"Prodigality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fastening on those in upper life who honour him with a little notice of him or his works. Indeed, the situation of poets is generally such, to a proverb, as may, in some measure, palliate that prostitution of heart and talents they have at times been guilty of. I do not think that prodigality is, by any means, a necessary concomitant of a poetic turn, but I believe a careless, indolent inattention to economy is almost inseparable from it; then there must be in the heart of every bard of nature's ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... than once jousted victoriously in disguise. The same spirit led him to challenge Philip of France to decide their quarrel by single combat, and to win a personal triumph when masking as a knight attached to the service of Sir Walter Manny. He was liberal to the verge of prodigality, good-tempered, easy of access, and, save when moved by deep gusts of fierce anger, kindly and compassionate. His easy good nature endeared him both to foreigners and to every class of his own subjects. Not only did he enter fully into the free-masonry which regarded ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... the trader is avarice and the habit of continuous labor. Left alone to his instincts he amasses riches to possess them, without designing or knowing how to use them. Examples are needed to conduct him to prodigality, ostentation, and moral corruption. As a rule the merchant opposes the soldier. One desires the accumulations of industry, the other of conquest. One makes of power the means of getting riches, the ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... to evil-doers, and from which the Lord preserve us all!—syne to the Market, where ye'll see lamb, beef, mutton, and veal, hanging up on cleeks, in roasting and boiling pieces—spar-rib, jigget, shoulder, and heuk-bane, in the greatest prodigality of abundance;—and syne down to the Duke's gate, by looking through the bonny white-painted iron-stanchels of which, ye'll see the deer running beneath the green trees; and the palace itself, in the inside of which dwells one that needs not be proud to call ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... coming into direct collision are neither few nor far between. They divided the vestry fourteen times on a motion for heating the church with warm water instead of coals: and made speeches about liberty and expenditure, and prodigality and hot water, which threw the whole parish into a state of excitement. Then the captain, when he was on the visiting committee, and his opponent overseer, brought forward certain distinct and specific charges ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... as at least plausible; but it is foolish as applied to the version in the folio, where the piece is found to be remarkable for nimbleness of invention, strength and variety of natural character, affluent prodigality of animal spirits, delicious quaintness, exhilarating merriment, a lovely pastoral tone, and many touches of the transcendent poetry of Shakespeare. Dennis probably repeated a piece of idle gossip that he had heard, the same sort of chatter that in the present day constantly follows ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... and weather may defeat an army pursuing a wrong plan: not that I believe the sickness to have been so great as it has been reported; but there is a great deal of superfluous humiliation in this business, a perfect prodigality of disgrace. Some advantage, real or imaginary, must compensate to a great sovereign and to a great general for so immense a loss of reputation. Longwy, situated as it is, might (one should think) be evacuated ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... guardian rushed upon them with doubled fists; the adversaries followed their example. "Long live Theresa!" cried the one. "Long live Frederick!" cried the other—and the blows and kicks fell thickly right and left, with the most lavish prodigality. ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... give me cold glances of surprised recognition, or they pass me by without so much as a look. Their ardent devotion in summer fills me with a deep disdain; their admiration for great masses of colour, for high, striking effects, and for the general lavishness and prodigality of my passing mood, betrays their lack of discernment, their defect of taste, and their slight acquaintance with myself. I should much prefer that they would leave my woods and fields untrodden, and not disturb my mountain ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... father as well as for myself. Thousands, Mr. Bygrave—thousands of pounds sterling out of my pocket!!!" He clasped his hands in despair at the picture of pecuniary compulsion which his fancy had conjured up—his own golden life-blood spouting from him in great jets of prodigality, under the ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... and had been diffused thence among the other West India possessions, British and French. The licentiousness of the buccaneers was unbounded, and their blood-stained spoils were scattered with incredible prodigality. Indeed they seemed to be at a loss how to spend their money fast enough. Their captains had been known to purchase pipes of wine, place them in the street, knock in the head, and compel every passer-by to drink; and mention is made of one, who, returning from an expedition with three thousand ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... power of her Celtic lungs, plucked off her downtrodden shoes, slapped their soles together smartly, and, with a gesture of royal prodigality, tossed them right and left into the air, performed a caper of surprising agility on elephantine, blue-yarn-stocking-covered feet, and was carried away by a roaring surge of the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... in Great Britain an anti-slavery sentiment had appeared. There were anti-slavery leaders, statesmen, philosophers and philanthropists. By the terms of the Constitution the slave trade should cease in the year 1808. Sad to reflect that the inventive genius of man and the prodigality of nature in her gifts of cotton, sugar and rice to the old South should have produced a reaction in favor of slavery so great as to fasten it more strongly than ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... the prodigality and licence of his style, and the unchartered daring of his imagination, will find a most curious and brilliant discussion of the whole subject in his Essay on Shelley, which may be summed up in the injunction that "in poetry, as in the Kingdom of God, we should not take ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... farthing, refusing yourselves not only all the enjoyments of life, but even the most necessary comforts.... You brag of your threadbare clothes; but surely this extreme parsimony is a thousand times more blamable than the opposite prodigality of those of your comrades who spend their time among gipsies, and their money in feasting. You boast of your ignorance, because you do not know what civilization is. Civilization, according to your notions, consists in shorter laps of a coat, foreign furniture, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... lady had warmly grasped his hand with both of her own, which were imprisoned in tight new gloves, while her bonnet spoke of regardlessness of expense and recent prodigality. She fell back into the ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... with gold dressing-boxes to grace their Dame's tables, embryo Dukes for their cofags, and tastes that already knew to a nicety the worth of the champagnes at the Christopher. The old, old story—how it repeats itself! Boys grow up amid profuse prodigality, and are launched into a world where they can no more arrest themselves than the feather-weight can pull in the lightning stride of the two-year-old, who defies all check and takes the flat as he chooses. They are brought up like young Dauphins, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... Woodruffs, at all. They were of a different pattern. To be sure, Jim's clothes were not especially noteworthy, being just shiny, and frayed at cuff and instep, and short of sleeve and leg, and ill-fitting and cheap. They betrayed poverty, and the inability of a New York sweatshop to anticipate the prodigality of Nature in the matter of length of leg and arm, and wealth of bones and joints which she had lavished upon Jim Irwin. But the Woodruff table had often enjoyed Jim's presence, and the standards prevailing there as to clothes were only those of plain people who eat with their hired ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... fellows in the galaxy. The familiar stars of the Pleiades cluster, for example, appear on the negative immersed in a hazy blur of light. All in all, the accumulated impressions of the photographic film reveal a prodigality of nebulous matter in the stellar system ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... sun is warmth and light. The intensely heated mass of the sun radiates forth its beams in all directions with boundless prodigality. Each beam we feel to be warm, and we see to be brilliantly white, but a more subtle analysis than mere feeling or mere vision is required. Each sunbeam bears marks of its origin. These marks are ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... sequence of flowers without a gap is not the result of chance, or even of California's floral prodigality, but of McLaren's hard-headed calculation. He actually rehearsed the whole floral scheme of the Exposition for three seasons beforehand. To a day, he knew the time that would elapse between the planting and the blooming ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... Mozart into intense, restless energy. His life had no lull in its creative industry. His splendid genius, insatiable and tireless, broke down his body, like a sword wearing out its scabbard. He poured out symphonies, operas, and sonatas with such prodigality as to astonish us, even when recollecting how fecund the musical mind has often been. Alike as artist and composer, he never ceased his labors. Day after day and night after night he hardly snatched an hour's rest. We can almost fancy he foreboded ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... of the Pegu Club decided to give a dance. This dance was to be the cheeriest of the season, the secretary had exerted himself to the utmost, and the great ballroom looked particularly well, all colour and glow, with splashes of bright shades, a profusion of palms and flowers, and a reckless prodigality of electric light. Practically everyone was present, even Herr Krauss, who, on this supreme occasion, had volunteered to chaperon his niece. The band was playing the newest waltzes and a varied assortment of Rangoon residents swung over the polished floor—men ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... but tell me, thou resounding ministerial vacuum, thou unreflecting editorial parrot, where is its product? What has society to show for the expenditure of this energy? A hole in its working capital—a hiatus in its larder caused by employing and sustaining labor, not to produce but to destroy. Prodigality on the part of the rich personally benefits a few parasites, just as the bursting of a molasses barrel fattens useless flies; but waste, by reducing the amount of wealth available for reproduction, breeds general want. A thousand editors have screamed in leaded type that it were "worse for the wealthy ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... pleasantly representing real good qualities in a false light of shame, and bantering them as ill ones. So generosity may be treated as prodigality; oeconomy as avarice; true courage as foolhardiness; and so of ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... this evidence of White Fell's splendid supremacy, holding her own so long against Christian's famous speed. So long, so long that his love and admiration grew more and more boundless, and his grief and indignation therewith also. Whenever the track lay clear he ran, with such reckless prodigality of strength, that it soon was spent, and he dragged on heavily, till, sometimes on the ice of a mere, sometimes on a wind-swept place, all signs were lost; but, so undeviating had been their line that a course straight on, and then short ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... the room. This book is written out of a mind so full of wit and wisdom that it overflows at the gentlest touch. It has more sense and learning and power than go to the making up of a dozen ordinary novels. The very prodigality of its resources is a stumbling-block. Its great fault is its muchness, if we may borrow a term from Hawthorne's mint. It is like a young minister's first sermon, into which he frantically attempts to cram the whole body of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... inconvenience from the exposure, which is silently undermining their constitutions. Is it extraordinary that people thus exposed should be attacked by violent maladies? Would it not be more wonderful that such a careless prodigality of life could pass with impunity? These remarks might be extended; the food of the first settler, consisting chiefly of fresh meat without vegetables and often without salt; the common use of ardent spirits, the want of medical aid, by which diseases, at first simple, being neglected become dangerous; ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... from the gloomy darkness of many portions of the buildings. It is also noteworthy that the expenditure of materials and labour is greater in proportion to the effect attained than in any other style. The pyramids are the most conspicuous example of this prodigality. Before condemning this as a defect in the style, it must be remembered that a stability which should defy enemies, earthquakes, and the tooth of time, was far more aimed at than architectural character; and that, had any mode of construction less lavish of material, and less ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... gracious Father; but that his through-searching wisdom knew the estate of Dives burning in hell, and of Lazarus being in Abraham's bosom, would more constantly (as it were) inhabit both the memory and judgment. Truly, for myself, meseems I see before my eyes the lost child's disdainful prodigality, turned to envy a swine's dinner: which by the learned divines are thought not historical acts, but instructing parables. For conclusion, I say the philosopher teacheth, but he teacheth obscurely, so as the learned only can understand him: that is to say, he teacheth ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... Noor ad Deen did nothing for a whole year but feast and make merry, wasting and consuming, with the utmost prodigality, the great wealth that his predecessors, and the good vizier his father, had with so much pains ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... lark is beautiful, the song of the poet is not surpassed. The riotous spirit of music sings in every line, beauty is seen in every stanza, is lavished upon every phrase, upon every melodious verse. The prodigality of beautiful phrases is marvelous. The phrases descriptive of the bird alone are strikingly ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... was the portion assigned to the combatants, and derived its name from the sand with which it was strewn, to absorb the blood and prevent it from becoming slippery. Some of the emperors showed their prodigality by substituting precious powders, and even gold dust, for sand. The arena was generally of the same shape as the amphitheatre itself, and was separated from the spectators by a wall built perfectly smooth, that the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... represented his civil and religious character, asserted his rights, fulfilled his obligations, and discharged the gifts of friendship or liberality, which his last will had bequeathed under the name of legacies. But as the imprudence or prodigality of a dying man might exhaust the inheritance and leave only risk and labor to his successor, he was empowered to retain the Falcidian portion; to deduct, before the payment of the legacies, a clear fourth for his own emolument. A reasonable time was allowed to examine ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... with the two brothers and the canon, and I remarked that they looked quite confused. No doubt they were pondering the prodigality of gamesters; light come, light go. I did not interrupt their thoughts, for I loved to astonish people. I confess it was a feeling of vanity which raised me above my fellow-men-at least, in my own eyes, but that was enough for me. I should have despised anyone who told me that I was laughed ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Anacreon's Poems instead of the Anabasis or the Ars Poetica, he would have reduced the extent of the falsehood, and would have furnished a ready reply which would have been equally effective with his Sunday-school teachers and their disputants. Hence we conclude this prodigality of misstatement, this exuberance of mendacity, is an effervescence of zeal in majorem gloriam Dei. Elsewhere he tells us that "the idea of the author of the 'Vestiges' is, that man is the development of a monkey, that the monkey is the embryo man, so that ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... think I want to extenuate sins of passion (though, in very truth, the sin of Magdalene is a light one compared to that of Judas); but observe, sins of passion, if of real passion, are often the errors and backfalls of noble souls; but prodigality is mere and pure selfishness, and essentially the sin of an ignoble or undeveloped creature; and I would rather, ten times rather, hear of a youth that (certain degrees of temptation and conditions of resistance being understood) he had fallen into any sin you chose ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... will be mad, I'le be mad with him, and tell him that I'le not spare him, his Father kept good Meat, good Drink, good Fellows, good Hawks, good Hounds, and bid his Neighbours welcome; kept him too, and supplied his prodigality, yet kept his state still; must we turn Tenants now, after we have lived under the race of Gentry, and maintained good Yeomantry, to some of the City, to a great shoulder of Mutton and a Custard, and have our state turned into Cabbidge ...
— Wit Without Money - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher • Francis Beaumont
... editor, "has reached us, that free grants of land will be conferred no more." Lord Ripon's regulations were published in London, January 20th, 1831. They were framed to obviate the theoretical and practical evils attributed to the easy acquisition of land; to terminate the prodigality of governors, and the frequent quarrels occasioned by their favoritism; and above all, to prevent laborers from becoming landholders, and the tendency of colonists to scatter over territories they can not cultivate. ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... Splendid Phanaeus eat and knead, before the arrival of the present purveyor? The Llama, that denizen of the uplands, was not able to feed the Dung-beetles confined to the plains. In days of old, the foster-father was perhaps the monstrous Megatherium, a dung-factory of incomparable prodigality. ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... birds' nests and atar of roses, bulses of diamonds and bags of guineas. [166] Of what the Dictator expended no account was asked by his colleagues; and in truth he seems to have deserved the confidence which they reposed in him. His bribes, distributed with judicious prodigality, speedily produced a large return. Just when the Court became all powerful in the State, he became all powerful at the Court. Jeffreys pronounced a decision in favour of the monopoly, and of the strongest acts which had been done in defence of the monopoly. James ordered his ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... toucans, and they were silent, heralded only by the sound of their wings and the crash of their pigments. I can think of no other assemblage of jungle creatures more fitted to impress one with the prodigality of tropical nature. Four years before, we set ourselves to work to discover the first eggs and young of toucans, and after weeks of heartbreaking labor and disappointments we succeeded. Out of the five species ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... honourers of clergymen, but all of Cambridge, and chiefly Doctor Bamberge, Doctor Howlsworth, Broanbricke, Walley, and Mickelthite, and Sanderson, with many others. We lived in great plenty and hospitality, but no lavishness in the least, nor prodigality, and, I believe, my father never drank six glasses of wine in his life in ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... presents to the bridegroom, Giovanni Galeazzo gave away 150 beautiful horses, and his kinsman, Bernabo, jewels and golden coins to a large amount, the whole sum disbursed on this occasion would appear so enormous as to make one doubt whether a petty sovereign could really afford such ostentatious prodigality. But when we consider that the flourishing state of the commerce of Italy attracted thither all the wealth of Europe, we are no longer surprised at an expenditure which, however great, might at that time have been borne not by a reigning duke of Milan or Florence alone, but even by many citizens ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various
... the advantage over our shovel-headed predecessor—or possibly ancestor—and can perceive that a certain vein of thrift runs through this apparent prodigality. Nature is never in a hurry, and seems to have had always before her eyes the adage, "Keep a thing long enough, and you will find a use for it." She has kept her beds of coal many millions of years ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... where the green billows of wild oats carried it on and upwards to the darker crests of pines. For two months she was dazzled and bewildered with color. She had never before been face to face with this spendthrift Californian Flora, in her virgin wastefulness, her more than goddess-like prodigality. The teeming earth seemed to quicken and throb beneath her feet; the few circuits of a plow around the outlying corral was enough to call out a jungle growth of giant grain that almost hid the low walls of the hacienda. In this glorious fecundity of the earth, in this joyous ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... under the dullest skies, so that when the sun shines every view seems freshly painted and blazing with colour. The freshness of the atmosphere, too, is seldom tainted with those peculiar odours that some French towns produce with such enormous prodigality, and Lisieux may therefore claim a further point in ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... exchange for the coin exported, may be materials, tools, and provisions for the employment of an additional industry, a part also may be taken back in foreign wines, silks, &c. to be consumed by idle people who produce nothing; and so far the substitution promotes prodigality, increases expense and consumption, without increasing production. So far also, then, it lessens the capital of the nation. What may be the amount which the conversion of the part exchanged for productive goods, may add ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... joined the household, and she knew Ursula was pious and a bitter hater of witches. By the time Gottfried arrived Providence was established, unshakably intrenched, and getting all the gratitude. The cat made no murmur, but went on composedly improving in style and prodigality by experience. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of all things the most precious, wasting of Time must be (as POOR RICHARD says) the greatest prodigality; and since, as he elsewhere tells us, Lost time is never found again; and what we call Time enough! always proves little enough, let us then up and be doing, and doing to the purpose: so, by diligence, shall we do more ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... playhouses, seem to have been ornate. Thus T[homas] W[hite], in A Sermon Preached at Pawles Crosse, on Sunday the Thirde of November, 1577, exclaims: "Behold the sumptuous Theatre houses, a continual monument of London's prodigality"; John Stockwood, in A Sermon Preached at Paules Cross, 1578, refers to it as "the gorgeous playing place erected in the Fields"; and Gabriel Harvey could think of no more appropriate epithet for it than "painted"—"painted ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... with sailors, whose bodies exhibited marks of strength and brutal courage.—Their characters were all different, though of the same class; Sagestus did not stay to discriminate them, satisfied with a rough sketch. He saw indolence roused by a love of humour, or rather bodily fun; sensuality and prodigality with a vein of generosity running through it; a contempt of danger with gross superstition; supine senses, only to be kept alive by noisy, tumultuous pleasures, or that kind of novelty which borders on absurdity: this formed the ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... he had hopes of winning. Were he a bankrupt in trade, he might have grown rich; but he has neither spirit to spend nor resolution to spare. He does not spend fast enough to have pleasure from it. He has the crime of prodigality, and the wretchedness of parsimony. If a man is killed in a duel, he is killed as many a one has been killed; but it is a sad thing for a man to lie down and die; to bleed to death, because he has not fortitude enough to sear the wound, or even to stitch it up.' ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... the tragedy of a man who is not self-centered enough. His good and bad traits alike, generosity and extravagance, friendship and vanity, combine to make him live and breathe in the attitude of other men toward him. From this comes his unbounded prodigality by which in a few years he squanders an enormous fortune in giving pleasure to his friends. From this lack of self-poise, too, comes the tremendous reaction later, {194} when he learns that his imagined world of love and ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... changed by the forces of nature into a multitude of forms, can never die, will the imperial spirit of man suffer annihilation when it has paid a brief visit like a royal guest to this tenement of clay? No, He who, notwithstanding His apparent prodigality, created nothing without a purpose, and wasted not a single atom in all His creation, has made provision for a future life in which man's universal longing for immortality will find its realization. ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... visited several churches—rich, on the outside, with all the luxury of architecture,—withinside, gorgeous with painting, sculpture, and many-coloured marbles. The prodigality with which the most splendid and costly materials are lavished here is perfectly amazing: pillars of lapis-lazuli, columns of Egyptian porphyry, and pavements of mosaic, altars of alabaster ascended by steps incrusted with ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... people working and worrying over quince-marmalade and tucked petticoats and embroidered chair-covers, things that perish with the using and leave the user worse than they found him. This I call waste and wicked prodigality. Life is too short to permit us to fret about matters of no importance. Where these things can minister to the mind and heart, they are a part of the soul's furniture; but where they only pamper the appetite or the vanity, or any foolish ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... influence should make him Pope when the next vacancy occurred. On the day when the Emperor left England, the King and all the Court went over to Calais, and thence to the place of meeting, between Ardres and Guisnes, commonly called the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Here, all manner of expense and prodigality was lavished on the decorations of the show; many of the knights and gentlemen being so superbly dressed that it was said they carried their whole ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... display of luxury such as Europe could not rival had begun to characterize the manner of life of the possessors of the new and unexampled fortunes. Spectacles of gilded splendor, of royal pomp and boundless prodigality mocked the popular discontent and brought out in dazzling light the width and depth of the gulf that was being fixed between the masters ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... laboriously. He scattered his patrimony gaily and then when the last inherited cent was gone, turned with, equal gayety to earning, not only enough to support himself, but the wife and family that, with the royal and reckless prodigality of genius, he provided himself with at the ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... streets of science and gather up whatever I can find." The comparison was singular, but it was apt; he was, indeed, the ragpicker of physiology. With a scavenger's sense of honour he endeavored to rob Sir Charles Bell of the credit for his discovery concerning the functions of the spinal nerves, by a prodigality of torment, from which the nobler nature of the English scientist instinctively recoiled. When there came to him an opportunity of experimenting on man, he embraced it with avidity, and again and again, while ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... without temerity; laborious without ambition; generous without prodigality; noble without pride; ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... Farm-houses went to decay, and Strangers forestalled the Markets. Few People, however, could find in their Heart to hate him. They had a Love for him, though he was daily undoing them: For it was always their Humour to like a boon Companion; and instead of crossing his Prodigality, they followed his Example, wh——ed it away from the highest to the lowest, revelled and caroused for dear Blood, and were never better pleased than when the last Penny was a going. It became a Fashion to be Bankrupt; to be Rich, ...
— The True Life of Betty Ireland • Anonymous
... the motive he employed to animate his brethren to the practice of virtue. When he proposed anything that was difficult to them, such as to go about soliciting alms, "Go," he would say, "and ask it for the love of God." He found a noble prodigality in asking it for that motive, and he thought those demented who preferred money to the love of God, the price of which is incalculable, and sufficient to purchase the Kingdom of Heaven, and which the love of Him who has so loved us must make infinitely dear to us. They were surprised one day ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... dim vastness of the great Flemish churches, where the eye is satisfied everywhere with the wealth of brass and iron work, and where the Belgian passion for wood-carving displays itself in lavish prodigality. Such wealth, indeed, of ecclesiastical furniture you will hardly find elsewhere in Western Europe—font covers of hammered brass, like those at Hal and Tirlemont; stalls and confessionals and pulpits, new and old, that are mere masses of sculptured wood-work; tall ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris
... hinder his exercising this despotic authority. All Asia is by him disfranchised at a stroke. Its inhabitants have no rights, no laws, no liberties; their state is mean and depraved; they may be fined for any purpose of court extravagance or prodigality,—or as Cheyt Sing was fined by him, not only upon every war, but upon every pretence ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... I hear it said, Hosea, that divers of our young nobles frequent thy Hebrew shops with intent to borrow gold, which, lavished in present prodigality, is to be bitterly repaid at a later day by self-denial, and such embarrassments as suit not the heirs of noble names. Take heed of this matter—for if the displeasure of the council should alight on any of thy race, there would be long and serious accounts to settle! Hast ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... how far from appreciating France's generosity the easterners, and especially the anti-Jeffersonian Federalists in America, were at that time. Other and less conscientious newspapers put the prodigality of Jefferson's commissioners ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... on the other, as Quesnay and Turgot, who opposed unjust taxation. It was through them that the nation awoke to a consciousness of its wrongs, and saw for the first time, in the clear light of truth, the inveterate pride of the nobles, the rapacity of the clergy, and the prodigality of the court. The farmer then realized to the full the injustice of a government which could calmly allow taxes and feudal claims to swallow all but the twentieth part of the profit of his labor. Citizens discovered the iniquity of laws which gave so little security to their lives and property, that ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... the river in its boldest course," she wrote, "interspersed by halcyon isles on which Nature has lavished all her prodigality in tree, vine, and flower, banked by noble bluffs three hundred feet high, their sharp ridges as exquisitely definite as the edge of a shell; their summits adorned with those same beautiful trees and with buttresses of rich rock, crested with old hemlocks that wear ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... Knowing, however, with whom I had to deal, and divining what a great amount of patience would be necessary to bring them round to my way of thinking, I began to distribute gifts, especially tobacco, freely and frequently amongst them, only mentioning my wish occasionally, as if by chance. And my prodigality had its reward. ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... mean is found in neither fearing it nor courting it, and this is fortitude. In relation to pleasure, the true mean stands between greediness and indifference; this is temperance. The true mean between prodigality and narrowness is liberality; between simplicity and cunning is prudence; between suffering wrong and doing wrong is justice. Extending this law to certain qualifications of temper, speech, and manners, you have the portrait of ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... of this particular. Lousteau paid the cabman, giving him three francs—a piece of prodigality following upon such impecuniosity astonishing Lucien more than a little. Then the two friends entered the Wooden Galleries, where fashionable literature, as it is called, ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... and he died and went to the mercy of Allah the Most High; leaving a young son, who, when he grew up, gave himself to feasting and carousing and hearing music and singing and the loud laughter of parasites; and he wasted his substance in gifts and prodigality till he had squandered all the money his father left him, —And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... of the Land also must omit many duties, properly compulsory, as piety, benevolence, &c. It must also leave unpunished many vices, as luxury, prodigality, partiality. It must confine itself ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... those persons who acted in the latter capacity in the vicinity of their own homes, Zumalacarregui always had about him eighteen or twenty regularly paid spies; and to these, even in the moments of his greatest poverty and difficulty, he showed himself liberal to prodigality. Notwithstanding that it was out of his power to recompense sufficiently the risks they ran, and the important services they rendered, these men performed their arduous duties with admirable fidelity. Zaratiegui relates an anecdote of one of them who, having been guilty of some neglect, received, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... these in turn, ten thousand others outside the pale, but flinging money right and left in charity or prodigality to catch the eyes of those who catch the eyes of those who nod ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... it had that extraordinary affluence of thoughts, each mating itself with as remarkable originality of richly figured expressions, which is so characteristic of the style of Shakespeare's plays. In this prodigality he was remote indeed from the style of the Greeks; "panting Time toils after him in vain," and even the reader, much more the listener, might say, sufflaminandus est; "he needs to have the ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... hideous to suffer and heart-breaking to witness, he would attempt to talk, irrationally at times, but now and again with a startling coherence. His mind ran on that gift of a hundred pounds. He sent message after message to the little shop-girl for whom, with the senseless prodigality of such youth, he had proposed to fling away his future. Again and again he adjured his friend to tell his mother what a good little girl Kitty was, how she had stuck to him ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... to honest tradesmen, and with an unruffled countenance hears of their bankruptcy. The liberal treat as lords, when they know they are only beggars. Believe me, the most estimable characters are those with whom there is the least tendency to this overflowing prodigality of kindness. It is, however, my wish to serve Miss Damer. She shall be educated for a governess. But let us not neglect the old despised adage: 'Be just ...
— The Boarding School • Unknown
... mother, and how the suppression prepares him for the overflow in the next speech, in which his character is more developed by bringing forward his aversion to externals, and which betrays his habit of brooding over the world within him, coupled with a prodigality of beautiful words, which are the half embodyings of thought, and are more than thought, and have an outness, a reality sui generis, and yet retain their correspondence and shadowy affinity to the images and movements within. Note also Hamlet's silence to the long ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... linen, both wetted with sea-water; but likely to be very useful as our own clothes decayed. I found Fritz and Jack had been shooting ortolans; they had killed about fifty, but had consumed so much powder and shot, that I checked a prodigality so imprudent in our situation. I taught them to make snares for the birds of the threads we drew from the karata leaves we had brought home. My wife and her two younger sons busied themselves with these, while I, with my two elder boys, began to construct the sledge. As ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... avoid this prodigality, unless its inhabitants live upon the soil. Therefore towns ought not to exceed the size at which the whole animal refuse can be economically saved and directly ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... venture openly to declare himself; and Mr. Wakefield was too busy, in wasting your mother's fortune and gratifying his own desires, to attend to those of the bishop. But his prodigality, which is excessive, after a time brought him to London; and the bishop imagined that, with his help, my scruples would ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... to be seen through a shadowy lens, which magnifies their stature. Let us hope that the crimes of the three or four generations immediately succeeding Clovis have been in like manner expanded; for it is sickening to read of such monstrous prodigality of wickedness; whole families butchered—husbands, wives, children, anything obstructing the path to the throne—with an atrocity which makes Richard III. seem a mere pigmy in the art of intrigue and killing. The chapter closes with the daughter and mother ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... and with watch in hand. He seemed grimmer and gaunter than ever that morning, and as he looked around the great Hall, he shook his head at its faded grandeur reprehensively, as if he could, if time permitted, deliver a sermon on the prodigality, the wicked wastefulness, which had brought ruin on the house, and rendered it necessary for him to extend his ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... temptations of all the luxuries of land and sea; at that time especially proceeded to such a pitch of extravagance in consequence of the obsequiousness of the nobles and the unrestrained liberty of the commons, that their lust and prodigality had no bounds. To a disregard for the laws, the magistrates, and the senate, now, after the disaster of Cannae, was added a contempt for the Roman government also, for which there had been some degree of respect. The only ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... a heart alive to the distresses of millions, than in all those trappings which encumber royalty without adorning it. He asked whether the legislature should give an example of encouraging extravagance at a moment when the prevailing fashion of prodigality among people of fortune was rapidly destroying their independence, and making them the tools of the court, and the contempt of the people. He knew the refusal to pay his debts would be a severe privation to the Prince of Wales; but it would be a just penalty for the past, a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - No. 555, Supplement to Volume 19 • Various
... dissatisfied, though for what length of time he has joined the schemes of the astucious Agelastes it is more difficult to say. This I know, that for many months he has fed liberally, as his riches enable him to do, the vices and prodigality of the Caesar. He has encouraged him to show disrespect to his wife, although the Emperor's daughter; has put ill-will between him and the royal family. And if Briennius bears no longer the fame of a rational ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... Luxury and ostentation require that the servants of these people should be numerous; their number unavoidably makes them idle; idleness makes them debauched; debauchery renders them often necessitous; the affluence or the prodigality, the indolence or indulgence; or indifference of their masters, affords them every possible facility for being dishonest; and, beginning with the more venial kinds of peculation, their conscience has an opportunity ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... than the intervention of all the great powers of Europe to give it a chance of success, and, even so, has not yet succeeded. That Byron himself was under no delusion, as to the importance of his own solitary aid—that he knew, in a struggle like this, there must be the same prodigality of means towards one great end as is observable in the still grander operations of nature, where individuals are as nothing in the tide of events—that such was his, at once, philosophic and melancholy view of his own sacrifices, I have, I trust, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 474 - Vol. XVII. No. 474., Supplementary Number • Various
... agricultural and industrial education, to diversify crops, to systematize farm work, to establish cooperative buying and selling, to suppress personal, local, sectional, and national prejudices, and to discountenance "the credit system, the fashion system, and every other system tending to prodigality and bankruptcy." As to business, the Patrons declared themselves enemies not of capital but of the tyranny of monopolies, not of railroads but of their high freight tariffs and monopoly of transportation. In politics, too, ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... range, but the prodigality of the portions, surprises. Your halibut or salmon or trout is not a strip that seems like a sample, it is a solid slice of exquisitely cooked fish that looks dangerously near a full pound, and all the portions are on the same scale, so that you soon come to recognize that, unless ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... creature man with a comprehensive mind? Why make him a little lower than the angels? Why give him the faculty of thinking, the powers of wit and memory; and, to crown all, an immortal and never-dying spirit? Why all this wondrous waste, this prodigality of bounty, if the mere animal senses of sight and hearing (by which he is not distinguished from the brutes that perish) would have answered the end as well? and yet I find the same people are seen at the opera every night—an ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... distinctions were gradually broken down, and people, as they were able and willing, launched out into unlimited extravagance in their dress. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and down from thence to the time when the Quakers first appeared, were periods, particularly noticed for prodigality in the use of apparel, there was nothing too expensive or too preposterous to be worn. Our ancestors also, to use an ancient quotation, "were never constant to one colour or fashion two months to an end." We can have no idea by the present generation, ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... been far more correct and careful in drawing than was Tintoret, while Veronese's prodigality of colour was a mellowed version of Tintoret's glare or deadness. One of Veronese's best pictures is the 'Marriage of Cana,' painted originally for the refectory of the convent of San Giorgio, Venice, and now in the Louvre. 'It is not less than thirty feet long ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... such turbulence were not infrequent, and they account in part for the reckless prodigality shown by Shirakawa in building and furnishing temples. The cenobites did not confine themselves to demonstrations at the palace; they had their own quarrels also. Kofuku-ji's hand was against Kimbusen and Todai-ji, and not a few priests doffed the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... close student of human nature no place offers such manifold attractions, such possibilities of deep insight, such a mine of suggestion, such a prodigality of illustration, as a pig-pen at feeding time. It has been said, with allusion to this philosophical pursuit, that "there is no place like home;" but it will be seen that this is but another form of the same assertion.—End of the Essay upon the Study ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... the "Harlot's Progress," was at his death still more bitterly branded by Swift's friend, Dr. Arbuthnot, in the epitaph he proposed for him: "Here continueth to rot the body of Francis Charteris, who, in the course of his long life, displayed every vice except prodigality and hypocrisy. His insatiable avarice saved him from the first: his matchless impudence from the second." And he concludes it with the explanation that his life was not useless, since "it was intended to show by his example of how small estimation inordinate ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... assertion, repose in peace. It is a thing I never could understand, for it seems to me that nothing can be more distressing than to discover two opposite tendencies in mankind. Why, it comes to degradation at each of the extremes: economy brings it to misery; prodigality plunges it into moral degradation. Happily, these vulgar maxims exhibit economy and luxury in a false light, taking account, as they do, of those immediate consequences which are seen, and not of the remote ones, which are not seen. Let us see if we can ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... which is still periodically made in New York, may be said to have had its beginning in April, 1792. Seldom has an election been contested with such prodigality of partisan fury. The rhetoric of abuse was vigorous and unrestrained; the campaign lie active and ingenious; the arraignment of class against class sedulous and adroit, and the excitement most violent and memorable. ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... to contribute to the 'Revue des Deux Mondes,' as soon as my six sheets (at fifty dollars a sheet, that would be three hundred dollars) were printed and published, the editor would say to me, 'We are even now.' So you see that it would be unpardonable prodigality on my part to publish anything; therefore I have determined not to work at all, in order to avoid spending my money, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... deck and even mixed a little in the conversation of the foremast hands. On the night that they cleared the Capes he served out double noggins of rum to all the men aboard. There was a good deal of prodigality in the way it was poured out and a fine scene of carousal ensued, lasting until after the watch changed at midnight. It was the first time either of the boys had heard the smashing chorus of "Fifteen Men" sung by the whole fo'c's'le. ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... dollar wasn't his, either to give away or to throw away. Such prodigality, or impulsive benevolence, would be at the expense of another, and this ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... boisterous, and unpolished: so much so, indeed, as to approach that limit beyond which wealth will not make society tolerant. But his freedom of manner bore, to most observers, the appearance of generous heartiness, and he soon gained the good will of the neighborhood by the careless prodigality of his life. He was tall, elegantly formed, and quite well-looking; and though he is said to have borne, a few years later, a sinister and dishonest look, it is probable that most of this was attributable to the preconceived notions of those who ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... say, he might raise money by bargaining with some one who wanted a peerage; when, however, later on, he asked Buckingham for a repetition of the favour, Buckingham gave him a lecture on the impropriety of prodigality, which should make it seem that "while the King was asking money of Parliament with one hand he was giving with the other." How things were in Chancery in the days of the Queen, and of Bacon's predecessors, ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... exceptionally selfish man. I believe I represent the average in this respect. I always respond to minor calls in a way that pleases the recipient and causes a genuine flow of satisfaction in my own breast. I toss away nickels, dimes and quarters with prodigality; and if one of the office boys feels out of sorts I send him off for a week's vacation on full pay. I make small loans to seedy fellows who have known better days and I treat the servants handsomely ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... three men together, Monsieur Comminges," said Mazarin, "we must double the guard, and we are not rich enough in fighting men to commit such acts of prodigality." ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... a deep moral. The return of Nature, after such a career of splendor and prodigality, to habits so simple and austere, is not lost either upon the head or the heart. It is the philosopher coming back from the banquet and the wine to a cup of water and a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... all the outlay made by the mortgagee up to that date. Instalment payments were expressly ruled out. The entire sum intact was made obligatory. Therefore the danger of speedy redemption did not disquiet Charles. He knew the man he had to deal with. Sigismund's lack of foresight and his prodigality were notorious. There was faint chance that he could ever command the amount in question. Accordingly, Charles was fairly justified in counting the mortgaged territory as annexed ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... not engross his whole time, some part of which was dedicated to nocturnal riots and revels, among a set of young noblemen, who had denounced war against temperance, economy, and common sense, and were indeed the devoted sons of tumult, waste, and prodigality. Not that Peregrine relished those scenes, which were a succession of absurd extravagance, devoid of all true spirit, taste, or enjoyment. But his vanity prompted him to mingle with those who are entitled the choice spirits of the age; and his ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... fantastic forms, in striking contrast to the dark water on which a moment before the eye had rested. Everlastingly is this shifting ice modelling, as it were, in pure, gray marble, and, with nature's lavish prodigality, strewing around the most glorious statuary, which perishes without any eye having seen it. Wherefore? To what end all this shifting pageant of loveliness? It is governed by the mere caprices of nature, following out those everlasting laws that pay ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... extravagant. Forests, mines and soil fertility are wasted with wanton prodigality. We speak of our coal deposits and oil and gas wells as inexhaustible. We simply mean that it will be impossible for this and probably for the next generation to exhaust them. But coal mines are not inexhaustible. Oil and ...
— A Broader Mission for Liberal Education • John Henry Worst
... puddings; cheese; sandwiches; raw fruit; at Janet's elbow were cups and saucers and a pot of coffee; a large glass jug of lemonade shone near by; plates, glasses, and cutlery were strewn about irregularly. The effect upon Edwin was one of immense and careless prodigality; it intoxicated him; it made him feel that a grand profuseness was the finest thing in life. In his own home the supper consisted of cheese, bread, and water, save on Sundays, when cold sausages were generally added, to make a feast. But the idea of the price of living as the Orgreaves ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... rather, habits of fifteen years' standing, and men with whom he supped, and dined, and indulged his wit. He earned from seven to eight hundred francs a month, a sum which he found quite insufficient for the prodigality peculiar to the impecunious. Indeed, Lousteau found himself now just as hard up as when, on first appearing in Paris, he had said to himself, "If I had but five hundred francs a ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... the services all of us went up into the convento with the leading citizens of the town and other persons of note. There we were especially honored by the refinement, attention, and prodigality that characterize the Very Reverend Fray Salvi, there being set before us cigars and an abundant lunch which the hermano mayor had prepared under the convento for all who might feel the necessity for appeasing ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... rich, and pretty, and knew well how to ingratiate herself with the friend of the hour. She was a greedy, grasping little woman, but, when she had before her a sufficient object, she could appear to pour all that she had into her friend's lap with all the prodigality of a child. Perhaps Mrs. Bonteen had liked to have things poured into her lap. Perhaps Mr. Bonteen had enjoyed the confidential tears of a pretty woman. It may be that the wrongs of a woman doomed to live with Mr. Emilius as his wife had touched ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... insisted that the sewing woman, Carolina, who had only made five shirts in a week, not being sick, should make nine. He entered in his account "thread and needle, one penny," and used said thread and needle himself. All this closeness and contempt for shiftlessness and prodigality were perfectly consistent with a large and hospitable way of living; for during many years of his life he kept open house at Mt. Vernon. This frugal and prudent man knew exactly what it meant to devote his "life and fortune to the cause we are engaged in, if needful," as he ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot
... by the nobility and gentry of the period, who kept the Christmas festival with much display and prodigality, maintaining such numerous retinues as to constitute a miniature court. The various household books that still exist show the state in which they lived. From that of the Northumberland family (1512), it ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... or so, we had eyes for nothing but the varied beauties of nature which lay spread before us in such luxuriant prodigality. ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... object of their choice to a legal marriage with a person of inferior birth; and, having once made their selection, an act of infidelity is of rare occurrence among them. Their affection and constancy will stand the test of time and of long separation; generous to prodigality, but jealous, and irritable in their jealousy, even to the use of the dagger ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... us, he would have been astounded at the suggestion that he might have been born to be wasted. Other things were wasted, he knew, since those who called Nature an economist had grossly flattered her. Types and races and revolutions were squandered with royal prodigality—but that he himself should be so was clearly unthinkable. Deep down in him there was the obstinate belief that his existence was a vital matter to the awful Power that ruled the universe; and while he worked that May evening at the second ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... afterwards became the tool of the Russian policy, and was rewarded with the first palatinate of the kingdom. He gave a masquerade on the empress's birthday to near three thousand masks; and it was calculated that, besides the other wines, they drank a thousand bottles of champagne." The prodigality of a Polish feast exceeds all comprehension. This prince kept open house on such a scale, that his five-and-twenty cooks were scarcely able to supply his table. The great article of luxury in Poland was Hungary ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... tiny dishes of sweetened rice gruel; this they consume with the same unutterable satisfaction that hungry monkeys display when eating chestnuts, ending the performance by licking the platters. Although the price is nearly a farthing a dish, with wanton prodigality Yung Po orders dishes for the whole company, including ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... tapering fingers, you may know that hand betokens a duplex temperament, where opposite characteristics are constantly struggling for the mastery. The palm may denote strength and industry, but the fingers may overbalance these qualities by their love of ease or generous prodigality. For instance, when you see a hand of this nature, you may know that its owner might give you half his fortune, might even give you his life, and yet would be very likely to keep the household in discomfort for months, for want of one new shingle on ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... it. They live chiefly from without, not from within. Only gradually as they approach maturity do they cut loose from the scaffolding and depend upon their own centre of gravity. Appearances are very strong in school. Money and prodigality have great weight there, notwithstanding the democracy of attainments and abilities. If I live a thousand years, I do not believe I shall ever do a more virtuous deed than I did long ago in staying at home for the sake ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... forcibly on his readers the endless diversity of structures, and the prodigality of resources displayed for gaining the same end, the fertilisation of one flower by pollen from another plant. "The more I study nature," he says, "the more I become impressed with ever-increasing force that the contrivances and beautiful adaptations slowly ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... to him in conjunction with Greene, but on no sufficient evidence—viz., "Lady Alimony," not printed until 1659; "The Laws of Nature," and "The Contention between Liberality and Prodigality," 1602. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... to be near, and who is aware of the plot, is requested to take his place.—Besides appointing Norina heiress of half his wealth, Don Pasquale at once makes her absolute mistress of his fortune. Having succeeded in attaining her aim, Norina throws aside her mask, and by her self-willedness, prodigality and waywardness drives her would-be husband to despair. She squanders his money, visits the theatre on the very day of their marriage ignoring the presence of her husband in such a manner, that he wishes himself in his grave, ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... upon us. And that is all that can be said for excuse of ourselues to the Country, to whom we had giuen our own hopes of no further sessment to be raised, but must now needs incurre the censure of improvidence before or prodigality now, though it becomes no private member, the resolution having passed the House, to interpose further his own judgment in a thing that can not be remedied; and it will be each man's ingenuity not to grudge an after-payment ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... to guard his palace, or took such multiplied precautions of distrust. He seemed to acknowledge himself the enemy of the whole world. But the vices of tyranny had not weakened his ability. He employed his immense wealth without prodigality; his finances were always flourishing; his cities well garrisoned and victualed; his army well paid; all the captains of adventure scattered throughout Italy received pensions from him, and were ready to return to his service ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... of a multitude of beings, who swarmed about us, but of such tenuity that they passed through our substance, and we through theirs, without the slightest disturbance of their continuity. All that we knew of Nature taught us that she was tireless in the prodigality of her creative force, and boundless in the diversity of her workmanship; and we now knew that what the ancients called spirit was simply an ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... against his old habits of extravagance, to introduce a clause into the marriage-contract providing for the separation of property and settling the wife's fortune upon herself. In this way he gave security against any return to his old habits of prodigality. As for himself, it was his affair to obtain such empire over his wife by the power of sentiment that he could recover practically the marital power of which ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... unproductive expenditure, however useful, as a sacrifice. Unproductive expenditure of what was destined to be expended productively, they always characterise as a squandering of resources, and call it profusion and prodigality. The productive expenditure of that which might, without encroaching upon capital, be expended unproductively, is called saving, economy, frugality. Want, misery, and starvation, are described as the lot of a nation which ...
— Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... is avarice, which, as it both deprives a man of all use of his riches, and checks hospitality and every social enjoyment, is justly censured on a double account. PRODIGALITY, the other extreme, is commonly more hurtful to a man himself; and each of these extremes is blamed above the other, according to the temper of the person who censures, and according to his greater or less sensibility to pleasure, ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... wild imagination and his playfulness. He throws over all things a strange and magic coloring. You are startled at the boldness and beauty of his figures and illustrations, which are scattered everywhere with a reckless prodigality;—multitudinous, like the blossoms of early summer,—and as fragrant and beautiful. With a thousand extravagances are mingled ten thousand beauties of thought and expression, which kindle the reader's imagination, ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... interests but my own are involved, I am humbly content to get from place to place by the omnibus. Permit me to give an idea of my devotion to my aunt's interests by recording that, on this occasion, I committed the prodigality ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... illustration of the enormous pains which he took to base any statement on a secure foundation of evidence, and for this the world, till the publication of his letters, could not do him justice. He was a great admirer of Herbert Spencer, whose "prodigality of original thought" astonished him. "But," he says, "the reflection constantly recurred to me that each suggestion, to be of real value to service, would require years of work." (Ibid. II. ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... at the house on the afternoon before Christmas-day, he obtained permission to give a Christmas feast to the six Poor Travellers; how he ordered the materials for the feast to be sent in from his own inn; how, when the feast was set upon the table, "finer beef, a finer turkey, a greater prodigality of sauce and gravy," he never saw; and how "it made my heart rejoice to see the wonderful justice my travellers did to everything set before them." All this and much more, including "a jug of wassail" and the "hot plum-pudding and mince pies," which "a wall-eyed young man ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... respectable of the country, and deservedly enjoyed the highest consideration. M. Olivier de ——, his father, was not rich, and therefore could not do much for his son; the consequence was that owing to his outrageous prodigality the son was sorely pinched for means to keep up his position; he exhausted his credit, and was soon overwhelmed with debt. Among the companions of his dissipation was a young man whose abundant means filled him with admiration and envy; he lived like a prince ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... the best regulated families," and so it chanced that, in the autumn of the same year, our bachelor met at the Springs a charming belle of Baltimore, to whom he lost his heart incontinently. His person and address were attractive, and though his prodigality had impaired his fortune, still a rich old maiden aunt, who doted on him, Miss Persimmon Verjuice, promised to do the handsome thing by him on condition of his marrying and settling quietly to the management of his estate. So, under ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... competition of species, of which we have heard so much of late; and, to give a single instance, the seeming waste, of human thought, of human agony, of human power, seems but another instance of that inscrutable prodigality of nature, by which, of a thousand acorns dropping to the ground, but one shall become the thing it can become, and grow into a builder oak, the rest be craunched up ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... and then warmth, and October had caught all the prismatic colors of the drops of water, and was giving them forth with Southern prodigality. The birds bent over the swaying daisies, and sang soft love-notes into their great, dark eyes, while I looked on in an ecstasy of wonder and delight—the gold of the daisies, the gold of the sunlight, and the glow in my heart, seeming in a way all one—part and parcel of the munificence and cheering ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... that punish it, but never cure it—prodigality and general loose living. The thief is never the richer by this vile act which impoverishes his victim; for the money obtained by this crime is wasted in others. The folly of theft; its ill economy. What high qualities are laid out to their greatest disadvantage by the thief; ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade |
