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Beggarly   Listen
adjective
Beggarly  adj.  
1.
In the condition of, or like, a beggar; suitable for a beggar; extremely indigent; poverty-stricken; mean; poor; contemptible. "A bankrupt, beggarly fellow." "A beggarly fellowship." "Beggarly elements."
2.
Produced or occasioned by beggary. (Obs.) "Beggarly sins, that is, those sins which idleness and beggary usually betray men to; such as lying, flattery, stealing, and dissimulation."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Beggarly" Quotes from Famous Books



... imagined that, at last, I had discovered a true artist, one to whom her art was everything. No, I am again mistaken, and Mademoiselle Laurentia—why, she is not even going to marry a duke, there might be some sense in that, but only a beggarly artist. ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy

... and cannot consent, in this character, to be made more conspicuous, by being made a beggarly senator. I cannot take a house in Washington, furnish it, and live in it as a gentleman. I could not, in any other manner, entertain my people visiting Washington, consistently with my ideas of what a senator should ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... us, and I have often marvelled how, despite this poverty, kings and nobles, when I have seen them, go always in cloth of gold, with rich jewels. But, as you may guess, near the Court of a beggar Dauphin the country-folk too were sour and beggarly. ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang

... the difficulty?—It is true that I loved Julia Jowler—loved her to madness; but her father intended her for a Member of Council at least, and not for a beggarly Irish ensign. It was, however, my fate to make the passage to India (on board of the "Samuel Snob" East Indiaman, Captain Duffy,) with this lovely creature, and my misfortune instantaneously to fall in ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... early years of the King's exile, Bugbee had sent considerable sums to his royal master, which he alleged were from his own purse; but though he had since continued these, the annual amount had been reduced to a beggarly allowance. ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.

... lack, poverty, exigency; inanition, starvation, famine, drought. dole, mite, pittance; short allowance, short commons; half rations; banyan day. emptiness, poorness &c. Adj.; depletion, vacancy, flaccidity; ebb tide; low water; "a beggarly account of empty boxes" [Romeo and Jul.]; indigence &c. 804; insolvency &c. (nonpayment) 808. V. be insufficient &c. Adj.; not suffice &c. 639; come short of &c. 304 run dry. want, lack, need, require; caret; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... entered Cork harbour, and then Pett, thoroughly disgusted with privateering life, took leave of both ship and voyage. With much difficulty, he made his way across the country to Waterford, from whence he took ship for London. He arrived there three days before Christmas, 1594, in a beggarly condition, and made his way to his brother Peter's house at Wapping, who again kindly entertained him. The elder brother Joseph received him more coldly, though he lent him forty shillings to find himself in clothes. At that time, the ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... know I shall fail. Can you expect anyone who has always lived within touch of millions, one who has spent more in four years at college than all this range is worth—He cut my allowance repeatedly, until it was only a beggarly ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet

... snatching up the coarse gray knitting which was the sole unanchored circumstance in the room and casting off her heel viciously. "What call had you to adopt a daughter—you with never a wife to mother her nor a house of your own to take her to? For I reckon nowt of your furnished houses here and your beggarly apartments there, as you know. And now you can do nothing better than bring her here to fash the life out of me before the week's over! But that's always the way with you men. You talk precious big, but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various

... employed in expressing the sovereign contempt felt by ignorance for an honourable, religious, and primitive people. It seems also to have been thought only necessary for the Duke of Cumberland to show his face in the north, to put to flight a beggarly handful of undisciplined men, whose moral character, if we might credit certain passages in the Magazines of the day, was as low as their military acquirements. By other nations besides their own sister country, the same erroneous notions concerning the Scottish Highlanders prevailed. In Germany ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson

... not making an effort. Look at this!" He held up a little note with a coat-of-arms upon the envelope. "That belongs to—well, perhaps it is hardly fair to tell the name until to-morrow morning. But at that time it will be in the hands of the lady's husband. And all because she will not find a beggarly sum which she could get by turning her diamonds into paste. It IS such a pity. Now, you remember the sudden end of the engagement between the Honourable Miss Miles and Colonel Dorking? Only two days before the wedding ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle

... ascendency. And yet, though the adherents of Marcus might have been charged with innovation, they acted under the sanction of apostolical authority. They very properly refused to continue any longer in bondage to the beggarly elements of a ritual which had long since been superseded. Though the seceders might have urged that they were of apostolical descent, and that they were supported by ancient custom, it must be admitted, after all, that they were but ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... choked, could not go on, but started up, swung the book into the sea, vanished into his state-room, "And by Jove," said Phillips, "we did not see him for two months again. And I had to make up some beggarly story to that English surgeon why I did not return his ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale

... unfriendly to public schools, and especially to this department, offered him large inducements to engage in a private school, but Mr. Freese had faith in the success of the experiment, and was determined not to abandon it until its success was insured. The pay given by the city was but a beggarly pittance, and his labors inside and out of the school room were exceedingly arduous, but no discouragement could daunt his zeal, and he resisted blandishments as he treated opposition, with indifference. The unexpected and severe ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... their much talked of argument from design, and he will be satisfied that these are no idle charges. That argument has for its ground-work beggarly assumptions and for its main pillar, reasoning no less beggarly. Nature must have had a cause, because it evidently is an effect. The cause of Nature must have been one God; because two Gods, or two million Gods, could not have agreed to cause it. That cause must be omnipotent, wise, ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell

... my own terms, and then let him do his worst. What can he do? If he means to withdraw his beggarly two hundred and fifty pounds, of ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope

... all. No leaps, no starts will avail us, by patient crystallization alone the equal temper of wisdom is attainable. Sit at home and the spirit-world will look in at your window with moonlit eyes; run out to find it, and rainbow and golden cup will have vanished and left you the beggarly child you were. The better part of wisdom is a sublime prudence, a pure and patient truth that will receive nothing it is not sure it can permanently lay to heart. Of our study there should be in proportion two-thirds of rejection to one of acceptance. And, amid the manifold infatuations and ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller

... of the plaintain is a proud specimen of oriental foliage when it is first opened out to the sun, it soon gets torn to shreds by the lightest breeze. The tattered leaves then dry up and the whole of the tree presents the most beggarly aspect imaginable. The stem is as ragged ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson

... been to clarify that notion, which (if the reader has been patient to follow me) reveals the Poet as a helper of man's most insistent spiritual need and therefore as a member most honourable in any commonwealth: since, as Ben Jonson says: "Every beggarly corporation affords the State a mayor or two bailiffs yearly; but solus rex, aut poeta, non quotannis nascitur"—these two only, a King and a Poet, are not born every year. The Poet "makes"—that is to say, creates—which is a part of the divine ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... be more decided still. The Free Church, then, must lay her complaint before them. She must tell them, that such is the oppression to which her people are subjected, that she would be but too happy to see even the beggarly elements of the question recognised in their behalf; that she would be but too happy to hear the despot of a province pronounce the deprecated 'I tolerate you,' seeing that his virtual enunciation at present is, 'I do NOT tolerate you,' and seeing that he is powerful enough, through a misapplication ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... lab'ring poor, in spite of double pay, Are saucy, mutinous, and beggarly; So lavish of their money and their time, That want of forecast is the nation's crime. Good drunken company is their delight; And what they get by day they spend by night. Dull thinking seldom does their heads engage, But drink their youth away, and hurry on old age. Empty ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe

... more ass drivers at one bar and their victuals per day, we left Koolihori early in the morning, and travelled with considerable dispatch till three o'clock; at which time we reached Ganifarra, a small beggarly village. In the course of this march L. Cakill and J. Bird, two of the soldiers, and William Cox, one of the seamen, fell behind, and laid down. As soon as the front of the coffle had reached Ganifarra, it came on a very heavy rain. Being in the ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park

... court, through the which town passeth the river Mayne, that runs into the Rhine; thereabouts groweth strong and pleasant wine, the which Faustus well proved: the castle standeth on a hill on the north side of the town, at the foot thereof runneth the river. This town is full of beggarly friars, nuns, priests, and Jesuits; for there are five sorts of begging friars, besides three cloisters of nuns; at the foot of the castle stands a church, in the which there is an altar, where are engraven all the four elements, and all ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various

... lay it before you.—Now, sir, with these materials I set out a raw-boned stripling fra the north, to try my fortune with them here in the south; and my first step intill the world was, a beggarly clerkship in Sawney Gordon's counting house, here in the city of London, which you'll say afforded but a barren sort ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin

... were the subjects of the colonization policy of Pres. Monroe, to whom the United States have plighted their faith that no foreign authority shall ever be extended over them without their consent. These are not beggarly and vagabond Indians, to whom the offer of subsistence would be sufficient to obtain the relinquishment of their franchises, or the cession of their lands. They are self-supporting, independent, and even ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker

... Indians as he could have done with a proper force. The fight was prolonged, and the loss of life was much heavier than it would have been with a suitable force of soldiers on the field, so that the Forty-third Congress, which first reduced the army to its present beggarly proportions, is morally responsible for many, if not all, of the lives lost and wounds received by the brave men who participated in ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields

... she? Won't she? Will—— Tiresome flower, why did Nature give it such a beggarly few petals? If I'd had a daisy it would have all come right. Come, Chattie, waltz; and let's forget ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... not completer than thy wit," interrupted the Captain, "her figure-head was left unfinished. But, avast there; we are drifting off soundings. Where was I? Aye; belay, I have it. I was telling you what your beggarly ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... paid for the Captain's food for some time past, that the Captain had been brought into Norwich in his gig, that the Captain owed him money, and ought, so to say, to be regarded as his property on the occasion. "I pay my way, and that ought to give a man higher station than being a beggarly captain,—which I don't believe he is, if all the truth was known." It was thus that he took an occasion to express himself to Miss Fairstairs on that very evening. "Military rank is always recognised," Miss Fairstairs had replied, ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... upon this occasion, in a kind of soliloquy—"Church and bishop and parson, what are they worth unless to make the best use we can of them? Here I am prevented from going to that girl to-night—and that barbarous old blockhead of a squire, who was so near throwing me off for a beggarly Papist rebel: and doubly, trebly, quadruply cursed be that same rebel for crossing my path as he has done. The cursed light-headed jade loves him too—there's no doubt of that—but wait until I get him in my clutches, as I certainly shall, and, by —-, his rebel carcass shall feed ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... savage tone; "you are one of those sneaking hounds who are satisfied with dog's wages, a bit of bread and a kick. Work, indeed! who, with the spirit of a man, would work for a country where there is neither liberty of speech nor of action, a land full of beggarly aristocracy, hungry borough-mongers, insolent parsons, and 'their —- wives and daughters,' as William ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow

... to them, anxious to begin again. Harrington surveyed her in quest of her points much in the same manner men usually do horses. It certainly was not disappointing, for he asked with sudden interest, 'What did that beggarly uncle of yours get anyway?' 'One rifle, one blanket, twenty bottles of hooch. Rifle broke.' She said this last scornfully, as though disgusted at how low her ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London

... remembered now. The nickname the young bloods had given her because she had been eternally guarded by her mother and aunt, fierce-beaked Calabrians, who had determined that Rosa should never throw herself away on some beggarly Adonis. ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath

... territory, a few islands, or a region out of which we subsequently carve half a dozen States, is found adhering to us. Mr. Wilson offered us a war in which, of course, we sought nothing and found, at the end of it, not the customary few trifles of territory, but the whole embarrassing, beggarly world adhering to us. The thumbscrew and the rack could not wring from Mr. Hughes the admission that we are after anything ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous

... here's my friend Dorsett, who's bringing us something good from the South.' That's all. Why, only last week I actually offered to deliver a fifty-thousand-dollar franchise on a ten per cent. commission basis, provided I was given a beggarly two hundred advance for expenses—and had it ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford

... allotment as managing director. He knew I was in the swim down here, and asked me to pick up a good man cheap. A young, pushing man with plenty of snap about him. Parker spoke of you, and that brought me here to-night. We can only offer you a beggarly five hundred to ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... that, don't we, old boy? Not that any beggarly civilian is going to join this noble fellowship, is he? The more he keeps his distance the better we shall be pleased. And the ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier

... a drunken leer, "if you're not as crazy over the beggarly scribbler as my young gallant is over the Fenton girl who lives in the Old Bailey—at a coffee house, forsooth! Why, to see the pother you're in one would think the hussy had put your nose out of joint. Perhaps she has. ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce

... have no system of promotion and no hierarchy. From a cavalry officer Chosrew simply became a naval officer. Sultan Mahmoud ordered him to capture Ali by sea; and he did get hold of him, assisted by those beggarly English—who put their paw on most of the treasure. This Chosrew, who had not forgotten the riding-lesson I gave him, recognized me. You understand, my goose was cooked, oh, brown! when it suddenly came into my head to claim protection as a Frenchman and a troubadour from Monsieur de Riviere. ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac

... play the ruler, listening to the ambassadors who came from all directions, and giving them the answers that had been taught him, as if of his own sovereign will. In reality, however, he had nothing but the royal name and a beggarly income at the will of the mayor of the palace." The new mayors had succeeded in putting down all opposition when, to the astonishment of every one, Carloman abdicated and assumed the gown of a monk. Pippin took control of the ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... shambling body and heavy face toward the preacher, stemmed in the full tide of his eloquence by this unseemly interruption, "Ye beggarly Scot!" he exclaimed thickly. "Ye evil-thinking saint from Salem way, that know the very lining of the Lord's mind, and yet, walking through his earth, see but a poisonous weed in his every harmless flower! Shame on you to beat ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... ought to be regarded. He offered me his guards, but though Marechal d'Estampes fell on his knees in my way to stop me, I went down-stairs with only two persons in company, and made directly towards the ruffians, demanding who was their leader. Upon which a beggarly fellow, with an old yellow feather in his hat, answered me, insolently, "I am." Then I called out to the guards at the gate, saying, "Let me have this rascal hanged up at these grates." Thereupon he made me a very low bow, and said that he did ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz

... of his brother chiefs in his attempt to wrest from the agent the perpetrator of the murder of his tribesman. That the dead Indian was himself a murderer had no bearing on the matter, said Red Dog. He had simply knifed in self-defence a beggarly Brule who quarrelled with him over a girl. The blood of Lone Wolf cried aloud for vengeance, and the agent should not be permitted to harbor or conceal his slayer. "You've got no time to lose," said Boynton, who had kept his scouts on the alert. "You should ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... world is now running all over the continent, learning all sorts of Frenchified airs and fashions and notions, and beggaring themselves into the bargain. He never set foot on the d—d, beggarly, frog-eating Continent—not he! It was thought enough to live at home, and eat good roast beef, and sing "God save the King," in his time; but now a man is looked upon as a mere clown who has not ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... are the strangest girl I ever met with,' Beaufort pursued, in tones indicative of rising wrath; 'but I see how it is. I have suspected as much for some time. You would rather marry a beggarly clerk. I can tell you, however, that Herbert Lyddiard is no husband for you, and I positively forbid you to hold any further intercourse with ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various

... rebellion, or if the angry Queen had taken my head, as she this morning threatened, the wealthy dower which law would have assigned to the Countess Dowager of Leicester had been no bad windfall to the beggarly Tressilian. Well might she goad me on to danger, which could not end otherwise than profitably to her,—Speak not for her, Varney! ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... not of man's knowledge, but rather of divine wisdom. But he esteeming all kind of handicraft and invention to make engines, and generally all manner of sciences bringing common commodity by the use of them, to be but vile, beggarly, and mercenary dross: employed his wit and study only to write things, the beauty and subtlety whereof were not mingled anything at all with necessity. For all that he hath written, are geometrical propositions, which are without comparison of any other writings whatsoever: ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... contrast between his own and hers; between the niggard spirit of the beggarly receiver, and the high bloom of the exalted giver. Nevertheless, he loved her too well not to share much of her nature, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... hold of this eagle's nest, I feared that I had not much probability of finding any conveniences for travellers, and every step further confirmed this opinion. Ravandus was one of the most miserable towns I ever saw. Ali conducted me over a beggarly bazaar to a dirty court, which I took for a stable, but was the chan; and, after I had dismounted, took me into a dark recess, in which the merchant, to whom I had a letter, sat upon the ground before ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... when anybody asks you if you know that language, you say yes, and I suppose you are justified in a way. But just try to express the fundamental and secret things of your life, something that has happened, not in a book, but in your own soul, and see how ragged and beggarly your vocabulary is! The fact is, you don't often speak of these things in any language, let alone a foreign one. Rosa was never talkative. She could be silent without being sullen. Ours, you may say, was for the most part ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... served as sleeping and dining room, the other for his Majesty's cabinet. The box of books, geographical maps, the portfolio, and a table covered with green cloth, were the entire furniture. This was also the council chamber; and from these beggarly huts were sent forth those prompt and trenchant decisions which changed the order of battle and often the fortunes of the day, and those strong and energetic proclamations which so quickly reanimated the discouraged army. When our residence was ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... my discretion. It will come to a row one of these days, for I shall hit out at Master Joe, and then he will go and complain. Bother Joe Hanson! I want to think about that poor chap lying out there amongst the bracken. What a miserable, haggard scarecrow he did look, just like some poor beggarly tramp. But one could feel that he was a gentleman as soon as he began to speak. There; best way will be to take him boldly up to the front door and right up the stairs, and chance it. One never tries to play the sneak and get anywhere unseen ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn

... steps leading up to it, have been discovered. A portion of what seems to be the city-wall has just been laid bare. If there are any inscriptions or relics of any value they are kept secret; but there is plenty of broken pottery of a common kind. It is all very poor and beggarly looking; no carving nor even any hewn stones. The buildings seem to be of rubble, and "the walls of Jericho" are little better than the stone fences on a Connecticut farm. No wonder they fell down at the blast of Joshua's rams' horns and the rush ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke

... the ground, laying their weapons beside them. In appearance they tallied with the band of guerrillas that had carried Madeline up into the foothills, only this band was larger and better armed. The men, moreover, were just as hungry and as wild and beggarly. The cowboys were not cordial in their reception of this visit, but they were hospitable. The law of the desert had always been to give food and drink to wayfaring men, whether lost or hunted ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... part of it through which we traveled should seem to indicate as much. From Suffolk to Wilmington we did not pass a single town,—scarcely anything deserving the name of a village. The few detached houses on the road were mean and beggarly in their appearance; and the people whom we saw when the coach stopped had a squalid, and at the same time fierce air, which at once bore witness to the unfortunate influences of their existence. Not the least of these is the circumstance that their subsistence is derived in ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... of those around you,—could not repair a farmhouse for a better class of tenant, could not rebuild a labourer's dilapidated cottage. Give up an idea that might be very well for a man whose sole ambition was to remain a squire, however beggarly. Launch yourself into the larger world of metropolitan life with energies wholly unshackled, a mind wholly undisturbed, and secure of an income which, however modest, is equal to that of most young men who enter that ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... to hear my own voice mention that insignificant sum; for, when one considered Hynds House, the little we had was beggarly; so I wrote it down, and pushed the paper across to her. Instead of looking scared, ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... a snug little glen, 'Here am I cabined in this paltry cell among the mountains, when that great King Uhia is lord of the whole island, and every cubic mile of matter therein.' But this same Karrolono is envied. 'Hard, oh beggarly lot is mine,' cries Donno, one of his retainers. 'Here am I fixed and screwed down to this paltry plantation, when my lord Karrolono owns the whole glen, ten long parasangs from cliff to sea.' But Donno too is envied. 'Alas, cursed fate!' cries his servitor ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... these fellows, but to reject their counsels . . . . Among them are many malignant hypocrites and ambitious men who are seeking their own profit in these changes of government—many utterly ragged and beggarly fellows and many infamous traitors coming from the provinces which have remained under the dominion of the Spaniard, and who are filled with revenge, envy, and jealousy at the greater prosperity and bloom of these independent States than they find ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... but a beggarly inheritance I have here in the Blue Mountains," said she, and sitting down on a haycock, she began chatting with him. "But we've four such saetar[2] as this, and what I inherit from my mother is twelve ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie

... but whether he had crossed the water or was still in Ireland was for some time unknown, even to them. In due course he was attainted, and his little estate forfeited. It was a miserable catastrophe—a tremendous and beggarly waking up from a life-long dream ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... honour," said Prince Richard, "a sturdy and faithful yeoman! It were better send such fellows their dinners, and then buffet it out with them for the castle, than to starve them as the beggarly ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... voice, standing with his hands under his coat-tails. "That girl's a credit to her father and family, by George! Look at the match she's making without a rap to bless herself with. Now you've a fortune in prospective, young man, that would buy and sell half a dozen of these beggarly lordlings. You've youth and good looks, and good manners, or if you haven't you ought to have, and I say you shall marry a title, by George! There's this Lady Gwendoline—she ain't rich, but she's an earl's daughter. Now what's to hinder ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

... "of what avail rank or fame or both 'gainst a motley habit and a ragged mantle. Thus, Pertinax, thou art no more than what thou seemest, to wit—a poor, fierce rogue, and I, a beggarly stroller." ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol

... super-exquisite Sir Percy Blakeney locked up in a common cell with some of the most scrubby and abject rogues which the slums of indigent Paris could yield, having apparently failed in some undertaking which had demanded for its fulfilment not only tattered clothes and grimy hands, but menial service with a beggarly and disease-ridden employer, whose very propinquity must have been positive torture to ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... forwards, and who will be able to relieve our highly honored Director Herr F. Erkel of a part of his very meritorious but excessive exertions. Meanwhile I protest strongly against desiring to have a professorship without salary. Fees with honor; judicious restrictions without beggarly management; otherwise we ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... it not very easy to put what he had to say into any words that his companion would admit. He fully intended at some future day to thrust Scott's innocence down his throat, and tell him that he was not only a thief, but a mean, lying, beggarly thief. But the present was not the time. Too much depended on his inducing Undy to act ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... likely to effect a junction with Barclay on the road to Smolensk. As in these movements both the Russian commanders had lost many men, there would be only a hundred and twenty thousand in their united force, a beggarly showing in view of the two years' preparation necessary to bring it together. Consternation reigned in the Russian camp. The Czar could raise no money, Drissa was painfully inadequate as a bulwark, and the people grew desperate. The nation attributed its sorry plight to the bad advice of the ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... the eyes of a lady in the fourteenth century than in the nineteenth. The falsehood she had told was the same in both cases; or rather, it would weigh more heavily now than then. But the nature of the deception—that what they would have termed "a beggarly tradesman's brat" should, by deceiving a lady of family, have forced herself on terms of comparative equality into the society of ladies—was horrible in the extreme to their eclectic souls. Tradesmen, ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt

... know your motive, Miss Verinder, for breaking your promise to my son! I know it as certainly as if you had confessed it in so many words. Your cursed family pride is insulting Godfrey, as it insulted ME when I married your aunt. Her family—her beggarly family—turned their backs on her for marrying an honest man, who had made his own place and won his own fortune. I had no ancestors. I wasn't descended from a set of cut-throat scoundrels who lived by robbery and murder. I couldn't point to the time when the ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... usually silent Athelstane reply with so much eloquence to De Bracy's insolent remark that the princes of the House of Anjou conferred not their wards on men of such lineage as his. "My lineage, proud Norman," replied Athelstane, "is drawn from a source more pure and ancient than that of a beggarly Frenchman, whose living is won by selling the blood of the thieves whom he assembles under his paltry standard. Kings were my ancestors, strong in war and wise in council, who every day feasted in their hall more hundreds than thou ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... comparison or even relation to what man is in his higher style? While they of that higher style were revelling in their mental affluence, the vast majority of the inhabitants of the island were subsisting, and had always subsisted, on the most beggarly pittance on which mind could be barely kept alive. Probably they had at that time still fewer ideas than the people of the former age which we have been describing. For many of those with which popery had occupied the faith and fancy ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... if he were sure of the Duke of Burgundy. You see, these prelates hate nothing so much as the religious orders; and all the pride of the Luxemburgs is in arms against Clairette's fancy for those beggarly nursing Sisters; so it drives him mad to hear her say she only succoured you for charity. He thinks it a family disgrace, that can only be wiped off by marrying her to you; and he would do it bon gre, mal gre, but that he waits to hear what Burgundy will say. You have ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... brother, come down here purposely to manage matters for me. He's the eldest son, by Jove! and one of the greatest swells going. He has come down here on purpose to do the friendly thing by me. We're great friends, by Jove! Jack Wentworth and I; and yet here's a beggarly younger brother, that ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... qualify him for professional life. In boyhood he aspired to the career of an artist, but his father, himself the wreck of a would-be painter, rudely discouraged this ambition; by way of compromise between the money-earning craft and the beggarly art, he became a mechanical-draughtsman. Of late years he had developed a strong taste for the study of architecture; much of his leisure was given to this subject, and what money he could spare went in the purchase of books and prints which helped him to extend his architectural knowledge. ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing

... would be folly. The minute we stepped through that doorway they would be on us—the whole beggarly, ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout

... You're in Euclid now.) So, having the shilling—having i' fact a lot— And pence and halfpence, ever so many o' them, I purchased, as I think I said before, The pebble (lapis, lapidis, di, dem, de— What nouns 'crease short i' the genitive, Fatchops, eh?) O the boy, a bare-legg'd beggarly son of a gun, For one-and-fourpence. Here we are again. Now Law steps in, biwigged, voluminous-jaw'd; Investigates and re-investigates. Was the transaction illegal? Law shakes head. Perpend, sir, all the bearings ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells

... once you can't want it less than I do. Do you suppose that I wish to see my only child, who will have half a million of money and might be a countess, or half a dozen countesses, to-morrow, married to the son of a beggarly sniveller like you, for as you are so fond of the pure and sacred truth, I'll give it you—a fellow who can come and peach upon your own boy and ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard

... annuity of three hundred livres; but a hundred louis could not last long in the hands of a man who annually expended upwards of sixty, and three-hundred livres (twelve guineas) a year was but a trifling sum to one upon whom parasites and beggarly visitors lighted like a swarm ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... this was the last of the San Tome mine. What advantage that Government had expected from the spoliation, it is impossible to tell now. Costaguana was made with difficulty to pay a beggarly money compensation to the families of the victims, and then the matter dropped out of diplomatic despatches. But afterwards another Government bethought itself of that valuable asset. It was an ordinary Costaguana ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... say it was wrong to utter them; a man obeys his own Daemon in these cases as his supreme law. I dare say you are a little bored occasionally with "Jesus," &c.,—as I confess I myself am, when I discern what a beggarly Twaddle they have made of all that, what a greasy Cataplasm to lay to their own poltrooneries;- -and an impatient person may exclaim with Voltaire, in serious moments: "Au nom de Dieu, ne me parlez plus de cet homme-la! ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... fleet on its way to explore the ruins of London, undertake, after fifty years of examination, to reconstruct in a catalogue the flora and fauna of our day, that is, from the close of the glacial period to the present time. With all the advantages of a surface exploration, what a beggarly account it would be! How many of the land animals and plants which are enumerated in the Massachusetts official reports would ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... stream of some musty trash will be poured into the air you breathe. These unfortunate people call themselves men of firm character, men of principles and convictions. And no one cares to see that convictions are to them but the clothes with which they cover the beggarly nakedness of their souls. On the narrow brows of such people there always shines the inscription so familiar to all: calmness and confidence. What a false inscription! Just rub their foreheads with firm hand and then you will see the real sign-board, which reads: 'Narrow ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky

... having no possibility of retrieving the character of honesty, please themselves with that of being generous, because, whatever they get on the road, they always spend at the next ale-house, and are still as beggarly as ever. Her history, rightly considered, would be more instructive to young women than any sermon I know. They may see there what mortifications and variety of misery are the unavoidable consequences of gallantries. I think there is no rational ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville

... but the moment Mr. Dishart's back presented itself, he winked at Mr. Ogilvy. He winked a good deal more presently. For after all—how to tell it! Tommy was ignominiously beaten, making such a beggarly show that the judges thought it unnecessary to take the essays home with them for leisurely consideration before pronouncing Mr. Lauchlan McLauchlan winner. There was quite a commotion in the school-room. At the ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie

... club-men with one another. Look at the rush for the evening paper! See how Shiverton orders a fire in the dog-days, and Swettenham opens the windows in February. See how Cramley takes the whole breast of the turkey on his plate, and how many times Jenkins sends away his beggarly half-pint of sherry! Clubbery is organised egotism. Club intimacy is carefully and wonderfully removed from friendship. You meet Smith for twenty years, exchange the day's news with him, laugh with him over the last joke, grow ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the early meetings of this body that he called the municipal functionaries of Dublin, "a beggarly Corporation." He had become exceedingly obnoxious to the Orange party. He was an object of intense hatred within the precincts of the Castle. To get rid of such a man would be an invaluable service. The insult he had put on the immaculate and ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... never have expected that beggarly fool would have spent on this feast all the money she got from that other fool, Raskolnikov. I was surprised just now as I came through at the preparations there, the wines! Several people are invited. ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... "Psychical research" is, no doubt, a perfectly legitimate science; but when its professors invite us to watch the breaking down of the middle wall of partition between matter and spirit, they have, in my opinion, ceased to be scientific, and are in reality hankering after the beggarly elements of the ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... would make up for it next afternoon, that conscientious Englishman; which was fair enough to our parents, but not to us. And then what extra severity, as interest for the beggarly loan of half an afternoon! What rappings on ink-stained knuckles with a beastly, hard, round, polished, ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... own father and mother, deny brothers and sisters, with the rest of their kindred and friends, and will not suffer them to come near them, when they are in their pomp, accounting it a scandal to their greatness to have such beggarly beginnings. Simon in Lucian, having now got a little wealth, changed his name from Simon to Simonides, for that there were so many beggars of his kin, and set the house on fire where he was born, because no body should point at it. Others buy titles, coats of arms, and by all means screw ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... so fast, my sons," said the Father; "tarry a bit, I have more to say to thee. Prayers and provender, thou knowst—I'll come anon. So, sir, didst say yonder beggarly Flemings haggle at thy price for thy Southdown fleeces. Weight of dirt forsooth! Do not we wash the sheep in the Poolhole stream, the purest water ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... come along to the cap'n. What's the service a comin' to, I should like to know, when a beggarly shaver like you has the cheek to stow hisself away on board one o' his majesty's frigates! Wouldn' nothin' less suit your highness than a ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... ornamented the room, but Elsie's, who had married into a "present-giving connection," as her sister Johnnie called it, did even more. Each sister was supposed to own a private sitting-room, made out of the little sleeping-chambers of what Clarence Page stigmatized as the "beggarly bachelor days," which were thrown together two in one on either side the common room. Clover and Elsie had taken pains and pleasure in making these pretty and different from each other, but as a matter of fact the "private" parlors were not private at all; ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge

... Indeed, he has created them. They are the proper issue of his brain, lawfully begot, not foundlings, nor the "bastards of his art." He is not an indifferent, callous spectator of the scenes which he himself pourtrays, but without seeming to feel them. There is no look of patch-work and plagiarism, the beggarly copiousness of borrowed wealth; no tracery-work from worm-eaten manuscripts, from forgotten chronicles, nor piecing out of vague traditions with fragments and snatches of old ballads, so that the result resembles a gaudy, staring transparency, in which you cannot distinguish the daubing ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... as a whistle, and after a hearty breakfast the boys trudged down to the creek laden with all manner of country produce, for which the good natured farmer would accept only a beggarly recompense. ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon

... divan at the top of the room, and rose politely as we entered. There were too many of us to find room in the divan, so we were scattered about as best we could light on places. The main difficulty was to get a place that looked clean enough to sit upon; for a dirtier palace I never saw, nor a more, beggarly. One cannot say whether the head governor had taken all his traps with him when he went a-soldiering; but if what we saw really was his establishment, it is likely enough that he had gone away to avoid ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various

... "So that beggarly little servant did it, did he? He stole that paper I had given you, did he? What do you imagine I brought you to this country for if you are to let two stupid fools play with you as though you ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson

... the beggarly hunchback, the laughing-stock of Athens! O Mother Hera!—but I see the villain's aim. You are weary of me. Then divorce me like an honourable man. Send me back to Polus my dear brother. Ah, you sheep, you are silent! You ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... church, saying they have splendid music. Long ago the Catholic Church was forced to go into partnership not only with music, but with painting and with architecture. The Protestant Church for a long time thought it could do without these beggarly elements, and the Protestant Church was simply a dry-goods box with a small steeple on top of it, its walls as bleak and bare and unpromising as the creed. But even Protestants have been forced to hire a choir of ungodly people ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... deeply likewise— but are not people discontented already, from the lowest to the highest? And ought a man, in such a piecemeal, foolish, greedy, sinful world as this is, and always has been, to be anything but discontented? If he thinks that things are going all right, must he not have a most beggarly conception of what going right means? And if things are not going right, can it be anything but good for him to see that they are not going right? Can truth and fact harm any human being? I shall not believe ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... exclaimed Richard Delany, as an angry flush passed over his face. "One would think I had insulted her. Colonel Delany's penniless dependent should receive with more humility, if not with more gratitude, an offer of marriage from his heir. But I see how it is. She loves that beggarly Dulan—that wretched usher. But, death—death to the poverty-stricken wretch, if he presume to cross my path!" and the clenched fists, livid complexion, and grinding teeth gave fearful testimony to the deadly hatred that had sprung ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes

... of settling down, as the happy groom had hoped, to a life of wedded bliss in one of his country houses at Dordrecht, Lady Van Tromp insisted on spending her honeymoon in Paris. There they went, and the very day of their arrival the bride resumed a liaison with a beggarly count, who, not being an actual criminal, yet was written black enough in the books of the Paris police, and for whom the Countess had as warm an admiration as one of her cold, calculating nature was capable ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... assured her. "Houghton always was an ass"—(Houghton was the younger lawyer. How had he known? the girl wondered)—"lighting out for Goldfield when he ought to be here, straightening out his clients' business. And so you went to work on some beggarly salary, instead of seeing about having your property put in shape again. Why didn't you ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various

... 'Sir, he was a scoundrel, and a coward[787]: a scoundrel, for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotchman, to draw the trigger after his death[788]!' Garrick, who I can attest from my own knowledge, had his mind seasoned with pious reverence, and sincerely disapproved of the infidel writings of several, whom, in the course of his almost universal gay intercourse with men of eminence, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... have been speaking were founded in truth, though the personages are not real. Such customs did prevail in the first ages: and in consequence of these customs we find those beggarly attributes of wrestling and boxing conferred upon some of the chief Divinities. Hercules and Pollux were of that number, who were as imaginary beings, as any mentioned above: yet represented upon earth as sturdy fellows, who righted some, ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant

... such beggarly fellows as you speak of can be induced to go into the navy at all," said the colonel, who had been listening to the master's story, and was far from pleased at the interest Ada took in what he said. "For my part, I would as soon be a shoe-black; but you seem ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... of eighteen, and a scraggy nest of foreign office holders, sit in the places of Themistocles, Pericles, and the illustrious scholars and generals of the Golden Age of Greece. The fleets that were the wonder of the world when the Parthenon was new, are a beggarly handful of fishing-smacks now, and the manly people that performed such miracles of valor at Marathon are only a tribe of unconsidered slaves to-day. The classic Illyssus has gone dry, and so have all the sources of Grecian wealth and greatness. The nation numbers only eight hundred ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... saw what was the Cause, and that he had clandestinely brought off the Golden Laver. He durst not immediately take Notice of the Fact; but was ready to sink at the very Thoughts on't. About Noon, the Hermit rapp'd at a petty Cottage with his Staff, the beggarly Residence of an old, rich Miser. He desir'd that he and his Companion might refresh themselves there for a few Hours. An old, shabby Domestick let them in indeed, but with visible Reluctance, and carried them into the Stable, where all their Fare ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire

... had found 25,929 oaks and 4,204 beeches, containing 121,572 cords of wood, fit for being converted into charcoal, as used at the iron furnaces, and 11,335 tons of ship timber suitable for the navy. They add, however, that "cabins of beggarly people, with goats, sheep, and swine, began to invade the same as formerly." A fresh agreement was forthwith entered into with Sir John Winter on the part of the Crown, who thereupon surrendered his former Patent, reserving the woods called Snead and Kidnalls, and nominated Francis Finch and Robert ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls

... I said, had been cook's mate, did it himself; but as for the husbands of the three wives, they loitered about, fetched turtles' eggs, and caught fish and birds; in a word, any thing but labour, and they fared accordingly. The diligent lived well and comfortably and the slothful lived hard and beggarly; and so I believe, generally speaking, it ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe

... admirably. Both shows running together, Lords, as most novel entertainment, fuller spectacular entertainment, drew the cake. Instead of crowded House that usually waits when SAGE lunges at the Lords, beggarly array of empty Benches. Rather depressing even for imperturbable SAGE. Little later, Members finding things dull in Lords, came back in time to hear GEORGE CURZON. Capital speech; sparkle on the top; but some quiet depths of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 29, 1890 • Various

... in the Norther States for the labor of one day. But only a community blind to public justice and to public decency as well, could enact a law that in effect declares the poverty of the laborer to be a crime, in consideration of which he shall be deprived of the beggarly mite for which he is willing to give the sweat of ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... mean it that way. For you had the same sad, hungered look the first time I saw you—when you came into Milligan's in that beggarly disguise." ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand

... that most wonderful, and yet more unaccountable zeal, for a seat in their assembly, though at some years' purchase of their whole estates: these, and some other motives better let pass, have drawn such a concourse to this beggarly city, that the dealers of the several branches of building have found out all the commodious and inviting places for erecting new houses; while fifteen hundred of the old ones, which is a seventh part of the whole city, are said to be left uninhabited, and falling to ruin. Their method is the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... It amazes one to find in the midst of ruins such noble buildings, overflowing with wealth. Pictures, statuary, marbles, and precious metals, dazzle, and at last weary, the traveller, and form a strange contrast to the desolate fields, the undrained swamps, the mouldering tenements, and the beggarly population, that are collected around them. Of the churches of Ferrara, we may say as Addison of the shrine of Loretto, "It is indeed an amazing thing to see such a prodigious quantity of riches lie dead and untouched, in the midst of so much ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... hypocrite! enough to make one shudder! No doubt he can't pay his rent! A thief, my dears, a beggarly thief, who set fire to his own cellar, and who accused me of trying to steal from him, while it was he who cheated me, the villain, out of a piece of twenty-four sous. It's lucky I turned up here! Well, well, we shall have some fun! Here's another little business on your ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... Parisians than the national contest in which we were engaged,) the public had adopted the plan of never commencing operations until half-price, to the injury of the manager's purse. It was during the earlier acts of "The Man of the World," that Cooke, in performing to "a beggarly account of empty boxes," was addressed by one of the actors, in accordance with the scene, in a whisper; when the elevated comedian, casting a glance around, bitterly observed, "Speak out: there need be no secret. No one hears us." Poor Cooke could not plead in excuse what an actor did ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 268, August 11, 1827 • Various

... itself with the multiplicity of its minute observances. Faith holds communion with the Saviour in all His appointments, and rejoices in Him with joy unspeakable; superstition leans on forms and ceremonies, and is in bondage to these beggarly elements. No wonder then that the attempt to impose on the converted Gentiles the rites of both Christianity and Judaism encountered such resolute opposition. Paul and Barnabas at once withstood its abettors, and had "no small dissension and disputation with ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... that building, although there was no person who did not beseech her that she should go on with it, save only Maestro Amico, who out of envy always dissuaded her and went so far with his malignity, ever speaking ill of her to the Wardens, that she was paid a most beggarly price for her work. ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari

... fine they are; fresh as a daisy," she said, plunging her red arm into a sack of filberts. "Plump, no empty ones, my dear man. Just think! grocers sell their beggarly trash at twenty-four sous a pound, and in every four pounds they put a pound of hollows. Must I lose my profits to oblige you? You're nice enough, but you don't please me all that! If you want so many, we might make ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac

... of interposing Hindoo native states between us and the beggarly fanatical countries to the north-west no wise man can, I think, doubt; for, however averse our Government may be to encroach and creep on, it would be drawn on by the intermeddling dispositions and vainglory of local authorities; and ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... quartette netted by its crooked work is not known to this day, but it has been proven that Devlin secured but a beggarly $100 as his share, as once the others had him in their power they could compel him to do just whatever they pleased under ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson

... well have heard, there come not seldom to our city magistrates from the Marches, who for the most part are men of a mean spirit, and in circumstances so reduced and beggarly, that their whole life seems to be but a petty-foggery; and by reason of this their inbred sordidness and avarice they bring with them judges and notaries that have rather the air of men taken from the plough ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio

... this method of proceeding is well known. 'Sir, he was a scoundrel and a coward; a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality, a coward because he had no resolution to fire it off himself, but left half-a-crown to a beggarly Scotchman to draw the trigger after his death.' This is strong language, but it is not wholly undeserved. There is something inexpressibly mean in a man countenancing the persecution of his fellow ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... in Europe, I believe. How comes it that he is not produced here to tell your Lordships who was his informer, and what he knows of the transaction? They have not produced him, but have thought fit to rely upon this miserable, beggarly semblance of evidence, the very production of which was a crime, when brought forward for the purpose of giving color to acts of injustice and oppression. If you ask, Who is this Mr. Balfour? He is ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... author, No man is wise at all hours; it is therefore no wonder that a boy is not so. A difference arising at play between the two lads, Master Blifil called Tom a beggarly bastard. Upon which the latter, who was somewhat passionate in his disposition, immediately caused that phenomenon in the face of the former, which we ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... married. Also, as it happens, she can't marry anyone without my consent, at any rate until she is five and twenty, for if she does, under her father's will all her property goes away, most of it to charities, except a beggarly L200 a year. You see my brother John had a great horror of imprudent marriages and a still greater belief in me, which as it chances, is a good thing ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard

... discharged by them in such a manner as to show that they knew God, but which they had never properly performed. "But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage?"[642] To know God is, in reality, by faith to see God. As He promised to make himself known in a vision,[643] so he will give his people to know him in acceding ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham

... that the weevil despises the haricot; a very curious dislike if we consider how industriously the other vegetables of the same family are attacked. All, even the beggarly lentil, are eagerly exploited; whilst the haricot, so tempting both as to size and flavour, remains untouched. It is incomprehensible. Why should the Bruchus, which without hesitation passes from the excellent to the ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... of the Wild West. 'This is a goose of a book,' he begins, 'or if anybody wishes the idiom changed, the book of a goose. There is not an idea in it beyond what might germinate in the brain of a washerwoman.' He then proceeds to call the author by such elegant names as 'lickspittle,' 'beggarly skittler,' jackass, ninny, haberdasher, 'fifty-fifth rate scribbler of gripe-visited sonnets,' and 'namby-pamby writer in twaddling albums kept by the mustachioed widows or bony matrons of ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... Russianisation, Magyarisation, and so on. It raises the whole question of the value and significance to civilisation of the existence of small nations. Treitschke, of course, and his school are convinced that they possess neither value nor significance. In small States there is developed that beggarly frame of mind which judges the State by the taxes that it raises; there is completely lacking in small States the ability of the great State to be just; all real masterpieces of poetry and art arose upon the soil of great nationalities—such are a few of Treitschke's ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,

... in his power to create the means of releasing him from bondage. Then, marking that I gazed pitifully on his thread-bare, meagre, and by no means clean raiment, whence there came a sour, drug-like smell, he broke into a foul laugh and said that, to be sure, it would seem strange that so beggarly a figure should make bold to promise so great a treasure; howbeit, he stood to his word. So sure as night follows day, he could reach the goal for which he had consumed all his father's and mother's estate, nay all he had ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... of my life at Paris; but it was a dishonest reckoning. I grew ashamed of it; it was the gain of a slave; every sentiment of honor revolted against it; the higher I got, the more was I forced upon my beggarly system; the better the coterie, the more children of Art, I languished for those of Nature. And one night, after a most vile prostitution of myself to half a dozen different people, I grew sick, went ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... 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 to confine the English between the Alleghanies ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... nothing but glory, conquest, or acquired dominion. He set the power of France at defiance; and as if Great Britain had felt no distress, but teemed with treasure which she could not otherwise employ, he poured forth her millions with a rash and desperate hand, in purchasing beggarly allies, and maintaining mercenary armies. The earl of Stair had arrived in England towards the end of August, and conferred with his majesty. A privy-council was summoned; and in a few days that nobleman returned to Holland. Lord Carteret was sent with a commission to the Hague ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... mankind, have undergone vicissitudes of peril and wonder equal to mine. The miracles of poetry, the transitions of enchantment, are beggarly and mean compared with those which I had experienced. Passage into new forms, overleaping the bars of time and space, reversal of the laws of inanimate and intelligent existence, had been mine ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown

... slightest necessity becomes an invincible necessity. "The slothful man saith, There is a lion in the way, and I shall be devoured in the streets." But when the necessity pleaded is not in the nature of things, but in the vices of him who alleges it, the whining tones of commonplace beggarly rhetoric produce nothing but indignation; because they indicate a desire of keeping up a dishonourable existence, without utility to others, and without dignity to itself; because they aim at obtaining the dues of labour without industry; ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... delay that is wearing out the life of the nation. Weeks have passed since the battle of Antietam, and after repeated urgings on the part of the President, and repeated promises on the part of our commander, we have this beggarly apology for a movement. Yes, sir, apology for a movement. To-morrow's Dailies will tell in flaming capitals, how the Rebels were posted in large force in a strong position, and in line of battle upon the Oppequan, intimating thereby that further delay will be unavoidable to make our army equal ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong

... me as if there were only about a thousand people in the world, who keep going round and round behind the scenes and then before them, like the "army" in a beggarly stage-show. Suppose I should really wish, some time or other, to get away from this everlasting circle of revolving supernumeraries, where should I buy a ticket the like of which was not in some of their pockets, or find a seat to which some one of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... breeding more rancorous hatred than any which can now exist between the people of Boston and Charleston, between the Knickerbockers of New York and the Creoles of New Orleans. A Scotchman was to the South a comprehensive name for a greedy, beggarly adventurer, knavish and money-loving to the last degree, full of absurd pride of pedigree, clannish and cold-blooded, vindictive as a Corsican, and treacherous as a modern Greek. An Englishman was to the North a bullying, arrogant coward,—purse-proud, yet ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various

... Roger calmly. "So long as I only had my beggarly pittance, I could not ask you to marry me. There was nothing for it but to wait in patience. It has been a long weary wait, dear, but the sun has broken through the clouds at last. I am now in a position to support a wife. ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne

... my fate was sealed. It gives me a shudder of wonder to think what a narrow escape I had; I came so near not being born at all. If the beggarly cousin with the frowzy wig had prevailed upon her family and broken off the match, then my mother would not have married my father, and I should at this moment be an unborn possibility in a philosopher's brain. It is right ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... in the year '80, and I was twenty years of age. King Louis had then no especial Brigade of Irish Troops—that famous corps not being formed until after the Revolution—and his Scotch Guards, a pinchbeck, purse-proud set of beggarly cavaliers, would not have any Irishry among them. I scorned to deny my lineage, and indeed my tongue would have soon betrayed me, had I done so; and the name I listed under was that of James Moriarty. One name is as good as another when ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... through which my funicular was passing than to the stupendous prospects of sea and shore which it varyingly commanded. If words could paint these I should not spare the words, but when I recall them, my richest treasure of adjectives seems a beggarly array of color tubes, flattened and twisted past all col-lapsibility. Nothing less than an old-fashioned panoramic show would impart any notion of it, and even that must fail where it should most abound, namely, in the delicacy ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... he studied the situation as presented by his new guide and mentor, and then, having satisfied himself that he was reasonably safe, decided to sell some of the holdings which were netting him a beggarly six per cent, and invest in this new proposition. The first cash outlay was twenty thousand dollars for the land, which was taken over under an operative agreement between himself and Ross; this was run indefinitely—so ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser

... he cried, as soon as he could catch his breath from his hurry. "What! What! Can't you answer, you villain? Why, blind my eyes! a body would think you were a lord's son indeed, instead of being, as I know you, a beggarly runaway servant whom I took in like a mangy cat out of the rain. But come, come—no offence, my boy! I'll be no hard master to you. I've heard how the wind blows, and I've kept my ears open to all your doings. I know who is your sweetheart. Harkee, you rascal! You ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle

... stare at?" said M'Clutchy, strongly disposed to vent his malignity on the next object to him; "and, you beggarly scoundrel, what did you say to that? Tell me, or I'll heave you, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... us as we galloped down the pass, the fearful-looking ruffian on my heavy wagon horse, and I on his bare wooden saddle, from which beaver, mink, and marten tails, and pieces of skin, were hanging raggedly, with one spur, and feet not in the stirrups, the mare looking so aristocratic and I so beggarly! Mr. Nugent is what is called "splendid company." With a sort of breezy mountain recklessness in everything, he passes remarkably acute judgments on men and events; on women also. He has pathos, poetry, ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird

... to be slighted, nor is the skill in them to be held of trivial estimation. They are good, but then only good when they assume the effects of that settled order, and are built upon it. But when men think that these beggarly contrivances may supply a resource for the evils which result from breaking up the foundations of public order, and from causing or suffering the principles of property to be subverted, they will, in the ruin of their country, leave a melancholy and lasting monument of the effect of preposterous ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... was a scoundrel and a coward: a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotchman to draw ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett



Words linked to "Beggarly" :   poor, ungenerous, mean, stingy



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