"Impoverish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the Chinese at home to make offerings to beggar spirits as well as to their own relatives. If any great misfortune happens to a man, he thinks he must have neglected or offended some dead relative, or perhaps one of these beggar spirits; and will impoverish himself for years, to atone for it by a great feast. They are very much afraid of the spirits, and build their houses with intricate passages, and put up screens, to keep them from seeing what happens; and they especially avoid openings north and south, as they think the spirits move only ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... teaching, the property-owners as a class are useless idlers who impoverish the workers and who shamelessly spend their whole income on demoralising luxuries. "The idlers and non-workers produce no wealth and take the greater share. They live on the labour of those who work. Nothing is produced by idleness; ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... religion under the head of play, and by that epithet condemning them, as a certain school seems to do, to gradual extinction as the race approaches maturity. But if all the useless ornaments of our life are to be cut off in the process of adaptation, evolution would impoverish instead of enriching our nature. Perhaps that is the tendency of evolution, and our barbarous ancestors amid their toils and wars, with their flaming passions and mythologies, lived better lives than are reserved ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... us is that, in our efforts to sell ourselves for selfish ends or for the most dollars, we impoverish our own lives, stifle ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... not now quite know what to do. He certainly did not wish to impoverish the Church by marrying Miss Mackenzie without any fortune. But might it not all be a trick? That she had been rich he knew, and how could she have become ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... began in clear, emphatic tones. "We all know how you have spoiled Constance. She and Shotover have always been your favourites. But even you must admit that Shotover's wretched extravagance has impoverished you, and helped to impoverish all your other children. And you must also admit, notwithstanding ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... upper row of soldiers, machine-made men. See the trumpets, I can almost hear their blast, and see the dust and life-blood of degrading, cruel wars, which impoverish and grind into filth the entire afflicted human race, though there are very excellent people of wealth, were there to wisely co-operate. There is some promise in this reading. If rich men could become active benefactors—see the little ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara
... recusants to come to divine service, because it was set down by their decrees, that to come to church before reconcilement was absolutely heretical and damnable. Therefore there were laws added containing punishment pecuniary against such recusants, not to enforce conscience, but to enfeeble and impoverish the means of those of whom it resteth indifferent and ambiguous whether they were reconciled or no. And when, notwithstanding all this provision, this poison was dispersed so secretly, as that there were no means to stay it ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... environment, there would be no economy and only error in the human habit of accepting foresight for sight. But there are uniformities sufficiently accurate, and the need of economizing attention is so inevitable, that the abandonment of all stereotypes for a wholly innocent approach to experience would impoverish human life. ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... those adventures are generally such as these: first, that they stock-starve the tradesman, and impoverish him in his ordinary business, which is the main support of his family; they lessen his strength, and while his trade is not lessened, yet his stock is lessened; and as they very rarely add to his credit, so, if they lessen the man's ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... legislature finds itself wholly without the power of exercising its favourite attribute, the love of peace. In other words, they are powerful to usurp, impotent to restore; and equally by their power and their impotence they aggrandize themselves, and weaken and impoverish you and ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... know whether I used that expression, sir, but I am speaking merely in a technical sense. I mean to say, that, whether by mistake or otherwise, you are exercising a power which you don't lawfully possess, and that the effect of that is to impoverish the estate, and, by so much as it benefits you, to wrong ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... affections of the subject nations, and, as a natural result, received no help from them in her hour of need. Her system was to exhaust and oppress the conquered races for the supposed benefit of the conquerors, and to impoverish the provinces for the adornment and enrichment of the capital. The wisest of her monarch's thought it enough to construct works of public utility in Babylonia Proper, leaving the dependent countries to themselves, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... crop which greatly impoverishes the ground. To peel is to impoverish soil, as "oats, rye, barley, and grey wheat," but not ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... King having racked the nation for their sakes, as he hath-done." Stafford expressed much compassion for the French in the plight in which they found themselves. "Unhappy people!" he cried, "to have such a King, who seeketh nothing but to impoverish them to enrich a couple, and who careth not what cometh after his death, so that he may rove on while he liveth, and careth neither for doing his own estate good nor his neighbour's state harm." Sir Edward added, however, in a philosophizing ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... that great enemy of agriculture, to impoverish and, over thousands of square miles, to destroy our farms. The Mississippi alone carries yearly to the sea more than 400,000,000 tons of the richest soil within its drainage basin. If this soil is worth a dollar a ton, it is probable that the total ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot
... erected them. Would it not have been more humane to govern the people well, to procure them ease, to excite and to favor industry and trade, to permit them to enjoy in safety the fruits of their labors, than to oppress them under a despotic yoke, to impoverish them by senseless wars, to reduce them to mendicity in order to gratify an immoderate luxury, and afterward build sumptuous monuments which can contain but a very small portion of those whom they have rendered miserable? ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... That is just what we have never been able to do. When it comes to taking the best piece out of the dish which is handed round our natural politeness stands in our way. None of your ancestors could make money. They took nothing from the general mass, and would not impoverish their neighbours. Your grandfather would not buy any of the national property, as others did. Your father was like all other sailors, and the proof that he was born to be a sailor and to fight was that he had no head for business. When ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... age, like Persian enamel. In some of the temples which I visited, the colorings had been ruthlessly obliterated by coats of whitewash, but in those communities where Hinduism is still a living force, the inhabitants frequently impoverish themselves in order to provide the gold-leaf with which the interiors of the shrines are covered, just as the congregations of American churches praise God with carven pulpits and windows ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... In politics there's nothing worse than sentiment. While from humane considerations we forbid the cultivation of opium in our colonies, we tolerate the smoking of it, and the result is that we do not combat the vice but impoverish ourselves." ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... obscure, its anger and animosity penetrated as far as the lowest class; it created fissures in the social subsoil in order to diffuse the proscription there; the local triumvirates, nicknamed "mixed mixtures," served it for that. Not one head escaped, however humble and puny. They found means to impoverish the indigent, to ruin those dying of hunger, to spoil the disinherited; the coup d'etat achieved this wonderful feat of adding misfortune to misery. Bonaparte, it seems, took the trouble to hate a mere peasant; the vine-dresser was torn from his vine, the laborer from his furrow, the mason from ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... man," Forsyth said, "we can't let you impoverish yourself at this rate. What have you said to your benefactor, Tata? What are ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... and enriching them by an extensive variety of plants, augmenting the number of their cattle, whether intended for subsistence or reproduction, and improving the breed by a mixture of races well assorted, procuring a greater quantity of manure, varying their culture so as not to impoverish the soil, and separating their lands by inclosures, which obviate the necessity of constantly employing herdsmen ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... methods equally irresistible by guilt and innocence: let the man thus driven into exile, for having been the friend of his country, be received in every other place as a confessor of liberty; and let the tools of power be taught in time, that they may rob, but cannot impoverish." In 1761, Dr. Lucas was elected representative for Dublin. He died in 1771, and a statue to his honour is erected in ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... country, not with its revenue, not with the results of actual labor, but with its capital, with the accumulated savings which should serve for reproduction. A country may spend, dissipate its profits and savings, may impoverish itself, and by the consumption of its national capital, progress gradually to its ruin. This is precisely what we are doing. We give, every year, two ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... whether to an Italian we do not know— and when he left the city in 1745 to return to England he took a family along. He mentions "an impoverish'd Family" in the Essay, but beyond this we know nothing ...
— John Baptist Jackson - 18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut • Jacob Kainen
... your Society cou'd do, was to shew you understood the miserable Condition of Ireland, and to manifest your sincere desire to assist with some Care and Judgment in the Cure; but you cou'd as well remove Mountains by your Faith, as the Ills we groaned under, by so adequate a Remedy, as your impoverish'd stinted Fund. ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... coming mistress. Of her alone he thinks, and to her all his vows are made. The thought of license would be treasop to his sovereign lady, whose right to all the revenues of his being he joyfully owns. To rob her, to abate her high prerogatives, would be to impoverish, to insult, himself; for she is to be his, and her honor, her glory, are his own. Through all this time that he dreams of her by night and day, the exquisite reward of his devotion is the knowledge ...
— The Blindman's World - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... to exhaust your excellent wife's fortune. You came to Delgratz this morning for the express purpose of drawing fresh supplies from the Kosnovian treasury. Well, you haven't met your son yet; but when you suggest that he should begin to impoverish his people to maintain you in idle pomp in Paris, I fancy you will find him adamant. That is not his theory of governing. If it was, he would neither marry Joan nor be alive at this moment, since Heaven saw fit to intrust me with ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... in this ideal household was the avoidance of those middle exchanges between production and consumption, which enrich the shopkeeper but impoverish his customers. Not one of these exchanges is made without loss, and the multiplication of these losses would weaken even a man of fortune. Wolmar seeks those real exchanges in which the convenience of each party to ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... and a very sensible relief will be afforded to the flocks of sheep that had been withdrawn from them, and pent up on inadequate ranges of pasture—a circumstance which indeed has tended materially to impoverish the flocks and keep up ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... fulfil the dream I wove about her on that memorable day when I first saw her in the meeting- house. How perverse my fate has been, giving me that for which I might well thank God on my knees, and yet which my heart refuses, and withholding that which will impoverish my whole life. Why must the heart be so imperious and self-willed in these matters? An elderly gentleman would say, Everything is just right as it is. It would be the absurdity of folly for Miss Warren to give up her magnificent prospects because of your sudden and ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... encourages a more active use of the individual faculties. And vice vers, all errors in finance and taxation which obstruct the improvement of the people in wealth and morals, tend also, if of sufficiently serious amount, positively to impoverish and demoralize them. It holds, in short, universally, that when Order and Permanence are taken in their widest sense for the stability of existing advantages, the requisites of Progress are but the requisites of Order in a greater degree; ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... stimulus for my courage and a convenient soothing draught for conscience. Even had all been plain sailing, I do not hint that I should have drawn back. Smuggling is one of the meanest of crimes, for by that we rob a whole country pro rata, and are therefore certain to impoverish the poor: to smuggle opium is an offence particularly dark, since it stands related not so much to murder, as to massacre. Upon all these points I was quite clear; my sympathy was all in arms against my interest; and had ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... can say, Frank, is, I would not limit individual desire in any way. What right has society to punish us unless it can prove we have hurt or injured someone else against his will? Besides, if you limit passion you impoverish life, you weaken the mainspring of art, and narrow the realm ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... of war being now, as he told me, out of his mind, he had leisure for other projects to enrich himself; and he was determined to begin by reforming certain abuses, which had long tended to impoverish the royal treasury. I was at a loss to know whither this preamble would lead: at length, having exhausted his oriental pomp of words, he concluded by informing me that he had reason to believe he was terribly cheated in the management ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... the last degree. She gratifies self, and there is no other way to look at it. And I will admit to you now, Braden, that if there is no other way, I will give up all this money. That may represent to you just how much I think of self. But," and she smiled confidently, "I don't intend to impoverish myself if I can help it, and I don't believe you are selfish enough to ask it ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... offering them the same freedom of trade in food by which Ireland had been ruined. The farmers were everywhere invited to exhaust their soil by sending its products to England to be consumed; and the corn-laws were repealed for the purpose of enabling them to impoverish themselves by entering into competition with the starving Irishman, who was thus at once deprived of the market of England, as by the Act of Union he had been deprived of his own. The cup of wretchedness was before well nigh full, but it was now filled. The price of food fell, and the labourer ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... (1224-1244) was a bishop of more than local celebrity. Like Langton, the archbishop, he withstood the demands which the papacy and Henry III. made in their endeavours to impoverish the Church in England. For this opposition the king removed him temporarily from the post of Chancellor of the Realm, a position he held from 1226 to 1240. His "fame rests more upon his repute as a statesman faithful ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette
... they will thrive exceedingly, where they may be dispos'd at nine or ten foot distance, and sometimes nearer: But in planting of a whole wood of several kinds of trees for timber, every third set at least, would be an ash. The best ash delights in the best land (which it will soon impoverish) yet grows in any; so it be not over-stiff, wet, and approaching to the marshy, unless it be first well drain'd: By the banks of sweet, and crystal rivers and streams, I have observ'd them to thrive infinitely. One may observe as manifest a difference in the timber ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... monarch. There were no droughts and floods and plagues and fires and premature deaths in those days of Yudhishthira devoted to virtue. And it was only for doing agreeable services, or for worshipping, or for offering tributes that would not impoverish, that other kings used to approach Yudhisthira (and not for hostility or battle.) The large treasure room of the king became so much filled with hoards of wealth virtuously obtained that it could not be emptied even in a hundred years. And the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... earth with which he deals may be briefly summed up: He should look upon himself as an agent necessarily interfering with the operations which naturally form and preserve the soil. He should see that his work brings two risks; he may impoverish the accumulation of detrital material by taking out the plant food more rapidly than it is prepared for use. This injurious result may be at any time reparable by a proper use of manures. Not so, however, with the other form of destruction, which results in the actual removal of ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... would not admit it, and offered to clear himself by ordeal. King Harald would not have this, but laid on the bishop a money fine of fifteen marks of gold, which he should pay to the king. The bishop declared he would not thus impoverish his bishop's see, but would rather offer his life. On this they hanged the bishop out on the holm, beside the sling machine. As he was going to the gallows he threw the sock from his foot, and said with an oath, "I know no more about King Magnus's treasure than what is ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... Societies were dissolved, newspapers suppressed, printing establishments confiscated, and in a short time fifty agitators had been expelled from Berlin alone. A reign of official tyranny and police persecution was established, and even the employers undertook to impoverish and to blacklist men who were thought to hold socialist views. Within a few weeks every society, periodical, and agitator disappeared, and not a thing seemed left of the great movement of half a million men that had existed a ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter |
