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Bankrupt   Listen
noun
Bankrupt  n.  
1.
(Old Eng. Law) A trader who secretes himself, or does certain other acts tending to defraud his creditors.
2.
A trader who becomes unable to pay his debts; an insolvent trader; popularly, any person who is unable to pay his debts; an insolvent person.
3.
(Law) A person who, in accordance with the terms of a law relating to bankruptcy, has been judicially declared to be unable to meet his liabilities. Note: In England, until the year 1861 none but a "trader" could be made a bankrupt; a non-trader failing to meet his liabilities being an "insolvent". But this distinction was abolished by the Bankruptcy Act of 1861. The laws of 1841 and 1867 of the United States relating to bankruptcy applied this designation bankrupt to others besides those engaged in trade.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Bankrupt" Quotes from Famous Books



... the nasty thing," says the footman, with a contemptuous snigger. "She is bankrupt in her old age, has nothing to eat, and here now is selling her dogs and cats. She cries, and kisses them on their filthy snouts. And then she is so hard up that she sells them. 'Pon my soul, it is a fact! Buy it, gentlemen! The money is wanted ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... his heart was almost broken in struggling against nature; the soil being so ungrateful that, instead of obtaining an adequate return for his trouble and expense, the undertaking was likely to render him a bankrupt; and which he would inevitably have been but for assistance afforded him by ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... was taken into partnership by one of his brothers-in-law, a William Milner, then a merchant at Poole. Here his two eldest children were born, William on October 27, 1756, and James on June 30, 1758. Unfortunately the firm became bankrupt; and the bankruptcy led to a lifelong quarrel between James Stephen and his elder brother, William, who had taken some share in the business. James then managed to start in business in London, and for some time was fairly prosperous. Unluckily, while at Poole he had made a ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... a trifling concern, or that at least their sins are trivial and excusable? It is obvious, that they form very low and inadequate ideas of the greatness of their debt, and the utter worthlessness of their own merit—they do not realize their ruined and bankrupt condition, nor are they sufficiently persuaded that they have "nothing to pay" not an atom of righteousness, not a grain of inherent goodness, not a particle of ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox

... een to save your life, Mary, not to mention mine own, will I flatter a monarch who forgets what is due to my family. I deny not that my father was brought down to be a poor bankrupt; but twas his gentle blood that was ever too generous for trade. Never did he disown his debts. Tis true he paid them not; but it is an attested truth that he gave bills for them; and twas those bills, in the hands of base hucksters, ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw

... have my bankrupt's schedule. The disproportion between my powers and my desires, my want of balance, in short, will bring all my efforts to nothing. There are many such characters among men of letters, many men whose intellectual powers and character are always at ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac

... The prince was almost bankrupt. He had squandered the liberal fortune left him independently of the will. He had sold to the Jews half of the fortune he expected to get after marrying me. He had not the slightest affection for me; he ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath

... enemies of Conciliation was that the Purchase Act would bankrupt the Irish ratepayers. By means which it is not necessary to develop or inquire into, the British Treasury was induced on the very eve of the Convention to present to a number of the Irish County Councils claims for thousands of pounds ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... bad match. A bankrupt, a prodigal, who dare scarce show his head on the Rialto; a beggar, that was us'd to come so smug upon the mart; let him look to his bond. He was wont to call me usurer; let him look to his bond. He was wont to lend money ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey

... Nobody could think that he had calculated upon 'Lige's suicide, any more than that the property would become valuable. In fact if it came to that, if 'Lige had really contemplated killing himself as a hopeless bankrupt after taking Harkutt's money as a loan, it was a swindle on his—Harkutt's—good-nature. He worked himself into a rage, which he felt was innately virtuous, at this tyranny of cold principle over his own warm-hearted instincts, but if it came to the LAW, ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte

... members of civil society. Had the landlords of Ireland paid attention to these and other matters that directly involve their own welfare and independence, as well as those of their neglected tenantry, they would not be, as they now are, a class of men, some absolutely bankrupt, and more on the very eve of it; and all this, to use a commercial phrase painfully appropriate,—because they ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... of selfishness, "honesty is the best policy." But he who is honest for policy's sake is already a moral bankrupt. Men of policy are honest when they think honesty will pay the better; but when policy will pay better they give honesty the slip. Honesty and policy have nothing in common. When policy is in, honesty is out. It is more honorable ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.

... father gave him means to open a small shop, which failed, however, in less than one year. Then he tried a small farm, and married; then again he entered upon the life of a tradesman, but in a few years more was a bankrupt. It was at this period that he became acquainted with Mr. Jefferson, afterwards President of the United States. "Mr. Henry," says Jefferson, "had a little before broken up his store (shop), or rather it had broken ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... with success. The significance of these figures, two hundred and fifty, is to be found in the maximum discount to retailers of forty and ten per cent on that quantity. Latterly, the publisher has found that a bankrupt bookseller has few creditors besides publishers, and has come to a realizing sense of the futility of clogging the distributing machinery. He is disposed, therefore, to exercise some restraint upon his salesman's ardor. Perhaps it were better ...
— The Building of a Book • Various

... 'Happy Boy,' and whose 'Fisher Maiden' I read in this same fortunate sickness. I have since read every other book of his that I could lay hands on: 'Sinnove Solbakken,' and 'Magnhild,' and 'Captain Manzanca,' and 'Dust,' and 'In God's Ways,' and 'Sigurd,' and plays like "The Glove" and "The Bankrupt." He has never, as some authors have, dwindled in my sense; when I open his page, there I find him as large, and free, and bold as ever. He is a great talent, a clear conscience, a beautiful art. He has my love not only because he is a ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... there, and lead the life You most affect; while I, the home-kept slave Of others' humors, must brave poverty, Neglect and cruel treatment.'—'Did you say Poverty, Anna?'—'Do not breathe a word Of what I tell you: father is a bankrupt, Or soon will be; and we shall be compelled To quit our freestone house, and breathe the air Of squalid want. From that I'd not recoil, Could I have loving looks and words; for what Is poverty if there's but love to gild ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent

... hundred withdrawn from circulation. A jolly big davenport—more curtains;—and then something happened. They told me so, but I didn't need to be told; for it was then that Harry butted in. They were bankrupt already, and he knew it. He simply had to call a halt. It's the funniest contrast I ever saw, and pathetic too; for from this point on the whole house is a nightmare. Cheap! he bought the cheapest things he could find and even then he got scared. By the time they got through ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge

... frolicked, brought in woman after woman, and pretended to occupy himself with administration of the province, but he understood nothing, absolutely nothing. What is worst of all, he became intimate with Phoenicians, with bankrupt nobles, and traitors of various kinds, who are ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... returned or pretended to return to it. Prussia was regaining her strength too rapidly; her embittered hostility was an ever-increasing menace. On the plea that she could never pay the promised indemnity, and was therefore to be treated as a bankrupt, Napoleon declared at last that Russia could have the Danube provinces if France could take Silesia for the grand duchy of Warsaw. "Prussia," ran Napoleon's despatch on this subject—"Prussia would have but two millions of inhabitants; but would not that be enough ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... mind, being good-natured, friendly, and generous to a great excess. He had, indeed, too little regard to common justice, for he had forgiven some debts to his acquaintance only because they could not pay him, and had entrusted a bankrupt, on his setting up a second time, from having been convinced that he had dealt in his bankruptcy with a fair and honest heart, and that he had broke through misfortune only, and not from neglect or ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding

... for that moment he seemed as bankrupt in denunciation as he was in hope. This personal application of the new heresy found him merely aghast, with no words but 'That ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins

... not made, but he meant to go into the little house that belonged to grandma, as soon as he could, for it was n't honest for a bankrupt to keep ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott

... same mess is Bob Cornice, whose life has been spent in fitting up a house. About ten years ago Bob purchased the country habitation of a bankrupt: the mere shell of a building Bob holds no great matter; the inside is the test of elegance. Of this house he was no sooner master than he summoned twenty workmen to his assistance, tore up the floors and laid them anew, stripped off the wainscot, drew the windows ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... force upon them a moral ending, and they are very rarely permitted to indulge in a love-story which does not end in a wedding or the reconciliation of respectably wedded citizens. No wonder that as a body they seem to be getting bankrupt in imagination; they appear to be in the position of a cook who is never allowed to handle ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... any," replied the postilion, "except that they have arrested at Poitiers an English bankrupt and a Spanish Abbe ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans

... reap a hundred ears for every grain he confides to the earth. But, alas! the fields, where is garnered the harvest of expended doubloons, and where vernal loves bloom anew, are yet to be discovered; and the result of my double prodigality was, that one fine morning I found myself a bankrupt in heart, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... gives it to you, you immensely exaggerate its power and value. Your money is the least part of your bargain in such a case. You may be punctual in that to half a second on the clock, and yet be Bankrupt. I have nothing more to say,' said Tom, much flushed and flustered, now that it was over, 'except to crave permission to stand in your garden until my ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... of Desmond was not one of them. The bargain had been made, and her daughter would have been able to perform her part of it. She was still able to give that which she had stipulated to give. But Herbert Fitzgerald was now a bankrupt, and could give nothing! Would it not have been madness to suppose that the bargain should still ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... and coming ill-humoredly towards the operating chair). That wretched bankrupt ivory snatcher makes a compliment of allowing us to stand him a lunch - probably the first square meal he has had for months. (He gives the chair a kick, as ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw

... thenceforth the scene of his debauches, he drew up an order for the Governor of the Cape of Good Hope, bidding him welcome the arrival of a friendly British force, which would save Cape Town from the French. That important post belonged to the Dutch East India Company, then virtually bankrupt, and altogether unable to maintain its neutrality amidst the struggles for a world-empire now entering on a new phase. The officials of the Company at Amsterdam on 3rd February issued warnings to all Dutch ships in ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... ago Signor John Smitthe, an American gentleman now some years a resident of Rome, purchased for a trifle a small piece of ground in the Campagna, just beyond the tomb of the Scipio family, from the owner, a bankrupt relative of the Princess Borghese. Mr. Smitthe afterward went to the Minister of the Public Records and had the piece of ground transferred to a poor American artist named George Arnold, explaining that he did it as payment and satisfaction ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... sick of happiness than an invalid is sick of pain, an art sense that seeks the assistance of crime since it has exhausted nature. In many modern works we find veiled and horrible hints of a truly Renaissance sense of the beauty of blood, the poetry of murder. The bankrupt and depraved imagination does not see that a living man is far more dramatic than a dead one. Along with this, as in the time of the Medici, goes the falling back into the arms of despotism, the hunger for the strong man which is unknown among strong men. The masterful ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton

... you know till I get back. Come, Sleepyhead! Papa'll tell about the little red hen"—aside to Joyce—"It's my stock yarn. Couldn't tell another to save my head, and studied that out, word for word, on purpose. But luckily she wants it every time. I should be bankrupt if she didn't. Come now, say good-night to all ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... Now, to supply so many expenses, much money must be had; and he looks on every method of procuring it as good and even necessary; at first he borrows, afterwards he steals, robs, plunders, turns bankrupt, is at war with every one, ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... this which is so pleasing to the European aristocrats: no matter how bankrupt, incompetent, disreputable, the class theory which is recognized by the masses is, "Once a ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard

... man in a sad tone. "Mr Wilkins himself is bankrupt—the first call brought him and ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne

... sir, I'll be there," and with as much dignity as he could command, turned and walked back to his table, but wondered heavily, what on earth he had done; what was wrong; whether some prominent customer had gone bankrupt or if Falkner ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton

... mojadderah. In this extraordinary and outrageous manner, barbarously capricious, he would baptise the ideal in the fire of the real. And thus, glowing with health and confidence and conceit, he enters another Park from which he escapes in the end, sad and wan and bankrupt. Of a truth, many attractions and distractions are here; else he could not forget the peddling-box and the light-heeled, heavy-haunched women of Battery Park. Here are swings for the mind; toboggan-chutes for the soul; merry-go-rounds ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... Alsacienne" has been supported for some years mainly by a subsidy of 40,000 francs allotted by the State. This year the State furnishes, "Monge" and "Sainte-Barbe" with subsidies of 130,000 and 150,000 francs, without which they would become bankrupt and close their doors. The State probably thus supports them so as to have a field of pedagogic experiences alongside of its lycees, or to prevent their being ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... of its measures for paying? The loans it might be able to procure would be as limited in their extent as burdensome in their conditions. They would be made upon the same principles that usurers commonly lend to bankrupt and fraudulent debtors, with a sparing hand and ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... said; "one of those 'awful sacrifices' and bankrupt stock sales, like those we see in London, and the bills of which are thrown into the ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold

... her yearnings for sympathy would have been filled to the full by Harvey Kynaston or some other. As it was, she had but that one little fraction of a man friend to solace her; to resign him altogether to another woman, leaving herself bankrupt of love, was indeed a ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen

... engine," explained Norman. "It represents all the money Moulton and I have ever saved, some we haven't saved but expect to save, and all that we could borrow of our fathers. It's eighty horse power, came all the way from France, and if anything happens to it, we're bankrupt ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler

... ministers also. They did not hesitate to own and operate distilleries. Rev. Nathan Strong, pastor of the First Church of Hartford and author of the hymn "Swell the anthem, raise the song," was engaged in the distilling business and did not make a success of it either. Having become bankrupt, he did not dare show his head anywhere in public for some time, except on Sunday, for fear of arrest. This disreputable and most unclerical affair did not operate against him in the minds of the contemporaneous public, ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle

... say that nine of a man's passions are merely episodes in his career, the mile-stones that mark his path; the tenth, or the first, is his philosopher's stone that turns all things to gold, or, if the charm does not work, leaves his heart, broken and bankrupt, a cold monument ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... a man can't choose whether he'll be public or private!" said Garnet, and the Courier made the bankrupt cotton factor public every day. It quoted constantly from the unpardonable letter, and charged him with "inflaming the basest cupidity of our Helots," and so on, and on. But the General, with his silver-shot curls dancing half-way down his shoulders, a six-shooter ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable

... sensitive face; his clothes were coarse and careless, but he had a good seal ring on one of his long, thin fingers. His name, which came out in the course of talk, was James Dalroy; he was the son of a bankrupt Irish landlord, and attached to a pink paper which he heartily despised, called Smart Society, in the capacity of reporter and of something ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... "A man a bankrupt, whom I thought as safe as the Bank of England! Though it is true, people talked about him months ago—spoke suspiciously of his personal extravagance, and, above all, said that his wife was ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur

... under circumstances which inflicted immediate humiliation and threatened us with final subjugation. The Southerners held all the keys of the country. They had robbed our arsenals. They had made our treasury bankrupt. They had possession of the most important offices in the army and navy. They had the advantage of having long anticipated and prepared for the conflict. We knew not whom to trust. One man failed and another man failed. ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... control over banking policies to neutralize the impact of foreign inflows on the money supply. Although Czech unemployment is currently the lowest in Central Europe, it will probably increase 1-2 percentage points in 1995 as large state firms go bankrupt or are restructured and service sector ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency

... and Malplaquet and Oudenarde, and throughout those glorious Campaigns of which I could talk to you till doomsday. I came back to England at the Peace of Utrecht, and set up another Tavern, and married another husband, more worthless and more drunken than the first one, and then went bankrupt and turned washerwoman, and then got into trouble about a gentleman's silver-hilted Rapier, for which I lay long in hold, and was sent for five years to the Plantations; and at last here I am, old and fat and good for nothing, but to throw ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... Mr. Lott, in a tone of bitterness, "it's nothing but play, girls, gadding about the streets. Work, business—oh, no. I may go bankrupt; my wife and children may go into the workhouse. No thought for me, the man that keeps them, feeds them, clothes them. How much salary ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... entered into the canvass, but in this respect Governor Tilden and Governor Hayes did not materially differ, while public opinion in the southern states was almost a unit in favor of the larger use of paper money. Their bankrupt condition made this policy ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... de Chevreuse, a notorious schemer and former friend of Anne of Austria. She comes bearing more bad news for Fouquet, who is already in trouble, as the king has invited himself to a fete at Vaux, Fouquet's magnificent mansion, that will surely bankrupt the poor superintendent. The Duchesse has letters from Mazarin that prove that Fouquet has received thirteen million francs from the royal coffers, and she wishes to sell these letters to Aramis. Aramis refuses, and the letters are instead sold to Colbert. Fouquet, meanwhile, discovers ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... threaten me with ruin—but while I have a roof over my head, there's always a welcome for a friend. My dear fellow, I have every reason to believe that the doctor who sold me this practice was a swindler. The money is gone, and the patients don't come. Well! I am not quite bankrupt yet; I can offer you a glass of grog. Mix for yourself—we'll ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins

... Disorder.—While the provincials were learning lessons in warfare they were also paying the bills. All the conflicts were costly in treasure as in blood. King Philip's war left New England weak and almost bankrupt. The French and Indian struggle was especially expensive. The twenty-five thousand men put in the field by the colonies were sustained only by huge outlays of money. Paper currency streamed from ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... your present humour, my dear," said Lady Littleton: "this is not the happy moment to speak reason to you. Adieu! I give you four-and-twenty hours' grace before I declare you a bankrupt in temper. You shall hear from me to-morrow; for, on some subjects, I have always found it better to write than to ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... no doom But what is splendid as thyself. Alas! Weak woman, when she stakes her heart, must play Ever a fatal chance. It is her all, And when 'tis lost, she's bankrupt; but proud man Shuffles the cards again, and wins to-morrow What pays ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli

... man would live as long as what he had written. Sir Walter Scott and he were linked indissolubly together. Our friend, like Scott, was ruined by the mistakes of partners, who had become hopelessly bankrupt. Two courses lay before him. One the smooth, easy, and short way—the legal path. Surrender all your property, go through bankruptcy, and start afresh. This was all he owed to creditors. The other path, long, thorny, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie

... where Pera and Galata now stand, was probably covered with fields and gardens when Theodoric beheld it. There also in front of him, but a little to the right, comes rushing down the impetuous Bosphorus, that river which is also an arm of the sea. Lined now with the marble palaces of bankrupt Sultans, it was once a lonely and desolate strait, on whose farther shore the hapless Io, transformed into a heifer, sought a refuge from her heaven-sent tormentor. Up through its difficult windings pressed the adventurous mariners of Miletus in those early voyages which opened ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... escaped here to Philadelphia," added his wife, a note of pride in her voice, "he fought for the colonies just as surely as Colonel Franks upon the battlefield. You have heard of the vast sums of money he lent the bankrupt government—and without ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger

... insurrections, and in expelling Ethiopian invaders. After the destruction of Thebes in B.C. 661 the country sullenly submitted to the foreign rule; its strength was exhausted, and its leaders and priesthood were scattered and bankrupt. Elam was now almost the only civilised kingdom of western Asia which remained independent. It was, moreover, a perpetual thorn in the side of the Assyrians. It was always ready to give the same help to the disaffected in Babylonia that Egypt was to the rebels in Palestine, with the difference ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce

... by the procrastination that comes of lack of opportunity, and the procrastination that comes of timidity, the spring was fast passing into summer. Hilbrough had taken Millard into partnership in an enterprise of his own—the reorganization of a bankrupt railway company in the interest of the bondholders. It was necessary to secure the co-operation of certain English holders of the securities, and Hilbrough felt sure that a man of Millard's address and flexibility would ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... hated and blamed Rushton. Yet if they had been in Rushton's place they would have been compelled to adopt the same methods, or become bankrupt: for it is obvious that the only way to compete successfully against other employers who are sweaters is to be a sweater yourself. Therefore no one who is an upholder of the present system can consistently blame any of ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... peculiar accident, and only two days before our game with Chichester! See Dr. Bentley about your wrist at his office this afternoon. I'm beginning to think, Prescott, that it's a fortunate thing for you that the medical director is paid out of the fund. You'd bankrupt an ordinary citizen if you're going to keep ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock

... reconnoitring the Roman camp:—"These barbarians have nothing barbarous in their discipline." When I look, as I have pretty carefully looked, into the proceedings of the French king, I am sorry to say it, I see nothing of the character and genius of arbitrary finance, none of the bold frauds of bankrupt power, none of the wild struggles and plunges of despotism in distress,—no lopping off from the capital of debt, no suspension of interest, no robbery under the name of loan, no raising the value, no debasing the substance of the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... letter that Keane had received that night was to the effect that the man who proposed marrying his daughter was a bankrupt and a beggar, and would that evening be arrested in his own house ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables

... the stranger retorted scornfully, "was a runaway bankrupt out of the prison of Rouen. And who is this de Lery? His father, during the siege of Quebec, instead of confronting the enemy, went buying up cattle in the parishes to sell over again to the commissariat at the expense of the misery of ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall

... and afterwards a potter at Bristol, migrated to Bath about the year 1780. For the last six years of his life he was owner and manager of a coal wharf. He had inherited a small fortune, and his wife brought him money, but he died bankrupt, and left his family destitute. His widow returned to Bristol, and kept a school. In a letter to Murray, dated September 11, 1822 (Letters, 1901, vi. 113), Byron quotes the authority of "Luttrell," and "his friend Mr. Nugent," for the statement that Mrs. Southey and "Coleridge's Sara ... before ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... drinks the bitter cup of poverty to the dregs like the declining farmer. The descent is so slow; there is time to drain every drop, and to linger over the flavour. It may be eight, or ten, or fifteen years about. He cannot, like the bankrupt tradesman, even when the fatal notice comes, put up his shutters at once and retire from view. Even at the end, after the notice, six months at least elapse before all is over—before the farm is surrendered, and the sale of household furniture and effects ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... the cry was still money!—money was the one thought from the highest senator to the poorest wretch who sold his vote in the Comitia. For money judges gave unjust decrees and juries gave corrupt verdicts. Governors held their provinces for one, two, or three years; they went out bankrupt from extravagance, they returned with millions for fresh riot. To obtain a province was the first ambition of a Roman noble. The road to it lay through the praetorship and the consulship; these offices, therefore, became the prizes of the State; and being in the gift of the people, ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... left town and settled in the great country seat Sir Joseph had bought from a bankrupt American who had bought it from nobility gone back to humility. Here life was life. There were forests and surreptitious pheasants, deer that would almost but never quite come to call, unseen nightingales that sang from lofty nave and ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... impossible. With such a system of justice and impartiality society would be, as a general thing, unable to act, and would return to the fixedness of Roman justice. There must be victims. The principle of indemnity is consequently abandoned; to one or more classes of citizens the State is inevitably bankrupt. ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... everyone's surprise Denham is not only revealed as our original young acquaintance, Dermot, but the lawyer states that Dermot's father was in the line of succession to the Earldom. This makes Dermot the new Earl. Cheers all round, but who wants to be saddled with a derilict castle and a bankrupt estate? ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston

... where I thought his affairs stood, and I answered: "I don't think—I know, or, at least, I feel quite sure I do. You are at the end of your rope and are practically bankrupt." ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... me by surprise, young man. I was prepared for this—I have but a word to say. Restore this money, or undertake to pay it back to me—to the last farthing of my lawful claim. Do this, and I forgive you, and forget your indiscretion. Refuse, and to-morrow you are a bankrupt and a beggar. Leave me, and take time for your decision. Come to me again this evening. If you fail—you may expect a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... been so taken up with the three dear children, and working for them as hard as if they were my own (for the treasury of our British empire was bankrupt to these little ones—"no provision had been made for such a case," and so we had to make it)—I say that these children had grown to me and I to them in such degree that they all of them called ...
— George Bowring - A Tale Of Cader Idris - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore

... If it is, I'm sure bankrupt Even my thanks seem to stay at home. If y'u hadn't done so much for me, perhaps I could tell y'u how much y'u had done But I have ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine

... do you think?—just as I was standing ready to pour out the contents of my horn in plenty, I made the painful discovery that I was bankrupt. ...
— Rosmerholm • Henrik Ibsen

... against a wall and ram helpful statistics into them with a force-pump. You are grotesquely mistaken. Your ideal newspaper would not keep a dozen readers in this city: that is to say, it would be a complete failure while it lasted and would bankrupt Mr. Morgan in six months. A dead newspaper is a useless one, the world over. At the same time, every living and good newspaper is a little better, spreads a little more sweetness and light, gives out a little more valuable ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... the midst of which shortly appeared one which by its neck topped with a silver helmet, was recognized as belonging to the Royal Champagne Regiment—a fantastic Champagne vintaged by Saint Ouen, and sold in Paris at two francs the bottle as bankrupt's ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... so expanded by steel ribs that the vehicle can comfortably hold but four of her,—or do the honors of a table in hanging-sleeves that threaten destruction to cups and saucers, and take toll of gravy from every dish that passes them. Hoops, borrowed by bankrupt invention from a bygone age to satisfy craving fickleness, suited the habits of their first wearers, who would as soon have swept the streets as driven through them, packed thirteen to the dozen, in a carriage common to every passenger ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... went bankrupt he was sold to a firm here in the city. After a while the rust started to eat in and slow him down, they gave Dik his contract and ...
— The Velvet Glove • Harry Harrison

... was tied with a chain that defied his teeth, and he strove in vain, by lunging, to draw the staple from the timber into which it was driven. After a few days, sober and bankrupt, Grey Beaver departed up the Porcupine on his long journey to the Mackenzie. White Fang remained on the Yukon, the property of a man more than half mad and all brute. But what is a dog to know in its consciousness of madness? To White Fang, Beauty Smith was a veritable, if ...
— White Fang • Jack London

... that move the European puppets. They have practically seized my German bands, and unless I retake them at the head of a column of victorious French, I may as well say good-bye to them. As for Terremonde, the revenue is falling every quarter. If it were not for this secret service, I should be bankrupt, for the Tuileries, perhaps, suspecting my good faith, pay me only in pretty words—a la francaise. This bank which I hold tempts me sorely, Cesarine, but only if you will dip into it with me. Only once in a life does a ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... This demand the bankrupt Government of Brunai was equally incompetent to comply with, and, thereupon, the matter was settled by the transfer of the river to Raja BROOKE in consideration of the large annual payment of $4,500, two years' rental—$9,000, being paid in advance, and Sarawak thus acquired, as much by good ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher

... and the father of four children. We went to his trader to find out how much he was in debt. The man's account on the books was shown us, and it read over three thousand dollars against our friend. It had been carried on for many years. A year or two later when the merchant himself went bankrupt with a debt of $686,000 to the bank of which he was a director, the people of that village, some four hundred and eleven souls in all, owed his firm $64,000, an asset returned as value nil. The whole thing seemed a nightmare to any one who ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... populated, cultivated, profitable, stretching along the east coast of North America; on the other were the Canadian settlements, poverty-stricken, empty, over-officialled, a cause of constant expense to the home government, and, at a vast distance, those of Louisiana, struggling and bankrupt. The French remedy for an unsuccessful colony has always been to annex more territory, and forestall a possible rival. Therefore the French government strove to unite the beggarly settlements in Canada and Louisiana by setting up posts all along the Ohio and the Mississippi, in order ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... the grammar—the right word! Oh, I know; 'go bankrupt'—'it might go bankrupt. So it you would like to have a cats' home here and send me some money, I will start it at once. Your affectionate nephew, Hyacinth Wolfram Dangerfield.' There!" said the Terror ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson

... cataract; crushed him down under the immensity of sorrow, confusion and despair; his own death not a theory now, but probably a near fact,—a welcome one in wild moments, and then anon so unwelcome. Frustrate, bankrupt, chargeable with a friend's lost life, sure enough he, for one, is: what is to become of him? Whither is he to turn, thoroughly beaten, foiled in all his enterprises? Proud young soul as he was: the ruling Powers, be they just, be they unjust, have proved ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... to be no character, position, or circumstances that free men from the danger. I have known many young men of the finest promise, led by the drinking habit into vice, ruin, and early death. I have known many tradesmen whom it has made bankrupt. I have known Sunday scholars whom it has led to prison-teachers, and even superintendents, whom it has dragged down to profligacy. I have known ministers of high academic honours, of splendid eloquence, nay, of vast usefulness, whom it has fascinated, ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown

... resulted in all the States except New York agreeing to the proposed impost. But the refusal of one State was sufficient to block the whole measure, and there was no further hope for a treasury that was practically bankrupt. In five years Congress had received less than two and one-half million dollars from requisitions, and for the fourteen months ending January 1, 1786, the income was at the rate of less than $375,000 a year, which was not enough, as a committee ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand

... his seat beside her, his lips tight. "I can't honestly say I love my own child, hard as I've tried. But I can say that I love his mother. If I have to bankrupt myself to give Timmy proper care in an institution, then I'll do just that, and do it gladly. But I won't falsely place his interests above yours. He was born an idiot and he will live and die an idiot. Nothing can change that. Timmy goes, and ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan

... finds it greased for the occasion." And certainly the case of Richard Ashton illustrated the truth of the aphorism, for when he once began to go down hill his descent was so rapid that he soon reached the bottom; and became bankrupt in capital and character. He now began to talk of selling out and going to America: "There," he said, with much emphasis, "I ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter

... material interests; impatient of regular, and much more of exceptional restraint; had no natural nucleus of gravitation, nor any forces but centrifugal; were always on the verge of civil war, and slunk at last into the natural almshouse of bankrupt popular government, a military despotism. Here was indeed a dreary outlook for persons who knew democracy, not by rubbing shoulders with it lifelong, but merely from books, and America only by the report of some fellow-Briton, who, having eaten a bad dinner or lost a carpet-bag here, had written ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... thought. The farms could not pay even the interest on my present mortgage; the forests come in for that. If a contractor for the yearly sale of the woods was bankrupt and did not pay, how could I get my interest? ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... compartment three had to pay two dollars for that purpose when compartment two was still deeply in its debt. If compartment two had only met its rightful obligations, compartment three need n't have "failed up," as they say in New England; but as it is, poor compartment four is entirely bankrupt, and will have to borrow of the sugar-bowl or the ginger-jar. As these banks are not at all in the same line of business, they ought not to be drawn into the complications of the cigar-box, for they will ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... a good old burgher family, famous independents who had fought with Colonel Hutchinson, and who remained stout Congregationalists. Her grandfather had gone bankrupt in the lace-market at a time when so many lace-manufacturers were ruined in Nottingham. Her father, George Coppard, was an engineer—a large, handsome, haughty man, proud of his fair skin and blue eyes, but more proud still of his integrity. ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence

... not reply at once. "It's this," he said finally, with blunt directness. "Your partner, Philip Rochester, appears to be a bankrupt. Harding and Taylor came in here to attach his private bank account to cover indebtedness to ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... a good-natured, easy-minded man, who loved the chase and his country seat, and found it more agreeable to live on good terms with his subjects, and enjoy a handsome civil list,—which his Parliament has taken care to vote him,—than to be indebted for his safety and a bankrupt exchequer to the bayonets of his guards. Thus marvellously, hitherto, in the midst of dangers at home and re-action abroad, has the Piedmontese charter been preserved. I dwell with the greater minuteness on this point, because on the integrity of that charter are suspended the civil ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... which, amid the usual storm of ridicule and jealousy, is slowly struggling into existence—ridicule from all devout slaves of the intellectual fashion of the times; jealousy from the neighbour sciences of mental physiology and neurology, which it declares bankrupt in the face of ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... twelve years, and seemed as his widow to have had some success in paying his bills, for at her death all remaining demands were found to be discharged. For receiving this pension Burke was assailed by the Duke of Bedford, a most pleasing act of ducal fatuity, since it enabled the pensioner, not bankrupt of his wit, to write a pamphlet, now of course a cherished classic, and introduce into it a few paragraphs about the House of Russell and the cognate subject of grants from the Crown. But enough ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell

... Referring to the schedule of Jellicoe's alleged assets, they say "Many of the debts are marked as bad; and we apprehend that the debt from Mr. Henry Cort, not so marked, of 54,000L. and upwards, is of that description." As for poor bankrupt Henry Cort, these discussions availed nothing. On the death of Jellicoe, he left his iron works, feeling himself a ruined man. He made many appeals to the Government of the day for restoral of his patents, and offered to find security for ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... altogether unknown in other countries, but they don't hold it deliberately as a whole nation. Among other things that Hilda Seeberg's father did which roused her unforgiveness was just this,—to rob too few widows, come to grief over it, and go bankrupt for very little. She told me about it in an outburst of dark confidence. Just talking of it made her eyes black with anger. It was so terrible, she said, to smash for a small amount,—such an overwhelming shame for the Seeberg family, whose poverty thus became apparent ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley

... covered him with his mantle and held him clasped in his arms, until the by-standers brought Francis the cloak of a poor peasant. "Oh, what a grand bankrupt this merchant becomes to-day!" Bossuet wrote of him, long afterward. "Oh man worthy of being written in the book of the evangelical poor, and henceforward living on the capital of Providence!" From that time Francis wore mendicant's ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... gallant Marechal de Marillac has an affection for the block: so be it; a scaffold is easily constructed. And M. de Guise is an amateur of exile and of beggary: truly it were a pity to thwart his fancy; and France can well spare a prince or two without making bankrupt of her dignity. Bassompierre, the volatile and restless Bassompierre, the hero of the Court dames, and the idol of the Court ballets, favours the seclusion of a prison; there is space enough for him in the one which he has selected, and his gorgeous habiliments will produce ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... gradually nibble away some of his holding, but the political sky had been clouded and the public had refused to invest. Everything which he had touched had gone wrong, and now, on the eve of his marriage, young, clear-headed, and energetic, he was actually a bankrupt had his creditors chosen to make him one. But the Stock Exchange is an indulgent body. What is the case of one to-day may be that of another to-morrow, and everyone is interested in seeing that the stricken man is given time to rise again. So the ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Every one bankrupt or nearly so. Display! Nothing but display! Feasting, drinking! No thought of ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... go? Certainly not to Osia, since you traded it for this throne. It was understood, when you assumed the reign, that the finances of the kingdom would remain unimpeachable. Bankrupt, the confederation will be forced to disavow you. They will be compelled to restore the throne to your enemy, who, believe me, is most ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath

... must repeat that I am not ungrateful for the proofs of regard you have bestowed on me; but such excess of attachment is lavished upon a man that is a bankrupt in love. I am cold as monumental marble to every touch of that passion to which I was once but too entirely devoted. Bereaved of the object, I am punished; thus is my heart doomed to solitude on earth for having made an idol of the angel that was sent ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... consists of those remnants, my Lady,—memories of dear friends I love and honor. They will never be unfashionable with me: I should be bankrupt indeed, were I to ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... principle, public or private; could be bound by no agreement; will listen to no monitor but his ambition; and for this purpose will use the worst portion of the community as a ladder to climb to permanent power, and an instrument to crush the better part. He is bankrupt beyond redemption, except by the resources that grow out of war and disorder; or by a sale to a foreign power, or by great peculation. War with Great Britain would be the immediate instrument. He is sanguine enough to hope everything, daring enough to attempt everything, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... I heard from home my wife and one of the children were sick and my employer had gone bankrupt," broke in the very ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... rather hoped some one would take me in until I could look around. The place at The Forge, where I've been for two nights is—impossible, and the darkies have their hands stretched out for tips until I feel like a palmist, and a bankrupt one at that!" ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock

... be overrun by its enemies. The Boers were defeated by Sekukuni, chief of the Bapedi; they had an open dispute with Cetewayo about territory which they had annexed from his country, and he was preparing for war; the tribes in the north had driven back the farmers; the State was bankrupt, and all was confusion. The more settled members of the community in the towns called for firm government, but the president had no power at his back ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston

... replied. "Americans have been building submarines for all nations for many years. I wish, though, that we had gone bankrupt, my father and I, before ever we turned out that Frankenstein ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... stammered something about indifference to wealth, but I brushed all that aside. He had got to be rich, and it was no good his stammering. I gave him to understand the sort of man I was, and that I had had very considerable business experience. I did not tell him I was an undischarged bankrupt at the time, because that was temporary, but I think I reconciled my evident poverty with my financial claims. And quite insensibly, in the way such projects grow, the understanding of a Cavorite monopoly ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells

... and soliciting every influence to procure the required sum, the countess of Gruyere failed in her efforts. The poor lady now saw the end of her dream of rehabilitating the fallen fortunes of the man she had so unwisely married. How potent was the charm of the bankrupt hero who could still inspire her unlimited devotion was still better proved by the affection of his half brother Francois. Modest, dignified and charitable, as his brilliant senior was wasteful and rash, Francois' loyalty was unaltered by any disgrace of misfortune. But in the very climax of ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven

... that were edited into it, and the fact that many persons knew of the preliminary attempts to buy any old bear and fake a capture, it is not strange that people who always know the "inside history" of everything that happens, wag their heads wisely and declare that Monarch was obtained from a bankrupt circus, or is an ex-dancer of the streets sold to the newspaper by ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly

... history, that he resented being deprived of his monopoly. Perhaps there is another reason. Mr. Lodge has cherished two ambitions, neither of which has been gratified. The Presidency has been the ignis fatuus he has pursued; he was the residuary legatee of Mr. Roosevelt's bankrupt political estate in 1916, it will be recalled; last year, after his fight on the treaty, he considered himself the logical candidate and believed he had the nomination in his grasp. He has longed to be Secretary of State, and it was a bitter disappointment ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous

... was made on the bankrupt bill of that session—not a regular speech, but a searching examination of the details of the bill, which he exposed with such effect that its friends substantially gave it up in despair. His first serious ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby

... with the borrowed boat, and set up for himself, and from this small beginning, step by step, he rose in a few months to be one of the richest and most influential men in San Francisco; but in his wild speculations he was at last caught, and became helplessly bankrupt. He followed General Fremont to St. Louis in 1861, where I saw him, but soon afterward he died a pauper in one of the hospitals. When General Smith had his headquarters in San Francisco, in the spring of 1849, Steinberger gave dinners worthy any baron of old; and when, in ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... any is expected, the queen's troops are brought to the spot, to quell with all the power of the throne what would amount to an act of rebellion. It is absurd, then, to cast the blame of these foul deeds, and their horrible results, upon a few reckless, bankrupt, wretched landlords. It is to the law, or rather to the government and legislature which uphold it, and refuse to mitigate its ferocity, that the crime rightly attaches; and they will be held responsible for it by history, by posterity—ay, and perhaps before long, by the retributive ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... vanished; and that General Taylor had been ordered to the Rio Grande in disregard of Mexican claims to that region. One should also know that, from the beginning of his administration, Polk had hoped to secure from our bankrupt neighbor the cession of California as an indemnity.[223] A motive for forbearance in dealing with the distraught Mexican government was thus wholly absent from the ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... once been the property of a wealthy and prominent citizen of New York, who having failed, after the modern fashion, had given Jasper Lamotte the first bid for the valuable span. Given thus much, the rest was easy. Representing himself as a former coachman of this bankrupt New Yorker, he had told his little story. He was looking about him for a place in which to open a "small, but neat" livery stable, had wandered into W—— that morning, and having considerable cash about him, all his savings ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch

... of the poor is a most distressing spectacle to all right-minded students of sociology. But please spare me your homily this time. It does not apply. The poor are the poor in spirit. Those who are rich in spiritual endowment will never be found bankrupt. ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... would bankrupt us these hard times. The keep would be the same as for Betty, and a few dollars ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas

... farms. I see a vision of a people surfeited with prosperity and freedom grown factious, so that now one party must command a strong majority ere they can pass a law the goodness of which no one denies. I see a bankrupt exchequer, a drunken Governor, ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... my dear angel, knows nothing of bankrupt sentiments and collapsed joys. Love, after giving more than it has, ends by giving ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac

... balance sheet as a result of it," was the prompt retort. "If a nation chooses to make herself a bankrupt by building war toys, no one in the world can help her. Legislation of that sort is foolish and simply an incitement to revolution. Look at the difference in our country. Our income tax is practically abolished, our industrial troubles are over. Our credit never stood so ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... bankrupt's promissory note in lieu of told gold. It gives me small gratification, Miss Sophia—very small indeed—to see the bowing head of the grain that ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner

... saves his finest effect for the fall of the curtain, so we have saved for the last the most remarkable giver in history—Andrew Carnegie, whose total benefactions amount to at least one hundred millions of dollars. A sum so stupendous would bankrupt many a nation, yet Mr. Carnegie is so far from bankrupt that his gifts show no sign of diminution. The story of how, starting out as a poor boy, on the lowest round of the ladder, he acquired this immense fortune, is ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson

... that we had forgotten an obstacle in our way, when we distributed our photographs of the knife. We had none of us remembered that a certain proportion of cutlers might be placed, by circumstances, out of our reach—either by retiring from business or by becoming bankrupt. I always carried a copy of the photograph about me; and I thought to myself, "Here is the ghost of a chance of tracing the knife to ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins

... foreigners. The prerogative of "purveyance" by which the king in his progresses through the country had the right of first purchase of all that he needed at fair market price became a galling oppression in the hands of a bankrupt king who was always moving from place to place. "When men hear of your coming," Archbishop Islip wrote to Edward, "everybody at once for sheer fear sets about hiding or eating or getting rid of their geese and chickens or other possessions ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green

... yellow fever was of minor concern as regards the slaves, for negroes were largely immune to it; but cholera sometimes threatened to exterminate the slaves and bankrupt their masters. After a visitation of this in and about New Orleans in 1832, John McDonogh wrote to a friend: "All that you have seen of yellow fever was nothing in comparison. It is supposed that five or six ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... underwriters failed and went bankrupt, and the wreck came into the hands of your English Lloyd's. It remained their property till '75, but they never got at the bullion. In fact, for fifty years it was never scratched at, and its very position grew doubtful, for the sand swallowed ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... a leading publicist, in one of the London reviews. But the French people are not bankrupt. Far from it. On the average they are a very rich people. Even in the devastated areas there has been a rapid financial recovery due to the hard work and perseverance of the returned inhabitants. The constant talk about the ruined North of France has been more ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham

... Full of the pasture, jumps along by him, And never stays to greet him. 'Ah,' quoth Jaques, 'Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens; 'Tis just the fashion: wherefore do you look Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there?'" [24] ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... good deal idle in youth. For though here and there a Lord Macaulay may escape from school honours with all his wits about him, most boys pay so dear for their medals that they never afterwards have a shot in their locker, and begin the world bankrupt. And the same holds true during all the time a lad is educating himself, or suffering others to educate him. It must have been a very foolish old gentleman who addressed Johnson at Oxford in these words: "Young man, ply your ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the question how soon we shall recover from the war. For there is no doubt that we shall not be able to afford our former waste of labour; and, if we persist in it, we shall be bankrupt as a society. It may be said that we shall not have the money, the power, to waste labour. But we shall certainly have some superfluous energy, more and more, it is to be hoped, as time goes on; and our future recovery will depend upon the use we make ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock

... head, and looked at the young Monsignor with an expression which no language can describe. Relief, joy, shame, and remorse were mingled in one flash on his broken and bankrupt face. He was silent for a moment, and then ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... knife-thrusts in the heart. She had only to go to Darches, the jeweller in the Rue de la Paix. A fortnight before, Georges had bought a diamond necklace there for thirty thousand francs. It was his New Year's gift to Sidonie. Thirty thousand francs for diamonds at the moment of becoming bankrupt! ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... of superior attainments, not having gone to sea till he had completed his education at school and had entered college. At that time, his father, who was a merchant, dying just as his firm, by unforeseen circumstances, had become bankrupt, Leonard was left destitute. He had always had a predilection for the sea, and Captain Graybrook, an old friend of his father, at once offered, in the most liberal way, to give him an outfit and to receive him on ...
— The Voyage of the "Steadfast" - The Young Missionaries in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston

... course I have some money, but I am an actress and my expenses for dress alone are enough to bankrupt me. ...
— The Sea-Gull • Anton Checkov

... good?' he said at last. 'When I was working for the squire at Krzeszowie, and he went bankrupt, just such men as these came and measured the land, and soon afterwards we had to pay a new tax. No good ever comes of ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... things! What an unheard-of species of seduction! What a strange way to gain my friendship! And I found myself under the dire necessity of dissembling with the man whom I despised most in the world! I had been told that he was deeply in debt, that he had been a bankrupt in Vienna, where he had a wife and a family of children, that in Venice he had compromised his father who had been obliged to turn him out of his house, and who, out of pity, pretended not to know that he had kept his room ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... America, and their absence had left the country all but defenceless. In 1779, an attempt was made to carry out a levy of militia, in which Prostestants only were to be enrolled, and an Act passed for the purpose. It failed utterly, for so miserably bankrupt was the condition of the Irish Government, that it was found impossible to collect money to pay the men, and the scheme in consequence had ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... manner of it showed that the reporter felt the poignancy of his words—that the harness maker was bankrupt. For nearly fifty years he had kept a harness shop in that same little town, and competition by a younger, more aggressive man had taken away a good many of his customers, his money had gone in ordinary living expenses, his assets had shrunk to almost nothing, ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... from the grave, weariness of body must all be borne gallantly lest he be "raked up." Once or twice, when Louis had slipped and failed and was fighting himself back again, she felt that she was getting bankrupt. One could never treat Louis by rule of thumb. He might get drunk if she inadvertently spoke coolly to him. Then he would get drunk out of pique. He might get drunk if she had been especially loving. Then it would be because he was happy and wanted to celebrate; if she were ill he ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles



Words linked to "Bankrupt" :   break, bankruptcy, nonstarter, impoverish, smash, failure, unsuccessful person, loser, belly-up



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