so long as the mother was able to maintain them there. A young man, the nephew and clerk of a wealthy but miserly merchant, became acquainted with the daughters, and was specially attentive to the older one. The uncle disapproved of the conduct of his nephew, and failing to control it by honorable means, resorted to the circulation of the vilest slanders against mother and daughters. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... best understood By a fond parent, at the time, To he as sweet as music's chime. In him, though young, my eye can trace A something in his pretty face Which shows strong passion lurks within That childish breast—the fruit of sin. I also think I truly see A trait somewhat too miserly. I may be wrong—I hope I am, For 'twould be sad ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... figure, a cheery, open face, the freshness of one-and-twenty, and a heart incapable of guile. Katrine was not long in discovering these excellences, and, if his boldness had equalled his passion, she would have shown him how little she esteemed the pretensions of the proud landholder or the miserly carpenter. But he took it for granted that he was a fool to contend against such odds, and, buttoning his jacket tightly over his throbbing heart, toiled away in his little fields, thinking that the whole world had never ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... boisterous with seasons of success, and desolate with the drift, the slime, and the fungus of miserly greed! ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... of those words has borne My fancy backward to the gracious past, The generous past, when all was possible. For all was then untried; the years between 160 Have taught some sweet, some bitter lessons, none Wiser than this,—to spend in all things else, But of old friends to be most miserly. Each year to ancient friendships adds a ring, As to an oak, and precious more and more, Without deservingness or help of ours, They grow, and, silent, wider spread, each year, Their unbought ring of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... year 1727, just at the time when earthquakes were prevalent in New England, and shook many tall sinners down upon their knees, there lived near this place a meagre miserly fellow of the name of Tom Walker. He had a wife as miserly as himself; they were so miserly that they even conspired to cheat each other. Whatever the woman could lay hands on she hid away; a hen could not cackle but she was on the alert to secure ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... self-indulgence, and the curtains for the home of worship! It is a marked sign of spiritual awakening when a man begins to contrast his own indulgences with the rights of God. There are so many of us who are lavish in our home and miserly in the sanctuary. We multiply treasures which bring us little profit, and we are niggardly where treasure would ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... I understand that now,' said Quilp; 'but I was going to say, I was so deceived by that, your miserly way, the reputation you had among those who knew you of being rich, and your repeated assurances that you would make of my advances treble and quadruple the interest you paid me, that I'd have advanced you, even ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... habits of the master were regarded as very eccentric by his neighbors, and furnished frequent food for comment and speculation among the gossips which usually abound in country villages—and not in this case without cause. His manner of living was miserly and penurious in the extreme, and all ideas of comfort ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... the Indians lodged. When he got off he lay two days hidden in the hold of the vessel that was to carry him away. Then the Indians came out and so frightened its officers that he was sent ashore and put under the care of a miserly old fellow who ate the most of the food that was provided for Jogues. While he was hidden in this man's garret he was within a few feet of Indians who came there to trade. Finally the Dutch satisfied the Indians by paying a large ransom and shipped Jogues ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... extraordinary varied career. It will be remembered by readers of the Zincali that when he visited Borrow at Oulton in 1842 he complained that 'There is no living for the poor people, brother, the chokengres (police) pursue us from place to place, and the gorgios are become either so poor or miserly that they grudge our cattle a bite of grass by the wayside, and ourselves a yard of ground to light a fire upon.' After a time Ambrose left the eastern counties and crossed to Ireland. In 1868 he went to Scotland, ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... father insisted that she should marry another man; the settlements for this marriage had been drawn and the wedding day fixt, when Lady Mary left her father's house and married Montagu privately. Montagu was a man of some eminence in public life, but noted for miserly habits. He accumulated one of the largest private ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... discoursing on the affairs of Egypt, the aspect of which, he assured me, was becoming daily worse and worse. 'There is no living for the poor people, brother,' said he, 'the chokengres (police) pursue us from place to place, and the gorgios are become either so poor or miserly, that they grudge our cattle a bite of grass by the wayside, and ourselves a yard of ground to light a fire upon. Unless times alter, brother, and of that I see no probability, unless you are made either poknees or mecralliskoe geiro (justice of the peace or prime minister), ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... time after the death of Mademoiselle de l'Enclos, a terrible adventure happened to Courtenvaux, eldest son of M. de Louvois. Courtenvaux was commander of the Cent-Suisses, fond of obscure debauches; with a ridiculous voice, miserly, quarrelsome, though modest and respectful; and in fine a very stupid fellow. The King, more eager to know all that was passing than most people believed, although they gave him credit for not a little curiosity in this ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... eldest of three brothers, Walter coming next, and Larry being the youngest. They were orphans, and at the death of their widowed mother had been left in the care of their uncle, Job Dowling, a miserly man whose chief aim in life had been to hoard money, no matter at what cost, so long as his method was within ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... explain fully the old man's behavior, and the girl who had championed him sighed and then gave a sudden shiver as she remembered the awful suspicion that had fallen upon this strange individual. If the proof must be accepted that Hucks had miserly instincts, had not Beth accidentally stumbled upon a ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... grandparents who adore her, and transferred to the care of an aunt and uncle. Monsieur Rogron and his sister Sylvia. A hard, gloomy couple, these two; retired shopkeepers, who live in a dreary house in the back streets of a dreary country town. Their celibacy weighs heavily upon them; they are miserly, and absurdly vain; morose, ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... perish of famine before the rest, and be the first to need a tomb; for thou hast passed this strange law of thrift in fear that thou wilt be thyself the first to lack food. Thou art thinking for thyself, and not for others, when thou bringest thyself to start such strange miserly ways." ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... leaving their homes in the cool barren highlands of Central Asia where nature dispensed her gifts with a miserly hand, and coming down to the hot, low, fertile plains of the Indian rivers, underwent several fundamental changes in the process of adaptation to their new environment. An enervating climate did its work in slaking their energies; ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... with a celerity adequate to his necessity, bethought him of a wealthy Jew, Melchisedech by name, who lent at usance in Alexandria, and who, were he but willing, was, as he believed, able to accommodate him, but was so miserly that he would never do so of his own accord, nor was Saladin disposed to constrain him thereto. So great, however, was his necessity that, after pondering every method whereby the Jew might be induced to be compliant, at last he determined to devise a colourably reasonable pretext for extorting ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... so by the virtue, wealth, and generosity of their possessors. I have said virtue, wealth, and generosity, because a great man who is vicious will be a great example of vice, and a rich man who is not generous will be merely a miserly beggar; for the possessor of wealth is not made happy by possessing it, but by spending it, and not by spending as he pleases, but by knowing how to spend it well. The poor gentleman has no way of showing that ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... along, gayly whistling "Donna e Mobile," with certain private variations of his own, until he reached the splendid monument erected to the miserly old Duke of Brunswick, who showered his scraped-up millions upon an alien city, to spite his own fat-witted Brunswickers, and so escaped the blood-fleshed talons of ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... in her dressing-room by celebrated men and women, Leonora began to find Salvatti's tyranny unbearable. She now saw him as he really was: miserly, petulant, spoiled by praise. Every bit of her money that came into his hands disappeared, she knew not where. Eager for revenge, though really answering the lure of the elegant world she glimpsed in the distance but was not yet a part of, she began to deceive Salvatti in passing ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... butler, and an Arcadian meal was speedily set out on a table in the hall, where a great fire of logs burnt as merrily as if it had been designed to enliven a Christmas-keeping household. Indeed there was nothing miserly or sparing about the housekeeping at the Grange, which harmonised with the sombre richness of Lady Warner's grey brocade gown, from the old-fashioned silk mercer's at the sign of the Flower-de-luce, in Cheapside. There was liberality without ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... corrupt loyalty, and of evil times evil men are the natural fruit. In nearly all respects Asgill was as unscrupulous a man as the time in which he lived and the class from which he sprang could show. Following in the steps of a griping, miserly sire, he had risen to his present station by oppression and chicanery; by crushing the weak and cajoling the strong. And he was prepared to maintain his ground by means as vile and a hand as hard. But he loved; and—strange ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... cost nothing to the miserly Pope Pius, he this time found no inconvenience in keeping his sacred promise, though not so promptly as Corilla and the ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... him—there was nothing child-like about him. He always seemed to me like a little wizzled-up, miserly old man. He never tossed his cap up in the air, and laughed a good hearty laugh; he never sprang or ran, or climbed or shouted; no—he crawled round as if he had lead weights on his heels, and talked without scarce moving ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... when I will return them most carefully by the same intervention; and particularly the curious piece of enamel; for though you are, as usual, generous enough to offer it to me, I have plundered you too often already; and indeed I have room left for nothing more, nor have that miserly appetite of continuing to hoard what I cannot enjoy, nor have much ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... man that was really willing to work wouldn't need no help," grumbled the miserly storekeeper. "It is only on account of ...
— The Young Bridge-Tender - or, Ralph Nelson's Upward Struggle • Arthur M. Winfield
... oil, which it holds securely in its close grasp and guards from the least loss. Thus is it separate from all other objects around it and is miserly. But when lighted it finds its meaning at once; its relation with all things far and near is established, and it freely sacrifices its fund of oil to ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... means at their command, are there displayed to an attentive reader, in colors as dark and appalling as other features of the popish system are among us, by the recent exposures of the impudent arrogance of the murderer Bedini, and the ambitious and miserly spirit of his particular friend, the Romish ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... host of beautiful lyric poems, Pushkin left several dramatic fragments: "The Rusalka" or "Water Nymph," on which Dargomyzhsky founded a beautiful opera, "The Stone Guest,"[11] "The Miserly Knight," and chief of all, and like "Evgeny Onyegin," epoch-making in its line, the historical dramatic fragment "Boris Godunoff." This founded a school in Russian dramatic writing. It is impossible to do ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... from Julius Lange, attacking me for my "miserly city politics," seriously complaining that "our declaration of war against Prussia had come to nothing," and hoping that my stay in France had by now made ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... poison; the inhabitants submitted without offering resistance to their inevitable fate, and were placed under the governor of Cilicia. The ample treasure of nearly 7000 talents (1,700,000 pounds), which the equally covetous and miserly king could not prevail on himself to apply for the bribes requisite to save his crown, fell along with the latter to the Romans, and filled after a desirable fashion the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... of being compelled to ask for money, and perhaps to meet with refusal, frequently acts as a deterrent upon incipient love. A man is often generous with his sweetheart and miserly with his wife. In the days of courtship, the dollars may fly on wings in search of pleasure for the well-beloved, and yet, after marriage, they will be squeezed until the milling is worn smooth, the eyes ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... discussed. Something got to be known of Jamie,—that he was confidential clerk to the well-known firm of Boston's older ship-owners, and that she was his adopted daughter. Soon the rumor grew that he was miserly and rich. ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... a thing well worth doing. She must risk her soul, lose it, perhaps, or rather, exchange it for a man's life. She had hoarded it hitherto, had been miserly, selfish, seeking to save the poor thing as though it were a pearl of price. Now she saw herself as the veriest rag of flesh parading virtue, useless, comfortless, helpless, clinging to her code, and justifying ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... Jacket wheedled, "for the sake of Miguelito, who is bravely fighting in the manigua, to the shame of his miserly old father, fattening on the groans of good patriots like me! Must I remind you again that Miguelito was my brother? That I have robbed my own belly in ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... individual democrat; and first, as in the case of the State, we will trace his antecedents. He is the son of a miserly oligarch, and has been taught by him to restrain the love of unnecessary pleasures. Perhaps I ought to explain this latter term:—Necessary pleasures are those which are good, and which we cannot do without; unnecessary pleasures are those which do no good, and of which the desire might be eradicated ...
— The Republic • Plato
... characters? Schwartz and Hans were rich but very miserly; they were quarrelsome, drunken, and cruel. Gluck was ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... "You're a miserly coward," she declared. "I'm not robbing you; you will have an abundance for your needs. Why do you quarrel with Dame Fortune? Don't you realize you can pay your rent now and eat three square meals a day, and not have to work and slave for them? You can smoke a good cigar after your dinner, instead ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... my nature, otherwise correct, But with some few and trifling faults is flecked, Just as a spot or mole might be to blame Upon some body else of comely frame, If none can call me miserly and mean Or tax my life with practices unclean, If I have lived unstained and unreproved (Forgive self-praise), if loving and beloved, I owe it to my father, who, though poor, Passed by the village school at his own door, The school where great ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... by reputation. He was a close-fisted, miserly man, who was not likely to be a very desirable employer, for he expected every one who worked for him to labor as hard as himself. Moreover, he and his wife lived in a very stingy manner, and few of the luxuries ...
— The Young Acrobat of the Great North American Circus • Horatio Alger Jr.
... to the fact that Paul had hit upon a popular idea for turning the sudden generosity of the hitherto miserly old farmer to account. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... became possessed with the idea that all was not right, and would return to his dwelling closely to scrutinize every part. This and many other characteristics of Pedan induced a belief in the minds of his townsmen that he had by degrees become possessed of an avaricious disposition, and that his miserly views of the "whole duty of man" had induced him to secrete huge boxes of silver, and bags, of gold in crevices of his cellar, vacancies in his chimney, and musty and dusty corners ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... miserly that I was struck dumb by this sudden generosity, and could find no words in ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... because I'm crazy enough to want to marry one," the girl dealer replied. "Of all the miserly, unscrupulous, grasping characters ..." She expressed a doubt that the average gun-collector would pay more than ten cents to see his Lord and Savior riding to hounds on a Bren-carrier. "They don't give ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... man likes what he has chosen." Other men have other ranks to take, other fates to command. Do not politicians and publicists; professional men and princes of trade; those who toil for others, with brain or hands; the charitable and the miserly; those who pine if removed from the noise and breath of the crowd; those who spend their days in meditation and study; those who live conscientiously every moment in "the gateway of the life eternal"; those who are at enmity to ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... not run away; for she has a miserly father or mother who may not like her lover because he had not enough to give them for her; and she knows they will persecute her and perhaps shoot her husband. But this does not happen often. Just as, once in a hundred years in a Christian land, if a girl will run away with ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... our beloved Paris up again, bowed down as she was under the weight of so many ruins. He had been succeeded by MacMahon, a good, brave man, but a cipher. Grevy had succeeded the Marshal, but he was miserly, and considered all outlay unnecessary for himself, for other people, and for the country. And so Paris remained sad, nursing the leprosy that the Commune had communicated to her by the kiss of its fires. And our delightful Bois de Boulogne still bore the traces ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... great numbers to receive us. Many handed the clerks the money that was due without a word of comment, and we experienced no trouble until we reached the quarters of Yam Kow, an old fellow whose tail reached to the ground, and who was reported to be the most miserly of all the Chinese at Ballarat. That he had money there was no doubt, for he was always at work, or trading with his countrymen, and he was never known to spend a shilling for clothing or food. What he lived on was unknown, and could only be conjectured; but it was said that Kow ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... "Bountiful," again, is stronger than "liberal," and implies giving in abundance; it also differs from "liberal" in being restricted to giving; while "liberal" is applied to an easy style of expenditure in general; to the reverse, in short, of "stingy," or "miserly." Many people live in a liberal style, who are very far from being "bountiful." Bountiful always seems to imply, giving out of an ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... French people, as well as of Italian skies, from English literature. The probability was that our earliest association with the Gallic race partook largely of the ridiculous. All the extravagant anecdotes of morbid self-love, miserly epicurism, strained courtesy, and frivolous absurdity current used to boast a Frenchman as their hero. It was so in novels, plays, and after-dinner stories. Our first personal acquaintance often confirmed this prejudice; for the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... applying apparently to their preparation the taste which she applies to dress; and her extraordinary luck in angling did not fail to supply her with the finest specimens, though, for that matter, this lake, with its old fish-hatcheries and fish-ladders, is not miserly in that way, swarming now with the best lake trout, river trout, red trout, and with salmon, of which last I have brought in one with the landing-net of, I should say, thirty-five to forty pounds. As the bottom goes off very ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel |
