"Beggary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by the gentler sex of the present day, under the same imbrowning and heating circumstances. Ladies and gentlemen, who came to market, looked on at a larger amount of amateur fighting than could easily be seen in these later times, and beheld more revolting rags, beggary, and rascaldom, than modern householders could well picture to themselves. As the day wore on, the hideous drama of the gaming-house might be seen here by any chance open-air spectator—the quivering eagerness, the blank despair, the sobs, ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... obliged to take all the Care imaginable of the Children of their Slaves for their own great Profit; so that the Negroes, though they work moderately, yet live plentifully, have no Families to provide for, no Danger of Beggary, ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... I were to give you a free hand, you'd bring us to beggary. Aren't you aware of our position? We are going as fast as ever we ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... of mendicants, so wealthy that one day at the Paschal feast, another beggar wishing to rent his profit from him, Vieux par-Chemins refused ten crowns for it; in fact, the same evening he spent fourteen crowns in drinking the health of the alms-givers, because it is the statutes of beggary that one should show one's gratitude to donors. Although he carefully got rid of that of which had been a source of anxiety to others, who, having too much wealth went in search of poverty, he was happier with nothing in the world than when he had his father's money. And seeing what are the conditions ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... two men and Luke may designate the older of the two towns which bore the name of Jericho. All agree, however, in picturing the pitiful condition of the helpless man who because of his blindness was reduced to beggary and was a true symbol of the misery to which one is brought by the lack of ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... that he could take nothing of Roland's savings, having decided on giving up the whole of this money, he agreed; he resigned himself to keeping Marechal's; for if he rejected both he would find himself reduced to beggary. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... preserved between us once, is restored, to know no further interruption. Now, welcome poverty!' cried Mr. Micawber, shedding tears. 'Welcome misery, welcome houselessness, welcome hunger, rags, tempest, and beggary! Mutual confidence will sustain ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... which his first act as a child had arranged for him. Indeed, it might be that if he had gone to the well he would have ended his career on a throne, and that omitting to do it would set him upon a career that would lead to beggary and a pauper's grave. For instance: if at any time—say in boyhood—Columbus had skipped the triflingest little link in the chain of acts projected and made inevitable by his first childish act, it would ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... wife's penetration, until I could make arrangements prior to my leaving the country, for to this I had already made up my mind. In a foreign climate, being unknown, I might, with some probability of success, endeavor to conceal my unhappy calamity—a calamity calculated, even more than beggary, to estrange the affections of the multitude, and to draw down upon the wretch the well-merited indignation of the virtuous and the happy. I was not long in hesitation. Being naturally quick, I committed to memory the entire tragedy of "Metamora." I had the good fortune to recollect that in ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the church there is still a large double coffin, in which, according to tradition, lies a chain of gold of incalculable value. Some twenty years ago, the owner of Mellenthin, whose unequalled extravagance had reduced him to the verge of beggary, attempted to open the coffin in order to take out this precious relic, but he was not able. It appeared as if some powerful spell held it firmly together; and it has remained unopened down to the present time. May it remain ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... we had several, but they all died before their mother. We had been reduced to beggary by misfortunes, and I had become too weak and ill to work. I buried my poor wife's bones by the side of the road where she died; raised the little shrine over them, planted the trees, and there have I sat ever since by her side, with our poor boy in my bosom. It is ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... "Beggary and rags," repeated the tailor. "Aye, aye; 'tis all very fine strolling about after the sheep with your hands in your pockets in summer weather, but you'll sing another song in winter time, and be sorry you did not know when you had ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... seen at Eastbourne a great number of venerable and amiable French clergy suffering all the evils of banishment and beggary with silent resignation, has for some time had in meditation a plan for procuring some addition to the small allowance the committee at Freemasons' hall is able to allow, from the residue of the subscriptions ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... in this dreadful exigency, were certainly liberal; and all was done by charity that private charity could do; but it was a people in beggary; it was a nation which stretched out its hands for food. For months together these creatures of sufferance, whose very excess and luxury in their most plenteous days had fallen short of the allowance ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... live happily enough, or tolerably. But that a victorious people should give up themselves again to the vanquished was never yet heard of, seems rather void of all reason and good policy, and will in all probability subject the subduers to the subdued,—will expose to revenge, to beggary, to ruin and perpetual bondage, the victors, under the vanquished: than which what can ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... newspapers, magazines, and publishers, Etienne knew not of what ink he could churn gold. Gambling-houses, so ruthlessly suppressed, could no longer, as of old, cash I O U's drawn over the green table by beggary in despair. In short, the journalist was reduced to such extremity that he had just borrowed a hundred francs of the poorest of his friends, Bixiou, from whom he had never yet asked for a franc. What distressed Lousteau was not ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... when made, wou'd do our Business much better. 'Tis a Misfortune for Ireland, that our Spendthrifts so often run out their Lives and their Estates together, and so their Examples are lost on us; for I ever thought it a Pity, they shou'd not live forty or fifty Years in beggary, their own Lives are such a Torment to them, and they become thereby such fine Scare-crows, to our young unthinking Squanderers, when they see them all the while, standing as it were in a kind of Pillory. Nothing keeps the Dutch so frugal as their Loads of high Taxes, for some good Author, ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... encountering further mishap, but gained no thanks for his heroism. He was compelled to give up a small estate that he had purchased with the remains of his property, the purchase-money proving insufficient, and he must have been consigned to beggary, had not Hofer's son, who had received a fine estate from the emperor, engaged ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... it would be all struggle,—every season it would be worse. It would become awful. Unmarried women over thirty-five would speak of her as though they had been in the nursery together. Married girls with a child or so would treat her as though she were a maiden aunt. She knew what was before her. Beggary stared them both in the face if she did not make the most of her looks and waste no time. And Joan knew it was all true, and that worse, far worse things were true also. She would be obliged to spend a long life with her mother in cheap lodgings, a faded, penniless, unmarried woman, ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... carried off an airy phantom in her likeness, for which the Greeks and Trojans fought for ten long years. By this contrivance the virtue of the heroine is saved, and Menelaus, (to make good the ridicule of Aristophanes on the beggary of Euripides' heroes,) appears in rags as a beggar, and in nowise dissatisfied with his condition. But this manner of improving mythology bears a resemblance to the Tales of the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... will not take the trouble to find their own food, but borrow or steal it from the more industrious. So deep-rooted is this tendency in Nature, that plants may become parasitic—it is an acquired habit—as well as animals; and both are found in every state of beggary, some doing a little for themselves, while others, more abject, refuse even to ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... calm, though a little confused. A little confusion is excusable when a man passes from wealth to beggary. He thought he would make his last toilet with especial care. Parbleu! The French nobility goes into battle in court costume! He was ready in less than an hour. He put on his bejewelled watch-chain; then he put a pair of little pistols, of the ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... are of a surprising neatness and magnificence, filled with an incredible quantity of fine merchandise, and so much cheaper than what we see in England, I have much ado to persuade myself I am still so near it. Here is neither dirt nor beggary to be seen. One is not shocked with those loathsome cripples, so common in London, nor teased with the importunities of idle fellows and wenches, that choose to be nasty and lazy. The common servants and the little shopwomen here are more nicely clean than most of ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... he was placed; showing that his and their destruction was inevitable should they continue any longer in the territory of the pasha, who would not fail to seize this opportunity of levying fines and exactions, and reducing them to want and beggary. They were assembled in the men's tent, to the number of ten persons; the place of honour, the corner, being given to my father's uncle, the elder of the tribe, an old man, whose beard, as white as snow, descended ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... him were to present their claims on a certain day. On the previous night he and his train noiselessly took their departure. The heavy debts remained unpaid, and many opulent families were reduced to beggary. Such was the result of the confidence of the people of Amsterdam in the honour ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... ruin and beggary for us both," said Mr. Darrell, "if I were to allow a single stranger, young or old, of even ordinary intelligence, to visit this place. From the time you are eighteen years of age you shall have plenty of friends of your own choosing; but until that ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... thinking do? You must do something. Oh! Margaret, after all that you said to him when he lay there dying!" and the woman, with some approach to true pathos, put her hand on the spot where her husband's head had rested. "Don't let his children come to beggary because men like that choose to rob the widow and ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... Commander of the Faithful, Omar ben Abdulaziz, who was then Khalif, and saw before him twelve dirhems, which he bade take to the treasury. So I said to him, "O Commander of the Faithful, thou impoverishest thy children and reducest them to beggary, leaving nothing for them. Thou wouldst do well to appoint somewhat by will to them and to those who are poor of the people of thy house." "Draw near to me," answered he. So I drew near to him and he said, "As for thy saying, 'Thou beggarest thy ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... them to lust and idleness. These be they that when they have drawn men's wives to such incontinency, spend away their husbands' goods, make the women to run away from their husbands, bringing both man, wife, and children to idleness, theft, and beggary. Yea, who is able to number the great broad bottomless ocean sea full of evils that this mischievous generation may bring ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... which before seemed like weeks, were now turned to minutes: scarcely had I swallowed my breakfast before I was in my justice-room; and before I had mittimused half a dozen paupers for beggary, I was called away to luncheon; this barely over, in comes a deputation or a dispatch, and so on till dinner, which was barely ended before supper was announced. We all became enchanted with the Mansion House; my girls grew graceful by the confidence their high station ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... no hope or escape; that the misery is merited, deserved, fairly earned (for that is the true meaning of those words), and therefore must come. Conceive him seeing around him estates destroyed, farms burnt, ladies and gentlemen, his own friends and relations, reduced in an hour to beggary, plundered, stript, driven off in gangs—I do not choose to finish the picture: but ask yourselves, would an honourable man wish to bring sons—much more daughters—into ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... Jayl, and abundance of Crimes; but when Matters were examin'd and things came to the Test, they could never prove the least thing upon him.——- In this manner however they continually worryed the poor Man, till they ruin'd his Family and reduc'd him to Beggary; and tho' he came out of the Prison they cast him into by the meer force of Innocence, yet they never left persuing him with all sorts of violence.——— At last they made use of their Brother of the Girdle ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... distinctness, "If any will not work, neither let him eat;" and, "If any man have not care of his own, and especially of those of his house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel." These opposite injunctions are summed up in the wise man's prayer, who says, "Give me neither beggary nor riches, give me only the necessaries of life." With this most precise view of a Christian's duty, viz., to labour indeed, but to labour for a competency for himself and his, and to be jealous of wealth, whether personal or ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... banker answered bitterly; "and I swear they shall never see my face again, living or dying. Not one dollar from my purse shall they ever receive, even though want and beggary come upon them. Think not I can ever change, Judge Le Grande. As my people and my people's God, the Eternal Father, are unchangeable, so is my purpose concerning these disobedient children. Good morning." Mr. Mordecai then turned slowly from the office, and as the judge beheld the receding form, ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... know," she said in a doubtful tone. Something of old Nelson's dread of the authorities had rubbed off on the girl since she had to live with it day after day. "I don't know. Papa's afraid of being reduced to beggary, as he says, in his old days. Look here, kid, you had better clear out to-morrow, ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... that his soldiers had deserted him, and fearing Sulla's unforgiving temper, committed suicide in the camp. Sulla now levied a contribution on Asia to the amount of twenty thousand talents: and he reduced individuals to beggary by the violence and exactions which he permitted to the soldiers who were quartered in their houses. He issued an order that the master of a house should daily supply the soldier who was quartered on him with four tetradrachmae, and with dinner for himself and as many of his friends ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... of a stain," said Hilda, calmly. "As to Lord Chetwynde, he, at least, has nothing to say. To him General Pomeroy was such a friend as he could never have hoped for. He saved Lord Chetwynde from beggary and ruin. When General Pomeroy first came back to England he found Lord Chetwynde at the last extremity, and advanced sixty thousand pounds to help him. Think of that! And it's true. I was informed of it on good authority. Besides, ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... is the best music-master in Cairo. Que faire? it's not catching, as Lady Morley said, and I won't present you with a young mulatto any more than with a young brave Belge. I may however find someone at Beyrout. Cairo is in such a state of beggary that all educated young men have fled. Maurice has no sort of idea why a nigger should not be as good as anyone else, but thinks ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... hand. We will send him the sons whom our wives have nursed; Were death to follow, mine own the first. Better by far that they there should die Than be driven all from our land to fly, Flung to dishonor and beggary." ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... the great doubt was, how to act with regard to Sophia. The thoughts of leaving her almost rent his heart asunder; but the consideration of reducing her to ruin and beggary still racked him, if possible, more; and if the violent desire of possessing her person could have induced him to listen one moment to this alternative, still he was by no means certain of her resolution to indulge ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... provincial towns, the bold adventurer of every denomination; has stamped his character with experience and example; and, while it has bestowed on some coronets and mitres—on some the lasting fame of genius—to others has dealt beggary, infamy, and ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... had been governors in various provinces, Haman had twenty others, ten of whom died, and the other ten of whom were reduced to beggary. (187) The vast fortune of which Haman died possessed was divided in three parts. The first part was given to Mordecai and Esther, the second to the students of the Torah, and the third was applied to the restoration of the Temple. (188) Mordecai thus became a wealthy man. ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... opinion, the miseries of the poor in New York were not owing to the rich, but mainly to themselves; that there was ordinarily remunerative labor enough for them; and that, but in exceptional cases of sickness and especial misfortune, those who fell into utter destitution and beggary came to that pass through their idleness, their recklessness, or their vices. That was always my opinion. They besieged our door from morning till night, and I was obliged to help them, to look after them, to go to their ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... Harold Hervey had not been given to the newspapers, for an excellent reason. If Hervey's financial enemies knew of his kidnaping and death they would hammer away at his stocks until they fell to nothing and his family, accustomed to fabulous wealth, would have been reduced to beggary. ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... we are again. And there—good God!—to see the arrogance of ignorance! To listen to the vapid joke of his worship on the crime of beggary! To see the punishment of the poor—to mark the sweet impunity of the rich! And then are we not in the Old Bailey—in all the criminal courts! Have we not seen trials after dinner—have we not heard sentences in which the bottle ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... who had formerly declared that their purpose was "to protect the skilled trades of America from being reduced to beggary," evinced no desire to be pressed into the service of lifting up the unskilled and voted down with practical unanimity the proposal. Thereupon the Order declared open war by commanding all its members who were also members of the cigar makers' union to withdraw from the latter ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... from Congress," he said. "It is no place for me in times so insubstantial. There is darkness and beggary ahead for all your Southern race. There is a crisis coming which will be followed by desolation. The generation to which your parents belong is doomed! I open my arms to you, dear girl, and offer you a home never yet gladdened by a wife. Accept it, and leave Washington with me and with your ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... country once fairly opened, the people on the coast would double or triple their present incomes, and Zanzibar would soon swell into a place of real importance. All hands would then be employed, and luxury would take the place of beggary. ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... ended, not quite in nothing, but in less, if we might say so. Considerably less, for some of us. We shall have to look what end it had, and Mauduit will look!—Most people, Pitt probably among the others, came to think that Choiseul, though his France is in beggary, had no real view from the first, except to throw powder in the eyes of France and mankind, to ascertain for himself on what terms those English would make Peace, and to get Spain drawn into his quarrel. A Choiseul with many arts. But we will ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... matters. One was the stir that Clement had made about the school-boys' festival, ending in the fine being imposed; the other, the discovery that the graceful, well- endowed young esquire was the child who had been left to probable beggary with a ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... commons; they made the poor idle and trained them for the gallows or beggary, and there were fewest poor where there were fewest commons,[332] as in Kent—a statement re-echoed by many observant writers; he also recommends enclosures, because they gave warmth and consequent fertility to the soil. He tells us that an effort had been made by James I to encourage the ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... rendered when the day was already won, and that the pathetic stories of the poet starving and dying in want are contradicted by the best authority—Charles Longueville, son of the poet's friend—who asserted that Butler, though often disappointed, was never reduced to anything like want or beggary and did not die in any person's debt. But the most significant notes on the subject are Aubrey's,[1] that "he might have had preferments at first, but would not accept any but very good, so at last he had none at all, and died in want"; and the memorandum of the same author, that "satirical ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... poor woman one day met Jack with tears in her eyes; her distress was great, and for the first time in her life she could not help reproaching him, saying, "Oh! you wicked child, by your ungrateful course of life you have at last brought me to beggary and ruin. Cruel, cruel boy! I have not money enough to purchase even a bit of bread for another day—nothing now remains to sell but my poor cow! I am sorry to part with her; it grieves me sadly, but we must ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... bitter taste in her mouth, and, ere she had folded the last strips of lace, she turned her back to the work-table and pressed both hands upon her bosom, while from the inmost depths of her tortured soul came the cry: "I will never bear it! In one way or another I will put an end to this life of beggary." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... know, I am a poor man. How I came to be reduced to a position little better than beggary is not known by any of you, for I have studiously avoided airing my troubles to any one. To-day I intend to tell the story. It will cast some light on the subject that we will be called ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... is quite true. There is no doubt of that. But as I was saying,—then he fell to talking about the books, and I was angered. I was very sore in my heart. From the moment in which the words of beggary had passed from my lips, I had repented. And he had laughed and had taken it gaily. I turned upon him and told him that I had changed my mind. I was grateful, but I would not have his money. And so I prepared to go. But he argued with me, and would not let me go,—telling me of my wife ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... as I trust the stars; Nor cruel loss, nor scoff, nor pride, Nor beggary, nor dungeon bars, Can move you ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... the case of many a younger brother of a great family, who had rather see their children starve like gentlemen, than thrive in a trade or profession that is beneath their quality. This humour fills several parts of Europe with pride and beggary. It is the happiness of a trading nation, like ours, that the younger sons, though uncapable of any liberal art or profession, may be placed in such a way of life, as may perhaps enable them to vie with the best of their family: Accordingly we find ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... alms-takers and beggars is that the former class deem it beneath them to ask, but have no objection to take alms, while the latter class both ask and take. Among the latter, beside the blind and helpless, many able-bodied men make beggary their profession. On one occasion, in the neighbourhood of Benares, I met a man in the prime of life who said he had just returned from a long journey. On referring to his business he frankly said that he had never had any other occupation than that of a beggar. This was his hereditary ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... distress, difficulties, wolf at the door. bad circumstances, poor circumstances, need circumstances, embarrassed circumstances, reduced circumstances, straightened circumstances; slender means, narrow means; straits; hand to mouth existence, res angusta domi[obs3][Lat], low water, impecuniosity. beggary; mendicancy, mendicity[obs3]; broken fortune, loss of fortune; insolvency &c. (nonpayment) 808. empty pocket, empty purse; light purse; beggarly account of empty boxes. [poor people] poor man, pauper, mendicant, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... deep schemes of other men, more feasible than his own perhaps, and certainly more honest. Allcraft winced, as every syllable made known the speaker's actual strength—his own dependence and utter weakness. He made no reply to the attack of the man whom he had drawn from beggary; but he looked him in the face steadily and reproachfully, and shamed him into ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... first meal for twenty-four hours. Strother, don't be an artist. It means beggary. Your life depends upon people who know nothing of your art and care nothing for you. A house dog lives better, and the very sensitiveness that stimulates an artist to work ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... and no indefeasible title whatever in any of his personal estate. As a consequence, a husband may strip his wife, by mere voluntary disposition to strangers, of all claim on his estate after his death, and thus add beggary to widowhood. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... the shabbiness of his clothes would be a greater bar to indoor than to outdoor work, and applied therefore at every farm they came to. But he did not look so able as he was, and boys were not much wanted. He never pitied himself, and never entreated: to beg for work was beggary, and to beggary he would not descend until driven by approaching death. But now and then some tender-hearted woman, oftener one of ripe years, struck with his look—its endurance, perhaps, or its weariness mingled with hope—would perceive the necessity ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... them nothing till some years before their death. In the meanwhile, the Jackson family also, what with wild sons, an indulgent mother and the impending emancipation of the slaves, was moving nearer and nearer to beggary; and thus of two doomed and declining houses, the subject of this memoir was born, heir to an estate and to no money, yet with inherited qualities that were to ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... courage, Dying, to trust thee with my lands. If not, The best wit, I can hear of, carries them. For since so many in my time and knowledge, Rich children of the city, have concluded For lack of wit in beggary, I'd rather Make a wise stranger my executor, Than a fool son my heir, and have my lands call'd After my wit than name: and that's ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... wretches does my present acquaintance with infamy and wickedness enable me to number among the heroes of debauchery. Reptiles whom their own servants would have despised, had they not been their servants, and with whom beggary would have disdained intercourse, had she not been allured by hopes of relief. Many of the beings which are now rioting in taverns, or shivering in the streets, have been corrupted, not by arts of gallantry which ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... window in front, through which shone a ray from the lantern. The wheels were warped. The lining, the floor, and the axletrees seemed worn out with fatigue. Altogether, it presented an indescribable appearance of beggary and prostration. The shafts, stuck up, looked like two arms raised to heaven. The whole thing was in a state of dislocation. Beneath it ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... queen was omitted. Mr. Hume desired to know whether any provision was to be made for her as queen? As Princess of Wales, her former allowance had of course ceased on the death of the late king: was she, as Queen of Great Britain, to be left to wander in beggary through foreign lands? or would parliament make a suitable provision for the maintenance of her dignified station? Lord Castle-reagh endeavoured to evade this subject, and to elude an acknowledgment of the queen's title, by stating that the "exalted personage" should ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... found brandy their most attractive commodity in dealing with the thirsty savage; and Pere Lalement gives a sad picture of the misery entailed. "They have brought themselves to nakedness," he writes, "and their families to beggary. They have even gone so far as to sell their children to procure the means of satisfying their raging passion. I cannot describe the evils caused by these disorders to the infant Church. My ink is not black enough to paint them in proper colours. It would require the ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... spite of impediments; in the same way as cultivation by slave labor, notwithstanding its expensiveness and inordinate waste, enables the first planter on a virgin soil, and with an open market for his produce, to roll in his carriage, though beggary is to be the fate of the second or ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... walked with him into St. James's Park (where I had not been a great while), and there found great and very noble alterations. And, in our discourse, he was very forward to complain and to speak loud of the lewdness and beggary of the Court, which I am sorry to hear, and which I am afeard will bring all to ruin again. So he and I to the Wardrobe to dinner, and after dinner Captain Ferrers and I to the Opera, and saw "The Witts" ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... the mechanic that the man in the landau has been the ruin of thousands, and you mention people whom he himself knows, people in various grades of life, widows and orphans amongst them, whose little all he has dissipated, and whom he has reduced to beggary by inducing them to become sharers in his delusive schemes. But the mechanic says: 'Well the more fools they to let themselves be robbed. But I don't call that kind of thing robbery, I merely call it out-witting; ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... about a dozen times before the day was over; but he forgot the next day, and the next, and the next, to have the button sewed on. He was content to make shift, as he called it, with the pin. This is precisely the species of content which leads to beggary. ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... the agitation and misery which enfeebled the hand that wrote it, was folded, and directed, and again the writer left his garret lodging on the errand of beggary; he descended the narrow stairway, slowly dragged his steps through the lane, and sought the dwelling of ...
— The Lumley Autograph • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... similarity, though it may not be an imitation; and is given as an example of that art in composition which can ornament the humblest conception, like the graceful vest thrown over naked and sordid beggary. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Hegio, I beseech you, don't let my wealth make your demands too exorbitant: for my father, even though I am his only son, might feel that it was better for me to remain your slave, well fed and clothed at your expense, than to come to beggary there at home where it ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... chapter of Luke. He is talking about the dishonest overseer of a wealthy man's estate. His dishonest practices have been discovered, and he is required to make a final settlement preliminary to his being discharged. He has evidently been living extravagantly, for the loss of position threatens him with beggary. Distressed to know what to do he hits upon a farther extension of his dishonest practices, and uses the position he is about to lose to buy up friends for his coming days ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... shepherd's life, O mistress, did you but live awhile in their content, you would say the court were rather a place of sorrow than of solace. Here, mistress, shall not fortune thwart you, but in mean misfortunes, as the loss of a few sheep, which, as it breeds no beggary, so it can be no extreme prejudice: the next year may mend all with a fresh increase. Envy stirs not us, we covet not to climb, our desires mount not above our degrees, nor our thoughts above our fortunes. Care cannot harbor in our cottages, ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... no further search should be made if I remained concealed; but that if I appeared either in England or Scotland, I should be secured. But this was not sufficient for me, unless I could submit to see my son exposed to beggary. My lord sent for me up to town in such haste, that I had not time to settle anything before I left Scotland. I had in my hand all the family papers, and I dared trust them to nobody: my house might have been searched ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... many occasions to remonstrate with you on your indiscriminate charities, your encouragement of beggary and vice. The wretch who went out last is breathing threats of personal violence against you, because he has been put off with a five-cent piece ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... proportionate to their poverty. The order of precedence seemed here inverted; those who were undermost all the day, enjoyed a temporary eminence and became masters of the ceremonies. It was they who called for the music, indulging every noisy freedom, and testifying all the insolence of beggary in exaltation." ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... neighbors saw this general renovation, of the estate, which could not have been accomplished without considerable expenditure of time, money, and labor, they shook their heads in strong disapprobation, and predicted that that woman's extravagance would bring Herman Brudenell to beggary yet. ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... seeing any relation of cause and effect between the coaches, palaces, and bowls of punch, and the "knot of deputy sheriffs," as a Fenian is from discerning any connection between the Irish rackrenting of the last century, and the Irish beggary of this. Like conditions produce like characters. How interesting to discover in this republican, this native Virginian of English stock, a perfect and splendid specimen of a species of tory supposed to exist only in such countries as Poland, Spain, Ireland, and the Highlands of ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... leviathans across thousands of miles of ocean. May not the enormous mass of waste labor that has accumulated in our cities and rural districts be fitly compared to the former waste of steam. The best that we have been able to do for it so far has been to provide for it the safety valves of beggary, destitution, famine, pestilence, crime, ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... houses of our unsuspecting inhabitants as a friend, and taken the food from their tables, and the clothing from their beds, and the fuel from their fire, and turned their lands over to others, and drove them from their dwellings to subsist on beggary and crime, or drag out a miserable existence in penitentiaries and almshouses. Two-thirds, or 150,000 of the wretched tenants of these abodes of poverty in the United States, were reduced by intemperance. So themselves confess. It was rum, brandy, and whiskey, that ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... of men who have something to do and to enjoy, and not with the listless, desponding, heart-sick look which marks the inhabitants of the other States of Italy. Here, too, you miss that universal beggary and vagabondism that disfigure and pollute all the other countries of the Peninsula. What rich loam the ploughman turns up! What magnificent vines shade its plains! Public works are in progress, railways have been formed, ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... those less endowed with bodily strength or mental power. For, by the same discrimination by which the father profited, the son, for whom he would give his life, being perchance weaker than others, might be reduced to crusts and beggary. How men dared leave children behind them, I have never ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... this fine country has groaned and bled under the malignant genius of Turkish despotism. The fields are left without cultivation, and the towns and villages are reduced to beggary; but the latest accounts from the holy Land encourage us to entertain the hope, that a milder administration will soon change the aspect of affairs, and bestow upon the Syrian provinces at large some of the benefits which the more liberal policy of Mohammed ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... and full of wretchedness, And fear'st to die? Famine is in thy cheeks, Need and oppression starveth in thy eyes, Content and beggary hang upon thy back; The world is not thy friend, nor ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... was outrageous. There was no money to be got from him, and I had no other course. Your bankruptcy would have meant your downfall. That dressmaker woman was inexorable. You would have been sued by your stock-broker, and—who knows what wretchedness was awaiting us?—perhaps absolute beggary in obscure lodgings, and our daily bread purchased with money begged from our friends. You know what father is: you know how he hates both you and me, how he would rub salt into our wounds, and gloat over our humiliation. If—if Dick ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... complied with, and the money paid at once into his hands. He could no longer withhold his consent; nor could he refuse some admiration of this proof of a father's love for his child. The Lord Somerset had, in fact, sold his whole possessions, and reduced himself to an estate not far removed from beggary, to give his daughter ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... incredible. Let him who complains of the fickle humors and inconstancy of a free people, read Pliny's character of Domitian. If the great man in a Republic cannot win office without descending to low arts and whining beggary and the judicious use of sneaking lies, let him remain in retirement, and use the pen. Tacitus and Juvenal held no office. Let History and Satire punish the pretender as they crucify the despot. The revenges of the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... accepting Secession with an enthusiasm (or rather self-exaltation) and confidence astounding to witness. There would be no collision; the North could not and dared not push it to the extreme issue; she must endure the punishment due to her 'fanaticism' in inevitable bankruptcy and beggary, while the South, the seat of 'a great, free, and prosperous people, whose renown must spread throughout the civilized world, and pass down to the remotest ages' (I quote from the ordinance of Secession), had infinite possibilities before it. Jack Cade's commonwealth, Panurge's ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... everything to lose by the downfall of the empire. Their personal interest in its prolongation was clear. With them it was a matter, if not of life and death, at least of comparative dignity and prosperity at home, or of exile and beggary abroad. ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... as real as Richard Savage, with whom he is contemporary, and it must be admitted that he is a more presentable personage. What a jolly philosophy is his about the delights of beggary! It has all the humor of Rabelais with no touch of the Touraine grossness. It has something of the wisdom of Aurelius, only clad in homespun instead of the purple. The philosophy of contentment was never ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... treaty have been greatly and deservedly blamed, inasmuch as, while they stipulated that the proprietors of the neighbouring counties should retain their estates, they abandoned those possessing property throughout the rest of Ireland to ruin and beggary. There was no excuse for this. They knew that the French fleet had sailed, and must have arrived in a few days, and that the English cause was becoming so desperate that Ginckle would not have resisted any terms they had laid down. This cruel and wholly ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... into eternity so near their own homes, under such aggravated circumstances. And then what a terrible disappointment to survivors! Many families as well as individuals were by this calamity not only bereft of friends, but of their property—some reduced to a state of comparative beggary. ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... Ralph being again alone in the world, as it were, entered into all the wild dissipations of Vienna and Paris, which ended in his ruin; and he returned to England with only a five pound note between him and beggary. As the cousin and only male relative of Sir Jasper Coleman, he was heir to the Baronetcy but not to the property. This was unentailed, and at the will of the Baronet; but should he die intestate the whole would fall ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... blood of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters. A gigantic system of robbery had seized upon houses and lands and every species of property and had turned thousands of the opulent out into destitution, beggary, and death. Pollution had been legalized by the voice of God-defying lust, and France, la belle France , had been converted into a disgusting warehouse of infamy. Law, with suicidal hand, had destroyed ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... Pole, if ye're going to talk of beggary!" Mrs. Chump threw up her hands. "My lady, I naver could abide the name of 't. I'm a kind heart, ye know, but I can't bear a ragged friend. I hate 'm! He seems to give ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... may go, and small loss." This was a most unjustifiable proceeding, but I was hardly in a position to take up a high moral attitude toward the chairman, and in the result I saw myself confronted with the certainty of beggary and the probability of jail. But for this untoward reverse of fortune I might have taken courage and made a clean breast of my misdoings, relying on the chairman's obligations to my father to pull me through. But now, where was I? I was, as Donna ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... us on the national progress we have made, as evidenced in the existence here of a starving population! One hardly knows whether to fret or to smile over so provoking a specimen of congratulation. Certainly, if a nation cannot grow old without bringing the producing classes to beggary, the best thing that could happen to it would be to die young, like men loved of the gods, according to the ancient idea. Whether such is the inevitable course of national life or not, we are confident that what took place a few months ago in New York had nothing to do with Agrarianism in reality,—using ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... extraordinary method of reducing oneself to beggary is gambling! The man who has but little money in the world, and knows not how to procure more without risking his life and character, must needs put it in the power of fortune to take away what he has. Put the case in the opposite light, it is just as absurd: the man who has money to spare, must ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various
... he was reduced to poverty, or rather to actual beggary; for shortly before his death, when fourscore years old, he was permitted, by royal letters patent, to become a mendicant. This curious document is printed in Mr. Bolton Corney's Curiosities of Literature Illustrated, and sets ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... worsted in the encounter with this arch-swindler. He would sail for San Francisco on the Columbus. Perhaps he would make his fortune there, while Joe, whom he had so swindled, might, within three days, be reduced to beggary. ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... prompted by envy of Augustine, who was marrying an artist and a man of rank; adding, with a sort of dismay, that if the Guillaumes were ambitious, there was an end to the business. An old fan-maker having remarked that such a prodigal would soon bring his wife to beggary, father Guillaume prided himself in petto for his prudence in the matter of marriage settlements. In the evening, after a splendid ball, followed by one of those substantial suppers of which the memory is dying out in the present generation, Monsieur and Madame Guillaume remained ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... the Burgomaster Wengelin had risen from his knees, and raising his head proudly, had cried out: "Give us back that of which you have robbed us, and we can pay you ten times the sum you ask. We were a peaceful and prosperous community until your plundering hordes reduced us to beggary. Be content with the booty you have already; and be not twice a barbarian, first stealing our property, and then, like a fiend, requiring us to reproduce and lay it ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... were laws which made provision for the poor, but they suffered them to fall into neglect. Beggary ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... Later, individual monks came running round the shrines, beating a gong as though to call the attention of the deity, and shouting a few words of perfunctory praise or prayer. Irreverence more complete I have not seen even in Italy, nor beggary more shameless. Such is the latter end of the gospel of Buddha in China. It seems better that he should sit deserted in his Indian caves than be dishonoured by ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... power to do much for their assistance, since my situation was not what it would have been if my dear husband had lived to become Marquis de Nidemerle. And we were neither of us young enough to think that even the most constant love could make it fit to drag Millicent into beggary. Yet still I could see that Eustace did not give up hope. The more I began to despond, the more cheerful he became. Was not the King in Scotland, and when he entered England as he would certainly do next summer, would not all good Cavaliers—yes, and all the Parliament ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it will be my poison)," mixing a fourth glass, "if I need any sermons on the subject. Hark ye,—I am perfectly convinced that the habit I am chained to will be the destruction of health, of reputation, of my slender means,—will reduce to beggary and starvation my wife and children,—and yet," drinking again, "I know I ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... I made to escape beggary was in the end frustrated by Chong Mong-ju. In Songdo I became a fuel-carrier, and the Lady Om and I shared a hut that was vastly more comfortable than the open road in bitter winter weather. But Chong Mong-ju found me out, and ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... drank, and filled their bags, and pocketed the little money that was given them, and went forth on their devious ways, showering blessings innumerable on the mansion and its lord, and on the souls of his deceased forefathers, who had always been just such simpletons as to be compassionate to beggary. But, in spite of their favorable prayers, by which Italian philanthropists set great store, a cloud seemed to hang over these once Arcadian precincts, and to be darkest around the summit of the tower where Donatello was wont to ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ell, the rain was falling on the grandmother's bed and the little children's cradles. The roof and walls were repaired; we supplied the materials and paid the workmen; but no more money for gaudy aprons. In another case, an old woman had been reduced to beggary because she had listened too well to her heart, and given all she had to her children, who had turned her out of doors, or made her life so unbearable that she preferred to be a tramp. We took up the old woman's cause, and ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... a beggary to the gods? Do they not see all men always begging of them and asking alms with incense, and bells, and ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... he knew no quicker mode of learning a lesson than that of being struck on the head by it; and yet he was himself surprised at his own slowness to understand what had struck him. For several years a sufferer from insomnia, his first thought was of beggary of nerves, and he made ready to face a sleepless night, but although his mind tried to wrestle with the problem how any man could be ruined who had, months before, paid off every dollar of debt he knew himself to owe, he gave up that ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... Employes;' and, indeed, in one way or other, as subordinate character or as heroine, this figure of a graceful feminine victim comes into nearly every novel. Virtuous heroes fare little better. Poor Colonel Chabert is disowned and driven to beggary by the wife who has committed bigamy; the luckless cure, Birotteau, is cheated out of his prospects and doomed to a broken heart by the successful villainy of a rival priest and his accomplices; the Comte de Manerville is ruined and transported ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... short commons they live, how sparing and niggardly and miserable they are; and another while you may observe the same men as distrustful and covetous withal, as if the plenty of the city and county, the riches of king and kingdom were not sufficient to preserve them from want and beggary. ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... fellow-partakers of the same nature fear the same God, have the same benevolence of heart, the same nobleness of soul, the same detestation at everything dishonest, and the same scorn at everything unworthy—if they are not in the dependence of absolute beggary, in the name of common sense, are they not equals? And if the bias, the instinctive bias of their souls run the same way, why may they not ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... farther back than I do), let the French royalists and emigrants recollect the confiscation of property and barbarity exercised by Marshall Richelieu in Hanover, where many families were reduced to beggary. They may not chuse to recollect this; but the Hanoverians do and they have not forgotten the Pavillon de Hanovre, so called by the wits of the time from its having been built by the Marshall with money arising from the spoils of Hanover; will they recollect ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... things after all would be merely a jest. If he has a spite against any one, he can pluck his heart out of his body with a look, just as easily as his money out of his pocket. The enemy he sets eye on will waste away and die miserably, or will sink into beggary, while he himself becomes as rich ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... the point where his emotions were mastered by his will. But Val had seen Ricky enjoy full tantrums, and the last occasion was not so long ago that the scene had become misty in his memory. Generous to the point of self-beggary, loyal to a fault, and incurably romantic, that was a ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... one else, men of noble birth, and perhaps still more richly endowed with virtues, were stripped of their patrimony and driven into exile, where they were exhausted with misery, perhaps being even reduced to subsist by beggary. Nor was any limit put to the cruelties which were inflicted till both the prince and those about him were ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... the whole of his time in throwing the dice. He continued to gamble until he had not only lost a princely fortune, but had incurred a large amount of debt among his tradesmen. With the loss of his money, and the utter beggary which stared him in the face, the unfortunate victim of play lost all relish for life; and sought in death the only refuge he could fancy from the infamy and misery which he had brought upon himself. ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... and still wandering, the day wore away, till he found himself in one of the lanes that surround that glittering Microcosm of the vices, the frivolities, the hollow show, and the real beggary of the gay City—the gardens and the galleries of the Palais Royal. Surprised at the lateness of the hour, it was then on the stroke of seven, he was about to return homewards, when the loud voice of Gawtrey sounded behind, ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
