"Skinflint" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the miller, "that printer is the son of the old skinflint who farms his own land at ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... in a business way. No one has yet had the courage to memorialize his wealth on his tombstone. A dollar mark would not look well there. The best epitaph proclaims simple old Scripture virtues, like honesty and diligence and patience. And you will observe that when the meanest skinflint or the most disgracefully avaricious millionaire dies, his tombstone never refers to his most notorious characteristics. His friends speak not of his scandalous speculations, but of his benevolences. Thus some of the most conscienceless rogues in a generation go down to posterity with expurgated ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... son, eh? I guess I know his pa, a mean old skinflint, if ever there was one. But he dotes on that boy of his, and he'll get him the suit all ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... spite of excellent ingredients; and a fine systematic stinginess may be accompanied with a seasoning that quite spoils its relish. Now, good Mr. Glegg himself was stingy in the most amiable manner; his neighbors called him "near," which always means that the person in question is a lovable skinflint. If you expressed a preference for cheese-parings, Mr. Glegg would remember to save them for you, with a good-natured delight in gratifying your palate, and he was given to pet all animals which required no appreciable keep. There was no humbug or hypocrisy ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... my savin's, an' you're welcome to what you need, Liz. For as sure as you're alive and kickin', if you've got into the 'ands of Skinflint Lockhart, 'e'll sell you up, garding an' all! I know 'im! Ah—I know 'im. So ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... stakes until they win a few francs. A theory that he was a detective in the employ of the Home Office found favor at one time, but Vautrin urged that "Goriot was not sharp enough for one of that sort." There were yet other solutions; Father Goriot was a skinflint, a shark of a money-lender, a man who lived by selling lottery tickets. He was by turns all the most mysterious brood of vice and shame and misery; yet, however vile his life might be, the feeling of repulsion which he aroused in ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... Old Squire. She says—"He do be a real old skinflint, the Old Zquire a be!" But she thinks it—"zim as if 'twas having ne'er a wife nor child for to keep the natur in 'un, so his heart do zim to shrivel, like they walnuts Butler tells us of as a zets down for desart. The Old Zquire he mostly eats ne'er a one ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... eyes stared as they had never stared before. "Dan Brayley, he's a miser'ble ol' skinflint. Thet man couldn't raise decent mellings ef ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... the sheriff as they strode down the street, "and she'd step into the store some time to-day and settle for them. By thunder, you could have knocked me over with a feather, Kenneth. If your stepmother was a man we'd describe her as a skinflint. She's as stingy and unfeeling as they make 'em. Hard as nails and about as kind-hearted as a tombstone. What other woman on this here earth would have gone out to Martin Hawk's last night just for the satisfaction of ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... as her tales were found to be a kind of mosaics composed of droll bits of fact picked up in the neighbourhood, Fortrose soon became considerably too hot for her. She had drawn, under the over-transparent guise of the niggardly Mrs. Flint, the skinflint wife of a "paper minister," who had ruined at one fell blow her best silk dress, and a dozen of good eggs to boot, by putting the eggs in her pocket when going out to a party, and then stumbling over a stone. And, of course, Mrs. Skinflint and the Rev. ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... the road that something had happened. I went down across the field up to the fence. Things were scattered all over the ground, and some of 'em floating down the creek—I could see in the moonlight. 'Serves you right, you old skinflint,' I said to myself. 'But it's none of your business.' So I turned about and went back to the road. Couldn't help feeling kinda glad about it." He paused and drew a deep, painful breath. "I guess it's all just retribution. Shouldn't have enjoyed a man's misfortune. ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... for the nonce, and a right open-handed lord is he. Better be under him than under the shrivelled skinflint of France, who wore his fine robes as though they galled him. Come and take service here when thou art whole ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ain't," Peace acknowledged; "but it's a whole lot. Just s'posing you had to live in a mite of an ugly house without nice things to eat or wear and with no father or mother to take care of you, and a mortgage you couldn't pay, and an old skinflint of a man ready to slam you outdoors and gobble up the farm, furniture and everything, the minute the mortgage was due. ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... of flowers, among which here and there we find a bright rose plucked but yesterday and worn for a day; and on this an old hag is always to be seen crouching—first cousin to Usury, the skinflint bargainer, bald and toothless, and ever ready to sell the contents, so well is she used to sell the covering—the gown without the woman, or the woman without ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... good for nothing. The window had been left open, and the rain had ruined the curtains, and on a dirty piece of paper the burglars had scrawled with a lead pencil the opinion that 'Old Hoskins is the biggest fule, and the gol-darndest skinflint in the country. You set out whiskey next time, or ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Abel Perry turned 'em out of that when the rent got behind. He's the meanest skinflint that ever strained skim milk. He got ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln |
