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Bankrupt   Listen
adjective
Bankrupt  adj.  
1.
Being a bankrupt or in a condition of bankruptcy; unable to pay, or legally discharged from paying, one's debts; as, a bankrupt merchant.
2.
Depleted of money; not having the means of meeting pecuniary liabilities; as, a bankrupt treasury.
3.
Relating to bankrupts and bankruptcy.
4.
Destitute of, or wholly wanting (something once possessed, or something one should possess). "Bankrupt in gratitude."
Bankrupt law, a law by which the property of a person who is unable or unwilling to pay his debts may be taken and distributed to his creditors, and by which a person who has made a full surrender of his property, and is free from fraud, may be discharged from the legal obligation of his debts. See Insolvent, a.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Bankrupt" Quotes from Famous Books



... now," said Mr. Glegg, gently, "hasn't your husband no way o' raising this money? Because it 'ud be a little fortin, like, for these folks, if we can do without Tulliver's being made a bankrupt. Your husband's got stock; it is but right he should raise the money, as it seems to me,—not but what I'm sorry for you, ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... 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 ...
— The Velvet Glove • Harry Harrison

... announcement of his discovery. He painted the details with, I fear, a slight exaggeration of coloring, due partly to his own excitement, and partly to justify their own. But he was strangely conscious that these bankrupt men appeared less elated with their personal interest in their stroke of fortune than with his own success. "I told you he'd do it," said the Judge, with a reckless unscrupulousness of the statement ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... on next day more quietly to Fauresmith. Thence to the diamond fields, the country became at each step more sombre and more monotonous than ever. In the afternoon they rested at Jacobsdal, another dusty, dreary, comfortless place, consisting of about five and twenty bankrupt houses scattered in bare clumps over a scorched-up desert. Then on again next day, over a drearier and ever drearier expanse of landscape. It was ghastly. It was horrible. At last, on the top of a dismal hill range, looking down on a deep dale, the driver halted. In the ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen

... had burdened himself heavily with debt in his efforts to ruin his rival, but he had some compensation in {105} the booty he found at St. John. By the capture of his fort La Tour lost jewels, plate, furniture, and goods valued at ten thousand pounds, and was for a time a bankrupt. His debts in Boston were very heavy, and Major Gibbons, who had sent vessels to Fort La Tour in 1643, was never able to recover the mortgage he had taken on his estate. Bereft of wife and possessions, La Tour left Acadia and sought aid from Sir David Kirk, who was then governor ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot

... had just entered a merchant's counting-room, when the head man of the place said to him, "Let us kneel and ask God to help me through, for without his help, I shall be a bankrupt before the setting of the sun." So they knelt and prayed. That man went through the pressure, and did not ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various

... excited almost as much of the public attention as the rivalries of Handel and Bononcini or of Faustina and Cuzzoni, completely prejudiced the public against him, and eventually ended in making him a bankrupt, a prisoner in the Fleet, and ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... cordiality, Jim said, "Very well, 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

... fair girl, the orphan daughter of a bankrupt squatter whom be had met in Sydney, and had brought her and her sister into the Queensland bush with him. His wife idolized him. His sister-in-law, Kate Daly, loved him dearly—as she had cause to do, for he had proved himself to be a very brother to her; but she ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope

... under the authority of the College of Commerce, and the major part of them, as well with respect to number as to the value of their demands, shall name three or more persons, from among themselves or elsewhere, trustees, who shall take possession of all the effects movable and immovable of such bankrupt, and of his books and papers, and shall examine the same to discover the state of his affairs, and they may decide upon the claims of any one pretending to be a creditor of such a bankrupt, if his claim shall be questioned ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various

... Antonovna, are testimonies of the writer's skill and profound divination of the human heart. (He has confessed that for him woman is "a human being, very much like myself.") The dialogue between Razumov, the spiritual bankrupt, and Sophia in the park is one of those character-revealing episodes that are only real when handled by a supreme artist. Its involutions and undulations, its very recoil on itself as the pair face their memories, he haunted, she suspicious, touch the springs of desperate lives. As ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... you the scathe of idle tongue. Here is gold to array yourself as becomes a well-to-do gentleman, and gold to spend at wine and on the games withal—for, thank Providence, the ancient House of Lemoyne is not yet bankrupt." ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... against bankruptcy by reason of his great fortune, tried to satisfy her cravings for splendor of entourage and her infatuation for gambling. The result was that one day the crack of a pistol-shot was heard in the Countess' chamber, and the servants rushing in found the young bankrupt dead, lying across the bed, with a bullet through the heart. The next day a horde of clamorous creditors besieged the house, where the Countess calmly told them she had sent for her bankers and on the morrow they would be paid. That night his comrades buried their dead friend ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... name the regulations of the State that define her status in the community. Among them are laws regulating marriage and divorce, defining the legitimacy of children, defining married women's property rights, exemption and homestead laws which protect her when her husband is bankrupt. Then there are the laws regulating her functions as ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... reared. With every want gratified, pampered and fed to the very full, how often do we see them disappoint all the fond expectations of parents and friends, their money proving only a curse, while not unfrequently beggared in purse, and bankrupt in character, they prematurely sink to an ignoble or dishonored grave. Think of it, ye who are slaving in the service of Mammon, that ye may leave to your sons, the overgrown wealth which usually proves a legacy of withering curses, while you neglect to train them up in those habits of stern ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... new retrenchments, new misery, stalk forth every day. The Parliament of Besan'con is dissolved; so are the grenadiers de France. The King's tradesmen are all bankrupt; no pensions are paid, and every body is reforming their suppers and equipages. Despotism makes converts faster than ever Christianity did. Louis Quinze is the true rex Ckristianissimus, and has ten times more success than his dragooning ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... Paris!" said Madame du Val-Noble. "After being bankrupt in his own part of town, a merchant turns up as a nabob or a dandy in the Champs-Elysees with impunity!—Oh! I am unlucky! ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... care. Consider the amount of scandal it has been forced to hear in its time, and how weary and blase it must be of that kind of intelligence. You are taken to prison, and fancy yourself indelibly disgraced? You are bankrupt under odd circumstances? You drive a queer bargain with your friends and are found out, and imagine the world will punish you? Psha! Your shame is only vanity. Go and talk to the world as if nothing had happened, and nothing has happened. Tumble down; brush the mud off your clothes; ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... knows," he went on deliberately. "I like pleasure—and I like a lot of it on a vacation like this, but you're—you're in awful shape. I never heard you talk just this way before. You seem to be sort of bankrupt—morally ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... that ground formerly under tack to Robert Mouat?- Yes. His tack expired about a year ago; but before that, he had become bankrupt. ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... 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 ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... was a flood of light upon his path,—so the reader will think;—a flood so clear that not to see his way was impossible. A man carried away by abnormal appetites, and wickedness, and the devil, may of course commit murder, or forge bills, or become a fraudulent director of a bankrupt company. And so may a man be untrue to his troth,—and leave true love in pursuit of tinsel, and beauty, and false words, and a large income. But why should one tell the story of creatures so base? One does not willingly grovel in gutters, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... think a poor, bankrupt, starving, ragged neighbor as desirable as a healthy, solvent, fat, well-clothed one?" ...
— The Audacious War • Clarence W. Barron

... extorting, I cannot say how, considerable and advantageous leases from Colonel O'Mara; but after his death he disposed of his interest in these, and having for a time launched into a sea of profligate extravagance, he became bankrupt, and for a long time I ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... lords must be enticed from their fastnesses to Vienna. They must be greeted with honors, titles, and estates. They must be taught to love splendor, to spend money, to accumulate debts, until they become bankrupt, and their possessions in Hungary fall into the ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... like some wild spendthrift, Has drawn upon my heart till it is bankrupt. God, how my soul is weary! I fear the sword Of that Don Felix may prevail against him. He is a man well knit in sinewy strength; Gaspar a boy. O spare him, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat

... the colonies in general to be any the more amenable to government from London. They simply regarded the indemnity as the skinflint payment of an overdue debt, and the message as no more than the thanks they had well deserved. But the money was extremely welcome to people who would have been bankrupt without it. Nearly a quarter of a million sterling was sent out in 217 cases of Spanish dollars and 100 barrels of coppers, which were driven through the streets of ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood

... months after date (17th March),—like the unnegotiable bill despondingly received by the reluctant tailor,—your despatch has arrived, containing the extract from Moore's Italy and Mr. Maturin's bankrupt tragedy. It is the absurd work of a clever man. I think it might have done upon the stage, if he had made Manuel (by some trickery, in a masque or vizor) fight his own battle, instead of employing Molineux as his champion; and, after the defeat of Torismond, have made him spare the son of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... with ninety thousand acres tilled land, valued even in times of cheap soil at three millions of dollars. Twenty thousand bales of ginned cotton went yearly to England, New and Old; and men that came there bankrupt made money and grew rich. In a single decade the cotton output increased four-fold and the value of lands was tripled. It was the heyday of the nouveau riche, and a life of careless extravagance among the masters. Four and six bobtailed thoroughbreds rolled their ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... was so hurt that he could not get over it. He felt that he had lost not only his partner and patron, but that he was bankrupt in honor, and an outlaw from the business community. No one trusted his word, written or spoken, in spite of his efforts to redeem the past falsehood; the sign was down, the firm broken up, and he a ruined ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... else? It is no use lying to one's self. I am the most wretched of all my patients, Mrs. Helmer. Lately I have been taking stock of my internal economy. Bankrupt! Probably within a month I shall ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen

... 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 speech was delivered on the ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby

... there!" Poor country singing-bird, the great Dismal Cage of the Dead was not for him, thank God! He lies under the open Heaven, close to the little river which he immortalised in song. After a brief sojourn in the "dear old ghastly bankrupt garret at No. 66," he fluttered home ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... himself; and with all his wealth around him, in a great house and spacious and beautiful demesne, he may live as blank a life as any tattered ditcher. Without an appetite, without an aspiration, void of appreciation, bankrupt of desire and hope, there, in his great house, let him sit and look upon his fingers. It is perhaps a more fortunate destiny to have a taste for collecting shells than to be born a millionaire. Although neither is to be despised, it is always better policy to learn an interest than to make ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... advantage. 'Cousin Pansie' got the corner lot where the grocery is, and pretty much everything else. The old woman left me a legacy. What do you think it was? An old set of my own books, that looked as if it had been bought out of a bankrupt circulating library. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... that there is a leak somewhere, Mary; and it is your duty as a wife, to find out where it is, and stop it. Our bills are perfectly enormous; and if this sort of thing goes on much longer, I shall be a bankrupt." ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous

... keep it to yourselves, you know," she said in a confidential tone, "but he has failed, he is a bankrupt." ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley

... of Judaism over the Christian world has reached such a point in North America that the preaching of the Gospel itself, the Christian ministry, has become an article of commerce, and the bankrupt merchant takes to the Gospel, while the minister grown ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx

... those whom Providence has blessed with affluence! And, in truth, I deserved what I got; for I suppose never man went through such a series of calamities in the same space of time. Sir, I was five times made a bankrupt, and reduced from a state of affluence, by a train of unavoidable misfortunes; then, sir, though a very industrious tradesman, I was twice burned out, and lost my little all both times. I lived upon those fires a month. I soon after was confined by a most excruciating disorder, and lost the use of ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... burden of my partner's crime—of that fellow Godeau, who absconded, carrying with him the cash box of our house!—And besides that, what disgrace is it to be in debt? What man is there who does not owe his father his existence? He can never repay that debt. The earth is constantly bankrupt to the sun. Life, madame, is a perpetual loan! Am I not superior to my creditors? I have their money, when they can only expect mine. I do not ask anything of them, and yet they are constantly importuning me.—A man who does not ...
— Mercadet - A Comedy In Three Acts • Honore De Balzac

... haven't even heard of a book for three weeks. I did stop in at the Old Angle Book Shop yesterday, just to say hullo to Joe Jillings. He says all booksellers are crazy, but that you are the craziest of the lot. He wants to know if you're bankrupt yet." ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley

... news. Arthur had been seriously injured by a railroad accident and, it was feared, was crippled for life. But that was not all. Dick Percival—whom Enna had married nearly two years before—had now become utterly bankrupt, having wasted his patrimony in rioting and drunkenness, losing large sums at the gaming-table; and his young wife, left homeless and destitute, had been compelled to return to her father's house ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley

... which she kept her face averted from him, he said: "I confess that appearances are against me, and that you have reason to feel offended. But if you knew just how I was situated, you would, perhaps, judge me less harshly. I have met with heavy losses lately, and I was in danger of becoming bankrupt unless I could keep up my credit by a wealthy marriage. The father of this young lady is rich, and she fell in love with me. I have married her; but I tell you truly, dear Rosa, that I love you more than I ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child

... them as not more than figuratively ungenteel, and may feel himself virtually in company with persons of some style. Thus while I tell the truth about loobies, my reader's imagination need not be entirely excluded from an occupation with lords; and the petty sums which any bankrupt of high standing would be sorry to retire upon, may be lifted to the level of high commercial transactions by the inexpensive ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... As he said to me afterward, who but an American would have taken the trouble to tell a stranger a thing like that! Not an Englishman, certainly—he would see you bankrupt first! He disguised his own sophistication, and said he was very much obliged, and he almost apologised for not being able to take advantage of the information, and stick ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... visionary enthusiast. Then he indulges in golden dreams of national greatness and prosperity. He discovers that 'liberty is power,' and not content with vast schemes of improvement at home, which it would bankrupt the treasury of the world to execute, he flies to foreign lands to fulfil 'obligations to the human race, by inculcating the principles of civil and religious liberty,' &c. This spirit had long been ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child

... interrupted, hoarsely. He gave her a mirthless smile, and spying the crap-dealer leaving his bankrupt table, called him ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach

... busy learning higher standards of living in the cities or making trips to Europe. Remains only one more step. The Japs buy them out. They've got to sell, for the Japs control the labor market and could bankrupt them at will." ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... Turkey has been bankrupt for many years, and owes money to most of the nations of Europe, so when Russia learned of this dangerous activity on her part, she took advantage of the ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 57, December 9, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... Finance, which the world judged him to be. It is hard for me to tell you this, but you must know, and you must try to believe that your Heavenly Father is sending you this added trial for some sure purpose of His own. Your father died a poor man, Anita. In fact, a bankrupt." The girl looked up ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander

... the nation, James could not but know. What he might have known as clearly, had he been a wise man instead of a merely clever man, was that, however such a bargain might suit himself, it was hardly likely to suit Spain. Spain was asked in effect to supply a bankrupt king with the means of figuring as the protector of Protestantism in Germany, while the only consideration offered to her was the hand of Prince Charles. But it never occurred to James to look at his schemes in any other light than his own. On the dissolution of the Parliament of ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green

... do, Alice,—but I see you are not prepared for this. Still, you may as well know it now as ever. Yes, Alice, your husband is irretrievably bankrupt!" ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... 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, for ten years later he received ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle

... without him, nor the Queen neither. I long to be in Ireland; but the Ministry beg me to stay: however, when this Parliament lurry(9) is over, I will endeavour to steal away; by which time I hope the First-Fruit business will be done. This kingdom is certainly ruined as much as was ever any bankrupt merchant. We must have peace, let it be a bad or a good one, though nobody dares talk of it. The nearer I look upon things, the worse I like them. I believe the confederacy will soon break to pieces, ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... now went down every evening and stood on the doorstep to smoke his pipe. The poorly-paved street rose steeply and had no sidewalks. Toward Rue de la Goutte d'Or there were some gloomy shops with dirty windows. There were shoemakers, coopers, a run-down grocery, and a bankrupt cafe whose closed shutters were covered with posters. In the opposite direction, toward Paris, four-story buildings blocked the sky. Their ground floor shops were all occupied by laundries with one exception—a green-painted store front typical of a small-town hair-dresser. Its ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... were not very attractive to the nobles of France; hence, but few of them settled in this country. Some of the prominent colonists, however, were granted patents of nobility and became seigniors. Prevented by their rank from cultivating the soil, they soon became bankrupt. Then they turned their attention to the fur-trade, and later many of them became explorers and the most gallant defenders of ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education

... there is the most marvellous choice of flowers, shrubs, and vines with which to get them, but we want to be told how, and added to this, it is heart-breaking to love a fountain nymph in the advertisements and to find that her travelling expenses would bankrupt you. ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane

... have been free; 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

... was made, which a subsequent secretary, Mr. Tracy, characterized to me as excellent; but the deficiencies and requirements exposed by it in our naval status frightened Congress, much as the confronting of his affairs terrify a bankrupt. ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... one, as that is than a Fiacre, send it back to me. Shall I fill the box with caps, bonnets, &c.? Not of my own choosing, but—I was going to say, of Mademoiselle Bertin's, forgetting, for the moment, that she too is a bankrupt. They shall be chosen then by whom you please; or, if you are altogether nonplused by her eclipse, we will call an Assemblee des Notables to help you out of the difficulty, as is now the fashion. In short, honor me with your commands of any kind, and ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson

... their dinners on the stroke of twelve find seven too early for elegant convenience. Among the reddest and palest of hot-house roses, which deck their tables, glisten glass of Venetian pattern and china from the bankrupt stock of kings. According to their intellectualities their talk is of labor and capital, of working-girls' clubs and model tenement-houses, of Buddha and Zola, of foreign titles, and transplanted fox-hunting. To-day a hundred thousand dollars is barely a competency, and ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant

... months we must repay both capital and interest. We are ruined!" The old merchant spoke in a broken voice, and his head sank upon his breast. "When that day comes," he continued, "the firm which has been for thirty years above reproach, and a model to the whole City, will be proclaimed as a bankrupt concern. Worse still, it will be shown to have been kept afloat for years by means which will be deemed fraudulent. I tell you, my dear son, that if any means could be devised which would avert this—any means—I should not hesitate to adopt ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... he said. "Death has cut off those that loved me, and change of fortune estranged my flatterers; and but for you, poor bankrupt, my life is as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson

... little merchants crowding round him. "You have a measure for sugar-plums; and we have all agreed to refer to that, and to see how much we have been cheated before we go to break Piedro's bench and declare him bankrupt, *—the punishment ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth

... Commercial 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 the press and debts were accumulated. Commerce was driven from its usual channels and ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... the departure of juvenile abilities. But it is otherwise with respect to the death of credit; for though all the approaches to bankruptcy may actually exist in circumstances, they admit of being concealed by appearances. Nothing is more common than to see the bankrupt of to-day a man in credit but the day before; yet no sooner is the real state of his affairs known, than every body can see he had been insolvent long before. In London, the greatest theatre of bankruptcy in Europe, this part of the subject will ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... favor. My career as a financial visitor was ended. Get out of his office! I got. But the Trolley Combine did not go through. The Planet and the other papers kept up the fight and—and the widows and orphans are bankrupt, I presume." ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln

... their own tale. They reveal the writer too (I refer to Sir Benjamin): shrewd, clear-headed, vulgar and of bull-dog courage. The disasters that overwhelm him in the end do not leave his readers unmoved; bankrupt and beaten he goes down fighting with the final characteristic wire, in response to a suggestion of compromise by his chief enemy, "Surrender be damned." A little ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various

... magistrates or juries, or before the provost marshals of the Freedmen's Bureau. He had no hesitation in expressing himself in favor of the former. He was opposed to all systems of repudiation, whether styled stay laws, bankrupt laws, or insolvent acts, and in general was in favor of placing Mississippi in the front rank of States. He desired to see our congressmen admitted at the next session, and to that end would do all in his power to promote the policy of President Johnson for the rehabilitation which ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz

... office. An admirable editorial on "The Resources of Humboldt County," which I had constructed the evening before, and which, I had reason to believe, might have changed the whole balance of trade during the ensuing year, and left San Francisco bankrupt at her wharves, was in this way lost to ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte

... even at the partial publicity of the income list. We are tossed upon the boundless ocean of conjecture. But we do know from his own reluctant lips that this public servant, who entered the public service a bankrupt, has become, by an entire abandonment of himself to the public good, 'one of the largest tax-payers in New York.' His influence is co-extensive with his cash. The docile Legislature sits at his feet, as Saul at ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... 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 who could pay six cents; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... hopeless, for they are aware that Englishmen have better judgment than to allow their Parliament to lend further money to a country over which they had relinquished direct Parliamentary authority, and whose Exchequer would be bankrupt. Home Rule would thus permanently relegate the agricultural population, not only of Ulster, but of Ireland generally, into two classes living side by side with each other—one consisting of occupying owners, the other of rent-payers without hope of ownership. ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... nothing in its manner to rouse enthusiasm of any kind. The audience listened with attention, but only woke into real animation when with a shout of laughter it heard an address sent to Cl82menceau by the emigr82 financiers, aristocrats and bankrupt politicians of the Russian colony in Stockholm, protesting against any sort of agreement ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome

... thrust upon her unsought. But she must pay for the privilege, whether she likes it or not. So over they come, these various "advisers" from various foreign nations, and settle down here in Peking as the official adviser of this and that, and draw their salaries from this bankrupt old government. The China Year Book for 1916 gives a list of twenty-five such advisers, British, American, French, Russian, Dutch, German, Italian, Japanese, Danish, Belgian, and Swedish. There is the political adviser to the President; to the ministry of finance; in connection ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte

... mistake their masters' money for their own; and a choice miscellany of idle vagabonds. The proprietor of a private theatre may be an ex-scene-painter, a low coffee-house-keeper, a disappointed eighth-rate actor, a retired smuggler, or uncertificated bankrupt. The theatre itself may be in Catherine-street, Strand, the purlieus of the city, the neighbourhood of Gray's-inn-lane, or the vicinity of Sadler's Wells; or it may, perhaps, form the chief nuisance of some shabby street, on the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... that the people given up to the more serious business of life are dedicated to labor, like the ox. Amusement is incompatible with their activities. Pushing this view still further, we think ourselves warranted in believing that the infirm, the afflicted, the bankrupt, the vanquished in life's battle, and all those who carry heavy burdens, are in the shade, like the northern slopes of mountains, and that it is so of necessity. Whence the conclusion that serious people have no need of pleasure, and that to offer it to them would be unseemly; while as to ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner

... more than an accident in his career, a comparatively trifling and casual item in the total expenditure of his many-sided energy. He was nearly sixty when he wrote Robinson Crusoe. Before that event he had been a rebel, a merchant, a manufacturer, a writer of popular satires in verse, a bankrupt; had acted as secretary to a public commission, been employed in secret services by five successive Administrations, written innumerable pamphlets, and edited more than one newspaper. He had led, in fact, as adventurous a life as any of his own heroes, and had met quickly succeeding ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto

... royal order from the king of France in 1684 to restore the forts on the Bay to England. Meanwhile amounts of L250 were voted widows of captains killed in the war; and the deputy-governor went to Hamburg and Amsterdam to borrow money; for the governor, Sir Stephen Evance, was wellnigh bankrupt. ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut

... 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 a matter of propaganda than ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham

... of fame renewed Bankrupt a nation's gratitude, To thine own noble heart must owe More than the meed she can bestow. For not a people's just acclaim, Not the full hail of Europe's fame, Thy Prince's smiles, the State's decree, The ducal rank, the gartered knee, Not these such pure delight afford As ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott

... no security for our capital (which, fortunately, is seldom so large as we suppose), but the love of Nature is a sure investment, which she repays a thousand-fold, which she repays most prodigally when the heart is bankrupt and full of bitterness, as Ruth's heart was that day. For in Nature, as Wordsworth says, "there is no bitterness," that worst sting of human grief. And as Ruth walked among the quiet fields, and up the ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... Salle Street, and that if the church people—the men I mean—put as much energy, and shrewdness, and competitive spirit into the saving of souls as they did into the saving of dollars that we might get somewhere. And so I took hold of a half dozen broken-down, bankrupt Sunday-school concerns over here on Archer Avenue that were fighting each other all the time, and amalgamated them all—a regular trust, just as if they were iron foundries—and turned the incompetents ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris

... religion is fellowship; living fellowship with the living Lord. It is neither being good nor doing good, though both will spring out of it. It is an exchange made between you and the Lord Christ: His righteousness for your iniquity; His strength for your weakness; His rich grace for your bankrupt poverty of all goodness. Mistress Amy, you want Christ our Lord, and the Holy Ghost, which He shall give you—the new heart and the right spirit which be His gift, and which He ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt

... remember, inquiry was made of his relations in England. His father, a farmer, was then alive; the answer was that he had certainly left Australia. His last letter, written two years before that date, containing a request for money, which the father, himself made a bankrupt by reverses, could not give, had stated that he was about to seek his fortune elsewhere—since then they had heard nothing ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... King began to alienate the affection of his natural allies, the people, by yielding to the clamor of the court party. From the nobility he could wring nothing. The royal treasury was therefore actually bankrupt, the nobles believed that they were threatened with bankruptcy, and the people knew that they themselves were not only bankrupt, but ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... people, dispirited and almost bankrupt, appealed to Brown and his friends who had held out such glowing inducements to them to build the road on their side of the river. An investigation of conditions was ordered and Bill, with his usual good luck and influence, appointed chairman of the investigating committee, ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... of friendship 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 part with ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... said Bjerregrav, "but it will come to them just as well in other ways. For when I'd made my offer to the Society, Shipowner Monsen—you know him—came to me, and begged me to lend him the money at one year. He would have gone bankrupt if he hadn't had it, and it was terrible to think of all the poor people who would have gone without bread if that great business of his had come to a standstill. Now the responsibility falls on me. But the money is safe enough, and in that way it does ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... 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. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey

... waltz with quack-prophets, pick pockets and public women. The invisible world of Satan is displayed and the smoke of its torment goes up continually. No provision is made for the general education of the common people and yet the government is fast becoming bankrupt. ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger

... me to do, count, outside the army? I could not turn merchant, for I should assuredly be bankrupt, at the end of the first month; nor could I well turn cultivator, when I have no land to dig. Now, however, my future is determined for me; and a point that has, I own, troubled me much, has been decided without an effort ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty

... orphan daughter of a London merchant, who was once very wealthy, but became bankrupt and died, leaving his daughter L200 a year. This annuity, however, she loses through the knavery of her man of business. When reduced to penury, her old lover, Henry Morland (supposed to have perished at sea), makes his appearance and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... the land of justice, modesty, and unselfishness; and suppose the property-owners of Ypres collected once more in Ypres. The enterprise of reconstruction facing them will make such a demand of initiative force and mere faith as must daunt the most audacious among them. And capital dragged out of a bankrupt Germany will by no means solve the material problem. For labour will be nearly as scarce as money; the call for labour in every field cannot fail to surpass in its urgency any call in history. The simple contemplation of the gigantic job will be staggering. To begin with, the withered and corrupt ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett

... years no one has cared to invest money in the erection of a new bridge, for they saw that there was no more traffic than one bridge could readily carry, and they knew that if a new bridge were erected, in the rivalry in tolls which would ensue, the old-established company would probably bankrupt its rival. It is thus plainly seen how an important bridge may become a monopoly, and a most powerful and ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker

... Imperial Majesty has no money; Imperial Majesty remembers recent days rather, and his own last quarrel with France (on the Polish-Election score), in which you Sea-Powers cruelly stood neuter! One comfort, and pretty much one only, is left to a nearly bankrupt Imperial heart; that France does at any rate ratify Pragmatic Sanction, and instead of enemy to that inestimable Document has become friend,—if only she be well let alone. "Let well alone," says the sad Kaiser, bankrupt of heart as well as purse: "I have saved the Pragmatic, got ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... at last, he has found a truly superior person. Schoolcraft is simply "poor Schoolcraft," and of course subsides; Miss Martineau is "that Minerva mediocre;" Carlyle is "Thomas Carlyle with his bilious howls and bankrupt draughts on hope." Hawthorne, he learns, though we cannot tell from whence, "thought it inexpressibly ridiculous that any one should notice man's miseries, these being his staple product," and was "swallowed up in the wretchedness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... the passing hour. The hero is misconceived and misreported; he cannot therefore wait to unravel any man's blunders; he is again on his road, adding new powers and honors to his domain and new claims on your heart, which will bankrupt you if you have loitered about the old things and have not kept your relation to him by adding to your wealth. New actions are the only apologies and explanations of old ones which the noble can bear to offer or to ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... but fairly constant supply of slaves would come from the seizure of the persons and families of bankrupt debtors, whose creditors, especially in the Orient, might sell them ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis

... from the gross product to be saved and capitalized, are consumed, there is an annual deficit of two hundred francs in the family assets; so that at the end of forty years these good people, without suspecting it, will have eaten up their property and become bankrupt! ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... Balcony. Balustrade. Bandit. Bankrupt. Bravo. Brigade. Brigand. Broccoli. Burlesque. Bust. Cameo. Canteen. Canto. Caprice. Caricature. Carnival. Cartoon. Cascade. Cavalcade. Charlatan. Citadel. Colonnade. Concert. Contralto. Conversazione. Cornice. Corridor. Cupola. Curvet. Dilettante. Ditto. Doge. Domino. Extravaganza. ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn

... Khan[240] was complained against to the king by our captain, Mr Hawkins, when Abdal Hassan, the grand vizier, was ordered to see that we had justice: But birds of a feather flock together, and Mucrob Khan, partly by misstatements and partly by turning us over to a bankrupt banyan, would only pay us with 11,000 mamudies instead of 32,501-1/2 which he was due, and even that was not paid for a ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr

... office where he has the handling, the smelling, and the tasting of tea. Without the sort of knowledge which can be gained only in this practical way, his exploits as a tea merchant will soon come to a bankrupt termination. The "paper-philosophers" are under the delusion that physical science can be mastered as literary accomplishments are acquired, but unfortunately it is not so. You may read any quantity of books, and you ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley

... "Worse than bankrupt," said the Curate: "there is a brother who takes everything. Will you stand by them—offer them shelter?—I mean for a time. I don't know anybody I should care to apply to ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... capital dividends has drawn more investment to the island. Upon coming to power in August 1996, President FERNANDEZ nevertheless inherited a trouble-ridden economy hampered by a pressured peso, a large external debt, nearly bankrupt state-owned enterprises, and a manufacturing sector hindered by daily power outages. In December, FERNANDEZ presented a bold economic reform package-including such reforms as the devaluation of the peso, income tax cuts, ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... was patent, mutual toleration was often replaced by personal esteem and regard. "Charity, brotherly love," writes Huxley, "were the chief traits of the Society. We all expended so much charity, that, had it been money, we should every one have been bankrupt." ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley

... Fox, debtor and bankrupt as he was, had taken lodgings with Fitzpatrick at an oilman's in Piccadilly. Every one pitied the landlord, who would certainly be ruined. 'Not a bit of it,' quoth George; 'he'll have the credit of keeping at his house the ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... substance, he had bartered his birthright for a moment's pleasure; there was no one so low and despicable who could not call him comrade, to whom he had not given himself without reserve. There was nothing left, and now the one thing he had ever wanted had come, and had found him like a bankrupt, his credit wasted and his coffers empty. He had placed himself at the beck and call of every idle man and woman in Paris, and he was as common as the great clock-face that hangs ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis

... there was a slight increase in expenditure and a considerable falling off in sales, and it needed but a little mathematical ability to reach the conclusion that in a comparatively short time the company would be bankrupt. The share-holders were thoroughly disgusted with the British Columbia end of the business, and were on the lookout for a victim. Naturally their choice fell upon the manager. The concern failed to pay. It was the manager's business to make it pay and the failure must be laid ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... Ambassador's invitation, feeling tolerably sure of meeting Logotheti at the dinner. If there were any other women they would be of the meteoric sort, the fragments of former social planets that go on revolving in the old orbit, more or less divorced, bankrupt, or otherwise unsound, though still smart, the kind of women who are asked to fill a table on such occasions 'because they won't mind'—that is to say, they will not object to dining with a primadonna or an actress whose husband has become nebulous and whose reputation is mottled. The men, ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford

... beyond the borders of their own States. This attitude fairly indicated the feeling of New England, which was opposed to the war and openly spoke of secession. Moreover, the wealthy merchants and bankers of New England declined to subscribe to the national loans when the Treasury at Washington was bankrupt, and vast quantities of supplies were shipped from New England seaports to the enemy in Canada. It was an extraordinary paradox that those States which had seen their sailors impressed by thousands and which had suffered most heavily from ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine

... Mexico had 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 ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... nothing back, Never knoweth any lack; Love, compelling love to pay, Sees him bankrupt ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... too soon to be confident that the policy of the Society in this matter was wrong. But the Trade Unions are stronger than ever: the Friendly Societies are not bankrupt: the working people are insured against sickness: and anybody who now proposed to repeal the Act would be regarded as ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease

... at the bankrupt sale,' he said. 'She allowed 'twould keep us in vests and her in petticuts and thro't bandages for ten years, and I'm not going to begin to waste the minute she's under ground. She would say, "you go on wearin' them vests!" ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards

... bankruptcy proceedings which followed were like a sinister farce, bursts of laughter in a setting of mute anguish—that of the depositors; hundreds of thousands of them. The laughter was irresistible; the accompaniment of the bankrupt's public examination. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... say the least, is an unlucky number ... [Rises, puts arm about ETHEL and comes left.] and there's that bankrupt stock of piano lamps. [Crosses to sofa; sits on sofa with ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The Moth and the Flame • Clyde Fitch

... world which is supreme, and to which no other joy is comparable. You receive your water, you make your deposit, and now what more would you have? Gold, diamonds, power, fame? All in a single moment these things have withered to dirt, dust, ashes. The world has nothing to give you now. For you it is bankrupt. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... of a Christian has gone bankrupt," he said, referring to the defendant in the late action, but too furious to speak ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... were being forwarded at almost the same time by Bunch in regard to the Southern Commissioners, now being despatched to London, but they were not so favourable. Mann, wrote Bunch, was the son of a "bankrupt grocer." His personal character was "not good," yet he alone of the three Commissioners appointed had had diplomatic experience. Yancey, it was stated, was an able lawyer, a stirring orator, and a recognized leader ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... up in the family of the Reverend James Maylands, but some time before the death of that gentleman he had called him home to help to manage the small farm with which he amused his declining years. George and his father amused themselves with it to such an extent that they became bankrupt about the time of the father's death, and thus the son was left with the world before him and nothing whatever in his pocket except ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne

... which happened to be Saturday, he sought admittance, and was refused. A warm altercation ensued in the passage between him and the porters, which brought down some of the proprietors. One of them—a powerful man—a bankrupt butcher—struck him a tremendous blow, which broke the bridge of his nose, covered his face with blood, and knocked him down. On getting up he was knocked down again. He arose once more, and instantly received ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... the members of which contributed to a general fund, and had in return the exclusive privilege of trafficking with the Levant; but those members trafficked, each on his own account; they forestalled each other; they undersold each other; one became rich; another became bankrupt. The Corporation meanwhile watched over the common interest of all the members, furnished the Crown with the means of maintaining an embassy at Constantinople, and placed at several important ports consuls and vice-consuls, whose business was to keep ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... 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 ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... 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 ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency



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



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