"Niggardly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... concerned the public exhibition of his master's household state, had positively enjoined his attendance. "What," quoth he, "shall the house of the brave Lord Boteler, or such a brave day as this, be without a fool? Certes, the good Lord St. Clere and his fair lady sister might think our housekeeping as niggardly as that of their churlish kinsman at Gay Bowers, who sent his father's jester to the hospital, sold the poor sot's bells for hawk-jesses, and made a nightcap of his long-eared bonnet. And, sirrah, let ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... of this man, O Phaeacians? Is he not tall and good looking, and is he not clever? True, he is my own guest, but all of you share in the distinction. Do not be in a hurry to send him away, nor niggardly in the presents you make to one who is in such great need, for heaven has blessed all ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... gay, polite, and generous abroad, she is sullen, rude, and niggardly at home; return the visit, and she admits you with all the suspicion of a miser, and all the reluctance of an antiquated beauty retired to replenish her charms. Bred up in antediluvian notions, she has not yet acquired the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... effect was not equally apparent. There were some who had scant minds to fix, and what nature had been niggardly in bestowing, they had frittered away in a trifling life; but for the earnest girls, those who truly longed to make the most of themselves and to be able to do a worthy work in the life before them, such advice ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... uplifted that the heels alone gently touch the sand. At each inspiration almost sufficient air is imbibed to float the whole bulk and machinery of the body. And when the radiant air is all one's own, why be niggardly? Let it be gulped greedily, strongly, wilfully, and let the smiling sea, responding to the embraces of your widespread arms, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... would very soon belong to his master. The Hamburgers were deeply afflicted at this threat; in fact, next to the loss of their independence, their greatest misfortune would have been to fall under the dominion of Prussia, as the niggardly fiscal system of the Prussian Government at that time would have proved extremely detrimental to a commercial city. Hanover, being evacuated by the French troops, had become a kind of recruiting mart for the British army, where every man who presented himself was enrolled, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... tells us why nature and society are so prodigal with treasures to some men and so niggardly to others. What a different thing a forest is to different men! He who gives the ax receives a mast. He who gives taste receives a picture. He who gives imagination receives a poem. He who gives faith hears the "goings of God in the tree-tops." The charcoal-burner ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... punishments are in store for the bad, he foretold by parables strange and wonderful, which he, the Well of Wisdom most wisely put forth. At one time he brought into his tale a certain rich man which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day, but who was so niggardly and pitiless toward the destitute as to overlook a certain beggar named Lazarus laid at his gate, and not even to give him of the crumbs from his table. So when one and other were dead, the poor man, full of sores, was carried away, he saith, into Abraham's bosom, for thus he describeth ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... Osgood's "New England," the summit of Owl's Head is 2,743 feet above the level of the lake, and the path to it is a mile and a half and thirty rods in length. It may seem niggardly not to throw off the last petty fraction; and indeed we might well enough let it pass if it were at the beginning of the route,—if the path, that is, were thirty rods and a mile and a half long. But this, it will be observed, is not the case; and ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... of their hand and were not obliged to risk their capital in other lands. The same hard luck pursued him when, with sudden demonstrations of affection, he had tried to convince Don Marcelo that three thousand francs a month was but a niggardly trifle. ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... my second pair of boots had been twice resoled before Dona Isidora's schemes for advancing my fortunes began to take form. Perhaps she was beginning to think us a burden on her somewhat niggardly establishment; anyway, hearing that my preference was for a country life, she gave me a letter containing half a dozen lines of commendation addressed to the Mayordomo of a distant cattle-breeding establishment, asking him to serve the writer by giving her nephew—as ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... tithe-payer saw the good result of the administration of the Church's moneys, and was generally satisfied. He was promised eternal happiness if he paid an honest tithe, but he was also given an earthly reward—for the Church admitted him to many opportunities and enterprises from which the niggardly were adroitly excluded. He was spiritually elevated and enlarged by giving for a purpose that he considered worthy—the fulfillment of a commandment of God and the relief of his fellow-creatures—and the community benefited by having a part of its yearly surplus ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... New Haven, girt with flat marshes that look like monstrous billiard-tables, with hay-cocks lying about for balls,—romantic with West Rock and its legends,—cursed with a detestable depot, whose niggardly arrangements crowd the track so murderously close to the wall that the peine forte et dare must be the frequent penalty of an innocent walk on its platform,—with its neat carriages, metropolitan hotels, precious old college-dormitories, its vistas of elms and its dishevelled weeping-willows; ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... couple who coddle themselves, and who do so at a cheaper rate and on more spare diet, because they are niggardly and parsimonious; for which reason they are kind enough to coddle their visitors too. It is unnecessary to describe them, for our readers may rest assured of the accuracy of these general principles:—that all couples who coddle themselves are selfish and slothful,—that they ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... after a heavy fall of snow, it happened that our friend Willard, though placed upon a bench in the middle of a row of these gum-chewing juveniles, was himself not chewing, for the simple reason that he had no gum to chew, and his next neighbors were niggardly enough to refuse to ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... but a deal more than you guess. First let us take the case for the Crown. The jeweller is travelling by coach at night over the moors. He has one postillion only, Roger Tallis by name, and by character shady. The jeweller has money (he was a niggardly fool to take only one postillion), and carries a diamond of great, or rather of an enormous and notable value (he was a bigger fool to take this). In the dark morning two horses come galloping back, frightened and streaming with sweat. A ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... those who have learnt how to legislate, justice by those who have studied jurisprudence, and the functions of a country postman are not given to a paralytic. Society should model itself on nature, whose plan is specialisation. "For," as Aristotle says, "she is not niggardly, like the Delphian smiths whose knives have to serve for many purposes, she makes each thing for a single purpose, and the best instrument is that which serves one and not many uses." Elsewhere he says, "At Carthage it is thought an honour to hold ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... cases of defence 'tis best to weigh The enemy more mighty than he seems: So the proportions of defence are fill'd; Which of a weak and niggardly projection, Doth, like a miser, spoil his coat with scanting ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... in his arms, and begged her to be his; but P'ing Erh snatched her hands out of his grasp and ran away out of the room; which so exasperated Chia Lien that as he bent his body, he exclaimed, full of indignation: "What a dreadful niggardly young wench! she actually sets her mind to stir up people's affections with her wanton blandishments, and then, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... of the payment a few days helps to pull an order. It is not that a man is niggardly or that he does not want the article but it is the desire, rooted deep in human nature, to hold onto money after ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... scanty, small, drained, insufficient, niggardly, scarce, sparing, exhausted, mean, poor, scrimped, stingy, impoverished, miserly, scant, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... succeeded the niggardly parsimony which counts the grains of salt in the pot-au-feu, which weighs the soap for the washing, and measures ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... great physical and moral strength, of fearless independence, and of, in his son's opinion, "a natural faculty" equal to that of Burns; and Margaret Aitken was "a woman of the fairest descent, that of the pious, the just, and the wise." Frugal, abstemious, prudent, though not niggardly, James Carlyle was prosperous according to the times, the conditions of his trade, and the standard of Ecclesfechan. He was able, therefore, to give such of his sons (he had a family of ten children in all, five sons and five daughters) ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... a trial to Peggy that vacation did not begin until the very day before Christmas, and then continued only one niggardly week. After school hours she had helped her mother in the Christmas preparations every day until she crept into bed at night with aching arms and tired feet, to lie there tossing about, whether from weariness or glad ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... getting his cousin Roderick to take charge. The Northwest Fur Company, which had succeeded the French fur traders of Quebec and Montreal when Canada passed from the hands of the French to the English, wouldn't assume any cost or risk for exploring unknown seas. This was more niggardly than the Hudson's Bay Company, which had paid all cost of outlay for its explorers; but Mackenzie assumed risk and cost himself. Then the Indians hesitated to act as guides; so Mackenzie hired guides when he could, seized them by compulsion when he couldn't hire them, and went ahead ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... Harrowby was too stiff; Lord Harrowby complained that Lord Grey was always beating about the bush of compromise, but never would commit himself fairly to concession. Melbourne complained last night that what was done was done in such an ungracious manner, so niggardly, that he hated the man (Harrowby) who did it. The ultra-Tories are outrageous 'that he gave up everything without reason or cause;' the ultra-Whigs equally furious 'that he had shown how little way he was disposed to go in Committee; his object was to turn out the Government;' ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... Ay to a niggardly host and more sparing guest: But though my cates be mean, take them in good part; Better cheer may you have, but not with better heart. But, soft! my door is lock'd.—Go bid them let ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... in my heart, and perhaps a little terror also. It had not been our way to build great fires; we were, indeed, by the captain's orders, somewhat niggardly of firewood; and I began to fear that something had gone ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of my uncle reddened. The last sentence of Mr. Edgerton was unfortunate for his object. It conveyed a tacit reproof, which the niggardly conscience of Mr. Clifford readily appropriated and, perhaps, anticipated. He dreaded lest Mr. ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... Hotel men cannot be niggardly. They must not imitate old Cornelius Husk. Old Corn Husk, you know, saw his boy the other day carrying the thermometer from the ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... to his own will and genius, civilization must run along natural courses even though its products are artificial. In many instances nature appears bountiful and kind to man, but again she appears mean and niggardly. It is man's province to take advantage of her bounty and by toil and invention force her to yield her coveted treasures. Yet the final outcome of it all is determined by the extent to which man ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... shoulder-belts, old regimentals that were too short, leaving their shirts visible over their flanks; and each of them pretended that he had not the means of doing otherwise. A subscription was started to clothe the poorest of them. Foureau was niggardly, while women made themselves conspicuous. Madame Bordin gave five francs, in spite of her hatred of the Republic. M. de Faverges equipped a dozen men, and was not missing at the drill. Then he took up ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... statement my philanthropic friend had to set another as made by the partner. Quarriar, according to this, had received the five pounds direct from Conn, and had handed over niggardly sums to the partner for the purchase of goods, to wit, two separate sums of one pound each (of which he returned to Quarriar thirty-three shillings from sales), while Quarriar only gave him as his share of ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... the niggardly equipment of Columbus when he sailed west from the Canaries to try a short-cut to an inhabited continent of magnificent empires, as he thought; but his three ships were, relatively to the resources of that time, much better than the one old ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... money. If only the Great Horatio would come out of his niggardly shell and stump up a bit! It was not fair—he was as rich as Croesus; it would not hurt him to fork out ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... collusion with the rascal, was not niggardly of her favours with the young Englishman. She received him every night to supper with Zanovitch and Zen, who had been presented by the Sclav, either because of his capital, or because Zanovitch was not ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... was furnished with a number. By that number he was to be known while in the company's employ. Each man showed his number and drew what he needed—overalls, lamps, and heavy boots. There was nothing niggardly in the credit. The deeper the debt the tighter the grip on the debtor. The goods cost just one hundred per cent. more than anywhere else. The company paid wages once a month. If a labourer borrowed of his own within that time, he paid ten per ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... forth the evil consequences of not listening to what he was saying with reverence, and, surrounded by Indians of various tribes, the good man, mounted on a primitive rostrum seat, dealt liberally in the terrors of the church, while he offered a niggardly allowance of hope even to the best, always excepting himself. For a time the motley crowd seemed disposed to assume a becoming deportment; but when the preacher went into the particulars of the fiery ordeal, prepared alike for sinners of all ages, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... so to speak, for years, and they had also been obliged to keep up appearances, which is sometimes embittering even to persons of amiable tempers. Lady Anstruthers, it is true, had lived in the country in as niggardly a manner as possible. She had narrowed her existence to absolute privation, presenting at the same time a stern, bold front to the persons who saw her, to the insufficient staff of servants, to the village to the vicar and his ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... bold stroke against the enemy his stingy and niggardly spirit urged him to defend himself against his friends, and before endeavoring to leave he ordered a division of the spoils. Many of the goods taken from the two towns were on board the different vessels of the fleet, and he was very much afraid that if his comrades, ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... be," Mr. Scogan replied, and, expanding the fingers of his right hand, he went on: "Look at me, for example. What sort of a holiday can I take? In endowing me with passions and faculties Nature has been horribly niggardly. The full range of human potentialities is in any case distressingly limited; my range is a limitation within a limitation. Out of the ten octaves that make up the human instrument, I can compass perhaps two. ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... been cleared, so that it was impossible by means of agriculture alone to provide against famine in the winter. Nevertheless, the requisite supplies were furnished by the company's agents in the most niggardly manner. Its neglect became worse and worse, until, in the winter of 1626, there was an actual dearth of provisions at Quebec. In the spring of 1627 De Caen's vessels brought out, as usual, a certain supply of necessaries. But when the summer had ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... half so careful in vending their poisons, there would be a notable diminution in the yearly average of victims to arsenic and oxalic acid. But, alas, in the matter of apology, it is not from the excess of the dose, but the timid, niggardly, miserly manner in which it is dispensed, that poor humanity is hurried off to the Styx! How many times does a life depend on the exact proportions of an apology! Is it a hairbreadth too short to cover the scratch for which you want it? Make your will—you are a dead man! A life ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... with such passionate anger that they could not have been prompted by mere regard for virtue; surely they came from some violent rival of his. In this opinion Rita concurred, formulating, in ill-composed words of her own, this thought: virtue is indolent and niggardly, wasting neither time nor paper; only self-interest is alert ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... Nature, made him feel more forcibly the barrenness of what was best in that of man: nor is it to be wondered at, that, seeing her perfect and exquisite creations poured forth in a profusion which conception could not grasp nor calculation sum, he should think that it ill became him to be niggardly of his own rude craftsmanship; and where he saw throughout the universe a faultless beauty lavished on measureless spaces of broidered field and blooming mountain, to grudge his poor and imperfect labour to ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... It is not any such grotesque or fragmentary immortality that God has given us. The Creator does not administer the universe on so niggardly a plan. Either there is no immortality for us which is intelligible or satisfying, or childhood, youth, manhood, age, and all the other persons who make up an individual, live for ever, and one day will meet and be ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... a big freehold of some 80,000 acres, belonging to an absentee syndicate, and therefore run in most niggardly style. There was a manager on 200 pounds a year, Sandy M'Gregor to wit—a hard-headed old Scotchman known as "four-eyed M'Gregor", because he wore spectacles. For assistants, he had half-a-dozen of us—jackaroos and ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... the strain of dissonance, as in the returning melody of the Adagio. Only we may feel we have been waiting too long. The desert was perhaps too long for the oasis. Est modus in rebus: the poet seems niggardly with his melody; he may weary us with too long waiting, with too little staying comfort. He does not escape the modern way of symbolic, infinitesimal melody, so small that it must, of course, ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... small thanks and am bound to give serious offence. For, besides the fact that the general standard of morality is so lax that there is much more to censure than to praise, you are sure to be called niggardly if you praise and too censorious if you censure, though you may have been lavish of appreciation and scrupulously guarded in reproach. However, these considerations do not stay me, for I have the courage of my convictions. ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... men of strong minds, was a good critic of the substance of poetry, but somewhat niggardly in the allowance he made for those subsidiary qualities which make it the charmer of leisure and the employment of minds without definite object. It may be doubted, indeed, whether he set much store by any contemporary writing but ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... edge, hurts worse; so I (fool!) found Crossing hurt me. To fit my sullenness, He to another key his style doth dress, And asks, What news? I tell him of new plays: He takes my hand, and, as a still which stays A semibrief 'twixt each drop, he niggardly As loth to enrich me, so tells many a lie, More than ten Hollensheads, or Halls, or Stows, Of trivial household trash he knows. He knows When the queen frown'd or smil'd; and he knows what A subtile statesman may gather of that: He knows who loves whom, and who by poison Hastes to an office's reversion; ...
— English Satires • Various
... concurrence failed to give the full satisfaction I expected, and they so habitually did what they pleased with me, that, like all men so disposed, I never got the credit for concession which a man more niggardly of his ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... malicious old king. He is all swathed in furs. He still owes me the money for my epithalamium, and he came within a nick of hanging me this evening, which would have been very inconvenient to me.—He is niggardly towards men of merit. He ought to read the four books of Salvien of Cologne, Adversits Avaritiam. In truth! 'Tis a paltry king in his ways with men of letters, and one who commits very barbarous cruelties. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... 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 be of ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... about with one. [He slaps his right coat-pocket.] Here lies the crown of England. [Now the left coat-pocket.] Here the crown of Scotland—and here, in my waistcoat pocket, is Ireland. What shall I take from herein exchange? [He looks about.] Is the gilding real? It looks deuced niggardly and close-fisted. There's space enough in these great halls, but I'll wager there are many mice here. It's as quiet as an English Sunday. [Rises.] There's ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... who is always la grande dame, rose without apparent embarrassment to meet the gentleman who entered, though I knew she could not help but feel keenly the niggardly appearance of the board she left with such grace. The stranger—he was certainly a stranger; this I could see by the formality of her manner—was a gentleman of urbane bearing and a general ...
— The Gray Madam - 1899 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... heart. They are mistaken, but no doubt they are sincere. Shakespeare, the wisest of monitors, is never so eloquent and splendid as when he makes one of his people express praise of another. Look at those speeches in Coriolanus. Such niggardly persons, in their detraction of Henry Irving, are prompt to declare that he is a capital stage manager but not a great actor. This has an impartial air and a sapient sound, but it is gross folly and injustice. Henry ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... was answering had adopted, to be original in everything, that selfsame conciseness: every sentence of his contained two or three ideas. But the member from Alcira would not be led astray by such niggardly parsimony. He believed that ponderousness and extension were qualities indispensable to eloquence. He must fill a whole issue of the Congressional Record, to impress his friends back home in the District. So he talked and talked on, trying deliberately to avoid ideas. Those he had he would keep ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... there are women to whom nature has been niggardly in the matter of roundness of form, but even these need not despair; if they cannot show their own busts, they can show something nearly as good, since we read the following, which we forbear to translate:—"Autre excentricite. C'est l'invention des poitrines adherentes a l'usage ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... a quality dispensed with of necessity in the practice of most professions, being that of which nature is, for some reason, most niggardly. There is no such thing as passing in imagination for any department of public usefulness, even the government of Oriental races; the list of the known qualified would be exhausted, perhaps, in getting the papers set. Yet neither poet nor philosopher enjoys it in monopoly; the ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... not be niggardly or ungenerous in meting out to struggling fellow-beings their share, and perchance a little more than their share of approbation and applause, poor enough return, after all, for the pleasure their labors have procured us. What adequate compensation can we mete out to ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... On the other hand, Mr. Mackworth, as you are probably aware, my daughter is—no, I won't say a rich woman—I will say comfortably provided for; not by the late Comte de Chaumie, but by myself. [Closing his eyes.] I have never been a niggardly parent, ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... is bound to write itself on space in an architecture beautiful and new; one which "takes its shape and sun-color" not from the niggardly mind, but from the opulent heart. This architecture will of necessity be organic, the product not of self-assertive personalities, but the work of the "Patient Daemon" organizing the nation into a ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... you live!" said she. "Your fishing has sped to a wish. And now let us choose for the king the fairest of all your fish. For fear inhabits the palace and grudging grows in the land, Marked is the sluggardly foot and marked the niggardly hand, The hours and the miles are counted, the tributes numbered and weighed, And woe to him that comes short, and woe to him that delayed!" So spoke on the beach the mother, and counselled the wiser thing. For Rahero stirred in the country and secretly mined the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... $13,000 damages. And those $13,000 belong to him bona fide; and whenever that unfortunate wife wishes a dollar of it to supply her needs she must ask her husband for it; and if the man be of a narrow, selfish, niggardly nature, she will have to hear him say, every time, "What have you done, my dear, with the twenty-five cents I gave you yesterday?" Isn't such a position, I ask you, humiliating enough to be called "servitude?" That husband, as would any other husband, in nearly every State of ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous
... continually crammed with keys: so that, when he would treat a guest, (a friend he has not out of your family), he is half as long puzzling which is which, as his niggardly treat might be concluded in. And if it be wine, he always fetches it himself. Nor has he much trouble in doing so; for he has very few visiters—only those, whom business or necessity brings: for a gentleman who can help it, would rather be benighted, than ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... nor yet do I think you a Grashopper, to live upon Dew. Here is nothing of Extravagancy, I always lov'd Neatness, and abhor Slovenliness. I am for being neither luxurious nor niggardly. We had better leave than lack. If I dress'd but one Dish of Peas, and the Soot should chance to fall in the Pot and spoil it, what should we have to eat then? Nor does every Body love one Thing; therefore I love ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... and a large, roomy one became an asset in the marriage market. I have seen a pretty little damsel of Sind with fourteen jingling silver things hanging at regular intervals from the outside edge of each ear. If Nature had been niggardly, the lobe at least could be enlarged by boring it and thrusting in a small wooden peg, then a larger one, and so on until it could hold an ivory wheel as large as a quoit, and ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... in a dream, you will concur with others in signifying some entertainment as a niggardly device to raise funds for the personal enjoyment ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... despite Athenian notions of what constitutes a gentleman, many citizens are people of utterly penurious, niggardly habits. Frequently enough the fellow who can discuss all Socrates's theories with you is quarreling with his neighbor over the loan of salt or a lamp wick or some meal for sacrifice.[*] If one of the customary "club-dinners"[] is held at his house, he will ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... sweet-scented billets; compelled, in very justice to the dead, to convince himself that the mother of his children was corrupt only at heart,—that the Black Horses had come to the door in time,—and, wretchedly consoled by that niggardly conviction, flinging into the flames the last flimsy tatters on which his honour (rock-like in his own keeping) had been fluttering to and fro in the charge of a vain treacherous fool,—envy you that mourner? No! not even in his release. Memory is not nailed ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the restless intellect of man, unless perhaps submarine navigation, or the invention of explosives. It cannot be prosecuted except with a perfect willingness to risk life. No doubt this is one of the reasons why practical results seemed so long in the coming. Nor have men been niggardly in this enforced sacrifice. Though no records of assured accuracy are available, the names of forty-eight aeronauts who gave up their lives in the century following the Montgolfiers' invention are recorded. ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... Christopherus, if it be a great thing to do, is not the doing it and thereby blessing yourself no less than others—is not that reward? Not that Castile shall deny you reward, no! Trust me that if you bring us the key of India you shall not find us niggardly! But we and they who advise us stumble at your prescribing wealth, honors and gifts that they say truly are better fitting a great prince! Trust us for enrichment and for honor do you come back with the great thing done! Leave it all now to Time that brings to pass. So you will be ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... were poor because the land was poor, because the country was barren, because Nature dealt with us in niggardly fashion, so that all men had to struggle against famine; if, in a word, there was democracy in our poverty, so that none were idle and rich while the rest toiled in poverty, it would be our supreme glory to bear it with cheerful ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... like. Cowardly caution and niggardly prudence had suggested rooms; two low-rented, unfurnished rooms such as could be found almost anywhere in Wandsworth; whereas a house in Wandsworth was impossible even if you sank as low as Jew's Row or ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... would not have the well-to-do feel that they must be niggardly I would earnestly warn them against extravagance, against the acquiring of expensive habits of wastefulness that later on may be chains of a cruel bondage. Why forge fetters upon oneself? Far better be free now and thus cultivate freedom for whatever future may come. For as sure ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... tumbling into ruin. The shutters were always closed, as though the mansion were in a state of chronic mourning for a race of proprietors now become extinct, except that now and then, in summer-time, a niggardly amount of fresh air and sunshine was allowed to find its way into ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... school. No butcher, no baker, no milkman duns them for payment of bills long overdue! They escape the danger of furniture on the "hire system." For them no automatic gas meter grudgingly doles out its niggardly pennyworths of gas. They are not implored to burden themselves with the ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... would haggle!" contemptuously exclaimed Albani. "You would be a very niggardly vicegerent of God! But as Corilla is well worth two thousand scudi, I am content. Give me eight thousand scudi and ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... name, as it is even now generally termed in New-England, had been intended, by his pious sponsors, humbly to express his future hopes, turned his head towards the heroic tailor, with an expression of drollery about the eye, that proved nature had not been niggardly in the gift of humour, however the quality was suppressed by the restraints of a very peculiar manner, and no less ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... plain at last, so that the man who runs may read, that he is no such bungler in his workmanship as to fashion the organism of a woman without giving her at the same time the corresponding strength. We have too much belief in him to believe that the power given to us is in such niggardly measure for our needs; that, in order to carry out perfectly the work of the organs most peculiarly our own, the regular action of the brain must be suspended. Not so. He who fits the shoulder to the burden; who, in planning the complex organism, not only made possible greatly increased size ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... give concerts for the benefit of his fellow-artists and for other charitable purposes, and on more than one occasion bestowed large sums of money for the relief of distress. We may assume that he was niggardly by habit and generous by impulse. Utterly ignorant of everything except the art of music, bred under the most unfortunate and demoralizing conditions, the fact that his character was, on the whole, so naive ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... 'woman's talk', not he; and when one of the teachers advanced on him with a book and an ink-horn and waved them before him in a mild persuasive way, much as a churchwarden invitingly shakes the offertory bag under the nose of a rich but niggardly parishioner, he sprang up with a fierce oath and flashed Inkosi-kaas before the eyes of our learned friend, and there was an end of the attempt to ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... generous who give to the rich, the big who praise the big; the niggardly salve their consciences in doles to the humbly poor, making life into a pilgrimage of greedy patrons in ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... "village governess." And as her tales were found to be a kind of mosaics composed of droll bits of fact picked up in the neighbourhood, Fortrose soon became considerably too hot for her. She had drawn, under the over-transparent guise of the niggardly Mrs. Flint, the skinflint wife of a "paper minister," who had ruined at one fell blow her best silk dress, and a dozen of good eggs to boot, by putting the eggs in her pocket when going out to a party, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... but two hundred and sixty thousand dollars has been raised through the agency of the labor organizations. This comparatively paltry sum is being doled out in niggardly fashion by a finance committee who feel reluctant to part with a single dollar unless assured that it will have a hundred fold its natural effect ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... niggardly Host, and more sparing guest: But though my cates be meane, take them in good part, Better cheere may you haue, but not with better hart. But soft, my doore is lockt; goe ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... helped carry the rest of me into some queer scrapes, one time and another. But we've had good times together, as well as bad, you and I, and anyway, I'm sorry to lose you. And now, skipper," said he, "get off your coat and wade in. I've put on the Esmarch's bandage for you. Don't be niggardly with the chloroform—I've got a good heart. And remember to do what I told you about that femoral artery, and don't make a mistake there, or else there'll be a mess on the floor. Shake hands, old man, and good ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... enjoyment of the Reverend Doctors Folliott and Opimian is sensibly increased by the reflection that a great many worthy people, even among his own acquaintances, are, by some mysterious law of their being, debarred from any share in his pleasure. Yet surely we need not be so niggardly in this matter. There is wit enough in those two reverend gentlemen to go all around the living earth and leave plenty for generations now unborn. ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... note of this,[10] he would already put to flight the greedy poverty of Catalonia, in order that it might not do him harm: for truly there is need for him or for some other to look to it, so that on his laden bark more load be not put. His own nature, which descended niggardly from a liberal one, would have need of such a soldiery as should not care ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... of things would be still more satisfactory from a teetotal point of view if Nature were less niggardly of water in these parts. In some localities it has to be strictly economized, and this is done in the case of streams by using it first for the exterior, and afterwards for the interior needs of man. I, having still some English prejudices, would rather run all the risks incurred ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... out their stomachs in token of the possession of extraordinary courage, the stomach being regarded by the Chinese as the seat of both courage and intelligence. In the absence of large stomachs provided by nature, perhaps these proud Manchus come to the correction of niggardly nature with wadding, as do various hollow-chested people in the "regions of mist and snow," the dreary, sunless land ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... been a potent factor in their development. "To the Bantu, perhaps more than to any other people," says Mr. S. M. Molema, himself a member of that race, "the missionaries have stood for civilization, Christianization and education."[2] Niggardly and inadequate governmental appropriations for common schools have been supplemented by missionary funds, and in many cases missionary funds alone have supported and are still supporting native schools. "In short, every ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... counsels just then taking favour; but I went back to my father and mother, and aunt, and Preston, and others; and comfort found no lodgment with me. Then there was an extract from a Southern paper, calling Yankees "the most contemptible and detestable of God's creation" - speaking of their "mean, niggardly lives - their low, vulgar and sordid occupations" - and I thought, How can peace be? or what will it ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... all the power of his "divine soul" in his will, and told her,—he,—a man,—that he put away her love from him then, forever! He spared himself nothing,—slurred over nothing; spurned himself, as it were, for the meanness, the niggardly selfishness in which he had wallowed that night. How firm he had been! how kind! how masterful!—pluming himself on his man's strength, while he held her in his power as one might hold an insect, played ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... dishonored, compared with the heritage of uncomplaining suffering and heroism which we boast of to-day because those modest martyrs were working people, proud that by the sweat of their brows they wrung from a niggardly soil the food they ate, proud also that they could leave the plough to govern or to legislate, able also to survey a county ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... the hand, to be seen than heard. He lies ever close within himself, armed with wise resolution, and will not be discovered but by death or danger. He is neither prodigal of blood to misspend it idly, nor niggardly to grudge it, when either God calls for it, or his country; neither is he more liberal of his own life than of others. His power is limited by his will, and he holds it the noblest revenge, that he might hurt and doth not. He commands without tyranny and imperiousness, obeys without ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... to hear her say so; for it showed a commendable anxiety to execute in no niggardly spirit the intentions of Master Richard Watts. But the room was really so well adapted to its purpose that I protested, quite ...
— The Seven Poor Travellers • Charles Dickens
... be a face that all the beautiful things in the world are promised to: just by being so beautiful itself it draws beautiful happenings to it. But if the hand contradicts the face, if the hand is one of those narrow niggardly distrustful hands, one of the hands that will give nothing and take nothing, a hand without courage, without generosity—well then one might as well be born without a fortune-face, for any good it will ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... here will be rich there, and those who were poor on earth will be poor in Hades. As to any moral retribution which may overtake evil-doers in the life to come, their ideas are very vague; only they are sure that the ghosts of the niggardly will be punished by being dumped very hard against the buttress-roots of chestnut-trees. They say, too, that all breaches of etiquette or of the ordinary customs of the country will meet with certain appropriate punishments in the spirit land. When the soul has thus done penance, it takes ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... he was usually called, was a man of business of the old school, moderate in his charges, economical and even niggardly in his expenditure, strictly honest in conducting his own affairs and those of his clients, but taught by long experience to be wary and suspicious in observing the motions of others. Punctual as the clock of Saint Giles tolled nine, the neat dapper form of the little hale old gentleman ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... exactitude this great biologist has also perceived the degree to which size may be modified; may dwindle to dwarfness when a niggardly soil refuses to furnish beast and plant alike ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... love is stronger than death; it rises superior to adversity, and towers in sublime beauty above the niggardly selfishness of the world. Misfortune cannot suppress it; enmity cannot alienate it; temptation cannot enslave it. It is the guardian angel of the nursery and the sick bed; it gives an affectionate concord to the partnership of life and interest, circumstances cannot ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... rouge is natural; it does not come off!" the old lady exclaimed, and a smile crept over her parchment-coloured face. "Not but what a great deal of nonsense is talked about the usage of rouge, my dear children! There is no harm in supplementing the niggardly gifts of nature. You, for instance, Marie-Anne, would look all the better for a little rouge!" She spoke in a ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... His death and resurrection (ix. 32), and after this prophecy they actually dispute about their own precedence (ix. 34); when Christ goes boldly forward to Jerusalem, they follow with fear and hesitation (x. 32); He rebukes the niggardly criticism of those who were indignant with the "waste" of the perfume poured upon His head (xiv. 6); and in Gethsemane "they all left Him and fled" ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... small labor to build him a house portionable to that bulk and bigness. And do you not observe, O Chersias, continues he, many poor men,—how one while they pinch their bellies, upon what short commons they live, how sparing and niggardly and miserable they are; and another while you may observe the same men as distrustful and covetous withal, as if the plenty of the city and county, the riches of king and kingdom were not sufficient to preserve them ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... sign almost anything for to-morrow, provided to-day could be left unmolested. He was a man whom scarcely any amount of fortune could have benefited permanently, and who was made to be ruined to cheat small tradesmen, to be the victim of astuter sharpers: to be niggardly and reckless, and as destitute of honesty as the people who cheated him, and a dupe, chiefly because he was too mean to be a successful knave. He had told more lies in his time, and undergone more baseness of stratagem in order to stave off a small debt, or to swindle a poor creditor, than ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Public opinion eventually prevented the continuance of this despotic rule, and at the present day a certain number of Roman and Protestant clergy are supported by the Government, but Roman zeal outstrips the niggardly spiritual provision, and proves the appreciation in which it is held by full churches and devout worshippers. The Mohammedanism of the Malay lacks the fiery fervour common to Islam, and his slack hands are ever ready to forego all symbols of faith. From the region ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... purpose, among the majority of the influential persons who, perhaps for decorum's sake, have made it, as to leave cause for apprehension that, if any such scheme were to be proposed, it would be in the first instance very limited in its compass, indecisive in its enforcement, and niggardly in its pecuniary appointments. Many of our legislators have never thought of investigating the condition of the people, and are unaware of their deplorable destitution of all mental cultivation; and many have formed but a low and indistinct estimate of the kind and measure of cultivation ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... new lord had to supply her forthwith with necessary clothing. In a subsequent page, when he comes to detail the purchases which he was, in consequence, obliged to make for his bride, he gives full vent to his feelings on this niggardly conduct of the father, and, in recording the costs of his own outfit, his very first words have a smack of bitterness in them, which is ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849 • Various
... know something of the fair Mistress Flanagan who was left in very comfortable circumstances by a niggardly husband, who did her the favour to die suddenly one day, to the no small satisfaction of the pleasure-loving widow, who married him in an odd sort of a hurry, and got rid of him as quickly. Mr. Flanagan was engaged ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... from year to year, until now it requires about $550 to $600 annually to cover tuition, room-rent, board, and common running expenses. A boy might squeeze through for $400 a year, but he would have to pinch and be niggardly, if not mean. The $550 or $600 would not cover vacation expenses and society dues, therefore the larger sum ought to be reckoned as the cost annually for a Harvard undergraduate at the present time. And upon inquiry, I find that ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various
... which speaks of getting out of the frying-pan into the fire, which was indeed my unhappy case in this change of masters. This priest was, without exception, the most niggardly of all miserable devils I have ever met with. He had a large old chest, the key of which he always carried about him; and when the charity bread came from the church, he would with his own hands deposit it in the chest and turn the key. The only other eatable we had was ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... Picton gave a great crunching blow with his boot-heel at the back-stick, and laid on a good supply of fuel. We were wet through and through, but we wrapped ourselves in our travelling-blankets like a brace of clansmen in their plaids, put our feet towards the niggardly blaze, and were soon bound and ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens |
