"Penurious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the General Government. He possessed a native strong intellect, and far more knowledge of the principles of civil government and law than he got credit for. In private and public expenditures he was extremely economical, but not penurious. In cases where the officers had to contribute money for parties and entertainments, he always gave a double share, because of his allowance of double rations. During our frequent journeys, I was always caterer, and paid all the bills. In settling with him he required a written ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... the Sybaris of old, and from a spot in the quarter a steep path descends to its banks. Here you will find yourself in another climate, cool and moist. The livid waters tumble gleefully towards the plain, amid penurious plots of beans and tomatoes, and a fierce tangle of vegetation wherever the hand of man has not made clearings. Then, mounting aloft once more, you will do well to visit the far-famed chapel that sits at the apex of the promontory, Santa Maria ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... must not, Line your Cause warmly, Sir, the times are Aguish, That holds a Plea in heart; hang the penurious, Their Causes (like their purses) ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... over, and the bride and groom left, Martin giving his old classmate, to whom the world had been penurious, a hand-shake that, when examined by the breathless family a few moments later, was found to yield at least a new parlour carpet, an easy-chair for the Rector's bent back, and a new clerical suit ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... was ill-regulated and penurious. She was born in 1789, the second daughter of Edmund Power, of Knockbrit, near Clonmel, in the county of Tipperary. Her father came of a good family, as did also her mother, who spoke unduly often of her ancestors, the Desmonds. Marguerite was not comely in her ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... base that I never heard of any man who would confess that he had ever been guilty of it. Philip was my best friend, and I was always loath to think unkindly of him, but at this time I really think he began to be rather penurious—not avaricious, certainly not. But he was not a hermit of the holiest kind. He began to save money and acquire stock. He had not been long on the hill before he owned a horse, two dogs, a cat, a native bear, a magpie, and a parrot, and he paid nothing ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... brought out a thoughtful look on his large, uncouth, yet kindly visage. Life had laid hard lines on his brown skin, but it had not entirely soured a naturally kind and simple nature. It had made him penurious and dull and iron-muscled; had stifled all the slender flowers of his nature; yet there was warm soil somewhere hid in ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... current rates for cutting metal, but Nickie was not penurious and grasping. He threw off his tattered coat, and, draped in fragments of a shirt, in a pair of trousers, half of which fluttered in the breeze, and boots that looked like a collection of fragments, ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... atmosphere. In keeping the golden rule, he had insulted the laws of the institution under whose merciless sway thousands of human beings were groaning. He would live no longer where his convictions of duty were to be subordinated to, and palliated by, the penurious and cruel teaching of the slave institution. So, after having been robbed of his property, he left, in company with his family, for the fair shores of New England. He had sought no distinction, but had settled ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... the fluctuations in the value of money and in the state of society rendered a fixed rate of compensation in the Constitution inadmissible. What might be extravagant to-day, might in half a century become penurious and inadequate. It was therefore necessary to leave it to the discretion of the legislature to vary its provisions in conformity to the variations in circumstances, yet under such restrictions as to put ...
— The Federalist Papers
... wore the most filthy rags themselves. It is said that they had no bed, and, to save the expense of one, always slept on a bundle of packing-cloths under the counter. In their housekeeping they were penurious in the extreme. A joint of meat did not grace their board for twenty years. Yet when the first of the brothers died, the other, much to his surprise, found large sums of money which had been secreted ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... it is one which, although little known in Italy, had several houses in England up to the reign of Henry VIII. Like so many other Orders at that time, its members moved first to France and then to Italy, where it has survived in penurious dignity ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson
... in Germinie's physical being. One would have said that the passion that was alive within her renewed and transformed her lymphatic temperament. She did not seem, as before, to extract her life, drop by drop, from a penurious spring: it flowed through her arteries in a full, generous stream; she felt the tingling sensation of rich blood over her whole body. She seemed to be filled with the warm glow of health, and the joy of living beat its wings in her breast like ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... he found his hearers obdurate to exhortation, he resorted to intimidation and corruption. Those who refused to pleasure him in this matter were plainly told that they must not expect any mark of his favour. Penurious as he was, he opened and distributed his hoards. Several of those who had been invited to confer with him left his bedchamber carrying with them money received from the royal hand. The Judges, who were at this time on their spring circuits, were directed by the King ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... he arrived to claim the inheritance, and found that its sum-total only amounted to twenty-five roubles in notes, he refused to believe it, and declared that it was impossible that his sister-a woman who for sixty years had had sole charge in a wealthy house, as well as all her life had been penurious and averse to giving away even the smallest thing should have left no more: yet ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... better'd my Condition a little, and lived a whole Summer in the Shape of a Bee; but being tired with the painful and penurious Life I had undergone in my two last Transmigrations, I fell into the other Extream, and turned Drone. As I one day headed a Party to plunder an Hive, we were received so warmly by the Swarm which defended it, that we were most of us left dead upon ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... from Bannisdale; or she would think of her father, his modes of life and speech—was he really connected, and how, with this place and its inmates? She had expected something simple and patriarchal. She had found a family of peasants, living in a struggling, penurious way—a grim mother speaking broad dialect, a son with no pretensions to refinement or education, except perhaps ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... little man, with dishevelled hair and haggard countenance, bad-tempered and irritable, penurious and dishonest, at least in his claims for priority in discoveries—this is the picture usually drawn, alike by friends and enemies, of Robert Hooke (1635-1703), a man with an almost unparalleled genius for scientific discoveries in almost ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... appropriate expositor of such atrocities! No offence, but it is a cordial that makes the heart sick. Still thy skill in compounding it I not deny. I turn to what gave me less mingled pleasure. I find markd with pencil these pages in thy pretty book, and fear I have been penurious. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... he went in for snuff. But "Tut!" quoth she; "a mim cat's never gude at the mice," and she lifted him out by the scruff of his neck, crying, "Run, mousie, or I'll catch ye!" On that day her popularity in Barbie was assured for ever. But she was as keen on the penny as a penurious weaver, for all her heartiness and laughing ways. She combined the commercial merits of the East and West. She could coax you to the buying like a Cumnock quean, and fleece you in the selling like the cadgers ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... had all the inclination of a profligate of the first water, and only lacked the one good trait in the common catalogue of debauched vices—open-handedness—to be a notable vagabond. But there his griping and penurious habits stepped in.—Chap. xi. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... olive—of Maecenas and the Medicis—it shall be mine to revive the arts and to make them pay; and if I can win out of this city of skinflints at a profit, I shall have served my apprenticeship and shall know my success assured. The Genoese, cavalier, are a banausic race, and penurious at that; they will go where the devil cannot, which is between the oak and the rind; opportunity given, they would sneak the breeches off a highlander: they divide their time between commercialism and a licentiousness ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... If you desire to win the love and admiration of young ladies, first, be intelligent; read books and papers; remember what you read, so you can talk about it. Second, be generous and do not show a stingy and penurious disposition when in the company of ladies. Third, be sensible, original, and have opinions of your own and do not agree with everything that someone else says, or agree with everything that a lady may say. Ladies naturally admire genteel and intelligent discussions and conversations when there is ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... deeper than customary, rewarded him with the thought that she was unusual in the courage of her emotions. That was it—the courage of her emotions! There was a total lack of any penurious trait, any ulterior thought of appraising herself against a possible advantageous barter. She was never concerned with a conscious prudery in the arrangement of her skirt. Mariana was aristocratic in the correct sense of the term; a sense, he realized, now almost lost. And he rated aristocracy ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... "they don't know when to abuse him, and when to praise him; I will allow no man to speak ill of David that he does not deserve; and as to Sir John, why really I believe him to be an honest man at the bottom; but to be sure he is penurious, and he is mean, and it must be owned he has a degree of brutality, and a tendency to savageness, that cannot easily be defended.... He said that Sir John and he once belonged to the same club, but that as he eat no supper, after, the first night of his admission he ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... vigour of manhood had rendered him a useful and enterprising seaman, was now displayed in the most ridiculous interference in his own domestic affairs, and those of his neighbours. With a great deal of low cunning, he mingled the most insatiable curiosity; while his habits were so penurious, that he would stoop to any meanness to gain a trifling pecuniary advantage for himself or ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... infernal saving habit, too—drat you! Don't deny it, Skinner. I can see by the look in your eye you're fixing to contradict me. You're as miserable a miser as I am—afraid to spend five cents and play safe—you penurious—er—er—fellow! Skinner, if you ever forget yourself long enough to give three hoots in hell you'll want one of them back. See now what your niggardly policy has done for us? At a time when we'd hock our immortal ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... to these wild scenes haste; The unfinish'd farm awaits your forming taste: Plan the pavilion, airy, light, and true; Through the high arch call in the length'ning view; Expand the forest sloping up the hill; Swell to a lake the scant, penurious rill; Extend the vista; raise the castle mound In antique taste, with turrets ivy-crown'd: O'er the gay lawn the flow'ry shrub dispread, Or with the blending garden mix the mead; Bid China's pale, fantastic fence delight; Or with the mimic statue ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... and next morning his head ached so he said he would buy me a dog if I would go down town and get a bottle of pollynurious water for him. You know that dye house on Grand avenue, where they have got the four white spitz dogs. When I went after the penurious water, I noticed they had been coloring their dogs with the dye stuff, and I put up a job with the dye man's little boy to help me play it on Pa. They had one dog dyed pink, another blue, another red, and another green, and I told the boy I would treat him to ice cream if he would let ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... or "Steeple-top," was a penurious, grasping, hardly social man of neighborhood origin, but of a family generally unsuccessful and undistinguished, which had been said to be dying out for so many years that it seemed to be always a remnant, yet never quite gone. He alone of the Milburns had lifted himself ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... sometimes the cure is almost overwhelmed by a single product such as peas; one of their number, thus paid, the neighbouring clergy christened the "cure des pois." The French Canadian farmer is often narrowly penurious and if he will not pay, as sometimes happens, the cure rarely presses him or takes steps to recover what the law would allow. In any case a bad harvest is likely to leave the cure poor. Changes in the type of farming ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... uncomfortable, muggy, unventilated; narrow, cramped; close-mouthed, secretive, reticent, reserved, uncommunicative, taciturn; dense, solid, compact, imporous; near, adjacent, adjoining; intimate, confidential; parsimonious, stingy, penurious niggardly, miserly, illiberal, close-fisted; exact, literal, faithful; intent, assiduous, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... ancestors. He was laborious in trifles, and a trifler where serious labour was required; devout in his sentiments, and yet too often profane in his language; just and beneficent by nature, he yet gave way to the iniquities and oppression of others. He was penurious respecting money which he had to give from his own hand, yet inconsiderately and unboundedly profuse of that which he did not see. In a word, those good qualities which displayed themselves in particular cases and occasions, were not of a nature sufficiently firm and comprehensive to ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... money. But those who had confidently expected to see her squander it were disappointed: on the contrary, it was presently whispered that she was exceeding penurious. That admirable woman Mrs. Stiver of Red Dog, who accompanied her to San Francisco to assist her in making purchases, was loud in her indignation. "She cares more for two bits than I do for five dollars. She wouldn't buy anything at the 'City of Paris' because it was 'too expensive,' and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... lose many signatures, but should in many instances be considered as very unwelcome visitors, and probably even be treated as downright intruders My companion, who was a narrow-minded politician, and of a penurious disposition, followed me in, grumbling, to the next house that we called at, which was a tradesman's, who, I recollect, sold salt. I accosted this tradesman in the usual way, by informing him of our business, requesting him to read the ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... necessaries of life; undergoing such an amount of bodily and mental toil as makes it wonderful that all of them did not—as some of them doubtless did—die under the hard training, or, at best, desert the penurious Muses for the ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... natives in order to secure the lives of his own troops.[266] But no vigilance of the besieged could insure the safety of a detached position on the borders of so powerful a state as France. Elizabeth was too weak, or too penurious, to afford the recruits that were loudly called for. And now a new and frightful auxiliary to the French made its appearance. A contagious disease set in among the English troops, crowded into a narrow compass and deprived of their usual ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... which gathered the friends and followers of the noble house; and the fire-utensils which still remain, and which seem destined for the consumption of entire forests, intimate that the household gods which presided here dealt in no stinted or penurious economy. There was scarcely need of flue or chimney, for the smoke curling up among the interlacing rafters of the roof, might long gather in its ample cavity without threatening those below with ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... Review in 1820. The last number of the London Magazine to bear Taylor & Hessey's name, and (in my opinion) to contain anything by Lamb, was August, 1825. We have no definite information on the matter, but there is every indication in Lamb's Letters that Taylor was penurious and not clever in his relations with contributors. Scott Lamb seems to have admired and liked; but even in Scott's day payment does not seem to have been prompt. Lamb was paid, according to Barry Cornwall, two or ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... on,—the slow, penurious winter of exhaustion after the acute fury of the spring and summer. These were hard times in earnest, not with the excitement of failures and bankruptcies, but with the steady grind of low wages, no employment, and general depression. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... native country. Even were I compelled to visit Van Diemen's land, the ties of birth-place would be so strong as to induce me to seize the first opportunity of returning. I am not, your honour, very fond of the French—they are an idle, frivolous, penurious, poor nation. Only think, Sir, the other day I saw a gentleman of the most noble air secrete something at a cafe, which could not clearly discern; as he wrapped it carefully in paper, before he placed it in his pocket, I judged that it was a silver cream ewer, at least; accordingly, ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... eyes, that were shaded with immense bushy brows nearly an inch in length. His features were dull and expressionless, and over the lower portion of his wrinkled face a scraggy, mud colored beard seemed struggling for existence. His clothing appeared to indicate a penurious, grasping nature. ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... penurious old ladies and gentlemen back into the lounge, glaring at them as belligerently and offensively as a gentleman could and maintain his self-respect. Then he went into the waiting-room and embarked upon a positive orgy of letter-writing. ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... imitation Oriental rugs and imitation-leather chairs and imitation-mahogany furniture, plated silver, and imitations of china and of linen were to be found in the small three-cornered dining room, which resembled a penurious wedge of cake, Mary thought as she tried saying something polite. The imitation extended to the bedroom with its wall bed and built-in chiffonier and dresser of gaudy walnut. Trudy had promptly ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... their abstinence and parsimony are too severe, so, when seated at another man's table, after a long fasting, (like wolves and eagles, who, like them, live by plunder, and are rarely satisfied,) their appetite is immoderate. They are therefore penurious in times of scarcity, and extravagant in times of plenty; but no man, as in England, mortgages his property for the gluttonous gratification of his own appetite. They wish, however, that all people would join with them in their bad habits and expenses; as the commission of crimes reduces ...
— The Description of Wales • Geraldus Cambrensis
... 1870, found John Worlington Dodds a ruined gamester of the Stock Exchange. Upon the 17th he was a very opulent man. And yet he had effected the change without leaving the penurious little Irish townlet of Dunsloe, which could have been bought outright for a quarter of the sum which he had earned during the single day that he was within its walls. There is a romance of finance yet ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... their writings, as he did when he came to be personally acquainted with them; but Allan, who had bustled up from a barber's shop into a bookseller's, was "a cunning shaver;" and nobody would have guessed the author of the Gentle Shepherd to be penurious. Let none suppose that any insinuation to that effect is intended against Campbell. He was one of the few men whom I could at any time have walked half a dozen miles through the snow to spend an evening with; and I could no more do this with a penurious ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... of gayety and pleasure as well, and having no children to place in the world and no really near kindred but first and second cousins she saw no need of being penurious, and lived with a free hand. She was very fond of young people also, and it seemed a great pity she had not been mother of a family. Her city house was a great rendezvous, and her farmhouse was the stopping place of many a gay party, ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... in behind the curtain of its secret and having declared deadly war to papism, it cooperates even to the present day, helping out England in her exploits over the whole world with its capital and concessions, in which respect the Sanhedrin was never penurious. ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... gripe, screw, dole out, hold back, withhold, starve, famish, live upon nothing, skin a flint. drive a bargain, drive a hard bargain; cheapen, beat down; stop one hole in a sieve; have an itching palm, grasp, grab. Adj. parsimonious, penurious, stingy, miserly, mean, shabby, peddling, scrubby, penny wise, near, niggardly, close; fast handed, close handed, strait handed; close fisted, hard fisted, tight fisted; tight, sparing; chary; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... he had returned to his home in the back street of Twybridge, and was endeavouring to spend the holidays in a hard 'grind'. He loathed the penurious simplicity to which his life was condemned; all familiar circumstances were become petty, coarse, vulgar, in his eyes; the contrast with the idealised world of his ambition plunged him into despair: ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... "What a penurious government it must be! Two weeks, tramping about the country in this unholy garb, following false trails half the time, living on crusts and cold meats. Ah, you have led me a merry dance, nephew, but I ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... the world Should, in a pet of temperance, feed on pulse, Drink the clear stream, and nothing wear but frieze, The All-giver would be unthanked, would be unpraised, Not half his riches known and yet despised; And we should serve him as a grudging master, As a penurious niggard of his wealth, And live like Nature's bastards, not her sons, Who would be quite surcharged with her own weight, And strangled with her waste fertility: The earth cumbered, and the winged air darked ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... Waterloo. That event terminated Decaen's military course. For a while he was imprisoned, but his life was not taken, as was that of the gallant Ney; and in a few months he was liberated at the instance of the Duchesse d'Angouleme. Thenceforth he lived a colourless, quiet, penurious life in the vicinity of his native Caen, regretting not at all, one fancies, the ruin of the useful career of the enterprising English navigator. His poverty was honourable, for he had handled large funds during the Consulate and Empire; ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... in a condition to be so easily coaxed as now. Maude Glendower had a place in his heart, which no other woman bad ever held, and that very afternoon the village merchant was astonished at the penurious doctor's inquiring the prices of the finest broadcloth in his store. It seemed a great deal of money to pay, but Maude Remington at his elbow and Maude Glendower in his mind conquered at last, and the new suit was bought, including vest, hat, boots, ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... indeed, nothing is more satisfactory than to hear of a miser denying himself the necessaries of life a little too far and ridding us of his presence altogether. Our confidence in the average virtue of humanity assures us that his place will be supplied by a better man. The details of his penurious habits, the comfortless room, the scanty bedding, the cheese-rinds on his table, and the fat banking-book under his thin bolster, only inspire disgust: if he were pinched to death he did it himself, and so much the better for the ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... of Buffalmacco's ingenuity to rid himself of annoyance. Soon after he left Tafi, he took apartments adjoining those occupied by a man who was a penurious old simpleton, and compelled his wife to rise long before daylight to commence work at her spinning wheel. The old woman was often at her wheel, when Buonamico retired to bed from his revels. The buzz of the instrument put all sleep out of the question; so the painter resolved ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... aunt, with whom he passed his days, had grown to be only vague, meaningless shapes to him. Their broadest pleasantries failed to raise a smile, and the coarse realities of a narrow, penurious existence had no power to disturb his happy serenity. All day long, in the back-shop where the penetrating smell of paste mingled with the fumes of the cabbage-soup, he lived a life of his own, a life of incomparable splendours. His little Corneille, scored thickly with thumb-nail marks at every ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... of the question at once. The penurious character of the baronet was so well known throughout the whole barony that if he had replied in the affirmative every man of them would have felt that the assertion was a lie, and he would consequently have been detected. He ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... much time, that, as our fund was so very low, we were reduced to some distress, and obliged to live extremely penurious; nor would all do without my taking a most disagreeable way of procuring money by pawning one ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... father's lawyer informing me of the death of my only surviving parent, at the same time informing me that he had left all his property to be divided equally between my brother and myself. His wealth was large, for his habits had been penurious, and I found myself the possessor of at least $10,000 a year. This of course entirely altered my prospects in life and it was natural that I should immediately throw up my engagement as governess and return home for the purpose of assisting the ...
— The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival - The Belle of the Delaware • Kate Percival
... would marry and install his wife in the manor-house. But the shop in Coinagehall Street was no place for a woman. She would be a nuisance, sweeping the place out and upsetting him and Malachi; an expense, too, and Roger—always a penurious man—incurred no expense ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... stocks in their ups and downs, and now, being much together, they were in and out as partners in a dozen different deals. Mr. Harley attended to most of these; and Storri learned certain peculiarities belonging to that gentleman. Mr. Harley, for one solvent matter, was penurious to the point of dimes; also, Mr. Harley took no risks. Mr. Harley was willing to book a joint deal in both Storri's name and his own; or in his own for the common good of Storri and himself. But Mr. Harley would not give a joint order solely in Storri's name. Evidently, Mr. Harley would not trust ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... colloquial charms. Many of her delightful "way down south" phrases and mannerisms were blighted by the cold, unromantic atmosphere of a seminary conducted by two ladies from Boston who were too old to marry, too penurious to love and too prim to think that other women might care to do both. There were times, however,—if she were excited or enthusiastic,—when pretty Beverly so far forgot her training as to break forth with a very attractive "yo' all," "suah 'nough," or "go 'long naow." And when the bands played ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... unamiable. Besides, he has a great desire for social position (it aids in carrying out his plans), in which his wife is of real service. Hiram, although close and careful in all matters, is not what would be called penurious. In other words, he makes liberal provision for his household, while he rules it with rigor; besides, in petty things he has ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... calculations, their objections, their control, then we get things that look like war-memorials, waiting-rooms, newspaper-kiosks and drinking-saloons. It was not always so? No; but even in the most penurious times it was kings ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... figures the sum, because, though she had known to a dime before the robbery, at, and after that time, she had recklessly tossed aside the little that remained. This wasted portion belonged with the whole amount, and being as truthful as she was penurious, she hesitated. Her color came and went, as she looked anxiously into John's face, realizing that he had laid a trap for her and caught her ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... could make out, the only topics they delighted in were demonstrations of the unity of God from texts in the Bible, and polemics against tri-theism. Sympathy with the great problems then beginning to agitate men they had none. Socially they were cold, and the entertainment at their houses was pale and penurious. They never considered themselves bound to contribute a shilling to my support. There was an endowment of a hundred a year, and they were relieved from all further anxiety. They had no enthusiasm for their chapel, and came or stayed away on the Sunday just as it suited them, ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... Lawrence, was of the number. He was De Courcy's brother-in-law, and they had made vows of eternal friendship in the famous Cathedral of Rouen. De Courcy is described as a man of extraordinary physical strength, of large proportions, shamefully penurious, rashly impetuous, and, despite a fair share in the vices of the age, full of reverence for the clergy, at least if they belonged to his own race. Cambrensis gives a glowing description of his valour, ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... her, and they went into her father's room, where, to his surprise, he found some coffee ready for him—at that time a rarity, and one which Philip did not expect to find in the house of the penurious Mynheer Poots; but it was a luxury which, from his former life, the old ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... secure. One of the most unedifying scenes in English history is that of George making a purchase in a shop at Windsor and because of this patronage asking for the shopkeeper's support in a local election. The King was saving and penurious in his habits that he might have the more money to buy votes. When he had no money left he would go to Parliament and ask for a special grant for his needs and the bought members could not refuse the ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... certainly not commonplace, but who seems to have been devoid of either poetical or humanitarian fervour. He figures as intent upon his worldly interests, accumulating a massive fortune, and spending lavishly upon the building of Castle Goring; in his old age, penurious, unsocial, and almost churlish in his habits. His passion was to domineer and carry his point; of this the poet may have inherited something. His ideal of success was wealth and worldly position, things to which the poet was, on ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... for while some would have it that the interment took place to the east of the choir, others clung to an opinion, handed down by Mr. Broome, the gardener, who stated that when he commenced his duties, about 1830, a Mr. Collett, sexton, a very old man, and a penurious one, too, employed him to prune an elder-tree which, he stated, he venerated, because it marked the site of Goldsmith's grave. The stone which has been placed in the yard, 'to mark the spot' where the poet was buried, is not the site of this tree. The tomb was erected ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... profession, a profession which I may really claim to have invented, and which offers a wide field for idle women. It is healthy, moreover, and in its pursuit its followers can be of immense service to their overtaxed sisters. The vocation is called "Pram-Pushing for Penurious Parents," and it consists simply of taking charge of Tommy, or Bobby, or Baby for his morning or afternoon promenade, and thereby setting his mother free ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the honor of his familiar presence, nor the recollections of that brilliant literary circle with whom he lived in the metropolis, have yielded much more than such an outline of his history, as is oftentimes to be gathered from the penurious records of a grave-stone. That he lived, and that he died, and that he was "a little lower than the angels;"—these make up pretty nearly the amount of our undisputed report. It may be doubted, indeed, whether at this day we arc as accurately acquainted with ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... land view, and an unobstructed sweep of the ocean: but the evil genius of building prevailed, and the palace is fixed in a gloomy bottom, from which it can be overlooked by every body, and from which nothing can be seen. Frederick, though sometimes superb in his expenses, was habitually penurious. He seems to have thought that war was the only thing on which it was worth his while to spend money. The salaries of his gentlemen and attendants were all on the narrowest scale. Lord Malmesbury observes that even the Prince ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... however sad he may have been at heart, he always bore a bold and cheerful countenance, and took fortune's worst as it were the showers of spring. But now his mother sits alone by the side of Fontainebleau woods, where he gathered mushrooms in his hardy and penurious youth. ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stocks in trade yield to them. The pleasures of property arise from acquisition more than possession, from what is to come rather than what is. The rich are seldom remarkable for modesty, ingenuity or humanity. Their wealth has rather a tendency to make them penurious ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... century, and simultaneously was the incumbent of other lucrative posts. Offices were created by Governor Dongan apparently for his sole benefit. His passion was to get together an estate which would equal the largest. Extremely penurious, he loaned money at frightfully usurious rates and hounded his victims without a vestige of sympathy.[21] As a trader and government contractor he made enormous profits; such was his cohesive collusion with high officials that competitors found ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... spent it all in riotous living, over a period just sufficient to spoil his children, and had then died leaving them penniless. Ewen Hooper had come across her when he was lecturing at a northern university, immediately after his own appointment at Oxford. He had passed a harassed and penurious youth, was pining for a home. In ten days he was engaged to this girl whom he met at the house of a Manchester professor. She took but little wooing, was indeed so enchanted to be wooed that Ewen Hooper soon imagined himself in love with her; ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... reside at Chalcedon, in the neighborhood of the capital: her bounty was repaid in his clandestine and amorous visits to the palace; and Theophano consented, with alacrity, to the death of an ugly and penurious husband. Some bold and trusty conspirators were concealed in her most private chambers: in the darkness of a winter night, Zimisces, with his principal companions, embarked in a small boat, traversed the Bosphorus, landed at the palace stairs, and silently ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... others speak respectfully of Boise, and regret that he was too fast to run. Pop might be childish on some subjects, but Bud rather banked on his judgment of horses—and Pop was penurious and anxious to ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... inferior to another[h]; and few willingly indulge the memory of an action which raises one whom they have always been accustomed to think below them, but satisfy themselves with faint praise and penurious payment, and then drive it from their own minds, and endeavour to conceal it from the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... I'd stay right here and tell my penurious friends to whistle for their profits. It seems I'm cursed with a fatal beauty. You may have noticed it? No? Well, perhaps it's a magnificent business ability that I have. Anyhow, the president of my company has a notion that I'd ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... of grains of corn, and presently gave them the form and appearance of thirty hogs well fatted for the market. He drove these hogs to the residence of one Michael, a rich dealer, but who was remarked for being penurious and thrifty in his bargains. He offered them to Michael for whatever price he should judge reasonable. The bargain was presently struck, Ziito at the same time warning the purchaser, that he should on no account drive them to the river ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... in office had a strong fancy for Numismatology. I have, too; nobody would more enjoy a vast collection of coins; but, oddly enough, I should prefer contemporary ones. He was simple and almost penurious in personal expenditure; yet, besides a great collection of books, he had, from his scanty income, got together, in the course of a long life, a large and very valuable collection of coins and medals, especially rich in gold. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... part with me, and I was resolute in my determination not to leave her. I had no wish to be married; I had reflected much upon the subject; the few married lives I had witnessed were not to my taste. I had seen my kind-hearted amiable grandmother thwarted by a penurious husband; I had witnessed my father under the control of a revengeful woman; and when I beheld, as I did every day, the peace and happiness in the establishment of Madame d'Albret as a single woman, I felt certain that marriage was a lottery in which there were thousands of ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... averse from country pursuits, penurious and incurably suspicious of all his fellow-men—now occupied after a fashion and with fair diligence that place in public affairs from which his father had, on approach of age, withdrawn. He sat in Parliament for the family borough of St. Michael, ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... world began to be more critical in their reading, the monks gave a graver turn to their narratives; and became penurious of their absurdities. The faithful Catholic contends, that the line of tradition has been preserved unbroken; notwithstanding that the originals were lost in the general wreck of literature from the barbarians, or came down ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... was an ensign at the time. You know ensigns—their blood is boiling water, their circumstances generally penurious. Well, I had a servant Nikifor who used to do everything for me in my quarters, economized and managed for me, and even laid hands on anything he could find (belonging to other people), in order to augment our household goods; but a faithful, ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... enterprising and patriotic promoters in the prosecution of their gigantic task. In those stirring times few people were inclined to question the motives of those who advocated what appeared to be patriotic measures, or to be penurious in the expenditure of public funds when the public weal ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... however, have been obtained in the way of trade, for Maxwell had hinted that he did business under the sign of the "three golden balls." He was apparently in the neighborhood of five-and-forty, and looked like the debauchee in the face, while his dress indicated the penurious ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... Also in their penurious, laborious character; the individual only satisfies his necessary appetites, and confines his expenditure to them; his other desires he subdues, under the ...
— The Republic • Plato
... unkind, and the ground penurious, so that the most fruitful years will produce only enough to maintain themselves; where life unimproved, and unadorned, fades into something little more than naked existence, and every one is busy for himself, without any arts by which the pleasure of others may be increased; if to the daily ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... Cunyngham, daughter of the late Sir George Cunyngham, and sister of Sir Hugh Cunyngham, of the Braes, Perthshire, and Aivron Lodge, Campden Hill.' I should like to have sent them a little wedding-present," he went on, absently, "for both of them have been very kind to me; but I am grown penurious in my old age; I suppose we shall have to consider every farthing for ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... soul of another is of a certain nature and possesses certain qualities, that he is generous and honest, or penurious and knavish, that she is virtuous and amiable, or vicious and ill-tempered, from the countenance alone, from little more than a glimpse of it, without the means of knowing. We venture our fortune on the signature of a man ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... for a boy to fill, and at that time I was not popular with the other boys, who resented my exemption from part of my legitimate work. I was also taxed with being penurious in my habits—mean, as the boys had it. I did not spend my extra dimes, but they knew not the reason. Every penny that I could save I knew was needed at home. My parents were wise and nothing was withheld from me. I knew every week the ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... thick-skinned as he was sapless. Believing that his penurious code was just, and his frugality the first virtue of his life, he was not ashamed of his table, and the outcast scraps upon it. But he looked at his young wife with a sharp drawing down of his spiked brows as he lingered ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... on the door. Between it and her was the table, covered with admirable things to eat, it being supper and therefore, according to a Twist tradition surviving from penurious days, all the food, hot and cold, sweet and salt, being brought in together, and Amanda only attending when rung for. Half-eaten oyster patties lay on Mrs. Twist's plate. In her glass neglected champagne had bubbled itself flat. Her hand still held her ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... all games of chance he had a perfect passion; would play whist all night, and conduct a case magnificently all day. And although he was no sportsman in the ordinary sense, having had no opportunities in a very penurious youth, he had an Irishman's love of horseflesh, and knew the Derby winners from the beginning with as much accuracy as Macaulay knew ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in a sentence as follows: Labor applied to natural resources is the source of the wealth of capitalistic society, but the greatest part of the wealth produced goes to non-producers, the producers getting only a part, in the form of wages—hence the paradox of wealthy non-producers and penurious producers. ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... conversion and a call. Being a man of undoubted talent, and thinking the Methodists were too slow in promoting him, he became a Baptist. His next hop was to the Universalists, whom, because he found too penurious, he deserted for the Congregationalists, from whom he got a call to a southern pro-slavery church, where, after amassing considerable wealth in cash and "human chattels," he resigned his charge, came to the north again ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... generalization, foresight, calculation, at the same time that the moral faculties are strengthened by the constant exercise of self-control. For, granted that the naturally economical are neither shabbily penurious nor deficient in the duty of almsgiving, it is still evident that it cannot be the same effort to them to deny themselves a tempting act of liberality, or the gratification of elegant and commendable tastes, as it must be to those who are destitute of ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... that penurious Herod was a builder!" they seemed to say. "There is enough stone insolence in these walls to trouble ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... seen a good deal of travel, which, in time, gave it the name of the shunpike. But since Captain Asher had lived at the toll-gate it was remarked that the shunpike was not used as much as in former times. There were penurious people who had once preferred to go a long way round and save money whose economical dispositions now gave way before the combined attractions of a better road, and a chat ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... delicately disguising the donation as a testimonial of his admiration for the "Symphonie Fantastique." Though the eagerness of Paganini to make money urged him to labor for years while his health was exceedingly frail, and though he was justly stigmatized as penurious in many ways, he was capable of princely generosity on occasions which appealed strongly to the ardent sympathies which lay at the bottom ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... his possessions, of his funded gold, and whose grasping soul was sick to handle and secure them. Abraham Allcraft, hunks as he was, was reputed wealthy. For years he had retained a high position as the opulent banker of the mercantile city of ——. His business was extensive—his habits mean, penurious; his credit was unlimited, as his character was unimpeachable. There are some men who cannot gain the world's favour, do what they will to purchase it. There are others, on the other hand, who, having ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... Canterbury Pilgrimage has done much; imprisonment on civil process, and want, will soon do more. I trust that the labour and hazard of an investigation—of which the smallest results have been slowly pieced together, in the pressure of arduous avocations, under grinding penurious apprehensions, at rise of morn, at dewy eve, in the shadows of night, under the watchful eye of one whom it were superfluous to call Demon—combined with the struggle of parental Poverty to turn it, when ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... follies for the great nobles of the last century. Under the Restoration the nobility cannot forget that it has been beaten and robbed, and so, with two or three exceptions, it has become thrifty, prudent, and stay-at-home, in short, bourgeois and penurious. Since then, 1830 has crowned the work of 1793. In France, henceforth, there will be great names, but no great houses, unless there should be political changes which we can hardly foresee. Everything takes the stamp of individuality. The wisest invest in ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Timandra, for his wits Are drown'd and lost in his Calamities. I haue but little Gold of late, braue Timon, The want whereof, doth dayly make reuolt In my penurious Band. I haue heard and greeu'd How cursed Athens, mindelesse of thy worth, Forgetting thy great deeds, when Neighbour states But for thy Sword and Fortune ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Prison, is in a fair way of being soon considered as a very undesirable place of residence. If owners of Apiaries, gardens and orchards, could be induced to pursue a more liberal policy, and not be so meanly penurious as they often are, I am persuaded that they would find it conduce very highly to their interests. The honey and fruit expended with a cheerful, hearty liberality, would be more than repaid to them in the good will secured, and in the end would cost much ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... wear out mine age in a discomfortable, in an unwholesome, in a penurious prison, and so pay my debts with my bones, and recompense the wastefulness of my youth with the beggary of mine age; let me wither in a spittle under sharp, and foul, and infamous diseases, and so recompense the wantonness of my youth with that loathsomeness in mine age; yet, if God withdraw not ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... was made in safety, a thriving settlement begun, and young Otto Relstaub, the son of a hard-hearted, penurious German, was sent back over the trail, according to promise, to guide Jack Carleton, who was impatiently awaiting him. The next morning after his arrival the two started westward, all their earthly effects packed upon the ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... Nevertheless, it is not so much that characters are energetic or virtuous because they have ruling plans or maxims as it is that they have ruling plans or maxims because they are energetic or virtuous. Say to a penurious, hard, grumpy man, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." Will you thus make him liberal, sympathetic, affable? No, his character will neutralize your precept, as vinegar receiving the sunshine into its bosom becomes more sour. Some persons seem to imagine that a wise maxim ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... Thus suddenly cut short of his prospects, not only of future independence, but even of support, what would be the event of his suit to Melissa, and stipulated marriage? Was it not probable that her father would now cancel the contract? Could she consent to be his wife in his present penurious situation?—And indeed, could he himself consent to make her his ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... English form of the nickname, Luca-fa-presto, given Luca Giordano (1632-1705), a Neapolitan painter, on account of his constantly being goaded on in his work by his penurious and avaricious father. ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... comparing the irregular yet extensive and commodious pile of building before her to the "Manses" in her own country, where a set of penurious heritors, professing all the while the devotion of their lives and fortunes to the Presbyterian establishment, strain their inventions to discover what may be nipped, and clipped, and pared from a building which forms but a poor accommodation even for the present incumbent, and, despite the ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... mortals, and two most extraordinary,—Ezekiel, born in 1780, and Daniel, born in 1782,—the youngest of his boys. Some of the elder children were even less than ordinary. Elderly residents of the neighborhood speak of one half-brother of Daniel and Ezekiel as penurious and narrow; and the letters of others of the family indicate very plain, good, commonplace people. But these two, the sons of their father's prime, inherited all his grandeur of form and beauty of countenance, his taste for high literature, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... cradle. Some are born into an easy and sheltered affluence. Others are the children of mean and sordid want. For some the long toil of life begins in the very bloom time of childhood and ends only when the broken and exhausted body sinks into a penurious old age. For others life is but a foolish leisure with mock activities and mimic avocations to mask its uselessness. And as the circumstances vary so too does the native endowment of the body and the mind. Some born in poverty rise to wealth. An ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... spent his portion in riotous living, afterward bought a tract of ground above Harlem, turned hermit, raised geese and ducks and pigs, married and had three daughters and they in turn married, glad, I suppose, to get away from the penurious living. So it went on. He had to give up the pigs and geese, did a little gardening and two years ago died without a will. Oddly enough he had kept a family record which has been of great service to us. The old shanty was a ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... schools when they reached an age where they were acceptable to employers or where they were not prevented by law. Back of the exodus, universal as it is, there is an urge of elemental force. A common accounting for it, the nearest at hand, is that parents of working class children are penurious; or that they are too ignorant to understand the deteriorating effect of factory life on children; or that they are too hard pressed in their physical needs to consider the best interest of the children. This reason given for ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... Silent, penurious, shrewd to the margin of dishonesty; unrelenting as the rock-fronted fastnesses of her native hills; good-humored at times and even possessed of swift moods of tenderness that disarmed and appealed—such she was. She stood straight as a spruce despite the burden of her years, and a suggestion ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... at the house of a cousin of my wife. He is a mean man, and his wife is also penurious and mean. They have made my sickness still more bitter by their taunts. They complain that I am an expense to them, and they would turn me out of doors, sick as I am, I am convinced, if they were not ashamed to do so. Poor Philip will be left to their tender mercies, ...
— Mark Mason's Victory • Horatio Alger
... own terms, Index, for after all you know it must come to that, and I am satisfied you will be as liberal as you can afford." Put in this way, the most penurious of the speculating tribe in paper and print would have strained a point, to overcome their natural infirmity: with Index it was otherwise; nature had formed him with a truly liberal heart: the practice of the trade, and the necessary caution attendant upon bookselling speculations, only operated ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... burden," and was neglected by his father, ill-used by his step-mother. Thus Tobias had not only his own early poverty to resent, but had a hereditary grudge against fortune, and "the base indifference of mankind." The old gentleman was lodged "with very hard and penurious people," at Glasgow University. He rose in the world, and was a good Presbyterian Whig, but "had no liberty" to help to forfeit James II. "The puir child, his son" (James III. and VIII.), "if he was really such, ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... hoop than fear.' And now I see that in certain cases his opinion may be right. I have verified it also with references to clients, who, learning of my return, hurried to salute me. Thou knowest that I have never been penurious with them; but my father acted haughtily with clients on principle, and taught me to treat them in like manner. But when I saw their worn mantles and hungry faces, I had a feeling something like compassion. I gave command to bring ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... rampant lions worked in silver thread much tarnished; to the right hand stood a prie-dieu. Between these isolated articles of furniture, and behind an unpainted table sat, in a high-backed chair, a wizen and shabbily-clad old man. This was Theodoret, most pious and penurious of monarchs. In attendance upon him were Fra Battista, prior of the Grey Monks, and Melicent's near kinsman, once the Bishop, now the Cardinal, de Montors, who, as was widely known, was the actual monarch of this realm. The latter was smartly habited as ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... preface is scurrilous beyond belief. Compiled from the gossip of servants, it is meant to cast ridicule on the housekeeping of the Protector's establishment. But the second part is a sober collection of by no means very penurious recipes from Joan's own ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... beginning to count the cost of everything now, and was almost penurious in her efforts to make their income go as far as possible. So they bought the pretty place, which she called Ridge Cottage, but Frank did not live to occupy it. After Tom went away and left him alone with his wife, who was not the most ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... himself and beggared states. Forego your boast. You must conclude, That's most esteemed that's most pursued. Think too, in what a woful plight That wretch must live whose pocket's light. Are not his hours by want depress'd? Penurious care corrodes his breast. 110 Without respect, or love, or friends, His solitary day descends.' 'You might,' says Cupid, 'doubt my parts, My knowledge too in human hearts, Should I the power of gold dispute, Which great examples might confute. I know, when nothing else prevails, Persuasive ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... Francis was awake to his duty, the best of his nature awoke to meet its calls, and he drew upon a growing store of love for strength to thwart the desires of her he loved. 'Entire affection hateth nicer hands,' and Francis learned not to mind looking penurious and tyrannical, selfish, heartless, and unsympathetic, in the endeavour to be truly loving and lovingly true. He had not Kirsty to support him, but he could now go higher than to Kirsty for the help he needed; he went to the same fountain from which Kirsty herself drew her strength. ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald |
