"Miserly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... used to be only a baiocco apiece, and I could get one at a time. But now they are two for three baiocchi; and so I have to get two always, because there are no half baiocchi any more—nothing but centimes. That is one of the sources of my extravagance. Mariuccia says I am miserly; she was born poor, and never had to learn ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... enabling her to buy the furniture at the Rougets' sale at Issoudun, and to redecorate her rooms in various styles—Mediaeval, Louis XIV., and Pompadour. The young wife found it difficult to believe that Monsieur de la Baudraye was so miserly as he was reputed, or else she must have great influence with him. The illusion lasted a ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... Fenellan, 'but I'll own I feel envious; like the girl among a family of boys I knew, who were all of them starved in their infancy by a miserly father, that gave them barely a bit of Graves to eat and not a drop of Pempton to drink; and on the afternoon of his funeral, I found them in the drawing-room, four lank fellows, heels up, walking on their hands, from long ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... its subjection to the wicked world. Every bleat of the flock, every low of the herd, is an outcry against the ungodly as enemies of God and not worthy to enjoy the creatures' ministrations; not even to receive a morsel of bread or a drink of water. Along this line St. Augustine is eloquent. "A miserly wretch," he says, "is unworthy the bread he eats, for he is an ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... fear-stricken rovings, Markheim's eyes returned to the body of his victim, where it lay both humped and sprawling, incredibly small and strangely meaner than in life. In these poor, miserly clothes, in that ungainly attitude, the dealer lay like so much sawdust. Markheim had feared to see it, and, lo! it was nothing. And yet, as he gazed, this bundle of old clothes and pool of blood began to find ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... house was old, rambling, and out of repair, and that what we heard of the landlord was not encouraging. He was rich, we were told, but miserly; and 'a very queer old gentleman,' whose oddness almost amounted to insanity. He had 'made himself so unpleasant' to various people who had thought of taking the house, that they drew back, and Reka Dom had been ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... that the books of a great collection are a part, not merely of their own property, though they are only the agents for their distribution, but that they are, as it were, outlying portions of their own organization. The old Librarian was getting a miserly feeling about his books, as he called them. Fortunately, he had a young lady for his assistant, who was never so happy as when she could find the work any visitor wanted and put it in his hands,—or her hands, for there were more readers among the wives and—daughters, and especially ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Frazer's is a house of petty annoyances. From the moment you enter, you feel the insolence of the surly, snarling landlord, and his no less gifted lady; the same old greed which has no eye except for money; the miserly table, for which you are obliged to pay before hand; the lack of attendance; the abundance of impertinence. Just as you are getting into bed you are peremptorily called to the door to pay for your room, which haply you had forgotten; ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... few were large even upon the first floor, and looking upon the street. Dirty, too, it should surely be, and comfortless, and tenanted by misery, or poverty, or sin, or, very likely, all together. Possibly some miserly old wretch lived there, needing only a little light to count up his hoard, and caring little for any intrusive wind, if it did not blow away his treasure. I fancied I could see him running over the tale of his coin by a feeble rushlight—squat, perhaps, on the dirty ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... very miserly fellow, and restricted his wife in what are considered the comforts of life—such as tea, sugar, &c. To make up for this, she set her wits to work, and, by the help of a slave, named Joe, used to take from the plantation whatever she could conveniently, and watch her opportunity during her husband's ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... need a tomb; for thou hast passed this strange law of thrift in fear that thou wilt be thyself the first to lack food. Thou art thinking for thyself, and not for others, when thou bringest thyself to start such strange miserly ways." ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... beauty and interest fall perhaps far short of their pretensions.) And the critical European will not be disappointed, unless his foible is to be disappointed—as, in fact, occasionally happens. Except for the miserly splitting, here and there in the older edifices, of an inadequate ground floor into a mezzanine and a shallow box (a device employed more frankly and usefully with an outer flight of steps on the East Side), there is nothing mean in the whole street ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... starvation and famine made bold, All dripping with wet and all trembling with cold, Away he set off to a miserly ant, To see if, to keep him alive, he would grant Him shelter from rain: A mouthful of grain He wished only to borrow, He'd repay it to-morrow: If not, he must die ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... Giles Toller's miserly nature had offered to his lodger shelter from wind and rain, and the furniture absolutely necessary to make a bedroom habitable—and nothing more. There was no carpet on the floor, no paper on the walls, ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... awkward. The Indian regarded the honey-bee as an ill omen. She was the white man's fly. In fact, she was the epitome of the white man himself. She has the white man's craftiness, his industry, his architectural skill, his neatness and love of system, his foresight; and, above all, his eager, miserly habits. The honey- bee's great ambition is to be rich, to lay up great stores, to possess the sweet of every flower that blooms. She is more than provident. Enough will not satisfy her; she must have all she can ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... patrons at "Malahide" were two quiet, polite little Japanese gentlemen, Mr. Den and Mr. Yabe; Madame Galli, a shrivelled old woman in a cheap wig, with sharp rat's eyes that nothing escaped, the soul of good nature, rich, miserly and incredibly mischievous. There were several boarders who were in business in the City, and Mr. Hutton, a careworn man of fifty, who spent his days working in the British Museum. Next to him at table sat Douglas Shafto, now a well set-up, ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... incident in any of the many books he had read, when a knight errant had given his squire fixed wages. How could he possibly establish a precedent now? And so it became his sad and solemn duty to refuse his squire's miserly request, and inform him that his services were no longer wanted. Not only that, but our valiant hero was cruel enough to remark that there would be any number of people who would be only too eager to serve him; and, what was more, he was convinced that no one ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... and something hard and icy in his looks revealed his wild character and foreign extraction. His tutor's portrait Petrarch has drawn for us: crimson face, hair and beard red, figure short and crooked; proud in poverty, rich and miserly; like a second Diogenes, with hideous and deformed limbs barely concealed beneath ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... The mouth was wide open. His drawn features wore a terribly sardonic look—a purely physical effect of the disease; but it seemed to the two spectators that this mean and disappointed slave of a miserly habit had by one superb imaginative effort realized the full vanity of all human wishes ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... are illustrious and great who are distinguished by their virtue and liberality, as well as their riches; for the great man who is vicious is only a great sinner, and the rich man who wants liberality is but a miserly pauper. ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... us see. Three, seven, twelve, fourteen, twenty-three—here is some mistake. Let us go over it again. Yes, here it is. This is not your accounting. The miserly Lombard would cozen you of your honor if he could but sell it again. Here is an error of near ten thousand livres; let me ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... to the hospital, feeling that my destinies were wrapped up with it for a while yet. Here I witnessed an illustration of the power of popular enthusiasm worthy of mention. A miserly old gentleman, who had never been known, it was said, to do a generous act, and who had thrown off all appeals for aid to ordinary benevolent causes with an imperative negative, was so overcome by the ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... you what I'll do," said Joe Jackson at last. "I'll put it up to some of the cowboys. They may know more about Bimbel and his outfit and about Jarley Bangs than I do. Bangs has a reputation for being a very queer and miserly man, but that's about all I can say ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... he made an effort to cause her to realize the hopelessness of her resistance and the vain sacrifice of life it must entail. He may have been moved to this by the valour she displayed, or it may have been that he obeyed the instincts of generalship which made him ever miserly in the matter of the lives of his soldiers. Be that as it may, with intent to bring her to a reasonable view of the situation, he rode twice to the very edge of the ditch to parley with her; but all that came of his endeavours was ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... miserly. Old Therese, the woman with the fish-cart, used to say that he was the stingiest man in all Tourraine. She ought to know, for she had sold him a fish every Friday during all those twenty years, and he had never once ...
— The Gate of the Giant Scissors • Annie Fellows Johnston
... out of these troubles. He had been commissioned by an old lady of Leipzig, called Fraulein Leplay, a rich and very miserly old maid, to find a cheap lodging in Paris for her and for his stepmother, with whom she intended to travel. As our apartment, though not spacious, was larger than we actually needed, and had very quickly become a troublesome burden to us, we did not ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... and her tall, lissom figure were the only beautiful things about Estella Keed. Everything else, dress, home, appointments, were exceeding plain. For her grandfather in whose house she lived was, though reputedly wealthy, a miserly man. ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... 'Twas the labor of years; but by the time he was thirty-three he done it—at what cost of scrimping and screwing, only his mother might have told. She never did tell, however, for she died two year before the last item was paid. Some went as far as to declare that 'twas her son's miserly ways hurried her into her grave; and, for all I know, they may have done so, for 'tis certain, in her husband's life, she had a better time. Tom was the large-hearted, juicy, easy sort, as liked meat on the table, and plenty to wash it down; and he loved Mercy Jane Drake very ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... injuring his character in the way it almost never fails to injure that of the farm-servant. As he has to calculate on being part of every winter, and almost every spring, unemployed, he is compelled to practise a self-denying economy, the effect of which, when not carried to the extreme of a miserly narrowness, is always good; and Hallow-day returns him every season to the humanizing influences of ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... Ruth Fielding as she approaches Cheslow and the Red Mill beside the Lumano River, where Uncle Jabez, the miserly miller, awaits her coming in no pleasant frame of mind. He is her only living relative and he considers little Ruth Fielding a "charity child." She is made to feel this by his treatment and by the way in which the girls in the ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... Sidney's right is Mackie, and the miserly looking one next to him is McVeigh," he whispered. "One of them will furnish your coffin, and the other will drive the nails into it. The big man with the beard is Brewster—a multimillionaire; and the one who looks like Senator Bailey is Magnus, president of the Mohican National. ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... belle of the soldiers' ball-rooms, she aspired to leadership among their wives and families, and was accorded that pre-eminence rather than the fierce battle which was sure to follow any revolt. She became avaricious,—some said miserly,—and Clancy miserable. Then began the downward course. He took to drink soon after his return from a long, hard summer's campaign with the Indians. He lost his sergeant's stripes and went into the ranks. There came a time when the new colonel forbade ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... her brother had vacated and sat down, her thoughts drifting backward to the past. Backward four years, and she saw herself, a penniless orphan, dependent on the bounty of that miserly Uncle Roosevelt in Montreal. She saw again the stately gentleman who came to her, and told her he was her father's third cousin, Captain Danton, of Danton Hall. She had never seen him before; but she had heard ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... her money! how, with more than miserly eyes, she counted it over every night, and pressed it ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... refused to be comforted, keeping her room the entire day, and weeping until her eyelids were nearly blistered. Meantime, Eugenia had hurried off to the city with her ill-gotten treasure, on which the miserly old Jew, to whom it was offered, looked with eager longing eyes, taking care, however, to depreciate its value, lest his customer should expect too much. But Eugenia was fully his equal in management, and when ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... pray? Yourself, perhaps, would keep the bubble? Then I suggest, 'twere fair and just To spare the lovely day your lust, And spare to me the further trouble. You are not miserly, I trust? I rub ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... Amelia, with a sarcastic laugh. "Look you, sire, I see that I have nothing to complain of. My hospital is splendidly endowed, and if I should ever become miserly, I may be able to lay aside ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... gathering was enlarged by other members of the film colony, a supper was served and poker played for inconsiderable stakes. In this game of chance the Montague girl proved to be conservative, not to say miserly, and was made to suffer genuinely when Merton Gill displayed a reckless spirit in the betting. That he amassed winnings of ninety-eight cents one night did not reassure her. She pointed out that he might easily have ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... crops, and others are proprietors, cultivators and labourers, while a few even lend money on their own account. Manas hold three zamindari estates in Bhandara and a few villages in Chanda; here they are considered to be good cultivators, but have the reputation as a caste of being very miserly, and though possessed of plenty, living only on the poorest and coarsest food. [176] The Mana women are proverbial for the assistance which they render to their husbands in ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... understand that now,' said Quilp; 'but I was going to say, I was so deceived by that, your miserly way, the reputation you had among those who knew you of being rich, and your repeated assurances that you would make of my advances treble and quadruple the interest you paid me, that I'd have advanced you, even now, what you want, on your simple note ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... and that is a big argument to prove that there ought to be a wise head and a merciful hand at the hellum to look out for the hull on 'em. A good father and mother with a big family of children takes care of the hull on 'em. And if one is miserly and one a spendthrift and one a dissipator and one over-ambitious they watch over 'em and curb these different traits of theirn and adjust 'em to the good of all and the honor of their pa and ma. They spur on the indolent and improvident, hold back the greedy and ambitious, ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... you have a wretched class of miserly so-called "economists" who are afraid to light their lamp, lest they should burn the oil, and who would rather sleep in the darkness, doing nothing, or break their necks fumbling about in their vain efforts to do little, when for a farthing dip they may put in hours of profitable toil! And when ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... see that it's absurd to call him a miserly merchant? Either he's not a merchant, or he's not ...
— The Game of Logic • Lewis Carroll
... eyelids, his bald head shining from its top to the thin fringe of reddish hair above his big flaring ears, his small wizened face all screwed up into a knot, his thin lips pursed, his little ferret eyes, close-set against his mean, miserly nose, peering at me under their blinking ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... whole Garden Spot county, and the Jonas Miller bank account grew correspondingly fast. But the bank account, however quickly it increased, failed to give Jonas Miller and his wife full pleasure, unless, as some say, the mere knowledge of possession of wealth can bring pleasure to miserly hearts. For Jonas Miller was, in the vernacular of the Pennsylvania Dutch, "almighty close." Millie, Reists' hired girl, said," That there Jonas is too stingy to buy long enough pants for himself. I bet he gets boys' size because they're ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... Anderson and Harry wrote declining to lend. The latter, in return, received a letter from Luke, denouncing him as a "mean, miserly hunks;" but even this did not cause him ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... thick as berries on the hills, and in utter amazement she turned to the equally astonished colonel for an explanation. It cams to him after a little. That bookcase, with its false bottom and secret drawers, had been the hiding place of the miserly John Stanley's gold. In his will, he had spoken of that particularly, bidding Hugh be careful of it, as it had come to him from his grandfather, and this was the result. What had been a mystery to the colonel was explained. He knew what John Stanley had ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... do not know any one. My poor mother is in Cumberland, and that is not en route. I have a maternal uncle of the name of Forster, who lives on the road—a rich, old, miserly bachelor; but I can't say much for his hospitality. I have called upon him twice, and he has never even asked me ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... Captain Keith, as he watched her busy fingers. "Have you considered how you are frightening people out of the society? It is enough to make one only subscribe as Michael Miserly or as Simon Skinflint, or something equally uninviting ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... applies to dress; and her extraordinary luck in angling did not fail to supply her with the finest specimens, though, for that matter, this lake, with its old fish-hatcheries and fish-ladders, is not miserly in that way, swarming now with the best lake trout, river trout, red trout, and with salmon, of which last I have brought in one with the landing-net of, I should say, thirty-five to forty pounds. As the bottom goes off very rapidly from the two islands to a depth of eight ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... son of Ahab, it can only be said that he had his father's faults without his father's virtues. Ahab was liberal, Joram miserly, nay, he even indulged in usurious practices. From Obadiah, the pious protector of the prophets in hiding, he exacted a high rate of interest on the money needed for their support. As a consequence, ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... this, sighed deeply, and wondered: "Why was my father only a miller? What favours are granted to a knight like that! But I hope the kiss won't be the end of it all; for, unless she is a miserly fairy, there ought to be much more substantial pay for his services ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... genius and to attribute his success to his talents as an organizer and driver of industry. "I may make a million dollars from this reaper," said McCormick, in the full tide of enthusiasm over his invention; and these words indicate an indispensable part of his program. He had no miserly instinct but he had one overpowering ambition. It was McCormick's conviction, almost religious in its fervor, that the harvester business of the world belonged to him. As already indicated, plenty of other hardy spirits, many of them almost as commanding personalities as himself, disputed the empire. ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... in inhumanity. "You believe you are making an example of the grasshopper, but they will choose the ant . . . they will take the more pleasant part, which is a very natural thing." Another observer said: "As for me, I love neither grasshopper nor ant, neither avarice nor prodigality, neither the miserly people who lend nor the spendthrifts who borrow." These statements represent complex, analytic points of view which are probably outside the range of most children. They will see the grasshopper simply as a type of thorough ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... self-denial, practised through filial affection. In the morning she was speechless, and while they were endeavoring to persuade her to give up her keys to the captain, died. In her pocket were found two parcels, containing forty sovereigns, sewed up with the most miserly care. It was ascertained she had a widowed mother in the north of Ireland, and judging her money could be better applied than to paying for a funeral on shore, the captain gave orders for committing the body to the waves. It rained drearily as her corpse, covered with starred bunting, was ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... others. Automatically through the dim light he catalogued remembered objects, all intimate to his grandfather, each oddly entangled in his mind with his dislike of the old man. The iron bed; the chest of drawers, scratched and with broken handles; the closed colonial desk; the miserly rag carpet—all seemed mutely asking, as Bobby did, why their owner had deserted them the other night and delivered himself to the ghostly ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... Nello had paid the last sad service to the dead he had not a coin left. He went and begged grace of the owner of the hut, a cobbler who went every Sunday night to drink his pint of wine and smoke with Baas Cogez. The cobbler would grant no mercy. He was a harsh, miserly man, and loved money. He claimed in default of his rent every stick and stone, every pot and pan, in the hut, and bade Nello and Patrasche be out of ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... San Reve," he observed, a show of feeling in his words. "Why do you tie yourself to that draughting? It grieves your Storri! Am I a pauper that my San Reve should work? Is Storri so miserly that the idol of his heart ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... talked and wondered—how were we to meet the expense? There was nothing in the savings bank, and much was needed there. Mother had cherished for years her ideas for her baby's outfit. They would cost money; and I would be no miserly father, either! My child should have the best of everything, somehow. It was up to me to get it, somehow, to.... If only ...
— Making the House a Home • Edgar A. Guest
... and lived with their father. The father was a miser: he lived in the poorest manner in spite of all his wealth and hoarded all his money. His eldest daughter-in-law managed the household and she alone of the family did not approve of the miserly way in which ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... relished their food and talked about it. They grumbled at the restraints military discipline imposed upon them, and at the paltry shilling a day which they received for the first really hard work they had ever done. They appeared to regard England as a miserly employer, exacting their last ounce of energy for a wretchedly inadequate wage. To the casual observer, theirs was not the ardor of loyal sons, fighting for a beloved motherland. Rather, it seemed ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... go as a general contribution from the entire membership to the insurance fund for the helpless and the aged. As liberal wages afforded ample means, large purchases were encouraged, and all tendency toward a miserly hoarding was discouraged. It was marked that all the members were quick to appreciate the fact that the more liberal their purchases, the more generously they swelled the fund that was set apart ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... knew very well by experience that his old miserly aunt would send him supperless to bed. But in the simplicity of his soul, and knowing that he had been all the year as good and industrious as possible, he hoped that the Christ-child would not forget him, and he, too, looked eagerly forward by-and-by ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... freed themselves from the yoke of the Achaean League, now fell into far worse hands, for they were governed by a tyrant named Na'bis,—a cruel and miserly man, who, in order to increase his treasure, often had recourse ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... dreams of color by which we know Turner emanated from an apparently sour, prosaic cockney. A bachelor implicated in low intrigues, dying under the assumed name of "Puggy Booth" in a dreary lodging in Chelsea, after a long career of miserly observance and rapacious bickering—of his life naught became him like the leaving. He died December 19, 1851. His will directed that his pictures—three hundred and sixty paintings and nearly two thousand drawings—should ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... you have allowed me to render you have brightened the closing days of my life. You have left me a treasury of happy memories which I shall hoard, when you are gone, with miserly care. Are you willing to add new claims to my grateful remembrance? I ask it of you, as a last favor—do not attempt to see me again! Do not expect me to take a personal leave of you! The saddest of all words is 'Good-by': I have ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... others worse than himself, and shining out in the unclouded light of his own genuine goodness—to do my utmost to help his better self against his worse, and make him what he would have been if he had not, from the beginning, had a bad, selfish, miserly father, who, to gratify his own sordid passions, restricted him in the most innocent enjoyments of childhood and youth, and so disgusted him with every kind of restraint;—and a foolish mother who indulged him to the top of his bent, deceiving her husband for him, and doing her utmost ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... The first question I asked myself, when I had blown out the candle, was, Are there fat wethers enough in my flock to pay for the cream-noses? Then I asked, How many fat wethers will it take at the price Don Sebastian—a miserly cheat be it said in passing—offers me a head for them to make up ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... a widower, with one daughter, Mary, about three years older than I, and certainly she was the dearest little treasure with which Providence ever blessed a miserly father; by the time she was fifteen, five farmers, three lawyers, twelve Protestant parsons, and a lieutenant of Dragoons had made her offers: it must not be denied that she was an heiress as well as a beauty, which, perhaps, had something to do with the love of these gentlemen. However, Mary declared ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... my fine clergyman at length, blowing a great whiff among the white blossoms. "Oons! your Americans worship his Majesty stamped upon a golden coin. And though he saved their tills from plunder from the French, the miserly rogues are loth ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... out the loudest against the misuse of honour and the vanity of the world, are those who most greedily covet it. This is not peculiar to the ambitious, but is common to all who are ill—used by fortune, and who are infirm in spirit. For a poor man also, who is miserly, will talk incessantly of the misuse of wealth and of the vices of the rich; whereby he merely torments himself, and shows the world that he is intolerant, not only of his own poverty, but also of other people's riches. So, ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... couple was much discussed. Something got to be known of Jamie,—that he was confidential clerk to the well-known firm of Boston's older ship-owners, and that she was his adopted daughter. Soon the rumor grew that he was miserly and rich. ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... him more sharply than he had ever done before. At the same time he gave me orders, under pain of his displeasure, not to leave Ferrara without duly informing him; and commanded the treasurer to present me with a diamond up to three hundred crowns in value. The miserly official found a stone rising a trifle above sixty crowns, and let it be heard that it was worth upwards of ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... mind is not then aware that there are many more such to come. When this comes to be known to that calculating organ it promptly tries to make a saving in its expenditure of attention. It is only when it believes something to be rare that the mind ceases to be miserly in assigning values. So in the streets of Calcutta I sometimes imagine myself a foreigner, and only then do I discover how much is to be seen, which is lost so long as its full value in attention is not paid. It is the hunger ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... Paganini lost money in Paris, he presented Berlioz with 20,000 francs, in order to enable him to pursue his career as a composer unhampered by financial distress. This act was greatly to Paganini's credit, and entirely contrary to the prevalent opinion concerning him, which was that he was very miserly. Among the works which Paganini produced was a set of caprices for the violin which were essentially novelties for the instrument. He enlarged the resources of the violin in every direction, employing double stopping, harmonics, and the high positions with a freedom previously ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... Alice married to me. She used occasionally to throw out hints on the subject, which I treated as jokes; and when she confided to me, two years before the time which I am speaking of, that her brother-in-law, an old miserly grocer at—, had left Alice L1,500, she looked anxiously into my face, and seemed disappointed at the indifference with which I received this communication, which she charged me to keep a secret. She lived so much alone, and the nature of her character was such, that whatever idea suggested itself ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... say when she has to live with a face like that she needs something to cheer her up. You'll never hear ME condemning a woman for her dress. I'm only too thankful when her husband isn't too mean and miserly to allow it. Not that I bother much with dress myself. Women just dress to please the men, and I'd never stoop to THAT. I have had a real placid, comfortable life, dearie, and it's just because I never cared a cent ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... a low, grumbling tone. "Well, if one don't get enough to eat, one get's enough hard knocks, and I never felt miserly over them. Look here, Master Fred, are we going ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... evil times evil men are the natural fruit. In nearly all respects Asgill was as unscrupulous a man as the time in which he lived and the class from which he sprang could show. Following in the steps of a griping, miserly sire, he had risen to his present station by oppression and chicanery; by crushing the weak and cajoling the strong. And he was prepared to maintain his ground by means as vile and a hand as hard. But he loved; and—strange anomaly, bizarre exception, call it what you will—somewhere in the ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... whether a man likes what he has chosen." Other men have other ranks to take, other fates to command. Do not politicians and publicists; professional men and princes of trade; those who toil for others, with brain or hands; the charitable and the miserly; those who pine if removed from the noise and breath of the crowd; those who spend their days in meditation and study; those who live conscientiously every moment in "the gateway of the life eternal"; those who are at enmity to law and order; the honest toiler and the impostor, the ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... story begins when the miserly old miner—who, all the time unknown to Jerry, is hoarding up gold for his young ward—discovers, to his great astonishment, that gold has no fascination for this strange young man, and fears that with his lofty ideals all his toil for him will be in vain and unappreciated. So the shrewd ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... just at the time when earthquakes were prevalent in New England, and shook many tall sinners down upon their knees, there lived near this place a meagre miserly fellow of the name of Tom Walker. He had a wife as miserly as himself; they were so miserly that they even conspired to cheat each other. Whatever the woman could lay hands on she hid away; a hen could not cackle but she was on the alert ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... neighbours, with whom they rarely met for any social intercourse, save at the stated times of sheep-shearing and Christmas; having a certain kind of sober pleasure in amassing money, which occasionally made them miserable (as they call miserly people up in the north) in their old age; reading no light or ephemeral literature, but the grave, solid books brought round by the pedlars (such as the "Paradise Lost" and "Regained,'" "The Death of Abel," "The Spiritual Quixote," ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... fact, Mlle. Meunier was considerably Ferrer's senior. Having spent her childhood and girlhood with a miserly father and a submissive mother, she could easily appreciate the necessity of love and joy in child life. She must have seen that Francisco Ferrer was a teacher, not college, machine, or diploma-made, but one endowed with genius for ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... bricks were exposed, like a beggar through the holes in his coat. It was one of those houses which are large without being commodious; its very tall, very narrow windows, with their attenuated, rusty inside shutters, boasting to the passerby of high ceilings but betraying the miserly floor spaces. At each side of the front door was a high and cramped bay-window, one of them insanely culminating in a little six-sided tower of slate, and both of them girdled above the basement windows by a narrow porch, which ran across the front of the house and ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... generally laid to the charge of Somerset. He was charged with a miserly hoarding of supplies as well as planning in conjunction with Suffolk the fatal sack of Fougeres. His incapacity as a general added to the resentment at his recall of the Duke of York, a recall which had been marked as a disgrace ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... left her, his heart overflowing with joy. He worked steadily, spent little, tried to save some money that he might not be without a sou at the time of his marriage, and became as miserly as he had once been prodigal. Summer glided by; then autumn, and no one suspected the tie existing between Duroy and Mme. Forestier, for they seldom met ...
— Bel Ami • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... began: 'What a pretty dress!' she said to me. 'Did you notice it? Would you believe that Emmeline has had that dress five years. I can remember it. She is so careful—so orderly!' 'All right,' I thought to myself, 'a lot of miserly wretches who mean ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... seeing—and let him alone. The original expenditure for building and fitting must be magnificent, and the current expenditure for cleaning and refitting magnanimous; but a certain proportion of this current cost should be covered by small entrance fees, exacted, not for any miserly helping out of the floor-sweepers' salaries, but for the sake of the visitors themselves, that the rooms may not be incumbered by the idle, or disgraced by the disreputable. You must not make your Museum a refuge against either rain or ennui, nor ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... looked up from her work, showing, at the same time, the nice strips she had been cutting. "I can't believe," said she, "all the stories they tell of old Scrimp's miserly ways. They say that he ...
— Who Spoke Next • Eliza Lee Follen
... had a graphic way of relating things; and, as he did not spare epithets in his designation of the opposing party, Mr. Buxton took it upon trust that the defendant or the prosecutor (as it might happen) was a "pettifogging knave," or a "miserly curmudgeon," and rejoiced accordingly in the triumph over him gained by the ready wit of "our governor," Mr. Bish. At last he became so deeply impressed with Edward's knowledge of law, as to consult him about some cottage property he ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... he hath been forgot, They scarce could afford to hang on the pot; Such miserly sneaking in England hath been, As by our forefathers ne'er us'd to be seen; But now he's returned, you shall have in brief, Plum-pudding, ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... from the breaking cornice; the jack and spit, those utensils of original hospitality, locked up, through fear of being used; the clean and empty chimney, in which a fire is just now going to be made for the first time; and the emaciated figure of the cat, strongly mark the natural temper of the late miserly inhabitant, who could starve in the midst of plenty.—But see the mighty change! View the hero of our piece, left to himself, upon the death of his father, possessed of a goodly inheritance. Mark how his mind is affected!—determined to partake ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... apartment house just around the corner. It interested me, after so many years, to see the two women together. Tiny audits Lena's accounts occasionally, and invests her money for her; and Lena, apparently, takes care that Tiny does n't grow too miserly. "If there's anything I can't stand," she said to me in Tiny's presence, "it's a shabby rich woman." Tiny smiled grimly and assured me that Lena would never be either shabby or rich. "And I don't want to be," the ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... volume tells how the hero ran away from his miserly guardian, fell in with a successful airman, and became a young ...
— The Curlytops on Star Island - or Camping out with Grandpa • Howard R. Garis
... the people loved and fondly loved Al-Fazl bin Khakan, so they hated and thoroughly hated the mean and miserly Mu'in bin Sawi. It befel one day by the decree of the Decreer, that King Mohammed bin Sulayman al-Zayni, being seated on his throne with his officers of state about him, summoned his Wazir Al-Fazl and said to him, "I wish to have a slave-girl of passing beauty, perfect in loveliness, exquisite ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... this suggestion, Van Nant told of an adventure Carboys had had in Persia some years previously. It appears that he saved the life of a miserly old Arab called Abdul ben Meerza at the risk of his own; that the old man was profuse in his expressions of gratitude, and, on their parting, had said: 'By the Prophet, thou shalt yet find the tree of this day's planting bear rich fruit ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... Celestials turned out in great numbers to receive us. Many handed the clerks the money that was due without a word of comment, and we experienced no trouble until we reached the quarters of Yam Kow, an old fellow whose tail reached to the ground, and who was reported to be the most miserly of all the Chinese at Ballarat. That he had money there was no doubt, for he was always at work, or trading with his countrymen, and he was never known to spend a shilling for clothing or food. What he lived on was unknown, and could only be conjectured; but it was said that ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... a time, in England, there were two brothers named Nickleby who had grown up to be very different men. Ralph was a rich and miserly money-lender who gained his wealth by persecuting the poor of London—a thin, cold-hearted, crafty man with a cruel smile. The other, who lived in the country, was generous but poor, so that when he died he left his wife and two children, Nicholas and Kate, with hardly a penny to ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... still in active practice. There was an old woman very miserly. She would alway be taking one of her neighbours' sheep from the hills, and they stood it for long; they did not like to meddle with her. At last it grew so bad that they brought her before the sheriff, and she got eighteen months in prison. When she came out she ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... living luxuriously on the rents he collects from this death-trap and others like it, and yet refuses through his agent to drive one nail in it to make it more fit to live in. A man who gives out as alms, with one hand, what he wrings with the other as blood-money from the victims of his miserly greed, deserves to have a trumpet sounded before him as the hypocrites do, and we shall continue to sound it until public sentiment compels him to be as ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... breakfast when Higgins, the coroner, drove into the yard accompanied by William Streeter, the town's most prominent farmer,—and the most miserly one, if report ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... split,—now a half,—three-eighths,—a quarter,—seventy-three!" Frye set his feet hard together, and clinched his hands. Only two cents in price stood between him and the loss of all his twenty years' saving. All the lies he had told for miserable gain, all the miserly self-denial he had practised, all the clients he had cheated and robbed, all the hatred he had won from others availed him not. His contemptible soul and his life, almost, now hung by a miserly ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... dog belonging to the Dutch farmer with whom he and the Indians lodged. When he got off he lay two days hidden in the hold of the vessel that was to carry him away. Then the Indians came out and so frightened its officers that he was sent ashore and put under the care of a miserly old fellow who ate the most of the food that was provided for Jogues. While he was hidden in this man's garret he was within a few feet of Indians who came there to trade. Finally the Dutch satisfied the Indians ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... spoiled him nicely. I've an idea, Tom, you were too near, as the spendthrift nephew said of his miserly uncle. If you can't get an aim at a greater distance, you'd never get a name as ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... gave Dave the rudiments of a good education. But he could not make his farm pay, and soon got into the grasp of Aaron Poole, a miserly money-lender, who threatened to sell ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... was weighed down by his family, was anxious to be always saving, and he had thereby become as miserly as he could well be. Wherefore it is related that, having received at Parma a payment of sixty crowns in copper coins, and wishing to take them to Correggio to meet some demand, he placed the money ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... miserly A, on awaking and searching for, and finding his treasure gone, takes it so much to heart that he ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... I, "you are a wicked old fraud, a miserly skinflint, a miserable land-crab. Behold, your share for the year in all our partnership has been thousands of dollars. The head clerk has given me this paper. It says that during the year you have drawn just ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... three-score and ten, but avarice glared from their shrivelled pupils, and their last but greatest delight lay in the coppers and the dimes. One would have thought that they had outlived the greed of gold; but wages deferred make the dying miserly. ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... Arthur's miserly employer is very good, and his shrewd friend Cheek is capitally drawn. It was a peculiarly happy thought to make Cheek into a railroad-conductor, and finally into a "gentlemanly and efficient" superintendent. Nothing else would have suited his ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... in it any more when it comes to big deals. You see, he was so close and miserly in all his business affairs that a great many people became afraid ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... receive all these unwelcome attentions. Moreover, his work, clear-cut, unobtrusive, and capable, pleased M. Joseph. And when the patron himself dined at the cafe, Ambroise was the garcon selected to wait upon him. Hence the jealousy of his colleagues. Couple to this the fact that he was reported miserly, and had saved a large sum—which were all sufficient ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... expect is, to have to work very hard for my living, and, as I am the eldest, I look upon it that I ought to do something for mamma, and the girls into the bargain. But for all that I hope I shall never turn a miserly screw. Why, when God gives us health, food, clothing, and lodging, don't you think that hoarding and hoarding, instead of dispensing the blessings, and performing such acts of kindness as may be in our power to bestow, is like doubting ...
— The Young Lord and Other Tales - to which is added Victorine Durocher • Camilla Toulmin
... he well knew that his Lordship of Treves was somewhat miserly in the dispensing of his hospitality. He preferred to see his guests drink the wine of a poor vintage rather than tap the cask which contained the yield of a good year. His Majesty smiled, because he imagined his nobles ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... man of business; and his mind contracts and hardens down to its central, motive idea. That which becomes the dominant aim and the grand end of life, always determines the character of life; and I have known young men, even before they have approached middle age, to become mean and miserly to such a degree as to disappoint and disgust their friends, simply in consequence of a few years' absorption in business. Business is not life, nor is it life's end. It is simply a means of life; and all true living lies outside of it. Ministry is the mission of business—ministry to ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... their society, and had found few for whom I really cared. It was only from learning my duty, when my eyes, with the years and the wisdom Clara brought, were opened, that I could see the advantage gained by considering with respect even those whom I had dominated as selfish. Miserly and mean Jane North had grown into a different woman, and Deacon Grover had left us, blessing the love and strength of this wisdom which brought peace to cover the last hour of struggle; and many hearts, in the quiet ministering ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... affairs of Egypt, the aspect of which, he assured me, was becoming daily worse and worse. There is no living for the poor people, brother, said he, the chokengres (police) pursue us from place to place, and the gorgios are become either so poor or miserly, that they grudge our cattle a bite of grass by the wayside, and ourselves a yard of ground to light a fire upon. Unless times alter, brother, and of that I see no probability, unless you are made either poknees or mecralliskoe geiro (Justice of the Peace ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... it is safer to eat by instinct rather than to follow any definite rules. While there are many who have a scanty living, with a small variety of food, there is a large number who have an abundance and a large variety. The former class, in many cases, live miserable lives, either to hoard up for miserly purposes the money which might make them happy, or in some cases through poverty; while the latter class, as a rule, have better health and have much more enjoyment in this life, unless it be some who are gluttonous, and make themselves miserable by abusing the blessings they should enjoy. ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... become teachers, and thus secure to them some degree of independence when she could no longer provide for them. The daughters were good scholars and favorites in the school, so long as the mother was able to maintain them there. A young man, the nephew and clerk of a wealthy but miserly merchant, became acquainted with the daughters, and was specially attentive to the older one. The uncle disapproved of the conduct of his nephew, and failing to control it by honorable means, resorted to the circulation of the vilest ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... of new, and many of the petty feuds and jealousies that divide and distract parishes or large families, the little circles of the great whole. At the foot of this column a paragraph records the death of a miserly bachelor schoolmaster, who had worn the same coat twenty years, and on the tester of whose bed were found, wrapped up in old stockings L1,600. in interest notes, commencing thirty-five years since, the compound interest ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 369, Saturday, May 9, 1829. • Various
... charging parcels by the pound, when goods are sold by the pound, and so getting a miserly profit in the packing, is surely one of the absurdest disregards of the obvious it is ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... a companion volume to this, which should deal with the operations on land. But a short examination showed that these operations were hardly worth serious study. They teach nothing new; it is the old, old lesson, that a miserly economy in preparation may in the end involve a lavish outlay of men and money, which, after all, comes too late to more than partially offset the evils produced by the original short-sighted parsimony. ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt |
