"Purse-proud" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... variety, and were benefited by it. That as to the practice being favourable to wantonness and vice, while he admitted that idleness was productive of these effects, he could not see how one occupation encouraged them more than another. That the tailor, for example, whom he had been speaking of, though purse-proud, overbearing, and rapacious, was not more immoral or depraved than his neighbours, and had probably less of the libertine than most of them. He admitted that evil thoughts would enter the mind in any situation, and could not reasonably ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... They were decidedly being mystified, and were preparing in consequence to pack up and begone, furious, and swearing by all their gods that they would never again expose science to see itself disgraced by a purse-proud vulgarian's scorn; when, lo! happily, a good fairy, the special friend of learned men, came passing by that way. She raised her enchanted wand with the tip of her finger, and all at once a little girl dressed in rags appeared in the midst ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... her by the arm hauled her out o' the ring. An' then up comes the big man with his face as red as fire. 'Look' here!' says he to her, as if he was ready to eat her up. 'Did you draw every cent of that money?' 'Not yet, not yet,' says she. 'You did, you purse-proud cantalope,' says he. 'You know very well you did, an' now I'd like to know where my ox-money is to come from.' But Jone an' me didn't intend to wait for no sich talk as this, an' he tuk the man by the arm, and I tuk the old woman, an' we jus' ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... was not all. As Ferdinand Brandeis' wife she had occupied a certain social position in the little Jewish community of Winnebago. True, they had never been moneyed, while the others of her own faith in the little town were wealthy, and somewhat purse-proud. They had carriages, most of them, with two handsome horses, and their houses were spacious and veranda-encircled, and set in shady lawns. When the Brandeis family came to Winnebago five years before, these people had waited, cautiously, and investigated, and then had called. They were ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... son to reside with him at the rectory, but he soon found that his disorders rendered him an intolerable inmate. And as the young men of his own rank would not endure the purse-proud insolence of the Creole, he fell into that taste for low society, which is worse than "pressing to death, whipping, or hanging." His father sent him abroad, but he only returned wilder and more desperate than before. It is true, this unhappy youth was not without his ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... The vulgar little purse-proud citizen made an impudent sort of distant bow, and looked for all the world like a coated Caliban sarcastically ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... his lips without some allusion to his own birth and station; or Mr. Briggs, without some allusion to the hoarding of money; or Mr. Hobson, without betraying the self-indulgence and self-importance of a purse-proud upstart; or Mr. Simkins, without uttering some sneaking remark for the purpose of currying favor with his customers; or Mr. Meadows, without expressing apathy and weariness of life; or Mr. Albany, without declaiming about the vices of the rich ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... saw such a girl as you to think of ways for spending money. What kind of a purse-proud plutocrat do you think I am? I've only seventy-five cents left. ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... the imaginative artist, is an opportunity! To paint the wholesale wickedness and small villanies of the Corn-laws! What a contrast of scene and character! Squalid hovels, and princely residences—purse-proud, plethoric injustice, big and bloated with, its iniquitous gains, and gaunt, famine-stricken multitudes! Then for the Debt—that hideous thing begotten by war and corruption; what a tremendous moral lesson might be learned from a nightly conning ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... Leverre, rendering their meetings easy. Marcia had never thought of hindering their intimacy, for in her recent years of affliction she had acquired a new interest in the name she had refused to take in her purse-proud young womanhood; and it was not until she knew how determined Mrs. Pierston was to make her daughter Jocelyn's wife that she had objected to her son's acquaintance with Avice. But it was too late to hinder what had been begun. He had lately been ill, and she had been frightened ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... benevolent, His servants love, however poor he be. The purse-proud, with a will on harshness bent, Pays service in the coin of ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... man on the wayside would exclaim, "a purse-proud bodagh upon our hands. Why, thin, does he forget that we remimber when he kept the shebeen-house, an' sould his smuggled to-baccy in gits (* the smallest possible quantities) out of his pocket, for fraid o' the gauger! Sowl, he'd show a blue ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... drink and a silver crown and a cup on a salver of Corinthian bronze. Seeing that Agamemnon was eyeing the platter closely, Trimalchio remarked, "I'm the only one that can show the real Corinthian!" I thought that, in his usual purse-proud manner, he was going to boast that his bronzes were all imported from Corinth, but he did even better by saying, "Wouldn't you like to know how it is that I'm the only one that can show the real Corinthian? Well, it's because ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... it. He could not endure his future stepfather; between them there existed a bottomless chasm of dislike and distrust. Levison considered Shafto a conceited young cub, "but a clever cub"; and Shafto looked on Levison as a purse-proud tradesman, ever bragging of his "finds," his ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... who had slain the Lord was close at hand. Then, as now, the commerce of the world was in Jewish hands, and it was felt that so much wealth ought not to be in such hands. That element which still exists in the Jewish character of being purse-proud and offensively familiar in prosperity, is reported to have twitted the Christians with the worship of a Jewish prophet as ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell
... sunset, all the fashionable world of Calcutta streams hitherward. The purse-proud European, the stuck-up Baboo or Nabob, the deposed Rajah, are to be beheld driving in splendid European carriages, followed by a multitude of servants, in Oriental costume, some standing behind their carriages, and some running before it. The Rajahs and Nabobs are generally dressed in silk ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... lover's name. Of all living men I abhor Count Nobili. To love him, in my eyes, is a crime—yes, a crime," she repeats, raising her voice, seeing that Enrica is about to speak. "I know him—he is a vain, purse-proud reprobate. He has come and planted himself like a mushroom within our ancient walls. Nor did this content him—he has had the presumption to lodge himself in a Guinigi palace. The blood in his veins is as mud. That he cannot help, nor do I reproach him for it; but he has forced himself into ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... letter there all right," reiterated Mr. Hennage, "an' if I was called on to give a guess who sent it I'd bet a stack o' blue chips I could hit the bull's eye first shot. A dry, purse-proud aristocrat, with gray chin whiskers an' a pair o' bespectacled blue lamps that'd charm a Gila monster, they're that shiny, lined up at the Silver Dollar bar the other day an' bought a drink for himself. Yes, he drank alone—which goes to prove that men with money ain't ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... to tell her that the purse-proud brewer was not the only man who had done the wretched brother a service for her sake possessed him. The few pounds he had put, in order that he might find them there, in Bernard's room, had been infinitely more to him than the ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... 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 cringing to rank,—without loyalty and without sentiment,—given over to mere material interests, not comprehending the idea of honor, and believing, as the fortieth of his religious articles, that any injury, even to a blow, could ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... resources, Harold, like a purse-proud millionaire, who boasts his bursting coffers. We depend rather upon our determined hearts and resolute right hands. Upon our power to endure, greater than yours to inflict, reverse. Upon our united ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... you are always going without my leave), and you are to beg Monsieur Mirobolant, your famous cook, to send you one of his best aides-de-camp, as I know he will, and with his aid we can dress the dinner and the confectionery at home for ALMOST NOTHING, and we can show those purse-proud Topham Sawyers and Rowdys that the HUMBLE COTTAGE can furnish forth an elegant entertainment as well as the ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray
... you know, Mrs. Hotchkiss is like one of those magic keys in fairy stories? All doors open to her. Between you and me I have been thinking Aiken's floating population snobbish, purse-proud, and generally absurd. And instead, the place seems to exist so that kindness and hospitality may not fail on earth. Of course I'm not up to genuine sprees, such as dining out and sitting up till half-past ten or eleven. But I can go to luncheons, and watch other ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... them all the same, however, and I would not seem ungrateful for their kind consideration. After all, how different from the purse-proud arrogance of wealth seen in ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... I 'm a lad o' laigh degree, Her purse-proud daddy 's dour an' saucy; An' sair the carle wad scowl on me, For speakin' to his dawtit lassie: But were I laird o' Leven's glen, An' she a humble shepherd's daughter, I 'd kneel, an' court her for my ain, The ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... seemed little hope of his ever attaining such a purse-proud position, for while he loomed fairly large in the boarding-house atmosphere of Ohio Street—or had so loomed until the advent of the reckless bookkeeper—he was so small a part of the office force of Comer & Mathison, jobbers of railway supplies, as to resemble nothing multiplied by itself. He ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... by the simplicity of its dress and the good manners of its bonne; while that of the parvenu is at once recognised by the showiness and expensiveness of its clothes, and the superciliousness of its nurse, who, accustomed to the purse-proud pretensions of her employers, values nothing so much as all the attributes that indicate the ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... were of the Gubbins and Riley stamp. There were some of the better class of the country people present; intelligence and courtesy in the one sex, and gentleness and natural grace in the other, making a society not to be ridiculed in the mass, though individual instances of folly and ignorance and purse-proud ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... about it!' sneered the invalid. 'You know you HAVE thought about it, and have thought that, and think so every time you come here. Do you suppose, young man, that I don't know what little purse-proud tradesmen are, when, through some fortunate circumstances, they get the upper hand for a brief day—or think they get ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... not exaggerating at all," said Ernest Wilton. "That ignorant purse-proud fellow wished to start a company for almost everything we came across in our route. I need not add that ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... you have to say to me?" she went on at length after another pause. "You, Lord Essendine—my husband's relative and friend, one of the richest and proudest men in this purse-proud land—how chivalrous, how brave of you, to bring me here to load me with vile aspersions, to rob me of my character; my child, my little friendless orphan boy, of the inheritance which is his by ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... second brother-in-law's name is Cheng, his style is Tzu-chou. His present post is that of a Second class Secretary in the Board of Works. He is modest and kindhearted, and has much in him of the habits of his grandfather; not one of that purse-proud and haughty kind of men. That is why I have written to him and made the request on your behalf. Were he different to what he really is, not only would he cast a slur upon your honest purpose, honourable brother, but I myself likewise would not have been as prompt ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... her hat a marvel of millinery; indeed, she presented a striking contrast to the professor's daughter in her plain, neat black coat and frock, and small toque, with its trimming of white narcissi, and I cannot say that I was favourably impressed by the unknown, she was far too cold and purse-proud looking to ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... to confess what we paid for the piece. Charmion was appallingly extravagant! That was another discovery which I had made in the last days. It seemed as if she found a positive satisfaction in paying abnormal prices, not with the purse-proud bombast of the nouveau riche, but rather with the almost savage relief of a slave who shakes off a few links of a hated chain. I was a little alarmed at the total to which our purchases amounted; but I comforted myself with the thought, nothing new would be required for a long, long time, and ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... in human life that women suspect nothing about, Mem. Darn this wagon, how it jolts! There's lots of genius trampled underfoot by yer purse-proud tyrants, Mem." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... money," writes a clergyman, "has not by that rash and immoral act blinded her eyes to other and nobler attractions. She may still love wisdom, though the man of her choice may be a fool; she will none the less desire gentle, chivalrous affection because he is purse-proud and haughty; she may sigh for manly beauty all the more because he is coarse and ugly; she will not be able to get rid of her own youth, and all it longs for, by watching his silver hair." No; and, while there comes a curse upon ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... has prospects. The uncle plots to get Sophie away by having her arrested, but is baffled by a counter-intrigue. Stormy scenes follow the revelation, and in the end it appears that Sophie is not a plebeian maiden at all, but the niece of the purse-proud Commandeur, who has neglected his poor relations. With the literary and dramatic qualities of this play, its absence of humor and of sparkling dialogue, its tedious moralizing, its hollow pathos and its general relation to Diderot's dramatic theory, we are not here directly concerned. What ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... True, blood and treasure boundlessly were spilt, But what of that? the Gaul may bear the guilt; But bread was high, the farmer paid his way, And acres told upon the appointed day.[es] But where is now the goodly audit ale? 590 The purse-proud tenant, never known to fail? The farm which never yet was left on hand? The marsh reclaimed to most improving land? The impatient hope of the expiring lease? The doubling rental? What an evil's peace! In vain ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... ever since I came from London; which hath vext me the more in regard I have been detained from the desire I had of being with you before this time. Such entertainment, however, must all those have that have to do with such a purse-proud and wilful person as Sir Edward Hales. This next week being Michaelmas week, we shall end all and I be at liberty, I hope, to consider my own contentments. In the meantime I know not what excuses to make for ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... the one entitled, "Marry your First Love if possible," which assigns the cause, and points out the only remedy, of licentiousness. As long as the main cause of this vice exists, and is aggravated by purse-proud, high-born, aristocratic parents and friends, and even by the virtuous and religious, just so long, and exactly in the same ratio will this blighting Sirocco blast the fairest flowers of female innocence and lovliness, ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... freely, and they had given their guests well-cooked dinners and expensive wines; but there had been nothing lavish in their entertainments, nothing that could make any of them go away and say to themselves, with angry discontent, that "those Millers" were purse-proud and vulgar in their wealth. When she had gone to her neighbours' houses Mrs. Miller had been handsomely but never extravagantly dressed; she had praised their cooks, and expressed herself envious of their flowers, and had bemoaned her own inability to ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... ancestors had "come over with William the Conqueror," had served in Palestine under King Richard, had compelled King John to sign the Magna Charta, had gained glory in every generation—was about to do this rude, purse-proud old tradesman the greatest honor in asking of him his granddaughter in marriage, ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... very soul. She would have been very glad to give them money, and had indeed wondered frequently if she might dare to offer it to them, if they would be outraged and insulted and slay her in their wrath at her purse-proud daring. She had tried to invent ways in which she could approach the subject, but had not been able to screw up her courage to any sticking point. She was so overpowered by her consciousness that they seemed continually to intimate ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... which is far inferior to the last, is likewise able to buy the first. The heads of old families are more tolerant to the great men of genius than they are to the accumulators of riches; and a wide distinction is made by them between the purse-proud millionaire and the poor man of genius, whose refined tastes and feelings are more in unison with ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... Helen, an unpleasant story. It threw a light on the characters of her uncle and cousins which did not enhance her admiration of them, to say the least. She had found them unkind, purse-proud heretofore; but to her generous soul their treatment of the little old woman, who must be but a small charge upon the estate, seemed far more blameworthy than their ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... possession of the ship, which afforded the means of saving their money, of which Tommy had much need; for notwithstanding he received a nice present from the consul, and another from the Captain, which, added to the few dollars that were coming to him for wages, made him feel purse-proud, though it was far from being adequate to sustain him any length of time, or to protect ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... I need not say, of course," continued General Belch, "must be a good man and a faithful adherent of the party. He must be the consistent enemy of a purse-proud aristocracy." ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... misery? Have they become beggars themselves—the haughty, purse-proud people? Do they wear rags, and beg in vain at the doors ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... amazement for a second; then, as Eustace knelt by him and tried to recall his consciousness, murmurs arose, "Why interferes he with our affairs? He is English," and they all held together. "Another of the purse-proud English, who pay no debts, and ruin the poor Bordelais." "His blood we will have, if we cannot have his money. Away, Master Knight, be not so busy about the traitor, if you would not ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had made purse- proud; and must, because she was rich, and for no other virtue, sit in the highest pew in the church; which being denied her, she engaged her husband into a contention for it, and at last into a law-suit with a dogged neighbour who was as rich as he, and had a wife as peevish and purse-proud as the other: and this law-suit begot higher oppositions, and actionable words, and more vexations and lawsuits; for you must remember that both were rich, and must therefore have their wills. Well! this wilful, purse-proud law-suit lasted during the life ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... was all puff, blarney, and brag, and all the time had been in a humour either to fight or to shake hands. Nothing would serve him but to play at cards with every one of the company, offering the most tremendous odds; but, fortunately for him, there was not another purse-proud man in the room but himself. One poor fellow in particular, on whom he fastened, and who distinctly stated that he had no money, or else he would hazard a game. But this only served to set the Hibernian's froth in motion. He stormed, roused ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... a different situation. There the people were not 'slavish tools of a narrow official clique or a few purse-proud merchants,' but 'hardy farmers and humble mechanics composing a very independent, not very manageable, and sometimes a rather turbulent democracy.' The trouble was that a small party had secured a monopoly of power and resisted the lawful efforts ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... and their brutality was only a murderous form of Yankee servant's mean "independence." I cannot treat the subject at all without going into necessary subtleties which never occurred to an enraged mob or a bloodthirsty and insolent official; I cannot accept the bald jeers of a comfortable, purse-proud citizen as being of any weight, and I am just as loath to heed the wire-drawn platitudes of the average philosopher. If we accept the very first maxim of biology, and agree that no two individuals of any living ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... more the command of the ruler than of the man. Despite himself, there had been something about the dainty peacock he could not help but like; and the bold dash for the window, the disarming of the purse-proud Buckingham, who for many reasons displeased him, and the leap to the sward below, with the accompanying farewell, had especially delighted both his manhood and his sense ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... purse-proud man could not see his danger. He began to apologize to me for Petralto's rudeness, and excuse "anything in a fellow whom he had ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... and trollabobble's trash Begin to fail— Asteead o' soups an' oxtail 'ash, Hail! herring, hail! Full monny a time 'tas made me groan To see thee stretched, despised, alone; While turned-up noses past have gone O' purse-proud men! No friends, alas! save some poor one Fra' ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... slim thread-paper exquisite, but scarcely bulged into ripple the Atlantic expanse of Jasper Losely's magnificent chest—the monster drew forth two letters on French paper,—foreign post-marks. He replaced them quickly, only suffering her eye to glance at the address, and continued, "Fancy! that purse-proud Grand Turk of an infidel, though he would not believe me, has been to France,—yes, actually to ——- making inquiries evidently with reference to Sophy. The woman who ought to have thoroughly converted him took flight, however, and missed ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... down alone in the great hall; the silence of it fell heavier and heavier on his sinking spirits; the beauty of it exasperated him, like an insult from a purse-proud man. "Curse the place!" he said, snatching up his hat and stick. "I like the bleakest hillside I ever slept on better ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... find some one to take her place. Hearing of this, Genevra came one day, and to my secret delight offered herself as half companion, half waiting-maid to Hatty. Anything was preferable to the life she led, she said, pleading so hard that Hatty, after an interview with the old aunt—a purse-proud, vulgar woman, who seemed glad to be rid of her charge—consented to receive her, and Genevra became one of our family, an equal rather than a menial, whom Hatty treated with as much consideration as if she had been a sister. I wish I could tell you how beautiful ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... dissent from Rhoda's verdict, for Linda had few real friends among the girls of Lakeview Hall. She was purse-proud and vulgar, and, though her money gave her a certain prestige among the shallow and unthinking, she lacked the qualities of mind and heart to endear ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... Scotland," said Basil, who for weeks had been reading little else but Scottish history, Scottish fiction, and Scottish poetry, in order to get himself in the right frame of mind for writing "the book." "I haven't come across a single instance of their being purse-proud ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... him in theology,—for Julien had proclaimed his intention of studying for the priesthood. By unexpected good luck, his Latin earned him an appointment as tutor to the children of M. de Renal, the pompous and purse-proud Mayor of Verrieres. Julien is haunted by his peculiar notions of duties which he owes it to himself to perform as steps towards his worldly advancement; for circumstances have made him a consummate hypocrite. One of these duties is to make love to Mme. de Renal: "Why should he not be loved ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... island races. I own we once were savage; and the traces Of those wild days remain; but, sir, go back A little way, on YOUR ancestral track, And see what you will find. A horde of bold And lawless cut-throats, started many an old And purse-proud race; and brutal strength became The bloody groundwork for pretentious fame When Might was Right. If every royal tree Were dug up by the roots, the world would see That common mud first mothered the poor sprout. Your ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... ill bird that fouls its own nest," replied his adversary, not perhaps the less bold that he saw matters were taking the turn of a pacific debate; "and a pity it is that a kindly Scot should ever have married in foreign parts, and given life to a purse-proud, pudding- headed, fat-gutted, lean-brained Southron, e'en such as you, Maister Christie. But fare ye weel—fare ye weel, for ever and a day; and, if you quarrel wi' a Scot again, man, say as mickle ill o' himsell as ye like, but say ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... exclaimed gleefully. "I can make him the husband of the most-run-after girl in New York—if I want to. And at the same time I can puncture the most arrogant, the most cold-blooded, selfish, purse-proud, inflated nincompoop that ever sat at the head of a director's table. O-ho! Now you're staring, Leila. I can do it; I can make good. What are you worrying about? Why, I've got a hundred ways to square that cheque, and each separate ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... was to send the five back by money-order the next day. Unfortunately he seems to have no idea of the flight of time. For him to-morrow never seems to arrive. For me it is the five that does not arrive. The great body of us consider those who give him more than five to be purse-proud plutocrats. But then we sometimes give him autographed copies of our books or other touching souvenirs. And write in them, "In memory of a pleasant visit." I do wonder what he did ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... office. A man thinks small things of himself, and his neighbors think less, if he does not find his heart filled with an insane desire, in some way, to attain to fame or notoriety, riches or bankruptcy. Nevertheless, we are not purse-proud,—nor, indeed, proud at all, more's the pity,—and receive a man just as readily whose sands of life have been doled out to suffering humanity in the shape of patent pills, as one who has entered Fifth Avenue by the legitimate way of pork ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... morbid degree. In Cecilia, for example, Mr. Delvile never opens his lips without some allusion to his own birth and station; or Mr. Briggs, without some allusion to the hoarding of money; or Mr. Hobson, without betraying the self-indulgence and self-importance of a purse-proud up start; or Mr. Simkins, without uttering some sneaking remark for the purpose of currying favour with his customers; or Mr. Meadows, without expressing apathy and weariness of life; or Mr. Albany, without declaiming about the vices of the rich and the misery ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... guests remarked, as guests will, gentle reader, when our backs are turned, that Howel was insufferably purse-proud and conceited, and his wife as affected and provincial as possible; they did not hear the friendly notices, and were well content to fill the concert room with their party, all in full dress, to the admiration of the townsfolk, and of ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... as well have me, Mary Hann,' says he. 'I've saved money. We'll take a public-house and I'll make a lady of you. I'm not a purse-proud ungrateful fellow like Jeames—who's such a snob ('such a SNOB' was his very words!) that I'm ashamed to wait on him—who's the laughing stock of all the gentry and the housekeeper's room too—try a MAN,' says he—'don't be taking on about such ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... The stupid blockhead and the liar. How long shall vice triumphant reign? How long shall mortals bend to gain? How long shall virtue hide her face, And leave her votaries in disgrace? ——Let indignation fire my strains, Another villain yet remains— Let purse-proud C——n next approach, With what an air he mounts his coach! A cart would best become the knave, A dirty parasite and slave; His heart in poison deeply dipt, His tongue with oily accents tipt, A smile still ready at command, The ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous |
