"Improvident" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "I'm so improvident that I'm afraid I'd marry you on nothing. I haven't a copper of my own, remember. You will have a penniless bride. Oh, I wish more than ever that Uncle Bernard had left me something, so that I might help you! It does seem hard, doesn't it, that Victor Druce should ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... especially netting, in the most reckless and improvident manner, are on the increase. Antelope are fast disappearing, and in the jungle tracts night shooting is clearing out spotted deer especially. As for cruelty nothing can exceed the indifference of net-workers to any pain they may cause their captures. Snipe are caught and their legs ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... careful preparation—oxen, wagons, provisions, arms and ammunition must be first of all provided. These were essentials, and woe to the hapless immigrant who neglected these provisions. To be stranded a thousand miles from the "settlements" was a fate none but the most improvident and reckless cared ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... front of her and did not reply. The wind of a keen clear winter morning had put colour into her cheeks. Overhead, the creamy- yellow smoke-clouds were thinning away one by one against a pale-blue sky, and the improvident sparrows broke off from water-spout committees and cab-rank cabals to clamour of ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... sprung that has so ravaged the Oceanic Islands. The sailors who first visited those islands were not, as a rule, a batch of consumptive tourists on a voyage in search of health or recreation; but we can well understand that the proverbially improvident mariner has not always had his health looked after by an Anson or a Cook, and that many a festive tar who induced the unsophisticated Indian maid to join him in worship at the shrine of Venus Porcina carried in the innermost recesses of the folds of his pendulous and sea-beaten prepuce the remnants ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... of each creature is determined by its individual qualities; whereas in civilised societies a man may obtain the highest position and the most beautiful wife because he is rich and well-born, although he may be ugly, idle or improvident; and then it is he who will perpetuate the species. The wealthy man, ill constituted, incapable, sickly, enjoys his riches and establishes his stock under the protection of the laws." Haycraft in England and Jentsch ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... became evident, in 1859, that the emancipation of the serfs was at hand, Karl Karl'itch confidently predicted that the country would inevitably go to ruin. He knew by experience that the peasants were lazy and improvident, even when they lived under the tutelage of a master, and with the fear of the rod before their eyes. What would they become when this guidance and salutary restraint should be removed? The prospect raised terrible forebodings in the mind of the worthy steward, who had his employer's ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... Scotland, p. 75. Lord Eldon said that Lee, in the debates upon the India Bill, speaking of the charter of the East India Company, 'expressed his surprise that there could be such political strife about what he called "a piece of parchment, with a bit of wax dangling to it." This most improvident expression uttered by a Crown lawyer formed the subject of comment and reproach in all the subsequent debates, in all publications of the times, and in everybody's conversation.' Twiss's Eldon, iii. 97. In the debate on Fox's India Bill on Dec. 3, 1783, Lee 'asked what was the consideration of ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... of it! It gets on my nerves, my brother's extravagance does. I often quarrel with him because he's so improvident. ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... a better place after the college settled permanently above it. Some improvident citizens took a new hold on life, while some undesirables who had lived in lawless infamy skulked across the Walnut and disappeared in that rough picturesque region full of uncertainties that lies behind the west bluffs of the stream. All this, after the college had found an abiding ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... on your part, by the fruitless promise of a hidden treasure, to lead an honest man, who has hitherto faithfully followed his calling, into ruin—to induce him to neglect his business—and to bring misery upon his wife and children, by rendering him improvident and idle. Begone! and delude them no longer ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 482, March 26, 1831 • Various
... gardening. This, perhaps, accounts for his location of the scene in his comedy "The Cherry Garden," where a business-like man, who had once been a serf, just like the dramatist's own father, has prospered sufficiently to buy the orchard from the improvident and highly educated owners; and for all the details about fruit-gardening given in the powerful story "The Black Monk." This story infallibly reminds one of Gogol. A man has repeatedly a vision of a black monk, who visits him through ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... were for the most part pressed men, but there was a notable difference between them and the seamen of Dampier's time. They were, and remained for long after, wild, improvident, overgrown children such as the nautical novelists who wrote a few years later [Sidenote: 1769] have pictured them; but the lawless rascals who manned king's ships or were pirates by turns, as fortune provided, were rapidly dying out, and veterans of the Spanish ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... cry torrents, but there must be absolute castigation before this criminal shall conceive the sense of regret; and probably then she will cling to her wickedness the more—such is the born Pagan's tenacity! Mrs. Berry sighed, and gave him back his shake of the head. O you wanton, improvident creature! said he. O you very wise old gentleman! said she. He asked her the thing she had been doing. She enlightened him with the fatalist's reply. He sounded a bogey's alarm of contingent grave results. She retreated to the entrenched camp of the fact she ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... faults. I do not deny that he is improvident. I do not deny that he has kept me in the dark as to his resources and his liabilities both,' she went on, looking at the wall; 'but I never ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... Laughing and looking, one of all, I watched the quivering lamplight fall On plate and flowers and pouring tea And cup and cloth; and they and we Flung all the dancing moments by With jest and glitter. Lip and eye Flashed on the glory, shone and cried, Improvident, unmemoried; And fitfully and like a flame The light of laughter went and came. Proud in their careless transience moved The changing faces that ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... the Immortals. To have done so would have been to provoke the amazement and censure that was the lot of Mark Twain many years after, when, at a dinner in the Hub, he sought to jest irreverently with the sacred names of Holmes, Emerson, and Longfellow. Again try to fancy the shy, eccentric, improvident genius of "Ulalume," "The Bells," and "The Fall of the House of Usher" at ease in a company that, while delightful, was all propriety and solid intellectuality. No, Poe would no more have fitted into the Century than Balzac or Zola would have fitted into the French Academy which so ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... always protested,' resumed the old man, 'that in their private and domestic life, as well as in their labouring career, the lower classes of this country are improvident, thriftless, and extravagant. A stitch ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... mission-conquest could not bear much fruit if they were confined to the vagrant tribes of the north. Farther west in the peninsula of the great lakes lived Indians of fixed habits and domicile, and otherwise further advanced towards civilisation than the improvident hunting tribes round about Quebec. Of these the most notable were the Hurons. As long before as 1615 the Recollet Le Caron had gone among them, and several years later Brebeuf had made the perilous lodges of Ihonatiria his habitation, but had at length returned to France. On his coming to Quebec ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... their looms. He grew wheat and corn, but no more than was necessary for flour and meal for the neighborhood and to feed the stock he owned, laying aside a portion for use in time of need for the improvident and unfortunate. ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... that were made against him; whether, by trampling on his sacred promise, he should not multiply his perils instead of lessening their number. A difficult part had been assigned to him; by much too difficult for one young, improvident, and ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... passed. We had gathered, damp and disconsolate, in the only available shelter of the camp. For the long summer had ended unexpectedly to us; we had one day found ourselves caught like the improvident insect of the child's fable with gauzy and unseasonable wings wet and bedraggled in the first rains, homeless and hopeless. The scientific Lacy, who lately spent most of his time as a bar-room oracle in the settlement, was away, and from our dripping canvas we could see Captain Jim returning ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... was not so. Alpha was not struck down, nor did his agreeable house topple over the metaphorical precipice. According to poetical justice he ought to have been struck down, just to serve him right, and as a warning to others—only he was not. Not merely the wicked, but the improvident and the negligent, often flourish like the green bay tree, and they keep on flourishing, and setting wisdom and righteousness at defiance in the most successful manner. Which, indeed, makes the life of a philosopher and sagacious ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... them dried salmon and other fish, which they exchanged with the seamen for tobacco. But, a few days before, every ounce of tobacco that was in the ship had been distributed among them; and the quantity was not half sufficient to answer their demands. Notwithstanding this, so improvident a creature is an English sailor, that they were as profuse in making their bargains, as if we had now arrived at a port in Virginia; by which means, in less than eight and forty hours, the value of this article of barter was lowered above a ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... as his self-vaunted brother of London upon thirty shillings. It naturally results that the mechanics of Berlin, unlike those of the smaller towns of Germany, "are married and given in marriage," although the practice is regarded even there as indiscreet and improvident. It is doubtless a creditable feeling which demands of the workman that he shall have past out of his state of servitude, and have gained the position of an employer of labor, before he dare assume still higher responsibilities; ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... to David Danvers, and she had been the only child of a talented but improvident father, who, after a short, brilliant career as a public singer, suddenly sank into obscurity and neglect, from the total loss of his vocal powers, brought on by a violent rheumatic cold and lasting prostration of strength. At this juncture, Bessie had nearly attained her ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... her letters and those of her husband, written after his fatal seizure to Mrs. Calvert, describing everything connected with their young and, as it proved, improvident lives. Neither of them, the sad wife protests, had ever been trained to the wise handling of money or of anything useful. It had not been their fault so much as their misfortunes that they were dying in what ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... virtuoso, who let it slumber in its case for a generation, till, when his hoard was broken up, it came forth once more and rode the stormy symphonies of royal orchestras, beneath the rushing bow of their lord and leader. Into lonely prisons with improvident artists; into convents from which arose, day and night, the holy hymns with which its tones were blended; and back again to orgies in which it learned to howl and laugh as if a legion of devils were shut up in it; then again to the gentle dilettante ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... considerations in mind then, we may state the Crees to be a vain, fickle, improvident, and indolent race, and not very strict in their adherence to truth, being great boasters; but, on the other hand, they strictly regard the rights of property[6], are susceptible of the kinder affections, capable of friendship, very hospitable, ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... purpose. The appetites of these people know no restraint when they have the means of gratifying them; they have no idea of temperance or prudence, and are equally regardless of the evil resulting from excess as they are improvident in preparing for the necessities of the morrow—"sufficient (literally so to them) for the day is ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... but it was not so for the men whose sole occupation was transporting that which the agriculturist did not need to markets now closed by law. Wherever employment depended upon commerce, distress was immediate. The seamen, improvident by habit, first felt the blow. "I cannot conceive," said Representative [afterwards Justice] Story, "why gentlemen should wish to paralyze the strength of the nation by keeping back our naval force, and particularly now, when many ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... hankering after the woods and the freedom of the chase, they are a people easily instructed, quick to learn, (when they like to do so), and very submissive and grateful. But they are very, very improvident. So long as they have enough for to-day, let to- morrow look out for itself. Even upon great festivals such as Christmas, when my husband would give them a double allowance of rations, they would come before our house, fire off their guns as a token of joy and thanks, ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... all the rest and the orchards and lands were to be rented, which was accordingly done December 5, to Nicholas A. Den and Daniel Hill for $1200 per year, the property being valued at $20,288. Padre Duran was growing old, and the Indians were becoming more careless and improvident; so, when Pico wrote him to give up the Mission lands and property to the renters, he did so willingly, though he stated that the estate owed him $1000 for money he had advanced for the use of the Indians. ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... was in my thoughts entirely when I suggested to a man of old George's headstrong and undisciplined nature that he would do well to investigate the habits of a sober and industrious insect like the ant. He has led an improvident life, and I thought that as he neared his end, whatever would promote a philosophic cast of mind would inevitably ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... indebted for all that was good and elevated in his character. She had emigrated with her husband to this town, at an early period of its settlement from the vicinity of Boston, where the latter had become so much straitened in his pecuniary circumstances, in consequence of being surety for an improvident and luckless brother, that he was induced, with the hope of bettering his fortunes, to gather up the poor remnant of his property, and, with it, remove to the New Hampshire Grant's, at that time the Eldorado ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... He connected them with the image of his lost wife. There is no more natural, truly affecting passage than his display of fretfulness when he got some inkling that his second daughter was about to make a rather improvident marriage with young Snodgrass. The first had followed her inclinations in wedding Trundle—a not very good match—but he did not lose her as the pair lived beside him. He thought Emily, however, a pretty girl who ought to do better, and he had his eye on "a ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... entirely different. At any rate, you should make it plain to him that he will get nothing but you,—absolutely nothing but you. Men of his kind do not love long. They love violently—but not long. Idle, improvident men, such as he is, are able to crowd a whole lot of love into a very short space of time. That is because they have nothing much else to do. They run through with love as they run through with money,—quickly. The man ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... continual, and it did not end with their lives. He tried to manage their successions; he thought no pains too great to arrange between a widow and a son who had succeeded his father; he was often harassed and perplexed by tales of hardship; and I find him writing, almost in despair, of their improvident habits and the destitution that awaited their families upon a death. 'The house being completely furnished, they come into possession without necessaries, and they go out NAKED. The insurance seems to have failed, and what next is to be tried?' While they lived he wrote behind ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... breathing time was permitted to France between two convulsive efforts, and the Revolution as yet knew not whether it should maintain the constitution it had gained, or employ it as a weapon to obtain a republic, Europe began to arouse itself; egotistical and improvident, she merely beheld in the first movement in France a comedy played at Paris on the stage of the States General and the constituent Assembly—between popular genius, represented by Mirabeau, and the vanquished genius of the aristocracy, personified in Louis ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... said Brother Copas, answering the Master's puzzled look. "He was a master-printer in his time, an able fellow, but addicted to drink and improvident. His downfall involved that of Brother Warboise's stationery business, and Brother Warboise has never ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... understand any but the most elementary methods. They do not put the land to its best use. When they had prosperous years, and many a one they had, they put nothing by for a rainy day. They are very improvident. I have been in both England and Scotland, and I know the difference in the people. They have more self-reliance, and they are keen after improvements. They are not satisfied to have just enough, to live from hand to mouth. They must have comfort, and they like to be independent. Now, Paddy is ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... good. He had the artistic temperament and some of its incidental weaknesses. He acknowledged himself "constitutionally improvident," and a debt-burdened life is not easy. His later years were pathetic. Those who knew and appreciated him remember him fondly. California failing ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... what could be expected of those whom supreme Goodness has destined to a subordinate lot? No! material improvement was not the first thing, even for those unhappy people (victims for the most part of their own improvident or vicious habits) who had scarcely bread to eat and raiment wherewith to clothe themselves. Let them seek the kingdom of God, and these paltry, temporal things shall surely be ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... Love is so improvident that a parting a year away is no more feared than death, and a month's end seems dim and distant. But a week,—a week only,—that even to love is short, and the beginning of the end. The chilling mist that rose from the gulf of separation so near before them overshadowed all the brief remnant ...
— Lost - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... if it had not been for Ferdinand's scrapes they would not have known each other. Nor was Lord Catchimwhocan passed over. Ferdinand Armine was not the man to neglect a friend or to forget a good service; and he has conferred on that good-natured, though somewhat improvident, young nobleman, more substantial kindness than the hospitality which is always cheerfully extended to him. When Ferdinand repaid Mr. Bond Sharpe his fifteen hundred pounds, he took care that the interest should appear in the shape of a golden vase, which ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... cleared the field before the end of another week. Grimes transferred his objectionable affection and Barbara was not even asked to be wife number three. Brewster's campaign was so ardent that he neglected other duties deplorably, falling far behind his improvident average. With Grimes disposed of, he once more forsook the battlefield of love and gave his harassed and undivided attention ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... fields, blackened ruins, and idle disheartened communities of the conquered, families brought to misery, and the young arms-bearing generation blotted out. Hut and manor-house have been licked up by the red torch of war. The hollow-eyed women, suffering children, and dazed, improvident negroes, wander around aimlessly. Bridges, mills and factories in ruins tell of the stranger's torch, and the crashing work of the artillery. Tall, smokeless chimneys point ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... "'How improvident are men inheriting a talent or two, or even ten talents! Instead of adding to their wealth by traffic, or by lending at high interest,' thought he, 'these men waste what they have, to no purpose. Had ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... about that which he cannot catch. He is not careful to catch all that he could. His purpose is to draw the largest possible revenue per day from his claim. He does not intend to spend many years in mining, or if he does, he has become thriftless and improvident. In either case, he wishes to derive the utmost immediate profit from his mine. If his claim contain a dollar to the ton, and he can save five dollars by slowly washing only six tons in a day, while he might make ten dollars by rapidly ...
— Hittel on Gold Mines and Mining • John S. Hittell
... much disposed to think that in this very emancipation they have been saved from their own Parliament by the humanity of their Sovereign? Or, do you wish to prepare them for the revocation of these improvident concessions? Do you think it wise or humane at this moment to insult them, by sticking up in a pillory the man who dared to stand forth as their advocate? I put it to your oaths; do you think that a blessing ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... is a deficiency, which there always is, it is provided for in the supplies of the ensuing year. The only considerable branch of the public revenue which yet remains unmortgaged, is thus regularly spent before it comes in. Like an improvident spendthrift, whose pressing occasions will not allow him to wait for the regular payment of his revenue, the state is in the constant practice of borrowing of its own factors and agents, and of paying interest for the use of its ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... brought from home a supply of oil in separate vessels, found it easy to make the flame of their torches burn up as brightly as ever; but those who had neglected to provide such a supply could not with all their efforts revive the dead or dying light. "Give us," said the five improvident maidens, "give us of your oil, for our lamps are gone out." The more thoughtful, and therefore more fortunate watchers, while they pitied their sisters, were afraid to part with any portion of their own stores, lest they ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... work of time. The majority of the people are unstable, thriftless improvident and ignorant. Slavery left its blight of impotency and profligacy upon them. They come and go as did their fathers a hundred years ago. Their tools and utensils are the same their great-grandparents used, and they are content with them. We never worked harder ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 01, January, 1884 • Various
... extent of the South Seas, from one tropic to another, we find traces of a bygone state of over-population, when the resources of even a tropical soil were taxed, and even the improvident Polynesian trembled for the future. We may accept some of the ideas of Mr. Darwin's theory of coral islands, and suppose a rise of the sea, or the subsidence of some former continental area, to have ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Here the two set up their separate complaints, Michael for the fraud that had been committed on him, and Ziito for the irreparable injury he had suffered in his person. From this adventure came the proverb, frequent in the days of the historian, speaking of a person who had made an improvident bargain, "He has made just such a purchase as ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... that I rightly understand how you would avert all these sad consequences of improvident ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... first attempted to trace Edgar Poe's descent from the old Norman family of Le Poer, which emigrated to Ireland during the reign of Henry II. of England. Lady Blessington, through her father, Edmund Power, claimed the same illustrious descent. The Le Poers were distinguished for being improvident, daring and reckless. The family originally belonged to Italy, whence they passed to the north of France, and went to England with William the Conqueror. In a letter dated January 3, 1877, Mrs. Whitman says: "For all that I said on the subject I alone am responsible. A distant relative ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... which good Mr. Larkin had procured for the improvident vicar, bore interest, I am almost ashamed to say, at thirty per cent. per annum, and ten per cent. more the first year. But you are to remember that the security was altogether speculative; and Mr. Larkin, of course, made ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... for the most part, nervous and irritable people, ignorant, and improvident, who could think of nothing but the grey earth and black bread; a people who were crafty, but were stupid about it, like the birds, who, when they want to hide themselves, only hide their heads. They would not do the mowing for you for twenty ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... in this way that society mainly consists of two classes—the savers and the wasters, the provident and the improvident, the thrifty and the thriftless, the Haves and the Have-nots. The men who economize by means of labour become the owners of capital which sets other labour in motion. Capital accumulates in their hands, and they employ other labourers to work for them. ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... Jews; 'Tisn't the middleman more than the factor, 'Tisn't, no 'tisn't, the sub-contractor; 'Tisn't machinery. No! In fact, What Sweating is, in a manner exact, After much thinking we cannot define. Who is to blame for it? Well, we incline To think that the Sweated (improvident elves!) Are, at the bottom, to blame themselves! They're poor of spirit, and weak of will, They marry early, have little skill; They herd together, all sexes and ages, And take too tamely starvation wages; And if they will do so, much to their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 24, 1890 • Various
... decided to keep store, and then other boys decided to buy of them with pins; but there was no calculation in the scheme; and though I have read of boys, especially in English books, who made a profit out of their fellows, I never knew any boy who had enough forecast to do it. They were too wildly improvident for anything of the kind, and if they had any virtue at all it was scorn of the vice ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... us headlong. Butler! Butler! You are my evil genius, wherefore must you Announce it in their presence? It was all In a fair way. They were half won! those madmen With their improvident over-readiness— A cruel game is Fortune playing with me. The zeal of friends it is that razes me, And not the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... belief that there was a pervasive natural and self-operating harmony, providentially established, between individual interest and the interest of the community, partly on the empirical ground that government was generally inefficient, improvident, and unintelligent. ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... wrestlers and such like to be strictly required again, allowing only the tenth part to be retained; though it turned to very small account, most of those persons expending their daily income as fast as they received it, being rude, improvident livers; upon which he had further inquiry made as to those who had bought or received from them, and called upon these people to refund. The trouble was infinite, the exactions being prosecuted far, touching a great number of persons, bringing disrepute on Galba, and general hatred on Vinius, who ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... continually allowing himself to grow angry over the least trifle; he was quick to see and speak of the faults in others; he was demanding more of those he associated with in the way of consideration and justice than he was willing to give, and he was untidy in his person and improvident in his use ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... living in manhood, among the mills. He was below the middle size and slightly made; there was almost a stunted look about him; and his wan, colourless face gave you the idea, that in his childhood he had suffered from the scanty living consequent upon bad times and improvident habits. His features were strongly marked, though not irregular, and their expression was extreme earnestness; resolute either for good or evil, a sort of latent stern enthusiasm. At the time of which I write, the good predominated over the bad in the countenance, ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Police. He could tirelessly follow the dog-sleds, sometimes on the scantiest rations, for hundreds of miles over the snow, sleeping in the open in the arctic frost. He had made long forced marches to succor improvident settlers starving far out in the wilds; in the fierce heat of summer he made his patrols, watching the progress of the grass-fires, sternly exacting from the ranchers the plowing of the needed guards; and cattle-thieves prudently avoided the district ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... of the tenants and of the country round, the owner of Castle O'Shanaghgan; but, after consulting with me, your Uncle George felt that he must not have the reins. His Irish nature, my dear—But I need not discuss that. You know as well as I do how reckless and improvident ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... the sea of sleep; the death of the year, when winter lies heavy on the graves of the children of summer, when the leafless trees moan in the blasts from the ocean, when the beasts even look dull and oppressed, when the children go about shivering with cold, when the poor and improvident are miserable with suffering or think of such a death of disease as befalls us at times, when the man who says, 'Would God it were morning!' changes but his word, and not his tune, when the morning comes, crying, 'Would God it were evening!' when ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... means of marrying the others; nor in the higher, to find a young man, whose estates have, during a long minority, under the careful management of Government officers, been freed from very heavy debts, with which an improvident father had left them encumbered, the moment he attains his majority and enters upon the management, borrowing three times their annual rent, at an exorbitant interest, to marry a couple of sisters, at the same ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... even my father, had any influence—good influence, of course, I mean—over him, except his mother, who was of my family; and also a woman who lived with her—a sort of governess—aunt, he called her. The way of it was this: Captain St. Leger had a younger brother, who made an improvident marriage with a Scotch girl when they were both very young. They had nothing to live on except what the reckless Lancer gave them, for he had next to nothing himself, and she was "bare"—which is, ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... ores, oil and cork; Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, and Malaga are the chief towns; the widest variety of character exists among the natives of the various provinces, from the hard-working, thrifty Catalan to the lazy, improvident Murcian, but all possess the southern love "of song, dance, and colour," and have an inherent grace and dignity of manner; Roman Catholicism is the national religion; and although systems of elementary and secondary schools ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... ditties," and "distressful strains," for the magazines; for flirting with the muse, while their wives are wanting shoes, or perpetrating puns, while their children cry for "buns"! Suppose that, pointing every line with wit, I should hold them up to contempt as careless, improvident lovers of pleasure, given to self-indulgence; taking their Helicon more than dashed with gin; seekers after notoriety, eccentric in their habits and unmanly in all their tastes! After this, should I very handsomely make an exception in favor of Mr. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... cleared up by a daughter of Adam, and which, submitted to a woman's culture, has yielded a harvest of unknown flowers. Let us permit Madame Sand to produce these perilous marvels till the approach of winter; she will sing no more when the North wind has come. Meanwhile, less improvident than the grasshopper, let her make provision of glory for the time when there will be a famine of pleasure. The mother of Musarion was wont to repeat to her child: "Thou wilt not always be sixteen; will Choereas always remember his oath, his tears ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... a Genoese, who had spent much time in Buenos Ayres and was presently thinking of New York; and we had some friendly discourse together concerning the English. His ideas of them were often so parallel with my own that I hardly know how to say he thought them an improvident people. I owned that they spent much more on state, or station, than the Americans; but we neither had any censure for them otherwise. He was of that philosophic mind which one is rather apt to encounter in the Latin races, and I could well wish for his further acquaintance. ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... discharging of pistols, and you are filled with a vague thought that the whole city has been formed into a line of skirmishers. You are startled by a noise on the front pavement, which sounds like an energetic drummer beating the long roll on a barrel-head; and you have an indistinct idea that some improvident urchin (up since the dawn) has just expended ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... extremely inconvenient for passage out of, and into the house, often fails to make a dry cellar, for the water from the roof runs in, and causes a flood. And such accidents, as they are mildly termed by the improvident builders, often occur by the failure ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... not been altogether improvident. He had hoped great things of Bill Siddall's wine-cellar—this despite an almost unbroken series of bitter disillusionments and disappointments in experience with those who had the wealth to buy, if they had had the taste to select, the fine wines he loved. So, resolving to indulge ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... evil, taking as was the superficial evidence to the contrary. No cruelty could make the slave work like a free man, while his power to consume was enormous. Infants, aged, and weak had to be supported by the owner. Even the best slaves were improvident. Everywhere slave labor tended to banish free. Upon slave soil scarcely an immigrant could be led to set foot. Poor whites grew steadily poorer, their lot often more wretched than that of slaves. Invention, care, forethought were as good as unknown among them. Slave labor proved incompetent even ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... money, except for what I could do with it.—As a means, of vast importance. As an end, uninteresting.—So it has been lightly come and lightly go, I am afraid. All the same I've not been culpably improvident. A portion of my income dies with me; but enough remains to secure you against any anxiety regarding ways and means, if not to make you a rich woman. I have left an annuity to your Aunt Felicia. Her means are slender, dear creature, and her benevolence outruns them, so that she balances ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... country where not only the houses but most of the things in common use are made of wood; and there seems to be no end to the trees that remain. It is little wonder that in many parts there has been and is improvident use of wood. Happily every year the regulation of timber areas and wise planting make progress. But for many square miles of hillside I saw there is no fitting word ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... earliest Roman society, for we can hardly form a notion of the primitive family group unless we suppose that its members brought their earnings of all kinds into the common stock while they were unable to bind it by improvident individual engagements. The true enigma of the Patria Potestas does not reside here, but in the slowness with which these proprietary privileges of the parent were curtailed, and in the circumstance that, before they were seriously diminished, the whole civilised world was brought ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... thought will naturally arise, what could have prompted Chatterton, endued as he was, with so much original talent, to renounce his own personal aggrandizement, and to transfer the credit of his opulence to another. It is admitted to be an improvident expenditure of reputation, but no inference advantageous to Rowley can be deduced from this circumstance. The eccentricities and aberrations of genius, have rarely been restricted by line and plummet, and the present ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... won my regard. I sought his acquaintance, found him easy of access, friendly and communicative, and always anxious to oblige every one as far as lay in his power. Commanding an excellent income, he was always ready to assist the improvident who had expended theirs, and with such a disposition, you may be certain that the calls upon his purse were by no means few. He formed a strong attachment to me, and we usually spent most of ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... required of him, and would have to pay the penalty unrewarded, let him Italianize as much as he pleased. Not many months longer, and there would be the bit of an outburst, the whiff of scandal, perhaps a shot, and the rupture of an improvident alliance, followed by Henrietta's free hand to the moody young earl, who would then have possession of the only woman he could ever love: and at no cost. Jealousy of a man like Brailstone, however infatuated the man, was too foolish. He must perceive how matters ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... had much chance to be improvident!" said Herbert "We have had to spend all our income, but we are not in debt—that is, we have no debts that we are ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... For we break rules very often—as that exegetical third person might expound to you clearly out of the ninety-sixth volume of the 'Code of Conventions,' only you are not like another, nor have you been to me like another—you began with most improvident and (will you let me say?) unmasculine generosity, and Queen Victoria does not sit upon a mat after the fashion of Queen ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... peaceable mood that can well be imagined; and unless they are abused, allow themselves to be treated with great familiarity. The hiving of bees by those who understand their nature, could almost always be conducted without the risk of any annoyance, if it were not the case that some improvident or unfortunate ones occasionally come forth without the soothing supply; and not being stored with honey, are filled with the gall of the bitterest hate against all mankind and animal kind in general, and any one who dares to meddle with them in particular. Such radicals are always to be dreaded, ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... anchors himself to a little pebble to prevent being dashed about by the waves; of birds, who change their dwellings when winter draws nigh; of beasts, who adapt their lair to the time of year. And shall man alone be improvident? Shall he not imitate that higher Providence by ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... in heaving or stagnant crowd of disintegrated individuals lacking any spontaneous, central, rallying point, and who, failing natural leaders, simply push and jostle each other or stand still, each according to personal, blind, and haphazard impressions—a hasty, improvident, inconsistent, superficial opinion, caught on the wing, based on vague rumors, on four or five minutes of attention given each week, and chiefly to big words imperfectly understood, two or three sonorous, commonplace ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... theatre-goers. His grandfather, born in England, in 1774, came to America twenty-three years later and spent the remainder of his life here, gaining some reputation as a comedian. His father is said to have had little ability, and to have been careless and improvident. The third of the name was born in Philadelphia in 1829, and began his stage career at the age of three, appearing as the child in "Pizarro," which must have frightened him ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... he is," the mother answered, feelingly; "for, know that he has this day given up to thee, his sister, one half of his heritage, and more—unwise and improvident youth!" ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... improving very poor land without manure of some description, unless plaster will act with effect; nor is this generally the case without the land possesses naturally, some particular source of fertility, not wholly exhausted by bad or improvident tillage. ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson
... clearly than anything else the fact that when the people reach that stage in their development in which they begin to till the soil, they soon become careful of the little property they have, in marked distinction to the savage and nomadic tribes, who are always lavish and improvident. I have seen as many as ten store-houses of the kind described, and once even fourteen near one dwelling, but generally one or two ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... ground of various armies; we shall see temporary victors assuming lordship for a while; but change of authority will follow, and inevitable retaliation; this several times, perhaps, in the course of the campaign. Therefore every improvident step will meet with terrible revenge. By holding firm through the present conflict you best can serve the Polish cause. In the name of the love you bear your country, of your solicitude for the nation's future, we entreat you, fellow countrymen, to remain ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... headlong. Butler! Butler! You are my evil genius! Wherefore must you Announce it in their presence? It was all In a fair way. They were half won! those madmen With their improvident over-readiness— cruel game is Fortune playing with me. The zeal of friends it is that razes me, And not the hate ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... them and of them. I tell you that money is the beginning and end of all things. Why am I here, and why is my life made up of baseness and lies? Because my father was an improvident scoundrel, and did not leave me five hundred a year. I wonder what I should have been like, by the bye, if I had been blest with ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... in God and in the value of God's gifts, the greatest of which is love. I am romantic about love—oh, much more than you are, though older than you. A man's life does not develop rightly without it, and what is called an 'improvident marriage' often appears to me a noble, righteous, and prudent act. Your Ninian was a man before he was a brother. I hold that he had no right to sacrifice a great spiritual good of his own to the worldly good of his family, however he made it out. He should have said: 'God gives ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... driven into a damp corner. Indeed it was not impossible that their tent itself might be seized, for many a noble or his attendants might think that beggarly artisans had no right to comforts which he had been too improvident to afford, especially if the ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... features, her plump and pretty hands, were all pleasant to look upon. She had rather a hard way with her, though, at times. The servants were always giving warning. And, personally, he was much fonder of his younger daughter, whom Mary considered foolish and improvident. But he was well aware that ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... my father, and her beauty and sweetness will do the rest. She will live like a queen and have servants to wait on her. There are many rich people up North, and, though the winters are long, no one suffers except the improvident. And I think I have loved Mam'selle from a little child. Then, too," with an easy smile, "there is a suspicion that some Indian blood runs in Mam'selle's veins. On that ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... of a famous usurer of that day, who died worth 400,000l., an amazing sum at that period, we find numberless expedients and contrivances of the money trader, practised on improvident landholders and careless heirs, to entangle them in his nets. He generally contrived to make the wood pay for the land, which he called "making the feathers pay for the goose." He never pressed hard for his loans, but fondly compared his bonds "to infants, which battle best ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... as I was thus spared the difficulties of defending her questionable behaviour to me, which I should have been at pains to excuse. This produced a salutary calm in my soul, which had so recently been a prey to the worst anxieties. All that had driven me with such passionate haste to an improvident and premature marriage, all that had consequently weighed on me so ruinously, now seemed set at rest, leaving peace in its stead. And although the ordinary cares of life still pressed on me for many years, often in ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... unambitious homeliness of all their goods and chattels, except the axe, the rifle, and the horse—these being invariably the best and handsomest which their means enable them to procure. But he is mistaken in supposing them indolent or improvident; and is little aware how much ingenuity and toil have been exerted in procuring the few comforts which they possess, in a country without arts, mechanics, money, ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... with the poverty 'problem' in many other ways, and the columns of the local papers were filled with letters from all sorts of cranks who suggested various remedies. One individual, whose income was derived from brewery shares, attributed the prevailing distress to the drunken and improvident habits of the lower orders. Another suggested that it was a Divine protest against the growth of Ritualism and what he called 'fleshly religion', and suggested a day of humiliation and prayer. A great number of well-fed persons thought this such an excellent ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... To pay their expenses they mortgaged an estate and put the money in a stocking, which they kept on the top of the bed; and when that store was used up, the young man actually sold a house in Dublin to buy a high-crowned hat and feathers. Still, reckless and improvident as they were, there was sound principle within them, and though they were great favorites, and Charles II. insisted on knighting the husband, their glimpse of the real evils and temptations of his Court sufficed them, and ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cynically, as though he were two separate persons, one of whom was cool and calculating, while the other was improvident and scape-grace. How Lady Dawn would despise him, were he to reveal to her the stupid commotion of his mind! His excuse for blundering his way into her privacy had been sufficiently fantastic: that her late husband was employing his living brain to communicate with ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... sum; but from the danger of his adding to it the expenses of law. Sir Terence undertook to pay the whole with five thousand pounds. Lord Clonbrony thought it impossible: the solicitor thought it improvident, because he knew that upon a trial a much greater abatement would be allowed; but Lord Colambre was determined, from the present embarrassments of his own situation, to leave nothing undone that could ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... of his own, awoke the anxieties of Nathan, he did not deign to reveal; but, by and by, having arrived within but a few paces of a wretched pile of skins and boughs, the dwelling of some equally wretched and improvident barbarian, he came to a sudden halt, and withdrawing the captain of horse-thieves aside from the path, addressed him ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... upon the prosperity and progress of his country. The most he will keep before him is that he should pay his bills, and perhaps in some few cases, will extend the notion to the future to include provision for the bills and possible emergencies then to be met by himself and his family. Nor is this improvident attitude confined to the young, to the professional and the other non-business classes. In the business world we see it all around us; among those who "work for a living," among clerks and employees and among the so-called laboring classes it appears to ...
— Creating Capital - Money-making as an aim in business • Frederick L. Lipman
... results of improvident management!" thought Platon to himself. "The disease is even worse ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... Lewis's remark: "When we have plenty of fresh meat, I find it impossible to make the men take any care of it, or use it with the least frugality, though I expect that necessity will shortly teach them this art." We shall see, later on, that the men, who were really as improvident of food as the Indians, had hard ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... self-restraint the means by which this curtailment is made possible. But prudence and self-restraint are the characteristic attributes of the best citizens. They are conspicuous by their absence in the worst; and it is a matter of common observation that the hopelessly poor, the drunken and improvident, the criminal and the defective have the largest families, while those in the higher walks of life rejoice in smaller numbers. The very qualities, therefore, that make the social unit a law-abiding and useful citizen, who could and should raise the best progeny for the State, also enable ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... officer in the British army. Mr. Raymond was the youngest son of an old, wealthy and haughty family in Dorsetshire, England. At a very early age he married the youngest sister of Colonel Delany. Having nothing but his pay, all the miseries of an improvident marriage fell upon the young couple. The same hour that gave existence to Alice, deprived her of her mother. The facilities to ambition offered by America, and the hope of distracting his grief, induced Mr. Raymond to dispose of his commission, and embark for the Western World. Another object ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... that he was poor somehow or another, and you couldn't talk it out of him, no more than you could talk Beef into him. Then you see, some people as was better off said, and a good many such people lived pretty close up to the mark themselves if not beyond it so he'd heerd, that they was 'improvident' (that was the favourite word) down the Yard. For instance, if they see a man with his wife and children going to Hampton Court in a Wan, perhaps once in a year, they says, 'Hallo! I thought you was poor, my improvident friend!' Why, Lord, how ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... Strang, know my past, but do not seem to think much about it. I live in the present. I brood neither over past nor future. I am careless, improvident, uncautious, happy out of sheer well-being and overplus of physical energy. Fish, fruits, vegetables, and seaweed—a full stomach—and I am content. I am high in place with Raa Kook, than whom none is higher, not even Abba Taak, who is highest over the priest. No man dare lift hand ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... especially in the exercise of the veto power conferred upon it by the Constitution. It should be remembered, however, that this power is wholly negative and conservative in its character, and was intended to operate as a check upon unconstitutional, hasty, and improvident legislation and as a means of protection against invasions of the just powers of the executive and judicial departments. It is remarked ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... somewhat dazzled with ale and brandy, were speedily engaged in contemplating a half-crown which Joshua held between his finger and his thumb, saying, at the same time, 'Friend, thou art indigent and improvident. This will, well employed, procure thee sustentation of nature for more than a single day; and I will bestow it on thee if thou wilt sit here and keep me company; for neither thou nor I, friend, are fit ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... have come if the belligerents had not been far too afraid of one another to face the situation sensibly. Germany, having failed to provide for the war she began, failed again to surrender before she was dangerously exhausted. Her opponents, equally improvident, went as much too close to bankruptcy as Germany to starvation. It was a bluff at which both were bluffed. And, with the usual irony of war, it remains doubtful whether Germany and Russia, the defeated, will not be the gainers; for the victors are already busy ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... Antoninus, had spread terror to the gates of Rome. But they still possessed arms and courage; their courage was animated by despair, and they obtained the usual reenforcement of the cavalry of their Sarmatian allies. So improvident was the assassin Marcellinus, that he chose the moment when the bravest veterans had been drawn away, to suppress the revolt of Firmus; and the whole province was exposed, with a very feeble defence, to the rage of the exasperated Barbarians. They invaded Pannonia in the season of harvest; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... Bloomsbury: they began to forgive him when the bailiffs were after him, and abused Mr. Addison for selling Dick's country-house. And yet Dick in the spunging-house, or Dick in the Park, with his four mares and plated harness, was exactly the same gentle, kindly, improvident, jovial Dick Steele: and yet Mr. Addison was perfectly right in getting the money which was his, and not giving up the amount of his just claim, to be spent by Dick upon champagne and fiddlers, laced clothes, fine furniture, and parasites, Jew and Christian, male and female, who clung to ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and "Nature's laws," though, indeed, they are no more than the methods and laws of the beasts. By such expedients we may hope to see, first, a certain fall in the birth-rate, a fall chiefly in the birth-rate of improvident, vicious, and feeble types, a continuation, in fact, of that fall that is already so conspicuous in illegitimate births in Great Britain; secondly, a certain, almost certainly more considerable fall in the death-rate of ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... emerged. The contract looked worse than ever after Cecil Chesterton's Counsel, Ernest Wild, had examined witnesses, but Mr. Justice Phillimore insisted that it had nothing to do with the case "whether the contract was badly drawn or improvident." ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... had always been improvident, careless of her earnings, and from a disposition to change often out of place. But as one extreme is apt to follow another, when she found that she had several dollars laid aside, entirely a new thing for her, there ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... hexameter, 'But a soupe au vin, madam, I will degust, and gratefully.' Not only would this have been but common civility—a virtue no perfect commander is wanting in—but not to have done it would have proved him a shallow and improvident person, unfit to be trusted with the conduct of a war; for men going into a battle need sustenance and all possible support, as is proved by this, that foolish generals, bringing hungry soldiers to blows with full ones, have been defeated, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... his father had been so tied up by the donor that nothing but the interest could be touched by the improvident recipient. It had, in fact, been given to Sir Lemuel Levison in trust for John Scott, with directions to invest it to the ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... somehow, managed to make this exultant dash for a few daring weeks or months of freedom and new experience. If we knew this, we should regard them from our conservative standpoint of provident decorum as improvident lunatics, being ourselves unable to calculate with their odd courage and their cheerful belief in themselves. What we do know is that they spend, and we are far from disdaining their patronage, though most of them have an odd little familiarity of address and are not stamped ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... raise a stone rampart for their own defence; yet the Monkish historians [x], who treat of those events, complain of the luxury of the Britons during this period, and ascribe to that vice, not to their cowardice or improvident counsels, all their subsequent calamities. [FN [x] Gildas. Bede, lib. ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... man once, who was foolish enough to entertain a senseless prejudice against cows, because they did not give milk all the year round. This man was married, and of course, had a numerous family of children, and being very lazy and improvident, depended principally upon the kindliness of an excellent cow, whose milk was the chief means of his support and theirs. At length in the due course of time, the poor cow, as every one must know, began to yield it in diminished quantities, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... navigated, who only holds out a cold and steady hand after the catastrophe has happened, or, if no catastrophe supervenes, is content to walk away in that silent wonder which the care of Providence for the improvident ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... for their wants. The whole social organisation of Italy, with its frequent saints' days, during which no work is done, and its numerous holy fraternities living on alms, and its sanctification of mendicancy in the name of religion, has tended to pauperise the nation, and give it those unthrifty improvident habits which have destroyed independence and self-respect. Although, therefore, the Government has publicly forbidden begging throughout the country, it has in some measure tacitly connived at it, as a compromise between an inefficient poor-law and the widespread misery arising ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... "Prodigal Father," as Dickens later called him. This father, whom Dickens long afterward described, in David Copperfield, as Mr. Micawber, was, as his son was always most willing to testify, a kind, generous man; but he was improvident to the last degree; and when in difficulties which would have made melancholy any other man, he was able, by the mere force of his rhetoric, to lift himself above circumstances or to make himself ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... have known better than to take it from you," Aunt Maria said. "She is nothing but a little thief, and you are a very improvident child. To-morrow I'll take you to church in your ...
— Five Happy Weeks • Margaret E. Sangster
... silent, while Blondel, aware of the precipice, to the verge of which his improvident passion had drawn him, watched them out of the corner of his eye, uncertain how far their comprehension of the scene had gone. He trembled to think how nearly he had betrayed his secret; and took the more shame ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... years old, the child of his second son, whose mother had died in giving her birth. It so happened that, about a month previous to the date on which our story has now entered, a paralytic affection had disabled Bernardi from the duties of his calling. He had been always a social, harmless, improvident, generous fellow—living on his gains from day to day, as if the day of sickness and old age never was to arrive. Though he received a small allowance for his past services, it ill sufficed for his wants,; neither was he free from debt. Poverty stood at his hearth,—when Viola's grateful smile ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... (if any difference) of the two. No, sir, no. If my family and friends have united their wits and money for this purpose, be the crime of perverted justice on their heads! They injure whom they intended to serve. Improvident men!—if the young may speak thus of the elderly; could they imagine to themselves that your worship was to ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... money liberally to relatives, lending it to improvident borrowers, and dispensing it with open hands when she had it, though always herself in debt. Yet she liked to make money, and to have her hotel filled with tourists who patronized her little bar or drank ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... soon as his health would permit, to commence the study of law. During the four years he was in public service, his patrimony was greatly impaired. Towards his brethren in arms he had acted with liberality. Naturally of an improvident character, he adopted no means to preserve the property which he inherited. The cardinal vices of gaming and drinking he avoided. But he was licentious in the extreme, and regardless of consequences in the gratification of his desires. His extravagance was unrestrained when, in his ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... only to return next year, when the traitor Edric joined him and Wessex submitted. Together Canute and Edric harried Mercia, and were preparing to reduce London, when AEthelred died there on the 23rd of April 1016. Weak, self-indulgent, improvident, he had pursued a policy of opportunism to ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and bread-fruit trees, was under high cultivation. Sweet potatoes, Indian turnips, and yams were growing; also melons, a few pine-apples, and other fruits. Still more pleasing was the sight of young bread-fruit and cocoa-nut trees set out with great care, as if, for once, the improvident Polynesian had thought of his posterity. But this was the only instance of native thrift which ever came under my observation. For, in all my rambles over Tahiti and Imeeo, nothing so much struck me as the comparative scarcity of these ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... the videttes were visited at frequent intervals to see if they had discovered anything. In that way the night passed. In the morning everybody was exhausted and, to make matters worse, many of the men ran short of provisions. Some of them had neglected to bring the amount ordered; others had been improvident and wasted their rations. So to the discomforts of cold and wet, were added the pangs of hunger. The little bag of coffee had proven a precious boon. Whenever the column would halt for a few minutes, and it was possible to find anything that would burn, a handful ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... thoughtless improvidence, threw about their money so carelessly, that, soon after their arrival, every article of household consumption doubled and trebled in price, the remuneration for labour rising in proportion. This improvident expenditure has had the effect of making the people discontented. Imagining our resources to be inexhaustible, they do not know how much to ask for their commodities or their services, and it will require great firmness and discretion, on the part of the persons in authority, ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... Clare was not, nor her mother before her. Indolent and childish, unsystematic and improvident, it was not to be expected that servants trained under her care should not be so likewise; and she had very justly described to Miss Ophelia the state of confusion she would find in the family, though she had not ascribed ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... magnificence, with discretion's self to open the portal and invite his entrance; still, he goes not in. A humming-bird around a rose has caught his vagrant eye, and he is off to follow its roamings from flower to flower. Was ever such an improvident, self-willed creature ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... life had been Lady Kirton's. The wife of a very poor and improvident Irish peer, who had died early, leaving her badly provided for, her days had been one long scramble to make both ends meet and avoid creditors. Now in Ireland, now on the Continent, now coming out for a few brief ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... always on THE DIRECTION OF ITS AIM BY THE EXPERIENCE OF AGES. Self-knowledge is not less difficult, nor less necessary for the direction of its genius, to a people than to an individual; and it is neither to be acquired by the eagerness of unpractised pride, nor during the anxieties of improvident distress. No nation ever had, or will have, the power of suddenly developing, under the pressure of necessity, faculties it had neglected when it was at ease; nor of teaching itself in poverty, the skill to produce, what it has never, in opulence, had ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... common as to occasion no surprise. In no State were books so kept that the modern student can be sure he knows where all the money went. Graft in contracts, fraud in the administration of schools and negro-relief schemes, sale of charters and votes, illegal issues of bonds, improvident loans to railroads, combined to enrich the office-holder and to increase the volume of public debts. A long series of repudiations of these debts injured Southern credit for many years. South Carolina occasioned ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... opportunity offered itself for acquiring a piece of freehold land of about seven acres, close to the poet's cottage, known to the people of Helpston as 'Bachelors' Hall' and already noticed as belonging to two brothers of the name of Billing. The brothers were somewhat improvident, leading gay bachelors' lives; and, getting into debt gradually, they were compelled at last to mortgage their small property to a Jew for the sum of two hundred pounds. For some years, the interest was duly paid, but this failing at last, on account of the growing infirmity ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... obvious malevolence of men. As a shipowner everyone had conspired to make him a nobody. How could he have been such a fool as to purchase that accursed ship. He had been abominably swindled; there was no end to this swindling; and as the difficulties of his improvident ambition gathered thicker round him, he really came to hate everybody he had ever come in contact with. A temper naturally irritable and an amazing sensitiveness to the claims of his own personality had ended by making of life for him a sort of inferno—a place ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... the thoroughness with which the country was covered by the police in order to prevent danger and catastrophe to the rather improvident gold-seekers, a patrol was made by Inspector (later Assistant Commissioner) W. H. Routledge a distance of 1,100 miles or so from Fort Saskatchewan away north to Fort Simpson. This patrol was of value in getting into touch with many groups of "Klondikers," taking in their mail and bringing it ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... conduct, and especially to the Tories by the occasional flippancy or severity of his attacks upon them, that as it was clear that any Conservative Government must depend upon the great body of the Tory party for support, it was improvident in him to make himself obnoxious to them, and that he would do well to exert his influence over Stanley for the purpose of restraining those sallies in which he was too apt to indulge, and showing him the expediency ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... should endeavor to understand what is going on, receiving it in a right spirit. If she has a private fortune, she should, in all points left to her, be generous and confiding; at the same time, prudent. Many a man, she should remember, may abound in excellent qualities, and yet be improvident. He may mean to do well, yet have a passion for building; he may be the very soul of good nature, yet be fond of the gaming-table; he may have no wrong propensities, and yet have a confused notion of accounts, and be one of those unfortunate men ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... very appropriately be called a bread-fruit, since, during the long winter months, it furnishes bread to many tribes of Indians; indeed, not bread alone, but subsistence—as it is the only food these improvident ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... said Ezra. "We know very well what that means. Three women, each with an armful of brats, besieging the office and clamouring for a pension. Why are seamen such improvident dogs?" ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... captain says, all romance has long since vanished, and I think the most of us are beginning to look the fact of our awful situation full in the face.' 'We are making but little headway on our course.' Bad news from the rearmost boat: the men are improvident; 'they have eaten up all of the canned meats brought from the ship, and are now growing discontented.' Not so with the chief mate's people—they are evidently under the eye of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the Negro some of the arts of civilized life; but it must be added, that, denying him the inalienable rights of manhood, denying him the right to the product of his labor, it left him no noble incentive to labor at these arts, and thus tended to render him improvident, careless, shiftless, in short, to demoralize ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... river in canoes. A heavy shower fell this morning. My improvident men have torn all their waterproof cloaks and blankets just as we have arrived in a country where they ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... Charles impatient with his friend? At all times will you have my power alike? Sleeping or waking must I still prevail, Or will you blame and lay the fault on me? Improvident soldiers! had your watch been good, This sudden mischief ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition] |
