"Paltry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Raleigh found his greatest disaster in the death of Elizabeth. After ruling England so wisely and well for more than fifty years, she died on March 24th, 1603. This great queen left her throne to one of the most paltry ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... had begged the Countess not to let such a small difficulty trouble her for a moment. She really must accept a loan to tide over the little annoyance; it would indeed be too hard to lose the pleasure of her companionship for the sake of a few paltry dollars, so that would be no favour at all, or rather, the favour would be the other ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... certainly communicating the results of his inquiries in one sense to George II., and, in another sense, to the exiled James III. in Rome. He was betraying his own cousins, and traducing his friends. Pickle is plainly no common spy or 'paltry vidette,' as he words it. Possibly Sir Walter Scott knew who Pickle was: in him Scott, if he had chosen, would have found a character very like Barry Lyndon (but worse), very unlike any personage in the Waverley Novels, ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... and proceeded in the darkness of the cabin to relate the particulars: the destruction of the president's house, the treasury, war, and navy offices, the capitol, the depository of the national library and the public records. There was a momentary pause after the speaker had ceased, when some paltry spirit lifted his head from his settee, and in a tone of complacent derision, 'wondered what Jimmy Madison would say now.' 'Sir,' said Mr. Irving, glad of an escape to his swelling indignation, 'do you seize on such a disaster only for a sneer? Let me tell you, sir, ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... rather, indeed, of our idea of devils; for I don't know that any brutes can be taxed with such malevolence. A sirloin of beef was now placed on the table, for which, though little better than carrion, as much was charged by the master of the little paltry ale-house who dressed it as would have been demanded for all the elegance of the King's Arms, or any other polite tavern or eating-house! for, indeed, the difference between the best house and the worst is, that at the former you pay largely ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... urge attention to the subject, and this was apparently complied with, the 27th of November being appointed for the payment of the men. On that day three months' pay only was offered to them, notwithstanding all they had achieved. This paltry pittance was refused. ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... It was just the same now as it had been then. The gilding was just as bright, the lamps were just as sparkling, the scenery had been repainted, and was even more showy and striking. Yet it all looked different to Rosalie. It seemed to her very poor and disappointing and paltry, as she looked at it from her ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... commonly found in those who bear rule in the East. His conduct towards Khush-newaz has generally been regarded as the great blot upon his good fame; and it is certainly impossible to justify the paltry casuistry by which he endeavored to reconcile his actions with his words at the time of his second invasion. But his persistent hostility towards the Ephthalites is far from inexcusable, and its motive may have been patriotic rather than personal. He probably felt that the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... confessor's, but when I saw the friar's gown, and he accused me of having two wives, it all flashed upon me at once. A pretty fool has he made of me! No wonder that he knew my rogueries when I confessed them to him. What's the having two wives to this? Mine is a paltry secret of a poor lacquey, but his is one which will obtain a price, and it is well to be first in the market. Whom shall I sell it to? let ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... refitting the arsenals. No foresight, no foresight! either statesmanlike or administrative. Curious to see these men at work. The whole efforts visible to me and to others, and the only signs given by the administration in concert, are the paltry preparations to send provisions to Fort Sumpter. What is the matter? what are ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... of their naked territory, make up the flattering unction which is laid upon the soul, as an antidote to the little misgiving which from time to time arises, lest their large country be not of quite so much importance among the nations, as a certain paltry old-fashioned little place that they ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... escapades which are inconceivable in Paris. He had ruined himself in supporting a theatre at Milan in order to force upon a public a very inferior prima donna, whom he was said to love madly. A fine future was therefore before him, and he did not care to risk it for the paltry distinction of a bit of red ribbon. He was not a brave man, but he was certainly a philosopher; and he had precedents, if we may use so parliamentary an expression. Did not Philip the Second register a vow after the battle of Saint Quentin that never again ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... of maps, gazetteers, and books of travel, was more difficult to procure. The ordinary Englishman of that day regarded America with horror or contempt as perverse and rebellious colonies, making a great to-do about a paltry tax, and giving "the best of kings" a world of trouble for nothing. He probably heard little of the thundering eloquence with which Fox, Pitt, Burke, and Sheridan were nightly defending the American cause in the House of Commons, and assailing the infatuation of the ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... popularity-hunting. In a sense it might be said of him, that he was "monarch of all he surveyed." It is true, he was member for the borough—an honor, however, for which he was indebted to the natural influence of his commanding position—one which left him his own master, not converting him into a paltry delegate, handcuffed by pledges on public questions, and laden with injunctions concerning petty local interests only—liable, moreover, to be called to an account at any moment by ignorant and insolent demagogues—but ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... instantly and got out the oars, pulling gently to the lee side of these rocks, and with some difficulty landed and made fast my boat between two lofty pillars of granite, which rose sheer from the sea. I was dreadfully cold and could find no shelter from the rain, which had completely saturated my paltry clothing. I therefore had a dip in the sea, which appeared to me warmer than the cold rain and night air, and less likely to have bad after effects upon my constitution. Oh, poor Robinson Crusoe! here was a pretty kettle of ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... yet, to prepare for the next step. The white smocks would have to go; Literates would have to sacrifice their paltry titles and distinctions. There would have to be a re-constitution of the Fraternities. Wilton Joyner and Harvey Graves and the other Conservative Literates would have to be convinced, emotionally as well as intellectually, of the ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... love, Eve's curse lays suffering, as their natural lot, On womankind, till custom makes it light. I know the use of pain: bar not the leech Because his cure is bitter—'Tis such medicine Which breeds that paltry strength, that weak devotion, For which you say you love me.—Ay, which brings Even when most sharp, a stern and awful joy As its attendant angel—I'll say no more— Not even to thee—command, and ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... asked him to repeat them, "Nay," he whispered, "I cannot bear to deceive the girl I love. Permit me to explain the tricks." So he explained them. His eyes sought hers across the bowl of gold-fish, his fingers trembled as he taught her to manipulate the magic canister. One by one, she mastered the paltry secrets. Her respect for him waned with every revelation. He complimented her on her skill. "I could not do it more neatly myself!" he said. "Oh, dear Miss Dobson, will you but accept my hand, all these things shall be yours—the ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... far-sighted reformer. But it is written: false prophets must come, deceiving in respect to all things in heaven and earth. "Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur." (The world wishes to be deceived, therefore, let it be deceived.) The world elects to be deceived. It is so—often on the most paltry of pretences. And here lies the fatal and prolific cause which has ever, throughout the ages, wrought infinite harm and impeded the progress of the world: ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... round Milan; in every city the pestilence swept off its hundreds daily; manufactures, commerce, agriculture, the industries of town and rural district, ceased; the Courts swarmed with petty nobles, who vaunted paltry titles; and resigned their wives to cicisbei and their sons to sloth: art and learning languished; there was not a man who ventured to speak out his thought or write the truth; and over the Dead Sea of social putrefaction floated the sickening ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... say, steward," the Ancient Mariner resumed, "that I was born with a silver spoon that melted in my mouth and left me a proper prodigal son. Also, that I was born with a backbone of pride that would not melt. Not for a paltry railroad accident, but for things long before as well as after, my family let me die, and I . . . I let it live. That is the story. I let my family live. Furthermore, it was not my family's fault. I never whimpered. I never let on. I melted the last of my silver spoon—South Sea ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... his head: "What do you know about it, Bessie? It is dreadfully hard on an ambitious fellow to be forced to turn his back on all his fine visions of usefulness and distinction for the paltry fear that death ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... print his cheap and popular editions. Then Aristotle and Plato, Virgil and Horace and Pliny, all the goodly company of the ancient authors and philosophers and scientists, offered to become man's faithful friend in exchange for a few paltry pennies. Humanism had made all men free and equal before the ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... it, readily forced the paltry Chinese fastening, and, like a Custom House officer, plunged my hands among the contents. For some while I groped among linen and cotton. Then my teeth were set on edge with silk, of which I drew forth several strips covered with mysterious characters. And these settled the business, for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you can, good folks. Now say not a word about taxes, Judges, lawyers, courts and women's extravagances. Your government, your courts, your lawyers, your clergymen, your schools and your poor, do not all cost you so much as one paltry article which does you little or no good but is as destructive of your lives as fire and brimstone."—Noah Webster's ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... in her feelings. Madame Staubach did believe that Satan was coming for her niece, if not actually come; he was close at hand, if not arrived. The crushing, if done at all, must be done instantly, so that Satan should find the spirit so broken and torn to paltry fragments as not to be worth his acceptance. She stretched forth her hand and took hold of her niece. "Linda," she said, "do you ever think of the bourne to which the wicked ones go;—they who are wicked as ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... life was a burden, poor darling, but I know he liked it. And who knows?—if I hadn't watched him so, he might not have lived as long as he did. That is my one consolation.... This terrible grief makes everything else seem so paltry; I could not even think of being engaged to Alan Rush any longer. Poor fellow! I feel sorry for him, but I can't play for a long time to come. As for papa's wishes in the matter, Mr. Geary and Mr. Washington will take care ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... offering us these paltry inducements to betray the secrets of our skill. We are—we hope we may say it without undue pride—an All-Round Angler, and we are not going to be squared by a bait of that kind. (2) We have never pretended we were a salmon. If ANDREW LANG says we have, we challenge him to repeat ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 8, 1893 • Various
... have to go out and sleep in the scrub, where the mosquitoes and bulldog ants would bite him out of his sleep. I hate the man who's always whining about his mother through his nose, because, as a rule, he never cared a rap for his old mother, nor for anyone else, except his own paltry, selfish little self. ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... which neither father nor mother had known in their younger days. Burns liked to see his Bonnie Jean neat and trim, and she went as braw as any wife of the town. Though we know that he wrote painfully, towards the end of his life, for the loan of paltry sums, we are to regard this as a sign more of temporary embarrassment than of a continual struggle to make ends meet. The word debt grated so harshly on Burns's ears that he could not be at peace with himself so long as the pettiest account remained unpaid; and if he had ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... course he was hated. There was hardly a family to whom he had not done an injury, for he pushed the law to savage extremes. He had evicted, and burnt down the deserted cottages; he had driven honest lads for some paltry act of poaching into criminal and dishonest courses; he had harassed the widow and unhoused the orphan; and every prayer that went up for the sweet face of his child was weighted with a curse for the savage and merciless father. He knew it, and didn't care. For there were plenty to fawn ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... arbitration. So the danger vanished, but Roosevelt, and every other thoughtful American, said to himself, "Suppose England had taken up the challenge, what had we to defend ourselves with?" And we compared the long roll of the great British Fleet with the paltry list of our own ships, and realized that we should ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... been effected with inconsiderable loss. Such a precaution was the more necessary, as he could not be ignorant that Bluecher's troops had already gained a march upon him, and was waiting for him at the Saale. Thus the want of a few paltry wooden bridges proved as ruinous to the French army as the battle itself. It lost, solely because it was unprovided with them, great part of its yet remaining artillery, several thousands of dead, who were mostly drowned, and a great number ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... my boast a vain, an empty one, And shall I rue it ere the day is done? Will hope revive betimes? Or must I stand For evermore outside the fairyland Of thy good will? Alas! my place is here, To muse and moan and sigh and shed my tear, My paltry tear for one who loves me not, And would not mourn for me on ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... surrender was such as became an officer and a gentleman. Congress shamefully broke the engagement. The captive troops were marched to Boston, but when the transports called for them, they were not allowed to embark. The paltry subterfuges by which congress defended its conduct only throw a specially odious light on its sacrifice of honour to policy. From the beginning of the war both sides made frequent complaints as to the treatment of prisoners, and both apparently with justice. ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... the contentious fight The larger portion of the toil is mine; But when the day of distribution comes, Thine is the richest spoil; while I, forsooth, Must be too well content to bear on board Some paltry prize for all my warlike toil. To Phthia now I go; so better far, To steer my homeward course, and leave thee here But little like, I deem, dishonouring me, To fill thy coffers ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... the habit of moulding whatever we look at into the forms borrowed from the one art with which we are acquainted. There is our standard of artistic reality. Let anyone give us shapes and colors which we cannot instantly match in our paltry stock of hackneyed forms and tints, and we shake our heads at his failure to reproduce things as we know they certainly are, or ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... his tenderest feelings torn and wounded by the behaviour of the Armours, and so miserably poor that he had been for some weeks obliged to skulk from the sheriff's officers to avoid the payment of a paltry debt. He returned, his poetical fame established, the whole country ringing with his praise, from a capital in which he was known to have formed the wonder and delight of the polite and the learned; if not ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... we, as we rush to the strangling fight, Send home to our true-loves a long "Good-night," Thou canst hie thee where love is sold, And buy thy pleasure with paltry gold. A graceless, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... was the friend of this poor Francesca's father; Francesca herself may have sat upon the Poet's knee, as a bright innocent little child. Infinite pity, yet also infinite rigour of law: it is so Nature is made; it is so Dante discerned that she was made. What a paltry notion is that of his Divine Comedy's being a poor splenetic impotent terrestrial libel; putting those into Hell whom he could not be avenged upon on earth! I suppose if ever pity, tender as a mother's, was in the heart of any man, it was ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... world, And its paltry crowd; She has chosen the world, And an endless shroud! She has chosen the world With its misnamed pleasures; She has chosen the world, ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... your pardon, with all my hearto. Before George, I was caught again there! But you are so very like a paltry fellow, who came to sell Pug essences this morning, that one would swear those eyes, and that nose and mouth, belonged to ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... that they had speech together, Hogarth said: "And were you such a clown, Fred Bates, as to imperil your life for a paltry ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... it thus we meet? You might have been happy with me. How could you, for the paltry love of gain, become the wife ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... in two dozen of their best Burgundy. She must want picking-up sometimes! Only in Richmond Park did he remember that he had gone up to order himself some boots, and was surprised that he could have had so paltry an idea. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of exploration around the shores of the bay. In this, however, we need not follow him. Suffice it to say that on the 24th day of June there crept cautiously into the harbor of St. John a little French ship; she was a paltry craft, smaller than many of our coasting schooners, but she carried the germ of an empire for de Monts, Champlain and Poutrincourt, the founders of New ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... Philip, they do purchase human life cheap, and make a rare profit of it, for without these poor fellows how could they hold their possessions in spite of native and foreign enemies? For what a paltry and cheap annuity do these men sell their lives? For what a miserable pittance do they dare all the horrors of a most deadly climate, without a chance, a hope of return to their native land, where they might haply repair their exhausted ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... under the stars; a mighty force, the strength of nations, the life of the world. There in the night, under the dome of the sky, it was growing steadily. To Presley's mind, the scene in the room he had just left dwindled to paltry insignificance before this sight. Ah, yes, the Wheat—it was over this that the Railroad, the ranchers, the traitor false to his trust, all the members of an obscure conspiracy, were wrangling. As if human agency could affect this colossal power! What were these heated, tiny squabbles, this feverish, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... For, in addition to my other ills, Eurystheus has chosen to insult me with this insult; sending heralds whenever on earth he learns we are settled, he demands us, and drives us out of the land; alleging the city of Argos, one not paltry either to be friends with or to make an enemy, and himself too prospering as he is; but they seeing my weak state, and that these too are little, and bereaved of their sire, respecting the more powerful, drive us from the land. And I am banished, together with the banished ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... companion was so startling to Celia, that she made no further journey toward the cliffs, in spite of several efforts made by Grip to coax her in that direction. But on the fourth day there was so mean and unsatisfactory a dinner at the Hoze, of the paltry little rock fish caught by the labouring men, that, as Celia watched her mother partaking of the unsatisfactory fare, and thought how easily it might have been supplemented by a dish of mushrooms and a blackberry pudding, she made up her mind that ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... engaged to play the part of Jem Baggs, an itinerant vocalist and flageolet-player, who, in tattered attire, roams about from town to town, making the air hideous with his performances. The part was a paltry one, and Robson, who had been engaged mainly at the instance of the manager's wife, a very shrewd and appreciative lady, who persisted in declaring that the ex-low-comedian of the Grecian had "something in him," eked it out by singing an absurd ditty called "Vilikins ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... you what I think,' he said. 'Anyone who knows Alec as well as I do must be convinced that he did nothing from motives that were mean and paltry. To accuse him of cowardice is absurd—he's the bravest man I've ever known—and it's equally absurd to accuse him of weakness. But what I do think is this: Alec is not the man to stick at half ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... prolong this hideous hell on earth, Making a by-word of your native land, Stripped of your wealth, how paltry is your worth! See how men shrink from contact ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... tapestry carpet too small to cover the whole room. The woodwork was painted gray. The plastered ceiling, divided in two parts by a heavy beam which started from the fireplace, seemed a concession tardily made to luxury. Armchairs, with their woodwork painted white, were covered with tapestry. A paltry clock, between two copper-gilt candlesticks, decorated the mantel-shelf. Beside Madame de la Chanterie was an ancient table with spindle legs, on which lay her balls of worsted in a wicker basket. A hydrostatic lamp lighted the scene. The four men, who were seated there, silent, immovable, like ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... Beware, then, lest thou don the dress of ignorance, after the robe of knowledge and wisdom, and follow perverse rede, after knowing that which is righteous and profitable. Wherefore pursue thou not a paltry pleasure, whose trending is to corruption and whose inclining is unto sore and uttermost perdition." When the King heard this from Shimas he said to him, "To-morrow I will come forth to them, an it be ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... our enemies." And so goes on the dialogue, like a scene in a play, see-sawing through six intolerable pages. How differently would Pitt's cabinet have acted, and how differently did it act! When the Russian councils menaced the seizure of even a paltry Turkish fortress on the Black Sea, the great minister ordered a fleet to be ready as his negotiators; and though the factiousness of Opposition at the time prevented this manly demonstration of policy and justice, the evidence was given, in the reign of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... began again talking of the classical period of singing, of the celebrated tenor Garcia, for whom he cherished a devout, unbounded veneration. 'He was a man!' he exclaimed. 'Never had the great Garcia (il gran Garcia) demeaned himself by singing falsetto like the paltry tenors of to-day—tenoracci; always from the chest, from the chest, voce di petto, si!' and the old man aimed a vigorous blow with his little shrivelled fist at his own shirt-front! 'And what an actor! A volcano, signori ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... has been very unfortunate in his speculations, obliged to sell our plantation and negroes, and now, he says, 'a few paltry thousands only remain;' but, oh! that is not the worst; I wish it were, he has sold out everything, broken every tie, and will be here this evening on his way to Texas. He writes that I must be ready to accompany ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... another jewel of the same kind, but so worn and defaced as to be utterly worthless. In one shop there were a great many crowns of laurel and myrtle, which soldiers, authors, statesmen, and various other people pressed eagerly to buy; some purchased these paltry wreaths with their lives, others by a toilsome servitude of years, and many sacrificed whatever was most valuable, yet finally slunk away without the crown. There was a sort of stock or scrip, called Conscience, which seemed ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... can you be enthusiastic over any view of things which you know to have been partly made by yourself, and which is liable to alter during the next minute? How is any heroic devotion to the ideal of truth possible under such paltry conditions?' ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... such a sum; still should I think that he would be a madman in politics who would, by a change of the constitution, risk these blessings (and France supplies us with a proof that infinite risk would be run) for a paltry saving of expense. I am not, nor have ever been, the patron of corruption. So far as the civil-list has a tendency to corrupt the judgment of any member of either house of parliament, it has a bad tendency, which I wish it ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... trees, I watched him as he knitted his brows in thought, whether on my account or his own I knew not. I thought I saw in him all that I dreamed of knightly spirit, and I guessed that in Des Bois lay hidden one like Brother Hugo, who for some reason masked a great and noble name in this poor, paltry disguise. Ay, but it was a visage that not long rested serious. A smile broke over its furrows, making it like a field that smiled in the sunlight, and he said right gaily ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar
... fresh—uncommonly fresh, I may say—from your first exploit. And a very stupid, clumsy, awkward exploit, too, Mr. Riggs, if you will pardon my freedom. You wanted money, and you had an ugly temper, and you had lost both to a gambler; so you stopped the coach to rob him, and had to kill two men to get back your paltry thousand dollars, after frightening a whole coach-load of passengers, and letting Wells, Fargo, and Co.'s treasure-box with fifty thousand dollars in it slide. It was a stupid, a blundering, a CRUEL act, Mr. Riggs, and I think I told you so ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... the legitimate velvet collar, new from the first, and, we really believe, a permanent velvet collar, adhered to in storm and in sunshine, has a very money-making impression on the world. It shows a spirit superior to feelings of paltry economy, and we think a person would be much more excusable for being victimized by a man with a good velvet collar to his coat, than by one exhibiting that spurious sign of gentility—a horse ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... and showy plumes, to address himself to alabaster statues, glittering lustres, grecian chairs, festoons of drapery, and an audience of beings tricked out as fine as himself, were he to be suddenly transported into a poor and paltry room, meanly lighted, badly ventilated, and inconveniently arranged, and to be told that, in that spot, the representatives of the first nation in the world, legislated for her subjects? What would he say, were he to see and hear in the mean attire of jockeys and mechanics, such orators ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... income as I started in life with; but he is so reckless of money, that I cannot feel justified in putting it into his hands. Say what I will, not a vacation occurs but he comes to tell me of some paltry debt of ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... still the possessor of twenty-five cents in silver. It was not much, but it seemed a great deal better than being penniless. A week before he would have thought it impossible that such a paltry sum would have made him feel comfortable, but he had passed through ...
— Driven From Home - Carl Crawford's Experience • Horatio Alger
... "to do so, than to sit at the helm of affairs in your company?" Others having their imagination advanced above the world and fortune, have looked upon the tribunals of justice, and even the thrones of kings, as paltry and contemptible; insomuch, that Empedocles refused the royalty that the Agrigentines offered to him. Thales, once inveighing in discourse against the pains and care men put themselves to to become rich, was answered by one in the company, that he did like the fox, who found fault with what ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... winter weather. Dispose of all rubbish by the simple process of putting it in trenches when digging plots for early seeds. In sheds and outhouses many tasks may be found, such as making large substantial tallies for the garden; the little paltry things commonly used being simply delusive, for they are generally missing when wanted, from their liability to be trodden into the ground or kicked anywhere by a heedless foot. Make ready pea-sticks, ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... compare these portraits till the outlines of his character are clear and certain; afterwards I shall show how his little vanities and shames idealized the picture, and so present him as he really was, with his imperial intellect and small snobberies; his giant vices and paltry self-deceptions; his sweet gentleness and long martyrdom. I cannot but think that his portrait will thus gain more in truth than it can lose in ideal beauty. Or let me come nearer to my purpose by means of a simile. Talking with Sir David Gill one evening on shipboard about the fixed ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... friends, for braving the king's displeasure. "By the mass, Master More," he said, "it is perilous striving with princes; therefore, I wish you somewhat to incline to the king's pleasure, for 'indignatio Principis mors est.'" "And is that all, my lord?" replied this man, so much above all paltry considerations; "then in good faith the difference between your grace and me is but this—that I may ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... as you would to a brother; let me help you, if I can, in your difficulties," he said to her one afternoon. And he really did try to understand, and to realise, how an insignificant and paltry person like Mason the dressmaker could be an object of dread, and regarded as a person having authority, by Ruth. He flamed up with indignation when, by way of impressing him with Mrs Mason's power and consequence, Ruth spoke of ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... I could persuade him to desist from this plan, and join in projects of my own. But at last however he was convinced that to rob him of his mistress, and awaken him from all his dreams of imaginary bliss to the torture I am preparing, would be more effectual revenge than a paltry beating. Not to mention that I firmly believe, instead of being beaten, he would conquer the best prize-fighter they could bring; for he is really a powerful ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... and a little of the selfishness of old people's minds, who, having an instinctive dread of final results and of the real characters of their acquaintances, prefer not to be too inquisitive or to know too much. Who knows? Perhaps all this mystery was nothing but a paltry matter, unworthy to disturb or to interest her, some petty woman's quarrel. She went to sleep thereupon, reassured, and ceased to cudgel ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... indeed sad to see professors, for the sake of paltry pelf, or to escape from persecution, denying the Lord Jesus. It subjects religion to scorn and contempt, and doubles the sorrows and sufferings of real Christians. Bunyan expresses himself here in a most ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... you mean to let your gifts go to waste? To bury your talent? Do you think your paltry achievements at Leipsic amount to the ne plus ultra of genius? Let us but once get to the great world—Paris and London! where you get your ears boxed if you salute a man as honest. It is a real jubilee to practise one's handicraft there on a grand scale. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... As for those "paltry figures" insufficient or flagrantly incorrect in drawing, with which many people are satisfied, he regards them as "intolerable" in his own books, and as absolutely contradicting the rigorous accuracy of his ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... resolved—I struggled in vain, Fate had ordained, that the sweet life of Madeline Lester should wither beneath the poison tree of mine. Houseman sought me again, and now came on the humbling part of crime, its low calculations, its poor defence, its paltry trickery, its mean hypocrisy! They made my chiefest penance! I was to evade, to beguile, to buy into silence, this rude and despised ruffian. No matter now to repeat how this task was fulfilled; I surrendered nearly my ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... this paltry childishness, I am tired of it!" answered the General, with authority. "This comes of allowing you a foothold here. Remember I cannot have my privacy intruded on in future by these mysterious visits; they will become known to the family, and Mrs. ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... in the morning sun. As I have now been long enough in Italy to sympathize in the national hatred of the Austrians, I turned from the sight, resolved not to be pleased. The arena of the amphitheatre is smaller, and less oval in form than I had expected: and in the centre, there is a little paltry gaudy wooden theatre for puppets and tumblers,—forming a grotesque contrast to the massive and majestic architecture around it: but even tumblers and puppets, as Rospo observed, are better than wild beasts ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... he was founding Rome for Goths and priests. Alexander did not foresee that his Egyptian city would belong to the Turks; nor did Constantine strip Rome for the benefit of Mahomet II. Why then fight for a few paltry villages? ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... The Acadians, as he declared, swore allegiance without reserve to King George; but he does not tell us how they were brought to do so. Compulsion was out of the question. They could have cut to pieces any part of the paltry English garrison that might venture outside the ditches of Annapolis, or they might have left Acadia, with all their goods and chattels, with no possibility of stopping them. The taking of the oath ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... tell you that in order to deceive her, not you! But you know better, La Corriveau! It was not for the sake of paltry jewels I desired you to come to the city to see me ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... its form as well as in its symbolism, in its logic no less than in its beauty. But fashion restored, a thing which neither time nor revolution ever pretended to do. Fashion, on the plea of "good taste," impudently adapted to the wounds of Gothic architecture the paltry gewgaws of a day,—marble ribbons, metallic plumes, a veritable leprosy of egg-shaped moldings, of volutes, wreaths, draperies, spirals, fringes, stone flames, bronze clouds, lusty cupids, and ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... are fond of rule and place, Though granted by the mean and base; Yet all superior merit fly, Nor will endure an equal nigh. They o'er some ale-house club preside With smoke and joke and paltry pride. Nay, e'en with blockheads pass the night; If such can read, to ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... taken a post with the ambassador. We arrived here yesterday. If he were less peevish and morose all would be well. As it is, he occasions me continual annoyance; he is the most punctilious blockhead in the world. He does everything step by step, with the paltry fussiness of an old woman; and he is a man whom it is impossible to please, because he ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... morning or so after witnessing one of these beautiful scenes, our own landlady knocks at our door and creates a disturbance over a paltry matter of three or four weeks' rent, and says she'll have her money or out we go that very day, and drifts slowly away down toward the kitchen, abusing us in a rising voice as she descends, then we think of these ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... this young soldier came in I had caught bits of speech in the clatter and din From the fine men about me in life's dress parade Who were boasting the cash sacrifices they'd made; And I'd thought of my own paltry service with pride, When I turned and that ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... with all over England; but we have placed it beside its neighbor q to show how the same form and idea are modified by the mind of the nations who employ it. The design is the same in both, the proportions also; but the one is a chimney, the other a paltry model of a paltrier edifice. Fig. q is Swiss, and is liable to all the objections advanced against the Swiss cottages; it is a despicable mimicry of a large building, like the tower in the engraving of the Italian cottage (Sec. 31), carved in ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... we are all to share alike and have everything in common, instead of one being rich and another poor, and one having hundreds of acres and another not enough to make him a grave, and one a houseful of servants and another not even a paltry foot-boy. I am going to ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... the consequences of their deeds have coined the word of philosophic Anarchism. Emma Goldman is too sincere, too defiant, to seek safety behind such paltry pleas. She is an Anarchist, pure and simple. She represents the idea of Anarchism as framed by Josiah Warrn, Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Tolstoy. Yet she also understands the psychologic causes which induce a Caserio, a Vaillant, a Bresci, a Berkman, or ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... of its prosperity the Louisiana Lottery took from the people only a paltry ten or twenty million dollars a year, while to-day there are single groups of banks, trust companies, corporations, and trusts which take from the people by might, by trick, and by theft hundreds of millions each year; and there are scores of such groups. The Sugar trust has been ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... journeyman to us. We could not then employ him; but I foolishly let him know as a secret that I soon intended to begin a newspaper, and might then have work for him. My hopes of success, as I told him, were founded on this, that the then only newspaper, printed by Bradford, was a paltry thing, wretchedly manag'd, no way entertaining, and yet was profitable to him; I therefore thought a good paper would scarcely fail of good encouragement. I requested Webb not to mention it; but he told it to ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... Washington, who made him his aid, loved him as a child. He declared that he could discover no fault in him, unless it was intrepidity, bordering on rashness. "Poor Laurens," wrote Greene, "has fallen in a paltry little skirmish. You knew his temper, and I predicted his fate. The love of military glory made him seek it upon occasions unworthy his rank. The state will feel his loss." He was buried upon the plantation of Mrs. Stock, in whose family he spent the evening previous to his death ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... her face was close to the child's, "I wonder if I look to my little girl as Cousin Hetty used to look to me?" and startled and shocked that the idea kept recurring to her, assuming an importance she was not willing to give it, she cried out to herself, "Oh, stop being so paltry about that!" ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... little figure, still quivering convulsively with every breath, touched the heart of the selfish man, and drawing a five-dollar gold piece from his pocket he slipped it inside the moist, brown fist. Then, as if realizing what a paltry thing gold is in comparison with love, he stooped over the flushed face and kissed it gently,—the first kiss he had ever given his little daughter. She stirred, and the coin slipped from her hand, but in his hasty retreat from the room he did not hear it fall ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... a paltry twenty billion dollars a year were spent on Xmas—sorry, sir—on Christmas Gratuities, back before my Bureau came on the scene to triple that figure, to bring us all ...
— The Great Potlatch Riots • Allen Kim Lang
... of us always donned the penitential nightgown early in the afternoon and supped frugally in bed, while the other feasted gloriously at the family board, never quite happy in her virtue, however, since it separated her from beloved vice in disgrace. That paltry tattered volume, when it confronts me from its safe nook in a bureau drawer, makes my heart beat faster and sets me dreaming! Pray tell me if any book read in your later and wiser years ever brings to your mind such vivid memories, to your lips ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... infantry of the line, and 1,226 fencibles. She had only one or two armed brigs and a few gun-boats on the lakes, but the Upper Canadians were not prepared to exchange their dependency on Great Britain for the paltry consideration of being erected into a territory of the United States, and the Superintendent of the Church of Rome, in Lower Canada, hardly thought it possible that a new conquest of Canada would make her peculiar institutions more ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... persons, yourself being he who will, if possible, suffer most," resumed the marquis, impressively—"it is, I say, for you to decide between exposure and the inquisition on one hand, and the surrender of those paltry diamonds on ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... any time, any serious effort in what, under happier circumstances, would have been the field of my choice. With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion; and the passions should be held in reverence: they must not-they can not at will be excited, with an eye to the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... pencil-case because he was first to go down into the tower. Oswald does not grudge Denny this, though some might think he deserved at least a silver one. But Oswald is above such paltry jealousies. ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... drudge, fudge—What a disgusting language English is! Nothing fit to couple with such a word as grudge! And the gush of an impassioned moment arrested in full flow, stopped short, corked up, for want of a paltry rhyme! ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... eye, which need not be particularised, as they consist of any drugs which they happen to possess or be acquainted with; the prescribers being perfectly reckless as to the effect produced on the patient, provided they receive their paltry reward. ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... their enemies, and we see nothing incongruous in their doing so. It is not so when the awful majesty of Milton descends from the empyrean throne of contemplation to use the language of the gutter or the fish-market. The bathos is unthinkable. The universal intellect of Bacon shrank to the paltry pursuit of place. The disproportion between the intellectual capaciousness and the moral aim jars upon the sense of fitness, and the name of Bacon, "wisest, meanest," has passed into a proverb. Milton's fall is ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... refused to alter my garb, and when one of them stammeringly referred to the Empress's tastes I asked him with plainness if he had got any definite commands on this paltry matter from ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... dreaming over paltry paradoxes. He is right; many of my paradoxes are paltry: he is wrong; I am wide awake to them. A single moth, beetle, or butterfly, may be a paltry thing; but when a cabinet is arranged by genus and species, we then begin to admire the {352} infinite variety of a system constructed on a wonderful ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan |
