"Penniless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shall be a penniless woman; or something very like it. I am making no jest. I am no heiress - ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... bets—trebled them, until all had been swept away—money, horse, and even his Bowie-knife. Then he had contrived to borrow—won again, and now the last stake trembled in the scales. The game was played—once more he was penniless. He sat still for several minutes, his eyes gazing on vacancy, and when he arose he seemed like a strange man, his face was so changed with the workings of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... to the end, telling all he had to tell; and especially that he was landless and penniless but for that one promise; and as for the sword, he said, he was but as a child playing before the sword of Don Alderon. And this Don Alderon said was in no wise so, though there were a few cunning passes that he ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... of the squadron of two companies, Levi took charge of his family and estate. This family consisted of a daughter Hope, and a son Dexter, now a lieutenant at eighteen. Noah had brought up in his family from their early childhood the children of a brother who died penniless in Vermont. Artemas, always called Artie, was sixteen, and a soldier in one of the companies. Dorcas, the adopted daughter, was eighteen. They had always been a happy family; and all the young people called Noah and his wife, who treated them as ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... she said, "If thou lovest me, thou must tell me," and used her most affectionate words, and said that no one should ever know it, and left him no rest. Then he told her how years ago, when he was travelling about seeking work and quite worn out and penniless, he had killed a Jew, and that in the last agonies of death, the Jew had spoken the words, "The bright sun will bring it to light." And now, the sun had just wanted to bring it to light, and had gleamed and made circles on the wall, but ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... of the Saracens, to the number of eight. The First (1096-1099), preached by Peter the Hermit, and sanctioned by the Council of Clermont (1095), consisted of two divisions: one, broken into two hordes, under Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless respectively, arrived decimated in Syria, and was cut to pieces at Nicaea by the sultan; while the other, better equipped and more efficiently organised, laid siege to and captured in succession Nicaea, Antioch, and Jerusalem, where Godfrey ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... remarked that the parents and the beloved one were as hypothetical as the fortune); and how the Judge would make his first start as a capitalist by breaking a certain faro bank in Sacramento. He himself had been equally eloquent in extravagant fancy in those penniless days, he who now was quite cold and impassive beside the ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... New-York City to assist, in turns, in every trial, should remain evermore an indestructible monument to their unselfish devotion to their city, the existence of which was threatened by less than a score of ignorant, penniless Negro slaves! ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... doat on his very grave," he said, stamping his foot, "and by the side of it you would have starved, a penniless widow, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... penniless and in rags, these poor people were thronging the wharves of St. Louis, crowding the steamers on the Mississippi River, hailing the passing steamers and imploring them for a passage to the land of freedom, where the rights ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... not strike you, Mr. Yorke, that for a mere penniless adventurer to aspire to a rich woman's hand ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... landed in San Francisco, penniless. He knew scarcely any English. He sought work. His first job was to deliver circulars from door to door, and for this he was paid three dollars a day. He attended churches and meetings to learn how to pronounce the English ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... cowardice. I dreaded discovery so much! Every circumstance alarmed me. Your arrival and your long mysterious conversation with madam alarmed me. I thought exposure imminent. I feared to lose this home, which, lonely, dreary, hopeless as it is to me, is yet the only refuge I have left on earth. I am penniless and helpless; and but for this kind family I should be homeless and friendless. Think if I had been cast out upon the world what must have been ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... England has become a den of thieves, given over to the ravening wolves of rebellion and dissent, the penniless soldiery who would bring down all men's fortunes to their own level, seize all, eat and drink all, and trample crown and peerage in the mire. They have slain him, reverend mother, this impious herd—they gave him the ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... confirmed by time and trials. He began to think the accounts he had occasionally heard, of his old flame, must have been incorrect; it was scarcely possible she should look so calm, and even cheerful, if her father, the Presbyterian minister, had actually left her not only penniless, but burdened with the support of a bed-ridden step-mother, and a house full of younger brothers and sisters. We leave him to satisfy his curiosity as ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... Patin could no longer understand how he had ever imagined Desiree to be different from other women. What a fool he had been to encumber himself with a penniless creature, who had undoubtedly inveigled him with some drug which she had ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... view. His conduct with regard to his pension was very particular. No sooner had he changed the bill than he vanished from the sight of all his acquaintance, and lay for some time out of the reach of all the inquiries that friendship or curiosity could make after him. At length he appeared again, penniless as before, but never informed even those whom he seemed to regard most where he had been; nor was his retreat ever discovered. This was his constant practice during the whole time that he received the ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... dream it was," Kismine sighed, gazing up at the stars. "How strange it seems to be here with one dress and a penniless fiancee! ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... days of his life, and fewer still are those he may grasp with pleasure when the hands are falling helpless by his side. But many are the riches he may have to hold forever in the things of the unseen. Many a man walks through the fields penniless and yet richer far than their owner; to him the birds sing, for him the flowers bloom, to his eyes there are beauties in the blue beyond all words, and all the loveliness of the fair land lifts his heart within him. The other man who holds the title deeds sees nothing beside ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... not over decent. During some months Savage lived in the closest familiarity with Johnson; and then the friends parted, not without tears. Johnson remained in London to drudge for Cave. Savage went to the West of England, lived there as he had lived everywhere, and in 1743, died, penniless and heart-broken, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... news very stolidly, and betrayed no impatience during the interval that elapsed before the exchange-steamer could be got ready. Truth to say, it is rather an equivocal advantage—to be turned loose in a city where famine-prices prevail, utterly penniless. But, if my mate did not exult in his prospects, neither did he in any way despond. He "supposed he'd get along somehow;" indeed, he had plenty of a very useful capital—solid, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... wrote me? Listen, while I tell, then see if she is not to blame. She cruelly reminded me that by my father's will all of us, save you, were wholly dependent upon her, and said the moment I threw myself away upon a low, vulgar, penniless girl, that moment she'd cast me off, and I might earn my bread and hers as best I could. She said, too, my sisters, Anna and all, sanctioned what she wrote, and your opinion had more weight ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... his body remained concealed for some time, and was later found with a hat marked with his initials, A. R. D. They are also charged with taking his watch, two gold rings, and a purse of gold, whereby Clerk, previously penniless, was enabled to take and stock ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... a leather purse full of silver: You will not be altogether penniless, said he, even if you wreck your ship, so long as you can hold on to this. But yet it may be, said the King, that you will lose this money, and then it will be of little use to you that you have been to see King Sveinn and given him a ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... the most delightful stories Mr. Chambers has ever written. It is the romance of a bewilderingly pretty girl and a young New York society man. Just as they come to know each other, Fate steps in and renders them both penniless by wrecking the great firm in which their fortunes are invested. How the idle young man, without occupation or profession, is moved to swing about and take up the business of life in dead earnest is told with the brilliance and animation ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... bed-clothes above him; another might have touched his hair or hand; another kissed his cheek. But not even because he was like her departed husband, like the man who five and fifty years before had courted a certain cold and proud, handsome and penniless Miss Augusta Gallup, would Mrs. de Tracy do these things. She had had her sensation, such as it was, her secret moment of emotion, and was satisfied. She left the room as she had come, the candle casting exaggerated shadows of herself ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... lonely woman's life. He found out where the child was hidden, and threatened to take him away. Anne was frantic. The positions became reversed. Where Arnold had given money for Lucien's support, as the years went on he forced money from Anne Watson instead until she was always penniless. The lower Arnold sank in the scale, the heavier his demands became. With the rupture between him and his family, things were worse. Anne took the child from the home and hid him in a farmhouse near Casanova, on the Claysburg road. There she went sometimes to see the boy, and there he had taken ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... feelings probably evaporated under the fascinating influence of her next interview with Leicester, and the indignation excited by a "rebel" who refused to resign his ancestral home quietly to some penniless adventurer. There had been serious difficulties in England in 1462, in consequence of the shameful state of the current coin; and the Queen has received considerable praise for having accomplished a reform. But the idea, and the execution of the idea, originated ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... breasts, or, if with child, were butchered with their unborn offspring. Of all the property spared them by previous oppressors, nothing was left to sustain the miserable survivors. For weeks they wandered homeless and penniless in the vicinity of their once flourishing settlements; and there one might not unfrequently see the infant lying on the road-side, by the corpse of the mother dead of hunger and exposure. For even the ordinary charity of the humane had been checked by an order of D'Oppede, savagely ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... jailer to deliver it for me ... told him how important it would be to our lives ... adjured him to consider our helpless and penniless state. He promised to ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... Southern girl, who had lost a position through five months' sickness, and found herself, at last, in the street and penniless, turned her steps to a daily prayer-meeting. She said her earliest impressions from her mother were, that the Lord never failed those who really put their trust in Him. She had sought work for food and shelter, though destitute ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... to her? Vane had done her a service and it was only right she should repay him in some sort. This was how she tried to sum up the position. Whether Mr. Gay befriended him or not, their acquaintance would have to cease. He was penniless and so was she. If she confessed as much as this to him he would be embarrassed and distressed because he ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... cool towards him, and he began to find himself one too many at the "George Hotel." "I don't think brothers care much for you," he said, as a general reflection upon life. Hurt at this change, nearly penniless, and too proud to ask for more, he set off on foot and walked eighty miles to Weymouth, living on the journey as he could. He would have enlisted, but he was too small for the army and too old for the navy; and thought himself ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... penniless tramp, who had wandered from Chicago on a predatory trip, to take any property he could lay his hands on. The chance that presented itself here was tempting to a man of ...
— A Cousin's Conspiracy - A Boy's Struggle for an Inheritance • Horatio Alger
... aloft. For our Phineas Finn was a young man not without sense,—not entirely a windbag. If he did this thing the probability was that he might become utterly a castaway, and go entirely to the dogs before he was thirty. He had heard of penniless men who had got into Parliament, and to whom had come such a fate. He was able to name to himself a man or two whose barks, carrying more sail than they could bear, had gone to pieces among early breakers in this way. But then, would it not be better to go to pieces early than never to carry ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... heard all. My nephew is an invalid; has been an invalid for years—that's why so little is known about him. He's dying of consumption. The doctors hold out no hope for him, and now, with the fear preying upon him of leaving his wife and children penniless, he is wearing away so fast that any hour may see his end. And I have to meet his eyes—such pitiful eyes—and the look in them is killing me. Yet, I was not to blame. I could not help—Oh, Miss Strange," she suddenly broke in with the inconsequence of extreme feeling, "the will is ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... orphan, and would arrive in England from Jamaica in about a fortnight. Her mother had been Sir Thomas's sister, and had been at this time dead about three years. General Bonner, the father, had now died, and the girl was left an orphan, almost penniless, and with no near friend unless the Underwoods would befriend her. News of the General's death had reached Sir Thomas before;—and he had already made inquiry as to the fate of his niece through her late father's agents. Of the General's means he had known ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... death of my father and mother almost simultaneously by an epidemic fever prevailing in the neighborhood. I was away from home at a bachelor uncle's at the time, and so was unexpectedly thrown on his hands, an orphan, penniless, except in the possession of the small house my father had owned in the country before our removal to the city, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... and that she might go home to her mother as soon as she liked, for an iligant young lady as she was. Zack Bunting overheard the strife, and the same night, on his return home, dropped a hint to the girl Libby—short for Liberia—his wife's orphan and penniless niece, who dwelt with them as a servant, and whose support they were anxious to get off their hands; and so, to her own prodigious astonishment, the recalcitrant Biddy found herself superseded, and the American help hired a day or ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... emulating their sovereigns, gave frequent entertainments in his honor, treating him with the punctilious deference usually shown only to a noble of the highest rank. It cannot be said, however, that envy at the high distinction shown this lately obscure and penniless adventurer was quite concealed, and at one of these entertainments is said to have taken place the famous episode of ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... here penniless, but meeting a friend, obtained the loan of a few crowns, nearly his all. With these he went to the rooms, put down his stake, and won. He then successively doubled his stakes till he closed the evening with a hundred louis in his pocket. He ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... because the characters are what they are." An exceptionally fine vaudeville example—one only, it is agreeable to note, out of many that might be quoted from vaudeville's past and present—that has but two persons in the playlet is Will Cressy's "The Village Lawyer." One is a penniless old lawyer who has been saving for years to buy a clarionet. A woman comes in quest of a divorce. When he has listened to her story he asks twenty dollars advance fee. Then he persuades her to go back home—and hands the money back. There ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... mercy. You are driving me crazy. Pretty thing it would be for me to propose to you before I even got my sheepskin. Jolly pleased your father would be, wouldn't he, to be presented with a jobless, penniless son-in-law?" ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... for liberty, as you choose to call them, but such men as Lord Mar and your father? Betrayed by artful declamation, they rush into conspiracies against the existing government, are detected, ruined, and perhaps finally lose their lives! Who gains by rebellion, but a few penniless wretches, that embrace these vaunted principles from the urgency of their necessities? They acquire plunder, under the mask of extraordinary disinterestedness; and hazarding nothing of themselves but their worthless lives, they would make tools of the first men in the ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... leave their employment to proceed to the nearest public-house and plunge into a course of drinking. After the endurance of a week's delirium, madness, and unconsciousness, they generally find themselves, when robbed of the greater portion of their hard-got earnings, thrust upon the world penniless, wretched, dispirited, and sick, to seek employment and re-enact the same scenes of ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... alike by Eglamore's neat plan and by his own cleverness in unriddling it.) But if rich Eglamore should make a stolen match with you, your father—good thrifty man!—could be appeased without much trouble. Your cousins, those very angry but penniless Valori, would not stay over-obdurate to a kinsman who had at his disposal so many pensions and public offices. Honor would permit a truce with their new cousin Eglamore, a truce ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... civilisation. The day of his landing was a dismal one; the sky was dun, and a wind-worried drizzle filtered down to the greasy streets, but he plunged boldly into the delights of Shadwell, and was presently cast up, shattered in health, civilised in costume, penniless, and, except in matters of the direst necessity, practically a dumb animal, to toil for James Holroyd and to be bullied by him in the dynamo shed at Camberwell. And to James Holroyd bullying was ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... engaged in developing and increasing his farm; that he was beginning to be prosperous Irving was aware; that he did not more earnestly insist upon helping his nephews stimulated their spirit of independence. They knew that they had been left penniless; Irving sometimes suspected his uncle of parsimony, yet this was a trait so incongruous with Mr. Upton's genial nature that Irving never communicated the suspicion to his brother. Irving felt, too, that his uncle cared less for him ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... look like a huge joke and stirred hearty amusement all along the water-front. Everywhere he found proof of Fogg's neat work of discouragement. If a real salvaging company had turned the scheme down as impracticable, how could penniless amateurs hope? It was conceded in business and financial circles that they ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... and clear judgment, that the feeling was unchanged. Truly in that hour was her chastened heart joyful and grateful. "Mabel must wait," she said, "until the prospect of advancement became a reality; for it would be an ill return of disinterested love for a penniless orphan to become a burden instead of a blessing. Mabel would grow more worthy every day; they were doing well; ay, he might look round the white-washed walls and smile, but they were prosperous, healthful, happy, and respected; ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... Sangamon have cast me off, my old friends of Menard, who have known me longest and best, stick to me. It would astonish, if not amuse, the older citizens to learn that I (a stranger, friendless, uneducated, penniless boy, working on a flatboat at ten dollars per month) have been put down here as the candidate of pride, wealth, and aristocratic family distinction. Yet so, chiefly, it was. There was, too, the strangest combination of church influence against me. Baker is a Campbellite, and ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... very terrible. I don't know what to do with you. Since your poor mother died my life has been nothing but trouble and vexation. I can't manage you, you are too strong for me. So she hasn't left her room; crying her eyes out, because I won't consent to her marrying a penniless young officer! But I will not squander my money. I made it all myself, by my own industry, and I refuse to ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... from which in time I extracted the following facts:—It appeared that ever since she was a child, Miss Heston had been addicted to drinking fits, and that it was on account of this constitutional weakness, which was of course concealed from me, that she had been allowed to engage herself to a penniless subaltern. It appeared, too, that the habit was hereditary, for her mother had died from the effects of drink, and one of her aunts ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... granted. He has claims on the State, claims for a position that will give him a means of subsistence, if only a scanty one. With talent and industry and much enduring toil, he may reach the highest places. He belongs to the aristocracy of learning,—a poor, penniless aristocracy, it may be, yet one which in Germany yields in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... Stoddart was penniless. The two hundred and fifty dollars that he expected to contribute to the capital of the new combination was swept away in the failure of the Fidelity Bank. He had looked forward to Gustave for help, and all the while Gustave, on ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... and catching whales. Had I known the truth I would have resisted her authority, and gone out as a governess or into service as a nursery-maid, or done anything rather than have come on board. But left an orphan and penniless, and under her guardianship, so she asserted, I thought it my duty to obey her. I do not regret it now," she added, quickly; "but I felt that you must have been surprised at finding me dependent on such a person ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... have mentioned that, besides being exquisitely lovely, Diana was an heiress, and it was not without a sense of my own presumption that I allowed myself to entertain the hope of winning her at some future day. Still, I was not absolutely penniless, and she was her own mistress, and I had some cause, as I have said, for believing that she was, at least, not ill-disposed towards me. It seemed a favourable sign, for instance, when she asked me one day why it was I never rode. I replied that I had not ridden ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... (Though Ben forgot his pipe and Will's deep eyes Deepened and softened, when they spoke of Kit, For many a month thereafter) it was Nash That took the blow like steel into his heart. Nash, our "Piers Penniless," whom Rob Greene had called "Young Juvenal," the first satirist of our age, Nash, of the biting tongue and subtle sneer, Brooded upon it, till his grief became Sharp as a rapier, ready to lunge in hate At all ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... he said this, the king put into Audun's hand a leather bag, full of silver, saying, "Take this, and even if your ship goes down, you will not be entirely penniless." ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... was already recognised. Since the Irish Rebellion the fixed residence of herself and her husband had been in (Pall Mall?) London. Here her relatives from Ireland and elsewhere gathered round her; and here in 1644 her youngest brother, the future chemist, turning up brown and penniless, a foreign-looking lad of eighteen, after his six years of travel abroad, had been received with open arms. He had remained in her house about five months, and then had retired to his estate of Stalbridge in Dorsetshire, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... The kindred have had a time; pulque and liquor have been passed around freely; the women have enjoyed "equal rights" with the men; they have drunk their full share, and smoked their little cigars. The tin-man, once more penniless, with an aching head, but with a light heart, returns to his little hammer, and a piece of solder and tin got on the pledge of his future earnings. Such is the condition of native Mexican mechanics, and of the mechanic arts ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... had managed to sustain her spirits so far, dropped to zero at this bad news. There she was, penniless, in a strange town; and how could she get through all the long, weary hours until the evening? Gulping down a lump in her throat, she asked the sailor if the cargo vessel were already in the harbour, and if it were possible that she might ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... uncle, who made me his heir and allowed me four hundred a year; so I was a sort of Croesus among Staff Corps officers. When the smash came he disowned me by cable. By selling my ponies and my other belongings I was able to walk out of my quarters penniless but ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... I know more about that than you do,' replied Joel, with an air which would have done credit to a diplomat, 'and, I assure you, Ellen will not be left penniless; and if you will insist on her going with you for a short time—mind, I say insist—I promise before long to make certain disclosures which will satisfy you as to my assertion. But she must not be here while they are settling ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of an older civilization than that which had given Barney Ryan's daughter her frankness and her force, and it did not cross his mind that the heiress of millions might cast tender eyes upon the penniless sons of New England farmers. He said to himself with impatient recklessness that he ought not to and would not fall in love with her. There was too great a distance between them. It would be King Cophetua and the beggar-maid reversed. Clerks at one hundred and ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... man, yet penniless and homeless. A man of toil, but one whose own and whose ancestral toil had created a material and social grandeur which now mocked at his poverty and arrogantly denied him a share in its blessings. A free man, but ignorant, the greatest curse imposed by his former status which had contributed ...
— The Disfranchisement of the Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 6 • John L. Love
... said, by an advertisement lately set forth by the Society of Booksellers; but, though he imagined he should get a considerable sum of money on this occasion, which his family were in urgent need of, he protested he would not leave Joseph in his present penniless condition. Finally, he told him he had nine shillings and threepence-halfpenny in his pocket, which he was welcome ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... hear of such a thing—I will not hear of it for a moment; and if you persist in this mad folly, I tell you, fairly, that from this moment I shall have nothing more to say to you! You have to choose between me, and this penniless beggar." ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... a French patriot, who suffered death in the cause of liberty when I, his only child, was but fourteen years of age. My mother, broken-hearted by his loss, followed him within a few months. I was left an orphan and penniless, for our estate ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... helps himself to the treasures in the hag's cottage, and goes off to the nearest town, where he puts up at the best inn and gets himself fine clothes. Then he determines to requite the King, who had sent him away penniless, so he summons the Dwarf[FN390] and orders him to bring the King's daughter to his room that night, which the Dwarf does, and very early in the morning he carries her back to her own chamber in the palace. The princess tells her father ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... waited for the ship to come in, wondering what the other girls would think when they failed to come back with the gasoline. It was past dinnertime but there was no dinner for them as long as they had no money. From jaunty tourist to penniless pauper in two hours is quite a change. An hour passed; two hours, but no gold-laden message came over the wire. Hinpoha had been chewing her fingers ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... and die in the catacombs, as the early Pontiffs did for the first three centuries. He may be dragged from his See and perish in exile, like the Martins, the Gregories and the Piuses. He may wander a penniless pilgrim, like Peter himself. Rome itself may sink beneath the Mediterranean; but the chair of Peter will stand, and Peter will ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... captain, at the highest. The church is good for those who are willing to submit to its restraints, and play the hypocrite. I may purchase land, too, doubtless, as you say; but its possession will not confer upon me any, even of the ideal advantages, which are claimed and conceded to the penniless aristocrat. With us the line of nobility is so distinct and broad, that no human being can, unless the accident of birth have placed him on the sunny side of the hedge, overstep it. But this is not all. The nobles not only engross all ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... ideas on that point; for, as he well knew, the vow of poverty was somewhat of a formality in the Middle Ages, since the nun who brought to her convent a title and a fortune was usually not treated in the same manner as a penniless commoner. ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... however, of violated justice are not such as to exact the impossible in order to repair an injury done. A dead man cannot be brought back to life, a penniless thief cannot make restitution unless he steals from somebody else, etc., etc. But he who finds himself thus physically incapable of undoing the wrongs committed must have at least the will and intention of so doing: to revoke such intention would be to commit a fresh sin of injustice. The ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... but the marriage was unexpectedly broken off, and for very many years she persistently refused all the offers which were made for her hand. At length, in 1746, when she was forty-eight years old, she was secretly married to Mr. Stewart, of Grantully. This gentleman was a penniless scion of a good family, and the sole resources of the newly-wedded couple consisted of an allowance of L300 per annum, which had been granted by the duke to his sister, with whom he was on no friendly terms. Even ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... October day in 1866, David Lloyd George, then a little lad of three years, came with his mother and younger brother to live with his uncle, Richard Lloyd, for his father had died leaving the family penniless. His uncle, a shoemaker and preacher, was educated though poor. In the picturesque little village of Llanystumdwy on the coast of Wales, Lloyd George grew up,—a leader among his mates, not only in his studies but in mischief as well. He was a good thinker ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... this is done. I can't rest when I go to bed. I am thinking all night when will the morning come, that I may be at work again. No, no; there is no rest until this is sold. Do you know that in a day or two we shall be penniless and starving?" ...
— The Boy Artist. - A Tale for the Young • F.M. S.
... good job, too," said Mrs. Spires, whose temper for the moment outsped her discretion. Was this penniless drab doing it on purpose to annoy her? A nice one indeed to high-and-mighty it over her. She would show her in mighty quick time she had come to the wrong shop. Just as Mrs. Spires was about to speak out ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... state of doubt, affairs assumed a new feature. Charles received a letter from a friend, stating that the banking institution, in the stocks of which his mother's entire property was invested, had failed, and that she was penniless. ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... speculated largely, loaning some of it out West, at twenty per cent., investing some in doubtful railroad stocks, and experimenting with the rest, until by some unlucky chance he lost the whole, and, worse than all, had nothing of his own with which to make amends. In short, Maude was penniless, and J.C. De Vere in despair. She had written to him immediately, and he had come, suggesting nothing, offering no advice, and saying nothing at first, except that "the man was mighty mean, and he ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... him up, before many years had passed. M. de Lomenie, in his interesting sketch of Beaumarchais, has tried hard to show the justice of his demands on the United States, but without much success. He does not attempt to explain how Beaumarchais, notoriously penniless in 1775, should have had in 1777 a good claim for three millions' worth of goods furnished. The American public looked upon Paine as a victim to state policy, and his position with his friends did not suffer at all in consequence of his disclosures. Personally, he exulted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... Negroes were leaving their homes in the South and going in greatest numbers to Kansas, Missouri, and Indiana. Within twenty months Kansas alone received in this way an addition to her population of 40,000 persons. Many of these people arrived at their destination practically penniless and without prospect of immediate employment; but help was afforded by relief agencies in the North, and they themselves showed remarkable sturdiness in adapting themselves ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... the Lawyer, advancing and taking the girl's hand for a moment in a kindly clasp, "the time has come for me to explain all. You are not, you never were, the penniless girl that you suppose. Under the terms of your father's will, I was called upon to act a part and to throw you upon the world. It was my client's wish, and I followed it. I told you, quite truthfully, that I had put part ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... ill-temper, kicked the unlucky bag to a distance, and slowly and disconsolately mounting his horse, plodded on his way. All his cheerfulness was gone. It was some comfort, but still scant, to think that John Miles was as unlucky as himself. Both had become penniless tramps, and were alike the sport of Fortune. There was a difference in respect to their desert, however. John Miles may rightly claim the reader's sympathy, while Bill Crane must be considered to have met with a disaster which he ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... badges of their households, to the smaller gentry and farmers of their neighbourhood, and this artificial revival of the dying feudalism became one of the curses of the day. The outlaw, the broken soldier returning penniless from the wars, found shelter and wages in the train of the greater barons, and furnished them with a force ready at any moment for violence or civil strife. The same motives which brought the freeman of the tenth century to commend himself to thegn or baron forced the yeoman or smaller gentleman ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... which to build a palace, but no millionaire has yet beheld the lovely spot. With unlimited wealth at his command he still confines himself to the smoke and dust of civilisation, leaving the free air and the brilliant beauty of the wilderness to the wild-fowl and the penniless hunter, and ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... They came by plane, with gold and jewels and government bonds and shares of Consolidated Pemmican. The middle creases of the accordion came later, more slowly, but as quickly as money could speed their way. Men of wealth when they began their journey, they arrived little more than penniless and were looked upon with suspicion, tolerated only so long as they did not become ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... floor of the Athenaeum Building on Van Buren Street, had a section which he called "the morgue," for the reason that it was littered with plaster duplicates of busts, arms, and hands. This room, fitted up with shelf-like bunks, was filled nearly every night with penniless young sculptors who camped in primitive simplicity amid the grewsome discarded portraits of Cook County's most illustrious citizens. Several of these roomers have since become artists of wide renown, and I refrain from disclosing their names. No doubt they will smile as they recall those ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... about twelve years before that time he had arrived at Georgetown from some remote district in the interior; that he had journeyed alone on foot across half the continent to the coast, and had first appeared among them, a young stranger, penniless, in rags, wasted almost to a skeleton by fever and misery of all kinds, his face blackened by long exposure to sun and wind. Friendless, with but little English, it was a hard struggle for him to live; but he managed somehow, and eventually letters from Caracas informed ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... a friend against taking such a step, even at the present and ever-increasing high cost of living. I do not use such language. Since I first put on long trousers I have hunted high and low for a wife, and with a persistence equalling that of a young penniless widow, but without success. Just when it seems that within a few days I shall be the happy recipient of the congratulations of my friends who in their hearts feel certain I am about to fall victim to the wiles of a designing female ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... make me an offer sooner or later, in obedience to her orders. My aunt is my rival, and I do not feel the least doubt as to his having offered to her half a dozen times. But then she has another lover, Captain Bellfield, and I see that she prefers him. He is a penniless scamp and looks as though he drank. He paints his whiskers too, which I don't like; and, being forty, tries to look like twenty-five. Otherwise he is agreeable enough, and I rather approve of my aunt's taste ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... income. At the rate business is done here, the slow, dilatory manner in which the most favorable projects are carried forward, I have no reason to believe that anything will be realized before I must leave France, which will probably be in about six weeks. If so, then I return penniless, and, worse than penniless, I return to find debts and no home; to find homeless children with all hope extinguished of ever seeing them again in a family. Indeed, I may say that, in this latter respect, the last ray is departed; I think no ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... official distinction and made money. Returning to England, he settled at Cheam in Surrey, where he died in 1789. In 1800 his daughter Catharine was twenty-two years old. Her brother, a Tory Member of Parliament and a placeman under Pitt, strongly objected to an alliance with a penniless and unknown clergyman of Liberal principles; but Miss Pybus happily knew her own mind, and she was married to Sydney Smith in the parish church of Cheam on the 2nd of July 1800. The bride had a small fortune of her own, and this was just as well, for her husband's total ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... most exemplary people, and his father at one time had been a wealthy grain merchant, but during one of the financial panics that swept over the country, he was unfortunate enough to suffer embarrassments which stripped him of his fortune and left him penniless in his old age to begin again the battle of life. At the present time, he was a benevolent-looking, intelligent old gentleman, who occupied the honorable and not very lucrative position of postmaster of Geneva, from the receipts of which, and a few ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... Be that as it may, he somehow becomes a power. He attaches himself to many journals, the editors of which he first pesters, afterwards serves, and always despises. He may perhaps have dabbled in music, and caused a penniless friend who is musical to write for small pay songs which he honours by attaching his own name to them as their composer. Woe betide the unhappy aspirant to the honours of public singing who ignores the demand of this quasi-musical Turpin that she should sing his songs. For, having ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 12, 1890 • Various
... but when they found out how it happened, disapproval was changed to commendation. She was the daughter of a French patriot. Her father and mother had both perished on the scaffold in the sacred cause of liberty; she was thrown helpless, friendless and penniless upon the cold charity of the world; Providence cast her in the way of our sensitive and enthusiastic young traveler; he pitied her; he loved her, and was casting about in his own mind how he could help without ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... of her earliest summers her widowed mother had died and bequeathed her sole legacy, a penniless orphan, to the care of the survivor in an imperishable friendship, Disbrowe Erne. A childless, thriftless, melancholy man, Mr. Erne had adopted her into his inmost heart, but out of respect to his friend had suffered her to retain her father's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... was not until all things relative to the contract had been duly arranged between these amiable parents and their intended son- in-law, that the bride elect was informed of the fortune in store for her. But all the time that the lawyers had been preparing the marriage settlements, a young penniless gentleman named Philip Brian had been finding out for himself the way to Julia's heart, and these two had pledged their faith to each other only a few days before Sir Julian and Lady Lorrington formally announced their plans to their daughter. In consequence of her engagement ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... people call a 'good look' at her, because all the usual legends were already repeated about her wherever she went. It was said that she was really an ugly woman of thirty-five who had been married to a Spanish count of twice that age, and that he had died leaving her penniless, so that she had been obliged to support herself by singing. Others were equally sure that she was a beautiful escaped nun, who had been forced to take the veil in a convent in Seville by cruel parents, but who had succeeded in getting herself carried off by a ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... missing; some of it was dropped; this man is always penniless; he has not drawn his wages, and yet he is half tipsy and treating his companions. I hope I am not suspecting him wrongfully, but it looks bad, ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... home had been lightened by the thought, that by a prosperous voyage he might bring home enough money to stay always in the little shingled cottage in the narrow street of some New England fishing-village; but now all that was over. When he should arrive home he would be penniless, with nothing but the clothes on his back, and all because of a war of the very existence of which he knew nothing. It was hard to bear, but war ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... this letter reaches you I shall in all probability be in a better world. I am dying of consumption. I leave behind me a boy of ten—my poor little Philip. I leave him to the mercies of a cold world, for I am penniless. I had a little property once, but I speculated and lost all. Poor Philip will be an orphan and destitute. I know you are rich and prosperous. Won't you, in your generosity, agree to care for my poor boy? He won't require much, ...
— Mark Mason's Victory • Horatio Alger
... of any remuneration from the Greeks has "turned out perfectly chimerical," Lord Byron remarks, in a note, "and will do so, till they obtain a loan. They have not a rap, nor credit (in the islands) to raise one. A medical man may succeed better than others; but all these penniless officers had better have stayed at home. Much money may not ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... strange," she said; "I had more faith in Mabel Harrington's pride. She glories in her son, you say—yet is willing to marry him to a penniless foundling." ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... hear it, Edmund, for I have long been penniless; and I have great need of something at least to pay this good woman for all the trouble she has been at with me, and for her food which my carelessness has destroyed, as you may ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... that would seem weak in an untutored boy. When he already has more money than he knows what to do with, he will perhaps hazard all on some wild cat speculation, and in a very little while find himself penniless and unable to furnish support for his family. Again he becomes the victim of a confidence game, and only learns how he has been played with when he has lost perhaps fifty thousand dollars by the unscrupulous sharpers with ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey
... congenial spirits, took several drinks with them, and then, being "flush,"—a very unusual thing for him—he proceeded to "buck the tiger." Like too many others, he bucked too long, and soon found himself penniless. Not to be outdone, however, he rushed out and borrowed one hundred dollars from a friend, promising to return it the first thing in the morning. With this money he returned to the unequal contest, but before long ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... not aware, as I have not considered it necessary to inform you hitherto of my affairs, that all we are living on is an annuity your father bought for me, before the catastrophe to his fortunes. That, you will understand, ceases with my life. At my death you will be absolutely penniless, a beggar in the street. Even were you to sell these trifles"—and she pointed to the Sevres cups and the miniatures—"the few pounds they would bring might keep you from starving for perhaps a month ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... really gaining on Alvina. There was a terrible sombre futility, nothingness, in Manchester House. She was twenty-six years old. Her life was utterly barren now Miss Frost had gone. She was shabby and penniless, a mere household drudge: for James begrudged even a girl to help in the kitchen. She was looking faded and worn. Panic, the terrible and deadly panic which overcomes so many unmarried women at about the age of thirty, was beginning to overcome ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... borrowed such large sums from him, and he refused him further loans. More than this, he told the old man that he (Quilp) held a bill of sale on his stock and property, and that he and little Nell would be henceforth homeless and penniless. ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... disasters had befallen the family of the other, until the daughter of the house, and its only lineal descendant, Mary Trigillgus's mother, had married an intemperate spendthrift, who had at his death left her penniless, though the grandchild, Mary Trigillgus, had inherited the small house in which mother and daughter found ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... whom he hath heaped insult, I have taken counsel with my advisers, the ministers of state, and it is my royal will and pleasure to pronounce sentence. Wherefore, I declare that my son, the prince, shall be cast forth into the world, penniless, and shall not return until he shall have learned how to Count Five. And be it further known that none may minister unto his wants should he crave assistance by declaring he ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... gave up everything to become an officer of the Salvation Army, but, exhibiting a sad want of that capacity for unhesitating and blind obedience on which Mr. Booth lays so much stress, was thrown aside, penniless—no, I am wrong, with 2s. 4d. for his last week's salary—to shift, with his equally devoted wife, as he best might. I wish I could induce intending contributors to Mr. Booth's army chest to read Mr. Redstone's story. I would ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... he argued; "but Sylla Chipchase's father is a wealthy man, and the young lady, in consequence of her mother's settlement, a very long way off a penniless maiden. I don't think Lady Mary has ever yet thought about Jim's marrying at all; but if Beauchamp and Blanche only make a match of it, I fancy it would reconcile her ladyship to a good deal. She wouldn't then, at all events, be beaten at all points of the game by her pet aversion—Mrs. ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... his head to wonder whether Laach too could give him peace, whether he could settle so far off. Now, if the old ties should be too strong to resist, thanks to Peter, he would have to set out on his way penniless. ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... my necessity extreme. Oh, sir! an infamous plot has been hatched against me; I have been driven with ignominy from my husband's house; my name has gone over the length and breadth of England, a by-word of reproach! I am alone and penniless in this hotel; in which I know not how short the time may be that they will permit me to stay. Come! Come quickly! Come and save, if it be possible, your ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... latter would offer to provide her a place in some convenient asylum, and the others would all agree that such would be her fitting destiny. She could bear the idea of walking forth, as she had said, penniless into the street, without a crust; but she could not bear the idea of being laughed at when ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... In truth, I have been rooted in idleness and indifference so long that I scarcely feel as if I cared enough about myself to take advantage of the offer. Then I cannot bring myself to think of selling Claremont, though I know that a penniless man has no right to the luxury of sentimental attachments. If I were in Egypt it would not matter to me that some upstart speculator owned ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... Whose head was happy on this breast; If you could have heard the songs I sung When the wine went round, you wouldn't have guess'd That ever I, Sir, should be straying From door to door, with fiddle and dog, Ragged and penniless, and playing To you to-night ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... young man," she thought, "what a pity that he had been robbed." That his mother and father were dead added to the romance, and she felt a sort of a fellow-orphan's interest in him. "Poor boy! robbed of his fortune on his arrival in a strange country; penniless and homeless; can't speak a word of English; as helpless as a child." The maternal instinct in the child was aroused, and his large innocent blue eyes and blond hair made a very strong appeal to her. He needed a ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... morning Morrison's hotel held but a single guest—the rest, penniless by Sunday night, had gone back to work. The Clown, with a dollar still in his pocket, remained. When the others had gone he came down softly in his sock feet from his room and drew up a chair to the stove in the stagnant and deserted bar-room. ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... country won't be Turkish any more after the war. And then my younger brother, who is at school at home, will inherit. No, we are not going to cut him out and leave him penniless. Do your worst, Henkel.' ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... all the money well or ill earned, this people numbers three hundred thousand individuals. Were it not for the cabarets, would not the Government be overturned every Tuesday? Happily, by Tuesday, this people is glutted, sleeps off its pleasure, is penniless, and returns to its labor, to dry bread, stimulated by a need of material procreation, which has become a habit to it. None the less, this people has its phenomenal virtues, its complete men, unknown Napoleons, who are the type of its strength carried to its highest expression, and sum ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... doubt you are disappointed in not being the sole heiresses of our aunt, but you ought not to have expected it for a moment. She had for a long time regretted making that rash will, which was drawn up when her heart was full of pity for your penniless condition. Only, being in such robust health, she always put off doing it until this last sad illness of hers. Where do ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... gambling is so strong that the criminal is always in a penniless condition, no matter how much treasure he has appropriated, and cases of starvation in prison are not unknown, prisoners having sold their rations in ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... abnegation of his conscience, each man seeks the indulgence of his private vice. And hence in Secret Societies (from which may yet proceed great danger to all Europe) we find but foul and hateful Eleusinia, affording pretexts to the ambition of the great, to the license of the penniless, to the passions of the revengeful, to the anarchy of the ignorant. In a word, the societies of these Italian Carbonari did but engender schemes in which the abler chiefs disguised new forms of despotism, and in which ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
