"Penurious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... trade yield to them. The pleasures of property arise from acquisition more than possession, from what is to come rather than what is. The rich are seldom remarkable for modesty, ingenuity or humanity. Their wealth has rather a tendency to make them penurious and selfish." ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... comfortable room, at once snug and handsome; the bright grate was filled with a genuine ——shire fire, red, clear, and generous, no penurious South-of-England embers heaped in the corner of a grate. On the table a shaded lamp diffused around a soft, pleasant, and equal light; the furniture was almost luxurious for a young bachelor, comprising a couch and two very easy chairs; bookshelves filled the recesses ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... sir: sit ye down then, sit you down here: [They sit down.]—and now, sir, you must recall to your thoughts, that your grandfather was a man, whose penurious income of half pay was the sum total of his fortune;—and, sir, aw my provision fra him was a modicum of Latin, an expertness in arithmetic, and a short system of worldly counsel; the principal ingredients of which were, a persevering industry, a rigid economy, a smooth tongue, a pliability ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... Douglas was, and courteous. And there were times when Marion seemed actually to be trying to interest Fred; other times she purposely irritated him, as though she were deliberately amusing herself with him. All this was not taking into account Marion's penurious habit of charging Kate for every facial massage and every manicure she gave her. When Kate looked ahead to the long winter they must spend together in that cabin, she was tempted to feel as though she, for ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... a month of Sundays," was his lightly-spoken reply. "What a remarkable change has passed over him! Once, he used to be a fine, generous fellow—his heart was in his hand; but now he is as penurious as a miser, and even more selfish: he will neither give nor take. If you happen to be walking with him, and, after waiting as long as decency will permit to be asked to step in somewhere for refreshments, you propose something, he meets you with—'No, I thank you, ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur
... immeasurably surpass, insomuch that, not only did he keep a tight grip upon his purse when honour was to be done to another, but in his personal expenditure, even upon things meet and proper, contrary to the general custom of the Genoese, whose wont is to array themselves nobly, he was extremely penurious, as also in his outlay upon his table. Wherefore, not without just cause, folk had dropped his surname de' Grimaldi, and called him instead Messer Ermino Avarizia. While thus by thrift his wealth waxed greater and greater, it so chanced that there came to ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the nation to aid liberally its enterprising and patriotic promoters in the prosecution of their gigantic task. In those stirring times few people were inclined to question the motives of those who advocated what appeared to be patriotic measures, or to be penurious in the expenditure of public funds when the public weal seemed to ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... dared to choose their own lovers. To put down this profligacy was the first care of Arthur; and in enforcing a severe attention to etiquette and outward respectability, he perhaps erred on the side of virtue. Honest, brave, and high-minded, he was also penurious and cold, and the ostentatious good humour of the colonists dashed itself in vain against his polite indifference. In opposition to this official society created by Governor Arthur was that of the free settlers and the ticket-of-leave ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... indefatigable, and enterprising to a degree; despising and contemning luxury and refinement, courting labour, and even making a pride of the privations which they, without any necessity, continue to endure with their families. They are prudent without being at all mean or penurious, and are fond of money without having a tittle of avarice. This may at first sight appear stated from a love of paradox, yet nothing can be more strictly and simply true; this is, in fact, a singular ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... soon made, and I entered upon my functions accordingly. My new friend was a man of a singular turn of mind. Love of money, and a charitable officiousness of demeanour, were his leading characteristics. He lived in the most penurious manner, and denied himself every indulgence. I entitled myself almost immediately, as he frankly acknowledged, to some remuneration for my labours, and accordingly he insisted upon my being paid. He did not however, as some persons would have done ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... Ellenborough inquired of the 'friend,' "Do you really mean to impose upon the court by appearing here in the disguise of a reasonable being?" Very pungent was his ejaculation at a cabinet dinner when he heard that Lord Kenyon was about to close his penurious old age by dying. "Die!—why should he die?—what would he get by that?" interposed Lord Ellenborough, adding to the pile of jests by which men have endeavored to keep a grim, unpleasant subject out of sight—a pile to which the latest mot was added the other day by ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... erected, which utterly decayed before the end of Sir Thomas Smith's government, that being the only bridge (any way soe to be called) that was ever in the country. At this time in all these labours, the miserye throughout the wholl Collony, in the scarcitye of foode was equall; which penurious and harde kinde of liveinge, enforced and emboldened some to petition to Sir Thomas Gates (then Governor) to grant them that favor that they might employ themselves in husbandry, that therby they and all others by plantinge of corne, might be better fed then those supplies ...
— Colonial Records of Virginia • Various
... the Medicis—it shall be mine to revive the arts and to make them pay; and if I can win out of this city of skinflints at a profit, I shall have served my apprenticeship and shall know my success assured. The Genoese, cavalier, are a banausic race, and penurious at that; they will go where the devil cannot, which is between the oak and the rind; opportunity given, they would sneak the breeches off a highlander: they divide their time between commercialism and a licentiousness ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... The penurious provision made for those who filled the high executive departments in the American government, excluded from a long continuance in office all those whose fortunes were moderate and whose professional talents placed a decent independence within their reach. While slandered as the accumulator ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... Cunyngham, daughter of the late Sir George Cunyngham, and sister of Sir Hugh Cunyngham, of the Braes, Perthshire, and Aivron Lodge, Campden Hill.' I should like to have sent them a little wedding-present," he went on, absently, "for both of them have been very kind to me; but I am grown penurious in my old age; I suppose we shall have to consider every farthing for many a ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... I have ever been mistaken in failing to place you among my friends or admirers. Again I pray you to let me say that I have never known you penurious in admiration towards any one who had the slightest claim to it, and that at no period of my life, not even during the limited one when we were in sharp political conflict, have I either felt any enmity towards you, or believed that you ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... with immense bushy brows nearly an inch in length. His features were dull and expressionless, and over the lower portion of his wrinkled face a scraggy, mud colored beard seemed struggling for existence. His clothing appeared to indicate a penurious, grasping nature. ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... empress: on her intercession, he was permitted to reside at Chalcedon, in the neighborhood of the capital: her bounty was repaid in his clandestine and amorous visits to the palace; and Theophano consented, with alacrity, to the death of an ugly and penurious husband. Some bold and trusty conspirators were concealed in her most private chambers: in the darkness of a winter night, Zimisces, with his principal companions, embarked in a small boat, traversed the Bosphorus, landed at the palace stairs, and silently ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... for safekeeping. There were imitation Oriental rugs and imitation-leather chairs and imitation-mahogany furniture, plated silver, and imitations of china and of linen were to be found in the small three-cornered dining room, which resembled a penurious wedge of cake, Mary thought as she tried saying something polite. The imitation extended to the bedroom with its wall bed and built-in chiffonier and dresser of gaudy walnut. Trudy had promptly cluttered ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... on,—the slow, penurious winter of exhaustion after the acute fury of the spring and summer. These were hard times in earnest, not with the excitement of failures and bankruptcies, but with the steady grind of low wages, no employment, and general depression. The ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... parallel of latitude, and less than seven degrees farther north the mean annual temperature everywhere east of the mountains sinks below the freezing point.[25-1] Agriculture is impossible, and the only chance for life lies in the uncertain fortunes of the chase and the penurious gifts of an arctic flora. The denizens of these wilds are abject, slovenly, hopelessly savage, "at the bottom of the scale of humanity in North America," says Dr. Richardson, and their relatives who have wandered ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... glad, I see, Too lifted for the scant degree Of life's penurious round; My little circuit would have shamed This new circumference, have blamed ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... portion in riotous living, afterward bought a tract of ground above Harlem, turned hermit, raised geese and ducks and pigs, married and had three daughters and they in turn married, glad, I suppose, to get away from the penurious living. So it went on. He had to give up the pigs and geese, did a little gardening and two years ago died without a will. Oddly enough he had kept a family record which has been of great service ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... true patriot, Sir, never loves to leave his native country. Even were I compelled to visit Van Diemen's land, the ties of birth-place would be so strong as to induce me to seize the first opportunity of returning. I am not, your honour, very fond of the French—they are an idle, frivolous, penurious, poor nation. Only think, Sir, the other day I saw a gentleman of the most noble air secrete something at a cafe, which could not clearly discern; as he wrapped it carefully in paper, before he placed it in his pocket, I judged that it was a silver cream ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... were acceptable to employers or where they were not prevented by law. Back of the exodus, universal as it is, there is an urge of elemental force. A common accounting for it, the nearest at hand, is that parents of working class children are penurious; or that they are too ignorant to understand the deteriorating effect of factory life on children; or that they are too hard pressed in their physical needs to consider the best interest of the children. This reason given for the failure of the schools to supply ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... over, and the bride and groom left, Martin giving his old classmate, to whom the world had been penurious, a hand-shake that, when examined by the breathless family a few moments later, was found to yield at least a new parlour carpet, an easy-chair for the Rector's bent back, and a new clerical suit to cover his ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... married a rich banker of Frankfort, old enough to be her father, not to say her grandfather, hoping, doubtless, that he would soon die; for, if ever a woman wished to be a widow, she is that woman. But the old fellow is tough and won't die. Moreover, he is deaf, and crabbed, and penurious, and half the time bed-ridden. The wife is a model of virtue, notwithstanding her weakness. She nurses the old gentleman as if he were a child. And, to crown all, he hates society, and will not hear of his wife's receiving ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... by, brother, I shall forget it I presume. I am human, and shall soon die, or live on till time hardens my nature, or sordid pursuits plough from my heart all its sympathies, and old age finds me gloating over the gains of laborious care and penurious meanness. ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... loved, I meant more than the love of a man for some particular woman. I meant love in every sense. I do not know what it is to have an affection for any human being. My parents died before I can remember. My only living relative was a penurious old uncle who brought me up for shame's sake and kicked me out on the world as soon as he could. I don't make friends easily. I have a few acquaintances whom I like, but there is not a soul on earth for whom I care, or ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery |
