"Parsimonious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of couple who coddle themselves, and who do so at a cheaper rate and on more spare diet, because they are niggardly and parsimonious; for which reason they are kind enough to coddle their visitors too. It is unnecessary to describe them, for our readers may rest assured of the accuracy of these general principles:—that all couples who coddle themselves are selfish and slothful,—that they charge upon ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... it has been admitted. Some of that few make a good use of them. But the vast majority are injured. They either become less active and industrious, or more parsimonious and miserly; and not a few become prodigals or bankrupts at once. In any of these events, they are of course unfitted for the essential purposes of human existence. It is not given to humanity to bear ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... He was a man of nearly sixty years of age, forty-five of which, with the exception of occasional furlough, had been passed in the country. Having held several lucrative situations for many years, and, although not parsimonious, being very prudent in money concerns, he had amassed a very large fortune. More than once he had returned to England on leave, and with the full intention of remaining there, if he could be comfortable; but a few months in his native country only made him more anxious to return ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... himself completely to rum-and-water, and the odious society of the Horrocks family. Pitt's success rendered the Rector's family furious, and Mrs. Bute regretted more (though she confessed less) than ever her monstrous fault in so insulting Miss Briggs, and in being so haughty and parsimonious to Bowls and Firkin, that she had not a single person left in Miss Crawley's household to give her information of what took place there. "It was all Bute's collar-bone," she persisted in saying; "if that had not broke, I never would ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... concession for drainage of land which he is too parsimonious to take full advantage of, ii. 21; complains of seizure of his estates by ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... covered with continual profusion, and distributed his beef and ale to such as chose rather to live upon the folly of others, than their own labour, with such thoughtless liberality, that he left a third part of his estate mortgaged. His successor, a man of spirit, scorned to impair his dignity by parsimonious retrenchments, or to admit, by a sale of his lands, any participation of the rights of his manour; he therefore made another mortgage to pay the interest of the former, and pleased himself with the reflection, that his son would have the hereditary estate without the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... The expression of Jakoff's face and the way in which he twitched his fingers showed that this order had given him great satisfaction. He was a serf, and a most zealous, devoted one, but, like all good bailiffs, exacting and parsimonious to a degree in the interests of his master. Moreover, he had some queer notions of his own. He was forever endeavouring to increase his master's property at the expense of his mistress's, and to prove that it would be impossible to avoid using the ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... found in her; for he would not be burdensome, but would pay the hire for his entertainment, and spend his own money. To which she replied, that he guessed right as to the humanity of her parents; but complained that he should think them so parsimonious as to take money, for that he should have all on free cost. But she said she would first inform her brother Laban, and, if he gave her leave, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... a cause often consist of two sets of phenomena, the one obvious, the other deeper under the surface, and exactly contrary, the latter is often neglected. This was why the rapidly spent capital of the prodigal was supposed formerly to employ more labour than the invested savings of the parsimonious, and the purchase of native goods to encourage native industry more than ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... by great frugality and extraordinary application, had raised a fortune of about L160 a year in lands, and a considerable sum of ready money, all which at his death devolved upon my father, as his only child; who, being no less parsimonious than my grandfather, and living upon his own estate, had much improved it in value before his marriage with my mother; but he coming to that unhappy end, my mother, after my birth, placed all her affection upon me (her growing hope, as she called me), and used every method, in my minority, of increasing ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... twinkled. "I expect Sadie will bear the separation. For one thing, we lost our crop and she'll save money while I'm away. She's not parsimonious, but she hates to waste dollars, and must have found me expensive now and then. Then I mean to earn something, and can imagine her surprise when I ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... o'clock in the afternoon and a fire in the Baxters' kitchen since six in the morning had produced a fairly temperate climate in that one room, though the entries and chambers might have been used for refrigerators, as the Deacon was as parsimonious in the use of fuel as in all other things, and if his daughters had not been hardy young creatures, trained from their very birth to discomforts and exposures of every sort, they would have ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... frank, full of expedients, generous (three times), gracious, honourable, hostile to crime, impervious, ingenious, inoffensive, joyous, just (twice), laborious, liberal, lofty, magnanimous, modest, noble, not easy to be understood (!), parsimonious, pious (twice), profound in opinion, prone to regret his acts, prudent, rash, religious, reverent, self-confident, sincere, singular in mode of thinking, strong, temperate, unreserved, unsteady, valuable in friendship, variable, ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... to restrict himself. He, as a matter of course, out of those to which he had possessed the right of entrance, chose the worst. It was called the Beargarden, and had been lately opened with the express view of combining parsimony with profligacy. Clubs were ruined, so said certain young parsimonious profligates, by providing comforts for old fogies who paid little or nothing but their subscriptions, and took out by their mere presence three times as much as they gave. This club was not to be opened till three o'clock in the ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... subscribing freely to carry on the religious primary schools, and refusing to let their children attend the lay schools, which are kept up by the Government out of the taxes paid by themselves. This, with a thrifty and rather parsimonious population, like that which increases and multiplies so steadily in Artois, ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... of great masters," replied madame, composedly. "You reproach me with being very parsimonious, sire; I have, however, paid very ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... [107] The parsimonious yet liberal London merchant, whose miserly habits gave Arbuthnot the materials of the story. See Professor Brown's Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, vol i. p. 244, and Martin Scriblerns, cap. xii., Pope, vol. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... and continually a fresh supply of superfluous artisans and shop assistants, coming out of employment with savings or 'help' from relations, of widows with a husband's insurance money, of the ill-trained sons of parsimonious fathers, replaces the fallen in the ill-equipped, jerry-built shops that ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... squirrel wriggle under the lash of the song. And so their wretched days of starvation were often made shorter by a more or less harmless attack on the poor skipper, who might only be the instrument of a parsimonious managing owner. But that was not the only method adopted of showing their dissatisfaction. The seaman who had the most flippant tongue and legal mind was chosen (or, as frequently happened, he selected himself) to introduce a deputation of the whole ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... vitality. It must be there when she wanted it, be ready for any strain she chose to put upon it, let her play fast and loose with it; and then, if necessary, she would be ill for a while and pay the piper. But be systematically prudent and parsimonious she would not. ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... with a good house and a host of servants, is naturally a hospitable man. A guest is one of his daily wants. A friendly face is a necessary of life, without which the heart is apt to starve, or a luxury without which it grows parsimonious. Men who are isolated from society by distance, feel these wants by an instinct, and are grateful for an opportunity to relieve them. In Meriwether the sentiment goes beyond this. It has, besides, something dialectic in it. His house is open to everybody, as freely ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... to make the day interesting, or say, rather, out of the common; but the palm was easily carried off by the Colonel's "gift." I have had occasion to allude to the parsimonious action of the military in curtailing the allowances paid to natives for captured cattle and thereby paralysing the incentive that usually induces humanity (black or white) to face danger. This untimely experiment in economics ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... and shabbiest description. He was compelled to go to school in patched shoes and a ragged suit, which hurt his pride as he compared himself with Oscar, who was carefully and even handsomely dressed. Parsimonious as his father was, he was anxious that his only ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... lady. "The wife of Captain Tinong is very parsimonious—she has never sent us presents, though we have been to her house. When such a person lets slip a little present of ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... with avidity, for his father was very parsimonious, and his mother no less so, and he seldom got any ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... very ill-used on our first night in Paris, when, having been wiled into a grand hotel near the Bourse, we were stowed away on the fifth floor, three in a room, and charged six francs for our beds, one more for a candle, and one for service. Our parsimonious Dane was so highly irritated, that he took possession of the candle and carried it off in his pocket. But Alcibiade was soon by our side, to give us help and advice with his old kindness; and under his guidance we removed immediately to more suitable lodgings, and were set in the ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... transient, pleasures dare With age's lasting honours to compare? On the world's stage, when our applause grows high, For acting here life's tragic-comedy, The lookers-on will say we act not well, Unless the last the former scenes excel: But age is froward, uneasy, scrutinous, Hard to be pleased, and parsimonious; But all those errors from our manners rise, Not from our years; yet some morosities 670 We must expect, since jealousy belongs To age, of scorn, and tender sense of wrongs: Yet these are mollified, or not discern'd, Where civil arts and manners have ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... wretched, that if you only knew what it is, you would be miserable." The summer was intensely hot at Bologna, and the plague broke out. In these circumstances it seems miraculous that the four sculptors in one bed escaped contagion. Michelangelo's parsimonious habits were not occasioned by poverty or avarice. He accumulated large sums of money by his labour, spent it freely on his family, and exercised bountiful charity for the welfare of his soul. We ought rather to ascribe them to some constitutional ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... of Henry were not kept with the splendour which characterised those of his rival and successor, Edward IV. Henry's habits were religious, and his house expenses parsimonious—sometimes necessarily so, for he was short of money. From the introduction to the "Paston Letters" (edited by Mr. James Gairdner) it appears that the king was in such impecunious circumstances in 1451 that he had to borrow his expenses for Christmas: "The government ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... genius, force of conception, and steadiness of purpose; qualities which every legislator is desirous of being thought to possess. On the other hand, the study of local advantages and impediments demands labour and inquiry, and is rewarded after all only with the cold and parsimonious praise due to humble industry. It is no less true, however, that measures which go straight and direct to a great general object, without noticing intervening impediments, must often resemble the fierce ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... likely to linger and become talkative if I had a comfortable chair for him to sit in, and if he found a bottle of Benedictine and plenty of the kind of cigarettes he liked, at his elbow. He was, I had discovered, parsimonious about small expenditures—a trait absolutely inconsistent with his general character. Sometimes when he came he was silent and moody, and after a few sarcastic remarks went away again, to tramp the streets of Lincoln, which were almost as quiet and oppressively domestic as ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... not to be conceived but by those who witnessed it. This critical period drew forth many examples of great and confiding liberality, as well as some of a very opposite character. Men of great wealth and parsimonious habits came and placed their whole fortunes at the disposal of their bankers in order to support their credit. For many days the evil continued to augment so rapidly, and the demands upon the Bank were so great and increasing; that a Bank restriction ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... suggested dreams, romance, a kind of sense or love of splendor and grandeur which one does not often encounter among the really wealthy. Those cracked shoes were in my mind, I suppose. He seemed to live among great things, but in no niggardly, parsimonious or care-taking way. Here was ease, largess, a kind of lavishness which was not ostentation but which seemed rather to say, "What are the minute expenses of living and pleasuring as contrasted with the profits of skill in the world outside?" He ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... foot-lights. They are but playgoers on compulsion. They even seem sometimes, when they retain their seats, to prefer gazing at the audience, rather than at the actors, and thus to advertise their apathy in the matter. And I have not heard that the parsimonious manager, who proposed to reduce the salaries of his musicians on the ground that they every night enjoyed admission to the best seats, for which they paid nothing, "even when stars were performing," ever succeeded in convincing his band of ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... this picture of literary life in Paris. We leave the reader to draw his own conclusions. He needs no assistance,—for the picture is painted in bright colors, and the light is thrown with no parsimonious hand upon every corner. It is a curious exhibition of a most unhealthy state of things. It explains a great many of those literary mysteries, which seem so unaccountable, in the most ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... to support a wife, and on top of that expense, to run the risk of having children to rear. He had no close kindred excepting a distant cousin or two in Chickaloosa. He kept no servant, and for this there was a double cause. First, his parsimonious instincts; second, the fact that for love or money no negro would minister to him, and in this community negroes were the only household servants to be had. Among the darkies there was current a belief that at dead of night he dug up the bodies of those he had hanged and peddled ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... a line thir long dimension drew, 480 Streaking the ground with sinuous trace; not all Minims of Nature; some of Serpent kinde Wondrous in length and corpulence involv'd Thir Snakie foulds, and added wings. First crept The Parsimonious Emmet, provident Of future, in small room large heart enclos'd, Pattern of just equalitie perhaps Hereafter, join'd in her popular Tribes Of Commonaltie: swarming next appeer'd The Femal Bee that feeds her Husband Drone 490 ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... save money, invest money; put out to interest; provide for a rainy day, save for a rainy day, provide against a rainy day, save against a rainy day; feather one's nest; look after the main chance. cut costs. Adj. economical, frugal, careful, thrifty, saving, chary, spare, sparing; parsimonious &c 819. underpaid. Adv. sparingly &c adj.; ne quid nimis [Lat.]. Phr. adde parvum parvo magnus acervus erit [Lat.]; magnum est ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... parsimonious with the tints. It reminds me of some of Lenbach's work which I saw at Florence; it ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... days, as also to meet with quiet matronly dignity the extraordinary honours showered on her as the mother of the French Emperor. She was inured to habits of frugality, which reappeared in the personal tastes of her son. In fact, she so far retained her old parsimonious habits, even amidst the splendours of the French Imperial Court, as to expose herself to the charge of avarice. But there is a touching side to all this. She seems ever to have felt that after the splendour there would come ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... life of a dog. Disappointed both in love and in friendship, and looking upon human learning as vanity, he had come to a conclusion that there was but one good thing in the world, videlicet, a good dinner; and this his parsimonious lady seldom suffered him to enjoy: but, one morning, like Sir Leoline in Christabel, 'he woke and found his lady dead,' and remained a very consulate widower, ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... generation, the suggestions and strong recommendations of educators relative to physical education in our schools been acted upon by the public? Ah! The fault was not with educational principles; they were sound. The educational forces of the country knew what was needed, but a parsimonious public would not follow intelligent leadership. We could say, all along the line, "I told you so," if we felt so inclined. Instead of being the "laughing stock" we could—if the matter were not too serious—throw ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... had been spent in buying off lawsuits; the lad's extravagance had squandered the rest. Of the Marquis' income of ten thousand livres, five thousand were necessary for the housekeeping; two thousand more represented Mlle. Armande's allowance (parsimonious though she was) and the Marquis' expenses. The handsome young heir-presumptive, therefore, had not a hundred louis to spend. And what sort of figure can a man make on two thousand livres? Victurnien's tailor's bills alone absorbed his whole allowance. He had his linen, his clothes, gloves, and ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... please him best;—perhaps because it involved the least risk; for Dammit had become excessively parsimonious. Had any one taken him up, his head was small, and thus his loss would have been small too. But these are my own reflections and I am by no means sure that I am right in attributing them to him. At all events the phrase in question ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... in the hotel and I had gone to my room, I realized that I had made rather good progress. I had ingratiated myself with her, and she had grown very confidential, inasmuch as I was already able to judge that she rather despised her elderly and parsimonious husband, and that she preferred to lead her own ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... parsimonious in only sending me a single copy of the Ballade of Count Tolstoy. ["The Blind Bard." Liszt wrote the melodramatic piano accompaniment to it (1874).] Allow me then to make use of this copy to indicate the version which I think should be put into the arrangement ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... had become extreme. So early as the eighth of June horseflesh was almost the only meat which could be purchased; and of horseflesh the supply was scanty. It was necessary to make up the deficiency with tallow; and even tallow was doled out with a parsimonious hand. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Do you know what poverty is like in this barren region?" he cried harshly. "The weapons of education only unfit you for the plow. You stint, pinch, live on nothing!" He rubbed his dry hands together. "It was crumbs and scraps under the parsimonious regime; but now the prodigal has come into his own and believes in honest wages ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... substantial ground of this high requirement in dissipation is in the last analysis no other than that same propensity for a manifestation of dominance and pecuniary decency which makes the French peasant-proprietor parsimonious and frugal, and induces the American millionaire to found colleges, hospitals and museums. If the canon of conspicuous consumption were not offset to a considerable extent by other features of human nature, alien to it, any ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... the happiest man in the world. There was still, however, one thing which greatly troubled him. He knew his father was very proud, and considered the honour of an alliance with his family so great that but few presents would be required to be made. On the other hand, the old Brule was exceedingly parsimonious, and, no doubt, would take this opportunity to enrich himself by demanding a great price for ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... discovered that the youthful heir of Draycot was fond of wine and dice, and that he had on more than one occasion met with his father's displeasure for indulgence in such acts of dissipation. Having learnt, too, that the young man was kept on short supplies by his parsimonious father, and had often complained that he was not allowed sufficient pocket-money for the bare expenses of his daily life; the crafty step-mother seized this opportunity for carrying out her treacherous and dishonourable conduct. Commiserating with the inexperienced youth ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... he differed widely from his brother-in-law. Pitt was utterly regardless of money. He would scarcely stretch out his hand to take it; and, when it came, he threw it away with childish profusion. Grenville, though strictly upright, was grasping and parsimonious. Pitt was a man of excitable nerves, sanguine in hope, easily elated by success and popularity, keenly sensible of injury, but prompt to forgive; Grenville's character was stern, melancholy, and pertinacious. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... himself.' Yet towards all this he has taken his position and resolution; can dismiss it all 'with frigid indifference, having little to hope or to fear.' Friends are stupid, and pusillanimous, and parsimonious; 'wearied of his stay, yet offended at his departure;' it is the manner of the world. 'By popular delusion,' remarks he, with a gigantic calmness, 'illiterate writers will rise into renown:' it is a portion of the history of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... of the trouble they underwent, in a very affecting way. With regard to his man-servant in particular, he was very anxious that he should be rewarded by liberal presents; and he pressed me earnestly on no account to be parsimonious. Indeed Kant was nothing less than princely in his use of money; and there was no occasion on which he was known to express the passion of scorn very powerfully, but when he was commenting on mean and penurious ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... sister,—Willoughby, after that lady had offended her father by marrying, yet she had little doubt of Helen's capability; and thought, after the energy and self reliance she had manifested, she might, for she was, though rich, a most parsimonious woman, turn it to her own account and for a few years, at least, get her children cheaply educated. It was Helen's determination, if she obtained the compassionate allowance, to keep it, as a reserve for her brother's ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... uncomfortable, muggy, unventilated; narrow, cramped; close-mouthed, secretive, reticent, reserved, uncommunicative, taciturn; dense, solid, compact, imporous; near, adjacent, adjoining; intimate, confidential; parsimonious, stingy, penurious niggardly, miserly, illiberal, close-fisted; exact, literal, faithful; intent, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... pension if commuted would be L7288, and the King of the Belgians was to provide that sum, which was to be paid into a trust fund. In this and every other matter the King behaved towards Gordon in the most generous and cordial manner, furnishing a marked contrast with the grudging and parsimonious spirit of the British Government towards Gordon in China, at the Cape, and now again when destined ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... comedian, a stout, heavy-looking Englishman, of grave deportment, with no signs of wit or humor, yet aiming at both in conversation, in order to support his character. Very steady and regular in his life, and parsimonious in his disposition,—worth $ 50,000, made by his profession.—A clergyman, elderly, with a white neckcloth, very unbecoming, an unworldly manner, unacquaintance with the customs of the house, and learning them in a childlike way. ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was liberal to the poor, and generous in the aid which he administered to men of genius and talent, who often found a comfortable asylum under his roof. In his domestic economy he was frugal without being parsimonious. His hospitable board was ever ready for the reception of his friends; and, though he was himself abstemious in his diet, he seems to have been a lover of good wines, of which he received always the choicest varieties out of the Grand Duke's cellar. This peculiar ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... bodies have no effect on the exhausted sensorial power, and a delirium like a dream is the consequence. At length the internal stimuli cease to excite sufficient irritation, and the secretions are either not produced at all, or too parsimonious in quantity. Amongst these the secretion of the brain, or production of the sensorial power, becomes deficient, till at last all sensorial power ceases, except what is just necessary to perform the vital ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... among them, and handed them over to the astonished student, along with a lecture-ticket, saying: 'Of course, Mr —— intended giving you the same value in books which I do in this ticket!' The bookseller, although a notoriously parsimonious character, had not a word to say. Dr Barclay took great pride in collecting a library, and invented the following device as a mark for his books: His initials were engraved in the centre of an oval, at the top was the sun, with the motto—'I ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... time it seemed to him he had begun to understand that she was incapable of love—in other words, of giving herself wholly to anybody. A strange mystery it was that one who could give her body so unreservedly should be so parsimonious about her soul. To give her body and retain herself was her gift, above all other women, thereby remaining always new, always unexpected, and always desirable. In the few visits to Paris which had been allowed to him by her, and by Madame Savelli, she had repaid him for ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... abundance of money his companion seemed to have. When they met in New York Jack was very hard up, and had only succeeded in obtaining twenty five-cents from his parsimonious aunt. ...
— Mark Mason's Victory • Horatio Alger
... "overhead charges" would not be reduced to their practicable minimum. Such a governmental establishment, with its bureaucratic personnel, its "civil list" and its privileged classes, would not be conducted on anything like a parsimonious footing. There is no reason to apprehend any touch of modesty in the exactions of such a dynastic establishment for itself or in behalf of its underlying ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... well-dressed resemblance of a being, whom it was necessary for certain purposes that the de Courcys should carry in their train. Of the Honourable George we may further observe, that, having been a spendthrift all his life, he had now become strictly parsimonious. Having reached the discreet age of forty, he had at last learned that beggary was objectionable; and he, therefore, devoted every energy of his mind to saving shillings and pence wherever pence and shillings might be ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... spend the greatest part of their time with the priest, either at church or in their own houses. Other amusements they have none in this place, except private parties of card-playing, which are far from being expensive. Nothing can be more parsimonious than the oeconomy of these people: they live upon soupe and bouille, fish and sallad: they never think of giving dinners, or entertaining their friends; they even save the expence of coffee and tea, though both are very cheap at Boulogne. They ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... family of ten or twelve children, there will be a child servant for every child in the house. The little servants are ill-fed creatures (for the Filipinos themselves are merciless in what they exact and parsimonious in what they give), trained at seven or eight years of age to look after the room, the clothing, and to be at the beck and call of another child, usually a little older, but ofttimes younger than themselves. They go to ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... Christ, to which they were the inveterate and professed enemies; that the lower class of that nation, when thus admitted to the right of denizens, would interfere with the industrious natives who earn their livelihood by their labour; and by dint of the most parsimonious frugality, to which the English are strangers, work at an under price; so as not only to share, but even in a manner to exclude them from all employment; that such an adoption of vagrant Jews into the community, from all parts of the world, would ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... have the price. That may be a bit beyond them sometimes, but usually there is someone in the crowd who is "flush," and that means who will pay. For the Villagers are not parsimonious; they stand in no danger of ever making themselves rich and thus acquiring place in the accursed class ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... and Mistress de Chavasse stood for that faction of Roundheads at which her father and all her relatives had sneered even while they were being conquered and oppressed by them. She disliked them both from the first; and chafed at the parsimonious habits of the house, which stood in such glaring contrast to the easy lavishness of her own ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... of the people against Cassius was not of long duration. The allurements of the agrarian law, now that its proposer was gone, were of themselves gaining ground in their minds; and this feeling was further heightened by the parsimonious conduct of the senators, who, the Volsci and AEqui having been defeated that year, defrauded the soldiers of the booty; whatever was taken from the enemy, the consul Fabius sold, and lodged the proceeds in the treasury. The Fabian name was odious to the ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... shoulders. "You know you only mean that in relation to human life, for of the flesh and the fowl and the fish you destroy as much as I or any other man. And human life is in no wise different, though you feel it is and think that you reason why it is. Why should I be parsimonious with this life which is cheap and without value? There are more sailors than there are ships on the sea for them, more workers than there are factories or machines for them. Why, you who live on the land know that you house your poor people in the slums of cities and loose famine and pestilence upon ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... gentle disposition and simple habits. His plainness of dress and freedom from ostentation gave the impression that he was parsimonious, and Handel says of him that "he liked nothing better than seeing pictures without paying for it, and saving money," He was also noted for his objection ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... of course; almost no women have the courage of their emotions." His name was Reynold Chase, a long thin grave young man in a dinner coat, who wrote brilliant and successful comedies. "Yet Linda isn't parsimonious." He turned to her. "Just what are you? What do you ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... endangering her whole future and her reputation,—all indeed that is most precious to a young girl. For an instant the thought of confiding all to her parents entered her brain; but she rejected the idea almost as soon as she had conceived it, for she felt that her father would believe that the parsimonious Duke de Champdoce would never consent to such a marriage, and that her entire liberty would be taken from her, and that she might even be sent ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... about the same period, and in both it has had the same result, making of the farming-class a body of energetic, thrifty, intelligent, and aspiring people. Scotland and New England alike owe some of their best as well as their least attractive traits to bitter climate and a parsimonious soil; and the rural population of either is pushed into emigration by the scanty harvests at home. It is not a little singular that the Yankee and the canny Scot should each stand as a butt for the wit of his neighbors, while each has ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... civilised man appears. He does not shoot naturally, but he learns by patient practice. He is not so tough as the Pathan, but he delights in feats of strength—wrestling, running, or swimming. He is a much cleaner soldier and more careful. He is frequently parsimonious, and always thrifty, and does not generally feed himself as well as the Pathan. [Indeed in some regiments the pay of very thin Sikhs is given them in the form of food, and they have to be carefully watched by their officers till they ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... learned Selden, with parsimonious phrase and copious sense, has thus compressed the result of an historical dissertation: he derives our ancient Christmas sports at once from the true, though remote, source. "Christmas succeeds the Saturnalia; the same time, the same number of holy-days; ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... that my father, who was very economical by nature, was extraordinarily cautious and, I may say, even parsimonious in charitable matters. It is of course easy to understand, if one considers the unlimited confidence which he enjoyed among the subscribers and the great moral responsibility which he could not but feel toward them. So that before undertaking ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... talking to Foote of an acquaintance of his, who was so avaricious as even to lament the prospect of his funeral expences, though a short time before he had been censuring one of his own relations for his parsimonious temper—"Now is it not strange," continued he, "that this man would not remove the beam from his own eye, before he attempted to take the mote out of other peoples?" "Why, so I dare say he would," cried Foote, "if he were sure of ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... long forgotten name, even to the small pittance of inheritance, which, in your vast accessions of property, you did not even scruple to grasp at, and which has certainly mightily recovered itself under your careful and parsimonious hand. But, nevertheless, though I claim all that is my own, I claim neither the title nor the estates of Byerdale. Wilton, my boy, stand forward, and let any one who ever saw or knew your gallant ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... the country. He had as housekeeper a woman so skinny that it made you feel cold to look at her, and her disposition was on a par with her appearance. Of course, it suited the national thrift, particularly congenial to Bogue, to feed us meanly, but we did not relish her parsimonious economies. ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... to leave the Nibelungen Hoard alone; but time tames all things except the love of gold. I went there; it was rich, but not inexhaustible. You have all had proof that I am neither poor nor parsimonious; but neither am I extravagant. I have all that I want—a cottage at Newport, a neat house in the Rue de la Paix, stocks, and real estate. The opal-mine started me; I have kept myself going very well ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... Forests, but to be responsible also for payment of the same. In which latter capacity, Kodweis, as Father Schiller insinuates, was rash, imprudent and unlucky, and at one time had like to have involved that prudent, parsimonious Son-in-law in his disastrous economics. We have also said what Elisabetha's comely looks were, and particular features; pleasing and hopeful, more and more, to the strict young Surgeon, daily observant ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... had grasped the essential ideas of the new warfare, and proved themselves better sailors and better gunners, but the number of the ships they took or destroyed was insignificant. Howard was so crippled by parsimonious mismanagement on the part of his Government that he had to be content with "half-doings," instead of decisive results. But there was worse mismanagement on the Spanish side, and this led first ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... pamper myself to an unreasonable extent. For one thing, I feel that I cannot work,—much less think,—when opposed by distracting conditions such as women, tea, disputes over luggage, and things of that sort. They subdue all the romantic tendencies I am so parsimonious about wasting. My best work is done when the madding crowd is far from me. Hence I seek out remote, obscure places when I feel the plot boiling, and grind away for dear life with nothing to distract me save an unconquerable habit acquired very early in ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... which stirred the young observer's interest was the great man's great love. The most parsimonious and mercantile of beings, he had married a poor beauty when fair creatures with fortunes smiled upon him on every side; the most indomitable of spirits, the warrior of whom armies stood in awe, he was the willing subject of a woman whose fiery ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... turned out a dish which her family has declared "tasted like medicine" is, naturally enough, discouraged from wandering after that particular strange god again. The truth is that she has overdone the seasoning. She doesn't want to be parsimonious, which is just what the French cook is with his flavors, only he, more scientifically, calls it using good judgment. If he uses garlic in a salad, it doesn't necessarily follow that the entire household ...
— Twenty-four Little French Dinners and How to Cook and Serve Them • Cora Moore
... been due in the first place to the rapid deterioration of rolling-stock and permanent way that could not be made good during the war, and has not been made good yet, but the real causes must be traced much farther back to the parsimonious and short-sighted railway policy of the Government of India for years past. Apart from the economic consequences, it is particularly unfortunate, even from the political point of view, that such a revelation of inefficiency should have occurred in a field which has been hitherto ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... was habitually parsimonious, but in no respects mean; his first thought was to save his fellow-traveller any part of the expense of the entertainment, which he supposed must be in his situation more or less inconvenient. He therefore took an opportunity of settling ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... static condition of the population was a constant source of wonder to us. How could people stay all their lives in one place? Must be something the matter with them.—Their ox-teams and tipcarts amused us, their stony fields appalled us, their restricted, parsimonious lives saddened us, and so, not wishing to be a burden, we decided to ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... wholesome that the parsimonious public should know what has been doing, and still is doing, in this connexion, I mention here that everything set forth in these pages concerning the Court of Chancery is substantially true, and within the truth. The case of Gridley is in no essential altered from one of actual occurrence, made public ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... write of, was reaping a rich harvest from the miseries of the unhappy people. In a lower room of his house, to the right of the kitchen as you entered it, he stood over the scales, weighing out with a dishonest and parsimonious hand, the scanty pittance which poverty enabled the wretched creatures to purchase from him; and in order to give them a favorable impression of his piety, and consequently of his justice, he had placed against the wall a delf crucifix, with a semi-circular receptacle at the bottom ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... above the fall there projected from the water a rock which had, by parsimonious saving during a long course of years, hoarded a little soil, out of which a small tuft of bushes struggled to support a decent vegetable existence. The high waters had nearly submerged it, but a few slender twigs ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... law of competence does not demand, yea, it forbids, more than a sufficiency to meet these peculiar exigencies of the child. Those parents who seek for more, become parsimonious, unfaithful to the moral interests of their household, and indifferent to all legitimate objects of charity and benevolence. These are indeed but the necessary fruits of unfaithfulness to this law; for the course of God's providence indicates the impossibility of our ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... arrival, the erection of buildings for the shelter of his command, and I continued the work of constructing the post as laid out by him. In those days the Government did not provide very liberally for sheltering its soldiers; and officers and men were frequently forced to eke out parsimonious appropriations by toilsome work or go without shelter in most inhospitable regions. Of course this post was no exception to the general rule, and as all hands were occupied in its construction, and I the only officer present, I was kept busily employed ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... two years, when he started for Chester, with a light heart, a bundle wardrobe, and a guinea. He entered Chester with his "last shilling," which he paid for admission to the theatre, little thinking of provision for the night. Yet Munden, in later life, was a prudent, parsimonious man. At the close of the performance he fell in with a person who had been a butcher's apprentice in Brooks's Market, and who remembering young Joseph's antic tricks, gave him good cheer, and money for his return to London. On the road, necessity overtook him, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... two lovely boys, Julius and Pompey—Pompey the senior of the two. The black-eyed darling! I see him now. I also see, hanging to his neck, his blue-eyed brother, who had given Pompey his black eye the day before. Pompey was generous to a fault; Julius parsimonious beyond virtue. I, therefore, instructed them in two different rooms. To Pompey I read the story of "Waste not, want not." To Julius, on the other hand, I spoke of the All-love of his great Mother Nature, and her profuse gifts to her children. ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... that it would come natural to an Englishman to talk about a dollar, still less about a dollar sign—whatever that may be. It is exactly as if he had made me talk about the Skelt and Stevenson Toy Theatre as 'a cent plain, and two cents coloured' or condemned a parsimonious policy as dime-wise and dollar-foolish. Another interviewer once asked me who was the greatest American writer. I have forgotten exactly what I said, but after mentioning several names, I said that the greatest natural genius and artistic force ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... dependent upon largely the will of the Vanderbilt family. To that will there is no check. To-day it may be expansively benevolent; to-morrow, after a fit of indigestion or a night of demoralizing revelry, it may flit to an extreme of parsimonious retaliation. As the will fluctuates, so must be the fate of the hundred thousand workers. If the will decides that the pay of the men must go down, curtailed it is, irrespective of their protests that the lopping off of their already slender wages means ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... it seemed as if New England air For his large lungs too parsimonious were, As if those empty rooms of dogma drear 370 Where the ghost shivers of a faith austere Counting the horns o'er of the Beast, Still scaring those whose faith to it is least, As if those snaps o' th' moral atmosphere ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... defence of the Tory party; but he never relinquished his friendship with Addison, for whom he had profound respect and admiration. Swift's life was worldly, but moral. He was remarkably temperate in eating and drinking, and parsimonious in his habits. One of his most bitter complaints in his letters to Stella—to whom he wrote every day—was of the expense of coach-hire in his visits to nobles and statesmen. It would seem that he creditably discharged his clerical ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... cold at the heart, thrilled at the approach of great and perilous enterprises, amidst which he rivalled his brother in activity and resourcefulness. Accordingly, his Viceroyalty of India moved Bonaparte to envy, patriotic Britons to rapturous applause, and the parsimonious Directors of the Company to carping criticisms. Those who deny to Pitt the gift of choosing able and inspiring men, forget that he made Wellesley Governor-General of India, and supported him in his quarrels with the India House. As Earl of Mornington, Wellesley had helped the Irish ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... not be confounded with the virtuous and parsimonious Caliph of the same name the tenth of the series (reign A.D. 692-705) who before ruling studied theology at Al-Medinah and won the sobriquet of "Mosque-pigeon." After his accession he closed the Koran saying, "Here you and I part," and busied himself wholly with mundane matters. The Cotheal ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... of the Wardrobe had been brought to Yuste, although Charles was plain in his attire and had somewhat disdained the personal vanity of his great rivals. He was parsimonious in such matters and hated to see good clothes spoilt, as he showed when he removed a new velvet cap in a sudden storm and sent to his palace for an old one! He observed {73} fast-days, though he did not ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... in appropriations, and to scan sharply any change in our fiscal revenue system which may reduce our income. The need of strict economy in our expenditures is emphasized by the fact that we can not afford to be parsimonious in providing for what is essential to our national well-being. Careful economy wherever possible will alone prevent our income from falling below the point required in order to meet our ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... laughter at Colonel Crockett's celebrated rifle, which had come to such a deplorable and dangerous end; and, for some time after, the entire community of "Penguin Castle," with the exception of the penguins themselves, feasted upon bunnies ad libitum, until they could say, as did the servants of that parsimonious nobleman who fed them without change ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... private conduct without restraint? Can it enter into a reasonable mind to imagine, that men of every other nation are not equally masters of their own time or houses with ourselves, and equally at liberty to be parsimonious or profuse, frolick or sullen, abstinent or luxurious? Liberty is certainly necessary to the full play of predominant humours; but such liberty is to be found alike under the government of the many or the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... them; and they say that this army amounted to about one hundred thousand men. And he collected a fleet of ships from the whole of the eastern Mediterranean, shewing great generosity to both soldiers and sailors, for he feared lest from a parsimonious policy some obstacle might arise to hinder him in his desire to carry out his punishment of the barbarians. Therefore, they say, thirteen hundred centenaria[28] were expended by him to no purpose. But since it was not fated that the Vandals should be destroyed by this expedition, ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius
... negotiate the bills, and her liability was to cease within a year. She was likewise to be collaterally secured by pledges from certain cities in the Netherlands. This amount was certainly not colossal, while the conditions were sufficiently parsimonious. At the same time a beginning was made, and the principle of subsidy was established. The Queen, furthermore, agreed to send five thousand infantry and one thousand cavalry to the provinces, under ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... entertainment; there had been whispers of another international marriage. And then, after respectful adieus, the Duke had sailed away—and within a month the papers were giving columns to his scandalous escapades with a sensational Spanish dancer of parsimonious drapery. Whereupon the rumors of Mrs. De Peyster's previously gossiped-of marriage with the now notorious Duke were revived—by the subtle instigation, and as an act of social warfare, so Mrs. De Peyster believed, of her aspiring rival, Mrs. Allistair. And there was one faint rumor, still ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... good, as in the Valais and even in some of the mountain districts of Italy, such as Friuli, the age of puberty for both sexes is quite as much later than in the heart of the towns, where, in order to gratify their vanity, people are often extremely parsimonious in the matter of food, and where most people, in the words of the proverb, have a velvet coat and an empty belly. It is astonishing to find in these mountainous regions big lads as strong as a man with shrill voices and smooth chins, and tall girls, well developed in other respects, without ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... labour and manufacture they can afford the commodity cheap, and at a rate not to be undersold in foreign markets. The Dutch, whose labour and manufactures are dear by reason of home excises, can notwithstanding sell cheap abroad, because this disadvantage they labour under is balanced by the parsimonious temper of their people; but in England, where this frugality is hardly to be introduced, if the duties upon our home consumption are so large as to raise considerably the price of labour and manufacture, all our commodities ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty
... leisure except for the strong, the nimble have none.—I ought to tell you what I do, or I ought to have to tell you what I have done. But what can I? the same concession to the levity of the times, the noise of America comes again. I have even run on wrong topics for my parsimonious Muse, and waste my time from my true studies. England I see as a roaring volcano of Fate, which threatens to roast or smother the poor literary Plinys that come too near for mere purpose ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson |
