"Penury" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... act of yours," he cried, "has shown that Count Robert was your uncle, and brought you up, and battled with Stephen for sixteen years for your sake, and for you was at last made captive? Had you called to mind his services you would not have driven my brothers to penury and ruin. My eldest brother's tenure, given him by your grandfather, you have curtailed. My youngest brother, a stout soldier, you have driven by stress of want to quit a soldier's life and give himself ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... shone in flattering brightness, promising duration; (such is often the cunning flattery of nature), that light, which through half a century, had diffused its radiance and its warmth so widely; that light in which penury had been cheered, in which science had expanded; to whose orb poetry had brought all her images; before whose influence disease had continually retreated, and death so often "turned aside his levelled dart!"[95] That Dr. Darwin, as to his religious principles or ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... firmly believe, the only object she ever loved; and her love for me ceased only with her life. Her faults, though not to be defended, may be palliated and deplored, because they were the defects of education. Her infant days were passed in scenes of domestic strife, profligacy, and penury; her maturer years, under the guidance of a weak mother, were employed in polishing, not strengthening, the edifice of her understanding, and the external ornaments only served to accelerate the fall of the fabric, and to increase ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... young woman? The Baron would have wept could he have seen it. The dingy decanters could not disguise the vile hue of wine bought by the pint at the nearest wineshop. The table-napkins had seen a week's use. In short, everything betrayed undignified penury, and the equal indifference of the husband and wife to the decencies of home. The most superficial observer on seeing them would have said that these two beings had come to the stage when the necessity of living had prepared them for any kind of dishonor that might bring luck to them. Valerie's ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... who with the sound of song Can charm away the heartache, and forget The frost of Penury, and the stings of Wrong, And drown the fatal whisper of Regret! Darker are the abodes Of Kings, though his be poor, While Fancies, like the Gods, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... coat was once of the richest; but now it was old and threadbare. His hands were once white and elegantly shaped; now they were dirty, and blue with cold. His face once beamed with contentment; now it was worn with care and marked by the hard lines of penury. ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... good or evil, considered in itself, seems greater at first. The reason for this is that a thing is more obvious when seen in juxtaposition with its contrary. Hence, when a man passes unexpectedly from penury to wealth, he thinks more of his wealth on account of his previous poverty: while, on the other hand, the rich man who suddenly becomes poor, finds poverty all the more disagreeable. For this reason sudden evil is feared more, because it seems more to be evil. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... keepe your hogs, and eat huskes with them? what prodigall portion haue I spent, that I should come to such penury? Oli. Know you where you are sir? Orl. O sir, very well: ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... "to have known nothing but misery is the most portentous condition under which human nature can start on its course." Has your agricultural laborer ever known anything but misery? He is born in a miserable hovel, which in mockery is termed a house or a home; he is reared in penury: he passes a life of hopeless and unrequited toil, and the jail or the union house is before him as the only asylum on this side of the pauper's grave. Is this the result of your protection to native industry? Have you cared for the laborer till, from a home of comfort, he ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... closet for thirty years together. LINNAEUS once in despair abandoned his beloved studies, from a too irritable feeling of the ridicule in which, as it appeared to him, a professor Siegesbeck had involved his famous system. Penury, neglect, and labour LINNAEUS could endure, but that his botany should become the object of ridicule for all Stockholm, shook the nerves of this great inventor in his science. Let him speak for himself. "No one cared how many sleepless nights and toilsome hours I had passed, while all with one ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... looked at one another, then at the elderly woman before them, and read the same thoughts in each other's eyes. That bit of gold was so plainly the last. Her hands shook a little as she held it out, looking at it sadly but ungrudgingly, as one who knows the full extent of the sacrifice. Hunger and penury had carved lines as easy to read in her face as the traces of asceticism and fear. There were vestiges of bygone splendor in her clothes. She was dressed in threadbare silk, a neat but well-worn mantle, and daintily ...
— An Episode Under the Terror • Honore de Balzac
... madness of the times has given him reputation.'[183] 'If, after the cruel treatment so many extraordinary men (Spencer, Lord Bacon, Ben. Jonson, Milton, Butler, Otway, and others) have received from this country, for these last hundred years, I should shift the scene, and show all that penury changed at once to riot and profuseness, and more squandered away upon one object than would have satisfied the greater part of those extraordinary men, the reader to whom this one creature should be unknown would fancy him a prodigy of art and nature, would ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... the priest's marriage fees for his life was always one of penury, so he gave him an old silver watch. When he was Head of the Italian Legion he was content to sit in the dark, because he discovered that candles were not served out to the common soldiers. The red shirts of his following had been bought originally for their cheapness, being ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... and enduring, the Methodist Church had its beginning among the humble and lowly. Rocked in the cradle of penury and ignorance, it was firmly fixed in the foundations of society, whence it rose from its own purity of doctrine and simplicity of worship to command the respect, love, and adoption of the highest in the land, and ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... my sister, than you can believe. For is there anything more cruel than this mean economy to which we are subjected? this strange penury in which we are made to pine? What good will it do us to have a fortune if it only comes to us when we are not able to enjoy it; if now to provide for my daily maintenance I get into debt on every side; if both you and I are reduced daily to beg the help of tradespeople in order ...
— The Miser (L'Avare) • Moliere
... ye affluent, And when the overplus of your fortunes disturb Your minds, think how little stops the lash of penury, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Whittington • T. H.
... a prominent member of Parliament, and Newton, Locke, Prior, Gay, Rowe, Congreve, Tickell, Parnell, and Pope all received direct or indirect aid from the government, in the reigns of George I and George II, Steele died in poverty, Savage walked the streets for want of a lodging, Johnson lived in penury and drudgery. Thomson was deprived of a small office which formed his sole dependence.[92] This neglect of authors and of literature was only partially due to an unappreciative government. It was supported by the indifference of ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... this the anxiety, the sufferings the amputated man feels when he is also deprived of his means of livelihood, as well as his limb, and from comfort comes down to penury. Perhaps he has been able hitherto to keep his wife and children with a fair amount of comfort; now he is helpless and has to ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... You're lucky who conjoin the benefits Of penury and abundance; for I know Your father was a man of slender means. You do not blush, I see. That's right! Why should you? What merit to be dropped on fortune's hill? The honour is to mount it. You'd have ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles
... character, and although every inducement was offered, so far as wealth was concerned, she remembered the injunction of the Scriptures, "Be ye not unequally yoked to unbelievers," and like Moses, who refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, but chose rather to suffer affliction, penury, and loss with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season, she declined to enter into the proposed matrimonial connection. And then she decided to emigrate to the United ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... of Heaven, so cultivated, too, as her voice is, making even an unsusceptible heart vibrate like a harp-string, she should not have had an engagement among the hundred theatres and singing-rooms of London; that she should throw away her melody in the streets for the mere chance of a penury, when sounds not a hundredth part so sweet are worth from other lips purses ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... interior heart-sap may be drawn apart, and examin'd by weight, quantity, colour, distillation, &c. and if no difference perceptible be detected the presumption will be greater, that the difference of heart and sap in timber, is not from the saps plenty or penury, but the season; and then possibly, the very season of squaring, as well as felling of timber, may be considerable to ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... benediction. Look at the days of thanksgiving and of fast with which they followed the shifting fortunes of the wars of Protestantism—which were wars for humanity—on the continent! Look at the vital consequence they attached to the interest of education; at the taxes that in their penury, and while for the most part they still lived in huts, they imposed on themselves to found and to sustain the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... arrangement of the materials, the entire want of critical or explanatory notes, the unaccountable neglect to cite authorities, the numerous repetitions, blunders, and contradictions." These charges are certainly not without foundation; but they are in some measure accounted for by the trouble and penury in which the author's last years were spent, and the unfinished state in which the work was left ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... families and effects. Considering opposition as unavailing, they made no resistance. The next day, Captain Mowat commenced a furious cannonade and bombardment; and a great number of people standing on the heights were spectators of the conflagration, which reduced many of them to penury and despair; 139 dwelling-houses and 278 stores were burnt. Other seaports were threatened with conflagration, but escaped; Newport, on Rhode Island, was compelled to stipulate for a weekly supply, to avert it." (Holmes' Annals, ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... each of the followers of Walter the Penniless was poor to penury, and trusted for subsistence to the chances of the road. In Hungary they met with loud resistance from the people, whose houses they attacked and plundered, but in Bulgaria the natives declared war against the hungry horde; they were dispersed and almost exterminated. Some of the survivors ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... life inexorably calls To face the grim realities of earth. His pensive fancy pictured there at play From year to year the careless bands of boys, Unconscious victims kept in golden state, While haply they await The dark approach of disenchanting Fate, To hale them to the sacrifice Of Pain and Penury and Grief and Care, Slow-withering Age, or Failure's swift despair. Half-pity and half-envy dimmed the eyes Of that old poet, gazing on the scene Where long ago his youth had flowed serene, And all the burden ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... only the intangible shadow of pomp and luxury, while the substance was actual penury. But her inborn fertility of invention, her abundant resources, her tact in accommodating herself to circumstances, and her inexhaustible energy, had endowed her with the faculty of making the best of ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... to their eyes her ample page Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll; Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage, And froze the genial current of ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... mart and palace, soon or late I knock unbidden once at every gate. If sleeping, awake; if feasting, rise before I turn away. It is the hour of fate, And they who follow me reach every state Mortals desire, and conquer every foe Save Death; but those who doubt or hesitate, Condemned to failure, penury and woe, Seek me in vain and uselessly implore; I answer not and I ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... whilst the effect is at a distance, and may be the concern of other times and other men. On these principles, he chooses to suppose (for he does not pretend more than to suppose) a naked possibility that he shall draw some resource out of crumbs dropped from the trenchers of penury; that something shall be laid in store from the short allowance of revenue-officers overloaded with duty and famished for want of bread,—by a reduction from officers who are at this very hour ready to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... saw Dangled along at the cold finger's end Just when the day declined; and the brown loaf Lodged on the shelf, half eaten without sauce Of savoury cheese, or batter, costlier still: Sleep seems their only refuge: for, alas' Where penury is felt the thought is chained, And sweet colloquial pleasures are but few! With all this thrift they thrive not. All the care Ingenious Parsimony takes, but just Saves the small inventory, bed and stool, Skillet, and old carved chest, from public sale. They live, and live without extorted alms from ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... been warned against; baskets of melon seed and water-chestnuts; men working in teak and blackwood; fan makers and jade cutters; eggs preserved in what appeared to her as petrified muck; bird's nests and shark fins. She glimpsed Chinese penury when she entered a square given over to the fishmongers. Carp, tench, and roach were so divided that even the fins, heads and fleshless spines were sold. There were doorways to peer into, dim cluttered holes with shadowy forms ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... my childhood I had been extremely precocious. There were anecdotes of preternatural brightness, picked up, Heaven knows where, of my eagerness to learn, of my adventurous, chivalrous young soul, and of my arduous struggles with chill penury, which was not able (as it appeared) to repress my rage, until I entered this institution, of which I had been ornament, pride, cynosure, and fair promising bud blasted while yet its fragrance was mingled with the dew of its youth. Once launched upon my ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... parishioners living within the parish. There are some cases in which those receipts amount to nearly 2000 pounds per annum; whilst in some others the sum total is hardly sufficient to sustain an existence of misery and penury. Notwithstanding this deplorable condition, there have been, it must in candour be said, notable examples of charity, zeal, and self-denial, among the inferior classes of the parochial clergy. The poor have frequently found in their priests consolation ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... learned, were plotting to intercept and kill him. When Eumaeus was gone, Minerva presented herself to Ulysses, and directed him to make himself known to his son. At the same time she touched him, removed at once from him the appearance of age and penury, and gave him the aspect of vigorous manhood that belonged to him. Telemachus viewed him with astonishment, and at first thought he must be more than mortal. But Ulysses announced himself as his father, and accounted for the change ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... they had to come to the upper class, first for remission of its claims on them and then for actual subsistence. But the dependence was mutual, and there were no reserves at top equal to the needs of that joint hazard. Penury was only at two removes from the "gentry houses." While the first line of defence, the tenants, held good, the world went pleasantly for the Ireland of yesterday. But when that line broke, and starvation burst in, ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... chests and drawers belonging to his daughters, wherein lay the clothes that had become faded and threadbare, from being worn over and over again. Such a song had not been sung, at the children's cradle as I sung now. The lordly life had changed to a life of penury. I was the only one who rejoiced aloud in that castle," said the Wind. "At last I snowed them up, and they say snow keeps people warm. It was good for them, for they had no wood, and the forest, from which ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... worn by sixteen years of struggle in the Capital, and aged quite as much by pleasure as by penury, hard work, and disappointments, looked eight-and-forty, though he was no more than thirty-seven. He was already bald, and had assumed a Byronic air in harmony with his early decay and the lines furrowed ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... mood to listen to the dictates of squeamish principles from a man who lacked the spirit and power—the will to raise her out of the mire of penury into which he had helped to plunge her. The hours of dreary, hopeless labor; the weeks and months of dismal and grinding poverty had sunk deeply into her soul. No price was too high to pay to escape these things. In a moment her reply was pouring ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... whose wanton eye Transfix'd his soul, and kindled amorous flames, Chloe, or Phillis, he each circling glass Wisheth her health, and joy, and equal love. Meanwhile, he smokes, and laughs at merry tale, Or pun ambiguous, or conundrum quaint. But I, whom griping penury surrounds, And Hunger, sure attendant upon Want, With scanty offals, and small acid tiff, (Wretched repast!) my meagre corpse sustain: Then solitary walk, or doze at home In garret vile, and with a warming puff Regale chill'd fingers: or from tube as black As winter-chimney, or well-polish'd ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... valley where lay the habitations of men, nothing audible anywhere but the deep rumble of the waves' bellow, or the chirp of the birds overhead, or, perhaps, when the wind was southerly, the church bells on Sunday morning. Never have I looked upon such lonely penury, and yet there, even there, these forlorn women kept their souls alive. "Yes," they said, "we're working when we can get the work, and trusting, trusting, ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... ignorance, the nation might he saved. The author ought also to recollect, that a good man would hardly deny, even to the worst of ministers, the means of doing their duty; especially in a crisis when our being depended on supplying them with some means or other. In such a case their penury of mind, in discovering resources, would make it rather the more necessary, not to strip such poor providers of the little stock they had ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... key on the bunch opened the iron doors; and Philip found himself in possession of a considerable sum of money, amounting, as near as he could reckon, to ten thousand guilders, in little yellow sacks. "My poor mother!" thought he; "and has a mere dream scared thee to penury and want, with all this wealth in thy possession?" Philip replaced the sacks, and locked up the cupboards, after having taken out of one, already half emptied, a few pieces for his immediate wants. His attention ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... little girl he saw abruptly the penury of heart, the desert-like aridity of this bourgeois class of which he formed a part. Dry and wornout earth which little by little has imbibed all the juices of life and does not renew them any more, just like those lands in Asia where the fecundating rivers, ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... of man is like Satan's supereminence of pain,—and the majority of his species, doomed to penury, disease, and crime, have reason to curse the untoward event, that, by enabling him to communicate his sensations, raised him above the level of his fellow animals. But the steps that have ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... thought still swiftly flows Rejoicing onward, ere the icy breath Of sorrow falls upon the sunny fount, And chains the music of its dancing waves.— What is the end of all his lovely dreams— The bright fulfilment of his earthly hopes? Too often penury and dire disease, Neglect, a broken heart, an early grave!— Oh, had he tuned his harp to truths divine, With saints and martyrs sought a heavenly crown, How had his theme ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... a home of care, For age and penury were there, Yet peace and joy withal; I asked the lonely mother whence Her helpless widowhood's defence. She told me, "Christ was all." Christ is all, all in all, She told me "Christ ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... him. His soul is yearning for the cooling freshness, the sweet fragrance, the beauty, the glory, of the outer world. It is just beyond his reach; and, wearied with futile exertions, he sinks, fainting and despairing, in his efforts to rend the chain of penury. And there are many other bonds which hold us to areas of life from which we have gathered all the fresh bloom and the rich fruit. We may tread their barren soil with jewelled sandals, wrap around us ermined robes in winter's cold, and raise our silken tents ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... whose dejected eye Th' unfeeling proud one looks, and passes by, Condemned on penury's barren path to roam, Scorned by the world, and left without a home. Pleasures of Hope. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... and a rich man that hath not the gout: for the one sleeps easily because he cannot study, and the other lives merrily because he feels no pain; the one lacking the burden of lean and wasteful learning, the other knowing no burden of heavy tedious penury. These time ambles withal. ...
— As You Like It • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... that early period, an antagonist not to be despised. He had been out of pocket and out at the elbows—indeed, his wardrobe now was mean and scanty; want and privation had been his companions, and, from his grievous experiences, he had become a sensational story-teller of low life and penury. Certainly Barnes had reason to lament the coincidence which brought players and lecturer into town at the same time, especially as the latter was heralded under the auspices of the Band ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... eventide, whilst the Solons of the little commonwealth were making laws, solving problems and building defences against the common enemy—the wolf of penury and hunger—I was sitting on the steps or on the low window-sills at the Eyry, meditating and thinking ever of the beautiful things with which I was surrounded; thinking of the glowworms I found in the path to Cow Island, their wonderful beauty, and how like illuminated pearls were their ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... they had been long since sold. The vicarage, still in their gift, might be worth a little more than L100 a year. The present incumbent had nothing else to live upon. He was a good man, and not originally a stupid one; but penury and the anxious cares for wife and family, combined with what may be called solitary confinement for the cultivated mind, when, amidst the two legged creatures round, it sees no other cultivated mind with which it can exchange an extra-parochial thought—had lulled him ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... general standard of comfortable living, as already hinted, has been greatly raised, and is still rising. What would have satisfied the ancient would seem to us like penury. We have a domestic life of which the Greek knew nothing. We live during a large part of the year in the house. Our social life goes on under the roof. Our houses are not mere places for eating and sleeping, ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... so many hundred thousand men seem ready to worship him. How many envy fame! and how proud men are, for generations afterward, who can trace back their descent to one who, while on earth, may have suffered all the annoyances and discomforts of penury! The poet seemed to know that he would be more highly esteemed after he had left the world than while he was in it; but did this thought really afford him much consolation, or would he have been willing, if possible, to sacrifice a more prosperous ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... over-estimate—is that it provides opportunity for, and encourages the cultivation of, that virtue which is "the greatest of all these"; that virtue which "suffereth long and is kind; which vaunteth not itself and is not puffed up"—Charity, in short. While not denying the simple joys of penury, nor forgetting the Saviour's promises to the poor and meek and lowly, it is still easy to understand that charity is less likely to be a vigorous soul-growth in a poor man than in a rich. The poor man may possess it as a germ, a seed; but the rich man is, through superior ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... everything to her less opulent daughter. My compassion for the Limberts led me to hover perhaps indiscreetly round that closing scene, to dream of some happy time when such an accession of means would make up a little for their present penury. ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... school-fellows together again, Lucien was weary of drinking from the rude cup of penury, and ready for any of the rash, decisive steps that youth takes at the age of twenty. David's generous offer of forty francs a month if Lucien would come to him and learn the work of a printer's reader came in time; David had no need whatever of a printer's reader, but he ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... victims of penury either abandon Christianity altogether, or find refuge in the bosom of their true Mother, the Catholic Church, who, like her Divine Spouse, claims the afflicted as her most cherished inheritance. The parables descriptive of this Church which our Lord employed also clearly teach us that the good ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... Know! And there are few sights in the moral world more sublime than that which many a garret might afford, if Asmodeus would bare the roofs to our survey—viz., a brave, patient, earnest human being, toiling his own arduous way, athwart the iron walls of penury, into the magnificent Infinite, which is luminous ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... honest support. Efficient and experienced men were taken from almost all the city departments, and cast without occupation upon the world. Men who had toiled in the city's service, for years, for a bare livelihood, were suddenly cast forth to want and penury. It was in the season of a terrible epidemic, and physicians who had braved pestilence and death, heaped together in the great hospitals of the city—who had made a home of the lazar-house, when to breathe its atmosphere was almost to die—were among those who were to be given ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... Providence, more than in any wisdom or disposition shown by men, that this melancholy state of things will be alleviated, otherwise than by a reduction of number through the diseases generated by utter penury. [Footnote: It has been alleviated; but not till after a considerable duration. In England it has; but look at Ireland?] We trust the time will come when the Christian monitor shall no longer be silenced by the apprehension of such a reply to the suggestion he wishes ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... imprisoned in the viewless winds, And blown with restless violence round about The pendent world; or to be worse than worst Of those that lawless and uncertain thoughts Imagine howling! 'tis too horrible! The weariest and most loathed earthly life That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment Can lay on nature, is a paradise To ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... the correctness of his former impressions of his uncle. Nevertheless, he could not help calling to mind that this man, fairly as he now spoke, had in all probability conspired against him, dooming him to privation and penury for nearly ten years, while he and his son had been living luxuriously. On the whole, his uncle was a puzzle to him. He exhibited such a contrariety of character and disposition, that he knew not to what decision it would be right ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... blushing to see themselves labelled threepence or fourpence! We did not know whether to smile or to drop a tear, as we contemplated these baits hung out to tempt the coins from the exiguous purses of ancient maidens, forlorn widows, withered annuitants, stranded humanity in every stage of shipwrecked penury. I am reminded of Thackeray's "Jack Spiggot." "And what are your pursuits, Jack? says I. 'Sold out when the governor died. Mother lives at Bath. Go down there once a year for a week. Dreadful slow. Shilling whist.'" Mrs. Gaskell's picture of "Cranford" is said to have ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... wanderer who is good for nothing on earth. He is despised of men, and, were it not that we know the inexhaustible bounty of the Everlasting Pity, we might almost think that he was forgotten of Heaven. Stand against idleness. Anything that age, aches, penury, hard trial may inflict on the soul is trifling. Idleness is the great evil which leads to all others. Therefore work ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... less Her honour and her sweetness, Soon her small hand to kiss Taketh he, Saying, "Now for that stress Drave thee here thou shalt bless God, for so ending this Thy penury." ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... humiliation at his early association with Gawtrey. He was in this respect more severe on himself than any other mind ordinarily just and candid would have been,—when fairly surveying the circumstances of penury, hunger, and despair, which had driven him to Gawtrey's roof, the imperfect nature of his early education, the boyish trust and affection he had felt for his protector, and his own ignorance of, and exemption from, all the worst practices of that unhappy criminal. But still, when, with ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... end must be more tame, Let large well-mounted photographs be made Of this high gathering, and let each name Beneath each face be generously displayed, That I may say, when penury has crept Too near for decency, to some old snob, "That was the kind of company I kept When England needed me"—and ...
— Punch, Volume 156, January 22, 1919. • Various
... till I be hid in the hiding-place of Thy countenance. This only do I know: that it fares ill with me when away from Thee; and this not merely externally, but within me; for all abundance which is not my God is but penury for me! ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... prosperity as of either. You see that at every step. Not a house but is in perfect repair and in perfect condition; the low white paling fences glitter in their purity; the window are bright and clear. And meet whom you will, man, woman or child, no rags or penury or squalor will offend you; but the look is of respectable comfort and real and ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... This Tarquin[us] went for aide and socour to the kynge of Tuscaye / whiche whan he [C.v.r] could by no menes entreat the Romains to receiue agayn theyr kyng / he cam with all his puissaunce against the citie / & there long space besieged the Romaynes / by rea[-] son wherof / great penury of whete was in the citie / & the kynge of Tuscay had great trust / that continuynge the siege / he shulde within a litle lenger space compell the Ro[-] maynes ...
— The Art or Crafte of Rhetoryke • Leonard Cox
... or had belonged, to that delicious unknown world of ease where the question of expense was never considered, much less mentioned. In her own eyes she was indeed living in a state approaching to penury, but the spectacle of her pictures, her furniture and her bibelots had impressed John with a very different idea. The squire's invitation, asking him to spend a week at the Hall, seemed in a moment to put him upon the same level as the woman to whom ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... the night and marred the consummate order, it must have been difficult for the Archbishop of Tyre not to recall the days gone by, when this brilliant and finished scene, then desolate and neglected, the abode of beauty and genius, yet almost of penury, had been to him a world of deep and familiar interest. Yes, he was walking in the same glade where he had once pleaded his own cause with an eloquence which none of his most celebrated sermons had excelled. Did he think of this? If he did, it was only to wrench ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... board in his county, and whose greatest dread was to be stigmatised with (what was to him the acme of derogation) meanness and parsimony. Though the family, through the extravagance of its head, was reduced to extreme penury, it was with the utmost difficulty the pride and prejudices of the father could be overcome, to be induced to allow his son to accept an appointment in a government office in London, which had been obtained through the intervention of a well-wisher of the family, and offered ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... parental influence; the selfishness which would trade in principles, and bargain away public measures for private gain,—these, and such as these, are the conclusive proofs of public vice. Even the deplorable appearances which penury exhibits are counterfeited, and we hesitate to give alms lest we should encourage an impostor. The benevolent man distrusts the beggar who asks for a night's lodging, and turns him away, fearful that he might prove an assassin or a robber; or he reluctantly calls him back, lest he should ...
— Reflections on the Operation of the Present System of Education, 1853 • Christopher C. Andrews
... this must be understood as in relation to the rank and position which he still held, and the work which he wanted done for the Instauratio. His will, dated a few months before his death, shows that it would be a mistake to suppose that he was in penury. He no doubt often wanted ready money, and might be vexed by creditors. But he kept a large household, and was able to live in comfort at Gray's Inn or at Gorhambury. A man who speaks in his will of his "four coach geldings and his best caroache," besides many legacies, and who proposes ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... preternatural dominion of the air, of earth, and of hell, was exercised, from the vilest motives of malice or gain, by some wrinkled hags and itinerant sorcerers, who passed their obscure lives in penury and contempt. The arts of magic were equally condemned by the public opinion, and by the laws of Rome; but as they tended to gratify the most imperious passions of the heart of man, they were continually proscribed, and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... words of Zeno, so that there is no room for contradiction in any point. What then? Can the proposing and thinking of such a life make Thyestes grief the less, or AEetes's, of whom I spoke above, or Telamon's, who was driven from his country to penury and banishment? in wonder at whom men ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... graciously. "My daughter and myself have lived for many years in Christchurch, Hants. We keep the inn there—not the principal inn, but a small public-house on the outskirts of the village. It will be a change for us both to come into five thousand a year after such penury. Of course, Mr. Pash, you will act for my daughter ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... the next day, finding that Claire obviously had not thought it over, she threw out a hint that was little save a thinly veiled threat. She came in with a more genial manner than she was accustomed to waste upon the desert air of penury, and Claire, well schooled in reading the significance of ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... also the money he left hidden at Granville—jewels and notes to the value of ten thousand pounds more. The wages of sin, even death, was all he gained, and, strangely, through him, Justine will be shielded from penury; for she bears a broken heart. All that she knows is of ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... (though not exactly HOW much) to me. Will you neglect one of those opportunities which only genius can discover, but which the humble capitalist can help to fructify? With thirty, nay, with twenty pounds, I can master this millionaire and tame this Earthly Providence. Behind us lies penury and squalor, before us glitters jewelled opulence. You will be at 1542 Park Lane ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... songs, And life bloom as a rose-tree blooms again After a night of rain. There are complacent widows clothed in crepe Who simulate a grief that is not real. Through paths of seeming sorrow they escape From disappointed hopes to some ideal, Or, from the penury of unloved wives Walk forth to opulent lives. And there are widows who shed all their tears Just at the first In one wild burst, And then go lilting lightly down the years: Black butterflies, they flit from flower ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... army as soon as the standard of liberty should be displayed in Belgium? Have we ever seen those treasures which they were to count into our hands? Can we either accuse the sterility of their country, or the penury of their treasure, or the coldness of their love for liberty? No! despotism and anarchy, these are the benefits which we have transplanted into their soil. We have acted, we have spoken, like masters; and from that time we have ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... there is generally a second wicket for timely escape. The only furniture consists of mats, calabashes, and a standing bedstead of rude construction, or a bamboo cot like those built at Lagos,—in fact, the four bare walls suggest penury. But in the "small countries," as the "landward towns" are called, where the raid and the foray are not feared, the householder entrusts to some faithful slave large stores of cloth and rum, ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... cruelty in you. It will be wantonly adding to that weight with which you have already sunk me to the grave. Besides, I will not leave you an option. While I live, my watchful care shall screen you from penury in spite of yourself. When I die, my testament shall make you my sole successor. What I have shall be yours,—at ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... result of this labour, of a too exacting labour? I know not. But at times (it is his one melancholy!) he expresses a strange apprehension of poverty, of penury and mean surroundings in old age; reminding me of that childish disposition to hoard, which I noticed in him of old. And then—inglorious Watteau, as he is!—at times that steadiness, in which he is so great a contrast to Antony, as it were accumulates, changes, into a ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... which makes it impossible for a beholder to predicate any particular age in the object. You can scarce make a guess between seventeen and seven-and-thirty. This antique cast always seems to promise ill-luck and penury. Yet it seems he was not always the abject thing he came to. My sister, who well remembers him, can hardly forgive Mr. Thomas Ranson for making an etching so unlike her idea of him when he was a youthful teacher at Mr. Bird's school. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... fresh in memory. He had a fair estate, which in a few years he so lost at play, that he died in great want and penury. Since that Mr Ba—, who was a clerk in the Six-Clerks Office, and well cliented, fell to play, and won by extraordinary fortune two thousand pieces in ready gold; was not content with that, played on, lost all he had won, and almost all his own estate; sold his place in the office, and ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... concerning the domestic finance, while her face assumed a curious expression of contemptuous thrift. It was as if she was making her reckoning with scrupulous accuracy and at the same time ridiculing her own penury and promising herself that there would come a time when she should make calculations concerning the treasures of emperors. She was deluding herself with dreams of the time when she should have crowned herself queen or made herself the hidden tyrant-saviour ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... description, the common peasantry of the Highland country, who, although they did not allow themselves to be so called, and claimed often, with apparent truth, to be of more ancient descent than the masters whom they served, bore, nevertheless, the livery of extreme penury, being indifferently accoutred, and worse armed, half naked, stinted in growth, and miserable in aspect. Each important clan had some of those Helots attached to them: thus, the MacCouls, though tracing their descent from Comhal, the father of Finn or Fingal, were a sort of Gibeonites, or hereditary ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... cause—who, together with his brothers, particularly the generous John of Nassau, had contributed all which they could raise by mortgage, sales of jewellery and furniture, and by extensive loans, subjecting themselves to constant embarrassment, and almost to penury, felt himself outraged by the paltriness of this conduct. He expressed his indignation, and denounced the niggardliness of the estates in the strongest language, and declared that he would rather leave the country for ever, with ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the clergy's interest to have religion corrupted." Quite the contrary; prove it. How is it the interest of the English clergy to corrupt religion? The more justice and piety the people have, the better it is for them; for that would prevent the penury of farmers, and the oppression of exacting covetous landlords, &c. That which hath corrupted religion, is the liberty unlimited of professing all opinions. Do not lawyers render law intricate by their ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... seen the delightless abode, Where Penury nurses Despair; Where comfortless Life is a load, Age wishes no longer to bear. Ah! who, in this lazerhouse pent, His lone wailings sends up to the skies? 'Tis the Man whose young prime was mispent; 'Tis he who ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... have power over human fortunes. He has brought him out here thus distinctly, for the purpose of inquiring whether there is any exorcism which can meet his case, or that of the great human multitude, that no man can number, of whose penury and vice he stands here as the elected, pre-eminent, royal representative. In that survey and report of human affairs, which this author felt himself called upon to make, the case of this poor creature had attracted his attention, and appeared to him to require looking to; and, accordingly, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... class. "Youth," he says in "The Romany Rye," "is the only season for enjoyment, and the first twenty-five years of one's life are worth all the rest of the longest life of man, even though these five and twenty be spent in penury and contempt, and the rest in the possession of wealth, honour, respectability, ay, and many of them in strength and health. . . ." Still more emphatically did he think the same when he was looking on his past life in the dingle, feeling ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... and some accepted the invitation. They spurned his parting advice to sell, and the policy they then adopted, and never afterward modified, was that "all or nothing" attitude which, as years rolled by, bled them to penury in those famous cupping-leeching-and-bleeding establishments, the courts of Louisiana. You may see their grandchildren, to-day, anywhere within the angle of the old rues Esplanade and Rampart, holding up their heads in unspeakable poverty, their nobility kept green by unflinching ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... devotion to the Stuarts, no high-toned sentiment of respect to bravery, nor consideration for the habits and feelings of their prisoners, influenced the British Government during that time of triumph. The mode in which those unfortunate captives were left in the utmost penury and necessity to petition for some provision, after their estates were escheated, plainly manifests how little there was of that sympathy with calamity which marks the ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... during the past year their mother was seldom able to exert herself in correcting these faults. Only by dint of struggle which cost her agonies could she discharge the simplest duties of home. She made a brave fight against disease and penury and incessant dread of the coming day, but month after month her strength failed. Now at length she tried vainly to leave her bed. The last reserve of energy was exhausted, and ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... screan, and the man handed him a raged shirt over the top of it, while I sat in a chair and dreamed. What I reflected, would the School say if it but knew! I felt no remorce. I was there, and beyond the screan, changing into the garments of penury, was the only member of the Other Sex I had ever felt I could truly ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... 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 marries her, by which she becomes the Lady Duberly.—G. Coleman, The ...
— 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.
... revolutionary struggle, and in our recent war, gave up freely at their country's call, their best beloved, regretting only that they had no more to give; knowing full well, that in giving them up they condemned themselves to penury and want, to hard, grinding toil, and privations such as they had never before experienced, and not improbably to the rending, by the rude vicissitudes of war, of those ties, dearer than life itself—those who in the presence ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... intention of a prudent, wise, and devout man, should be to cast before and make secure the state and the end of this short life with deeds of mercy and pity, and especially to provide for those miserable persons whom the penury of poverty insulteth, and to whom the power of seeking the necessaries of life by act or bodily ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... comfort is being evolved, though relics of this former state of insecurity may still be found; such as the absence, even in houses of good families, of clocks and watches, and convenient storage for clothes and domestic utensils; their habits of living in penury and of buying their daily food by farthings, as though one never knew what the next day might bring; their dread of going out of doors by night (they have a proverb which runs, di notte, non parlar forte; di giorno, guardati attorno), their lack of humour. For humour is essentially a product ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... acquisition of good repute and pleasure. They are only making grand pretensions, and they do not really despise these things. They go about in torn raiment and with solemn visage, and live the life of penury and hardship as a bait, to make people believe that they are lovers of good conduct, temperance, ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... things to two persons. For this reason the specific word that appeals to him most may be of no value in addressing others. "Free silver" means to one set of men the withdrawal of money from investment, consequent stagnation in business, followed by the closing of factories and penury among laborers. To others it means three dollars a day for unskilled labor, fire, clothes, and something to eat. Again, if one wished to present the horrors of devastating disease, in the South he would mention yellow ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... persons with the spirit of benevolence which the gospel breathes, when so many millions of precious souls are perishing without any knowledge of the only way of salvation, or while so many around them are suffering from penury and want. This is certainly contrary to the spirit of Christ. He who, for our sakes, became poor; who led a life of self-denial, toil, and suffering, that he might relieve distress, and make known the way of salvation,—could never have needlessly expended upon his ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... distinguishable from a pawnbroking establishment conducted under respectable auspices, but we should go sadly astray if we suffered our views of the institution to be tinged by the associations of a dingy shop in some back street in which hopeless penury plays its last shift. We should rather turn our eyes to the beatific vision of the Mons Pietatis as pictured by Botticelli—a hillock of florins, with the kneeling forms of worthy suppliants and the cloud-borne founder crowned by angelic hands. The poor scholar did ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... dinner a pound of bacon which had not a hair's-breadth of lean in it. Previously to my arrival in Kenilworth an intimate friend of mine had been ruined—reduced at once from affluence to utter penury by the villainy of his partner, to whom he had entrusted the whole of his business, and who had committed two forgeries for which he was sentenced to transportation for life. In consequence of this event, my friend, who was a little older than myself and had been ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... Seine, never had the French aristocracy been so rich or so splendid. The diamonds lavishly scattered over the women's dresses, and the gold and silver embroidery on the uniforms contrasted so strongly with the penury of the Republic, that the wealth of the globe seemed to be rolling through the drawing-rooms of Paris. Intoxication seemed to have turned the brains of this Empire of a day. All the military, not excepting their chief, reveled like parvenus in the treasure conquered ...
— Domestic Peace • Honore de Balzac
... Considering that the contribution of fourty shillings for entertaining of Highland boyes at Schools, in respect of the penury and great indigence of those parts hath not taken the intended effect. Therefore in respect of the necessity and profitablenesse of so pious a work The Assembly in lieu of the said fourty shillings Do Appoint and Ordain that there ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... colonel in the Spanish army, where he subsequently greatly distinguished himself, but he at length fell in some obscure skirmish in New Granada; and my old ally Morillo, Count of Carthagena, is now living in penury, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... say that he is going to dine with me one day this week. I hope I may not injure his character by stating that in those days I lived very much with him. He, too, was impecunious, but he had a home in London, and knew but little of the sort of penury which I endured. For more than fifty years he and I have been close friends. And then there was one W—— A——, whose misfortunes in life will not permit me to give his full name, but whom I dearly loved. He had been at Winchester ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... piano was the chief object of furniture; it dominated the space. Fuchsias in the window gave a pleasing frame to the general picture of penury. His mother had given him the oil painting of his father. From its place above the sofa the stern countenance of Gottfried Nothafft looked down upon the son. It seemed at times that the face of the father turned ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... its blessings in the paths of other men—is such an ogre, a fiend, to the poor? Alas! is he not a daily tyrant, scourging with meanest wants—a creature that, with all its bounty to others, is to the poor and destitute more terrible than Death? Let Comfort paint a portrait of Life, and now Penury take the pencil. "Pooh! pooh!" cry the sage LAURIES of the world, looking at the two pictures—"that scoundrel Penury has drawn an infamous libel. That Life! with that withered face, sunken eye, and shrivelled lip; and what is worse, with a suicidal ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... bound thine almsmen for that gift, We are bound to beggary, nor our own can call The journal dole of customary life, But after suit obsequious for't to thee. Indeed this flesh, O Mother, A beggar's gown, a client's badging, We find, which from thy hands we simply took, Nought dreaming of the after penury, In nescientness. ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... of the said inadequate pension was paid; and not being able to maintain the attendants necessary for their protection in a city in which all magistracy and justice was abolished, they were not only liable to suffer the greatest extremities of penury, but their lives were exposed to the attempts of assassins: the condition of one of the said princes, called the Nabob Bahadur, being by himself strongly expressed in three letters to the said Resident Bristow,—the first dated the 28th of December, 1783; the second, the 7th ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... want I legs to go, Wise in conceit, in act a very sot, Ravished with joy amidst a hell of woe, What most I seem that surest am I not. I build my hopes a world above the sky, Yet with the mole I creep into the earth; In plenty I am starved with penury, And yet I surfeit in the greatest dearth. I have, I want, despair, and yet desire, Burned in a sea of ice, and drowned ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... Borgert, coolly; "it is the only way out of all our difficulties, and it is not the first time I have had the thought. Is it not better to put an end to this dog's life than to die by inches in penury and distress?" ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... the peace of families and of individuals. It causes husbands and wives to neglect each other, their children, and their homes. It makes wives widows, and children orphans. It bereaves parents of their children. It reduces families to penury. It hinders the amelioration of the poorer classes of society. It makes time hard and trade bad. It is a cause of quarrels, robberies, and murders. It is a cause of suicide. It fills our prisons. It fills our poorhouses. It fills our hospitals. ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... colonist. He knows not where to procure more than he already possesses, or he would gladly return to the country of his fore-fathers; but alas! he sees no prospect of gaining even a bare livelihood there. Without knowing, then, how or where to improve his condition, he deplores the penury of his lot, and sighs for wealth which he has no prospect ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... overestimate of material good, and it is a question of circumstances whether that shall show itself in heaping up earthly treasures, or in anxious care. These are the same plant, only the one is growing in the tropics of sunny prosperity, and the other in the arctic zone of chill penury. The one is the sin of the worldly-minded rich man, the other is the sin of the worldly-minded poor man. The character is the same in both, turned inside out! And, therefore, the words, 'ye cannot serve God and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... it was only a few years. But during that period she had learned to put such confidence in Jehovah, that she was willing to forsake country and friends, even the home of her childhood and beloved parents, and go forth with her mother-in-law to strange scenes, and willing to brave penury and vicissitude that she might be numbered among His people. Firmly she adhered to her resolution. The entreaties of Naomi—the thought of her mother—the prospects which might await her in her own land—even the retreating form of Orpah—nothing had power ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... there was variety. Some were stupid and ungracious, hardened and dulled with long penury as some in this world are hardened and dulled with long riches. Some were as fat as beggars; some were old and shrivelled; some were shrivelled and young; some were bold; some were frightened; and here and there was ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... great retinues and hospitality, of noblemen and gentlemen, received into custom, doth much conduce unto martial greatness. Whereas, contrariwise, the close and reserved living of noblemen and gentlemen, causeth a penury of military forces. ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... breaking into their storehouses, hangs them out of preference.[4223] As the government, accordingly, has proclaimed their speculations "crimes," it is going to interdict their trade and substitute itself for them.[4224]—But this substitution only increases the penury still more; in vain do the towns force collections, tax their rich men, raise money on loan, and burden themselves beyond their resources;[4225] they only make the matter worse. When the municipality ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... as follows: Strepsiades, a wealthy country gentleman, has been brought to penury and deeply involved in debt by the extravagance and horsy tastes of his son Phidippides. Having heard of the wonderful new art of argument, the royal road to success in litigation, discovered by the Sophists, he hopes ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... should be displayed. "It is necessary," he had said the evening before, "to show these proud Britons that we are not reduced to beggary." The fact is, the English, before setting foot on the French continent, had expected to find only ruins, penury, and misery. The whole of France had been described to them as being in the most distressing condition, and they thought themselves on the point of landing in a barbarous country. Their surprise was great when they saw how many evils the First Consul had already ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... currency which shall graduate its volume to the amount needed and which shall prevent times of artificial stringency that frighten capital, stop employment, prevent the meeting of the pay roll, destroy local markets, and produce penury and want. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... separate from the scenes of their youth; but the secret understanding with the solicitor required that sacrifice. By staying at home a still greater might be called for,—subsistence in penury, and, worse than all, in a humiliating position; for, notwithstanding the open house long kept by their father, his friends had disappeared with his guests. Impelled by these thoughts, the brothers resolved to go forth into the wide world, and seek fortune ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... be adopted by their children, and by this means the little substance they may gain through hard toil, for you well know their gain is small if your profit is what you desire, falls through the grated bars of drunkenness and waste, into the waiting pit of penury and pauperism. Bear with me, gentlemen, if I speak thus plainly, and believe me it is for your own comfort as well as for the cultivation of the untouched soil in the minds of your workmen, that I feel called ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... him graze in common on the mead: The steed, who got the worst in each attack, Asked help from man, and took him on his back: But when his foe was quelled, he ne'er got rid Of his new friend, still bridled and bestrid. So he who, fearing penury, loses hold Of independence, better far than gold, Will toil, a hopeless drudge, till life is spent, Because he'll never, never learn content. Means should, like shoes, be neither large nor small; Too wide, they trip us up, too strait, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... addressed them: "Ye see the riches of the land. Its paths drop fatness and plenty, so that the fruits of the earth are scattered abroad even as stones are in Arabia. If but as a provision for this present life, it were worth our while to fight for these fair fields and banish care and penury forever from us." Such were the aspirations dear to the heart of every Arab warrior. Again, after the battle of Jalola, a few years later, the treasure and spoil of the Persian monarch, captured by the victors, was valued at thirty million of dirhems (about a million sterling). The royal fifth (the ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... acquainted with the French king, he cheerfully adjusted all the preliminaries of this interview. The nobility of both nations vied with each other in pomp and expense: many of them involved themselves in great debts, and were not able, by the penury of their whole lives, to repair the vain splendor of a few days. The duke of Buckingham, who, though very rich, was somewhat addicted to frugality, finding his preparations for this festival amount to immense sums, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... that! He walks in fear—he wallows in it. Poor devil!' And a curious feeling swelled his heart, of elation, of lightness such as he had not known for years. Those two young things were safe now from penury-safe! After dealing with those infernal creditors of his he would go round and have a look at the children. With a hundred and twenty a year the boy could go into the Army—best place for a young scamp like that. The girl would go off like ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... you; but allow me to observe, that I am no swindler. Your thousand pounds you will find safe in the bank, for penury would not have induced me to touch it. But now that your lordship appears more cool, will you do me the favour to listen to me? When you have heard my life up to the present, and my motives for what I have done, you will then decide how far I am ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... away from the farm. Still she was a willing and an orderly woman. Her poor dwelling was clean and neat, and the care with which her clothes were mended showed that she respected herself in the midst of her penury. ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... met his downfall, it was also a Waterloo for General Hugo. His property was confiscated, and penury took the place ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... enough answered; a score of people were there to testify that the elder of the two had been living well and spending money freely for six months and more, and a score were also there to swear that Abdallah had lived all the while in penury. "Then that decides the matter," said the Wise Judge. "The money ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... to subject his meager resources to the least strain possible, Dennis at last succeeded in securing, in one of the more pretentious stores on Baxter Street, a contrivance for the relief of penury and threadbare gentility known at that time by the ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... as vulg. {alla mentoi kai penetas opsei oukh outos oligous ton idioton os pollous ton turannon}. Lit. "however that may be, you will see not so few private persons in a state of penury as many despots." Breitenbach del. {oukh}, and transl., "Daher weist du auch in dem Masse wenige Arme unter den Privat-leuten finden, als viele unter den Tyrannen." Stob., {penetas opsei oligous ton idioton, pollous de ton turannon}. Stob. MS. ...
— Hiero • Xenophon
... until midnight. At that hour a messenger would receive the letter from him in the colonnade of the cathedral. On this night, each week, the messenger waited. Sometimes there was a letter, sometimes none. That was all. It was amazingly simple, and for it one received the difference between penury and comfort. ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... quantity of gall mingled with the blood in Pierre Petit-Claud's veins; his father was a tailor in L'Houmeau, and his schoolfellows had looked down upon him. His complexion was of the muddy and unwholesome kind which tells a tale of bad health, late hours and penury, and almost always of a bad disposition. The best description of him may be given in two familiar expressions—he was sharp and snappish. His cracked voice suited his sour face, meagre look, and magpie eyes of no particular color. A magpie eye, according to Napoleon, is a sure sign ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... says, "a herd of outcasts rather than of elect scholars meets the view of our contemplations, in which God the artificer, and nature his handmaid, have planted the roots of the best morals and most celebrated sciences. But the penury of their private affairs so oppresses them, being opposed by adverse fortune, that the fruitful seeds of virtue, so productive in the unexhausted field of youth, unmoistened by their wonted dews, are compelled to wither. Whence it happens, as Boetius ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... our souls be wrung, however, at contemplation of the luckless urchin cut off by parental penury from the rapture of new clothes. Just as the heroes of his dreams are his immediate seniors, so his heroes' clothes share the glamour, and the reversion of them carries a high privilege—a special thing not sold by Swears and Wells. The sword of Galahad—and of ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... and Toronto in Ontario came some twenty thousand more. It needs no {313} trick of fancy to call up the scene, and one marvels that neither poet nor novelist has yet made use of it. Here were fine old Royalist officers of New York reduced from opulence to penury, from wealth to such absolute destitution they had neither clothing nor food, nor money to pay ship's passage away, now crowded with their families, and such wrecks of household goods as had escaped raid and fire, on some cheap ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... wife and children are no better off, perhaps are worse off than before? What if his powers of work are being impaired by debauchery and he is thus surely losing the footing which he has won on the higher round of the industrial ladder and lapsing back into penury and despair? What if instead of gaining he is really losing in manhood and real independence? I see nothing shocking in the fact that a mechanic's wages are now equal to those of a clergyman, or an officer in the ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... ourselves reduced to eighteen-pence a day, while the poor midshipmen had only sixpence—a sum on which they could barely exist. We did our best to help them out of our own pittance; but to all of us it was like falling from affluence to penury. Misfortunes, it is said, never come alone. Certainly at that time we experienced plenty of them. We were all sitting together discussing what was best under our circumstances to be done, when Delisle, ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... on to report the tragedy to the police, Cram turning to his right and following the broad thoroughfare another mile, until Jeffers, indicating a big, old-fashioned, broad-galleried Southern house standing in the midst of grounds once trim and handsome, but now showing signs of neglect and penury, simply said, "'Ere, sir." ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... man can abide Oppression, want, the scorn of pride, The curse of penury. Companion of his lonely state, He is no longer desolate, And still can brave an adverse fate With ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... and by their liberality of conduct, received at this moment so rude a shock in their affairs that they have been unable amidst the increasing decadence of the community at large to re-establish their credit, and after disposing of the scattered wrecks of their fortune, have not only been reduced to penury, but are still indebted to their correspondents in the amount perhaps of L100,000. These gentlemen thus driven from the commercial circle by their liberality, unwillingly inflicted a deadly wound ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... to her, and have let her know at the same time that you mean to be my wife, come weal come woe, I will see her, and will have my say. I will not promise her a grand career for my darling: but I will pledge myself that nothing of that kind which the world calls evil—no penury, or shabbiness of surroundings—shall ever touch Mary Haselden after she is Mary Hammond. I can promise at least so ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon |
