"Niggardly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... general exclusion of foreign missionaries. Public opinion eventually prevented the continuance of this despotic rule, and at the present day a certain number of Roman and Protestant clergy are supported by the Government, but Roman zeal outstrips the niggardly spiritual provision, and proves the appreciation in which it is held by full churches and devout worshippers. The Mohammedanism of the Malay lacks the fiery fervour common to Islam, and his slack hands are ever ready to forego all symbols of faith. From ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... hearts" (dhu'kulbein) signifies to be prudent, wise. Karun is the Arabic Croesus. "Thy hand is tied up" is equivalent to calling a man niggardly.] ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... the niggardly parsimony which counts the grains of salt in the pot-au-feu, which weighs the soap for the washing, and measures the ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... Christopherus, if it be a great thing to do, is not the doing it and thereby blessing yourself no less than others—is not that reward? Not that Castile shall deny you reward, no! Trust me that if you bring us the key of India you shall not find us niggardly! But we and they who advise us stumble at your prescribing wealth, honors and gifts that they say truly are better fitting a great prince! Trust us for enrichment and for honor do you come back with the great thing done! Leave it all now to Time that brings to pass. So you will be clearer to ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... thronged with a great company. The preparations for the banquet were on a heroic scale: twelve sheep, eight fat swine, and two oxen, the choicest of the herd, were slaughtered, and a goodly row of casks, filled with the finest vintages, gave further token that Alcinous was no niggardly host. ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... is selling absinthe to such of the motley crowd as have a few sous, dealing it out in niggardly portions ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... had to submit to his will. We found a decrepit old man lying on a pallet, two ugly women of thirty or forty, three children entirely naked, a cow, and a cursed dog which barked continually. It was a picture of squalid misery; but the niggardly monk, instead of giving alms to the poor people, asked them to entertain us to supper in the name ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... with much wonder in my heart, and perhaps a little terror also. It had not been our way to build great fires; we were, indeed, by the captain's orders, somewhat niggardly of firewood; and I began to fear that something had gone wrong while ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... She was thinking of the stock she had hoarded up for him in her dressing-table drawer, under lock and key. It occurred to her that she could have no end of housewifely thrills if she doled them out to him in niggardly quantities, at stated times, instead of turning them over ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... ignorant of any language but their native patois. Up to this period their schoolmasters, paid at the rate of twenty-five francs a year, had been peasants like themselves. Their only time for study was such of the year as was not needed for the tilling of the niggardly soil or spent in the care of the flocks. And even the little they were able to learn was easily lost on account of the scarcity of books. Neff first addressed himself to learning the patois, and then, as he went from village to village, made ordinary teaching a part of his pastoral functions. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... spending most of her life in the past—that sad past, which had been very niggardly of joy for her; but she was so used to suffering that she was still grateful for the least tenderness shown to her, and the pale lights which had shone here and there in the drab days of her life, were still enough to make ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... simple, primeval, Greek. His delicate constitution permitted him the use only of bread and wine. Condemned by many as a renegade, he had no desire for places of honour, but only to see his merits acknowledged, and existence assured to him. He was simple without being niggardly; he desired to ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... scanty, small, drained, insufficient, niggardly, scarce, sparing, exhausted, mean, poor, scrimped, stingy, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... son took up the burden. At one time this cousin sent Swift quite a large sum of money, a fact which seemed to change the nature of the wild young spendthrift, who thereafter remained economical; in fact, he became niggardly ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... its effect was not equally apparent. There were some who had scant minds to fix, and what nature had been niggardly in bestowing, they had frittered away in a trifling life; but for the earnest girls, those who truly longed to make the most of themselves and to be able to do a worthy work in the life before them, such advice became at ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... occupied with himself, determined to succeed, not determined to labour. Praise was the very necessity of his existence, but he had the instinct not to display his beggarly hunger—which reached even to the approbation of such to whom he held himself vastly superior. He seemed generous, and was niggardly, by turns; cultivated suavity; indulged in floridity both of manners and speech; and signed his name so as nobody could read it, though his handwriting was ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... the zennanah, the old governante, Kamalia, having counted us on her four skinny fingers, proceeded to fulfil that sacred rite, never omitted in the east, of presenting refreshments; without the heartless and niggardly-ceremony of appealing to the guests, as is wont in Europe, to learn whether they will take them or not, looking on those who receive them with an evil eye. I followed Kamalia to know how the genuine oriental coffee is made. Good mussulmans ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... started herself for Waignies, where she began operations, which were judiciously overlooked and directed by Pierquin. Devotion was now set down as a good speculation in the mind of that worthy man; his care and trouble were in fact an investment, and he had no wish to be niggardly in making it. First he contrived to save Marguerite the trouble of clearing the land and working the ground intended for the farms. He found three young men, sons of rich farmers, who were anxious to settle themselves in life, ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... last (such depressed letters!) you compare your own fate with that of some others with an injustice which God measures, and which I too have knowledge of. Isa, you speak you know not what. Be sure of one thing, however, that God has not been niggardly towards you, and that He never made a creature for which He did not make the work suited to its hand. He never made a creature necessarily useless, nor gave a life which it was not sin on the creature's part to hold ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... the hollow of their hand and were not obliged to risk their capital in other lands. The same hard luck pursued him when, with sudden demonstrations of affection, he had tried to convince Don Marcelo that three thousand francs a month was but a niggardly trifle. ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... know something of the fair Mistress Flanagan who was left in very comfortable circumstances by a niggardly husband, who did her the favour to die suddenly one day, to the no small satisfaction of the pleasure-loving widow, who married him in an odd sort of a hurry, and got rid of him as quickly. Mr. Flanagan was engaged in supplying the export provision trade, which, every one knows, is considerable ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... Opposition, upon whom crowning mercy had fallen from beneficent heavens, naturally indisposed to treat unexpected boon in niggardly spirit. BONNER LAW insisted on business being set aside and opportunity provided for rubbing in the salt. Lively debate followed. Speeches delivered with difficulty through running stream of interruption. BYLES OF BRADFORD began it. Breaking in upon BONNER LAW'S speech ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... were a girl"—his voice had dropped to the most persuasive cadence—"I should value my beauty too highly to hide it behind a counter, and my subsistence should be the boundless reward of affection, rather than the niggardly recompense for wasted tissues! Of course, I shock you, because you have done no thinking for yourself. A lot of narrow souled ancestors have done thinking for you. They have brought you here to let you shift for yourself, but woe to you if you offend one of their petty notions ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... "What," quoth he, "shall the house of the brave Lord Boteler, or such a brave day as this, be without a fool? Certes, the good Lord St. Clere and his fair lady sister might think our housekeeping as niggardly as that of their churlish kinsman at Gay Bowers, who sent his father's jester to the hospital, sold the poor sot's bells for hawk-jesses, and made a nightcap of his long-eared bonnet. And, sirrah, let me see thee fool handsomely,—speak squibs and crackers, instead of that dry, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... he was privately informed that the Intendant of the works proposed to allow him but a very trifling remuneration. "These drawings," said Cano, "are either to be given away, or to fetch 2,000 ducats;" and packing them up, he mounted his mule, and took the road to Granada. The niggardly Intendant, learning the cause of his departure, became alarmed, and sent a messenger after him post-haste, offering him his own price for ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... were deemed worthy of representation in art; but with the growth of sympathy the range of tragic portrayal has gradually been extended over almost the whole of human life. The peasant in his struggle for subsistence against a niggardly soil, or the patient woman who loses the bloom of her youth in the unremitting effort to maintain her children, are ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... frontier of Belgium was crossed, England staked the existence of its great empire upon the issue of the uncertain struggle. It had, as figures go in this war, only a small army. If it had been niggardly in its effort to defend Belgium, and save France in her hour of supreme peril, England might have said, without violating any express obligation arising under the ENTENTE CORDIALE, that in giving its incomparable fleet it had rendered all the service that its political interests, ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... been the Queen's feelings towards him, there is no doubt that one powerful influence, which lasted into the reign of James, was steadily adverse to his advancement. Burghley had been strangely niggardly in what he did to help his brilliant nephew; he was going off the scene, and probably did not care to trouble himself about a younger and uncongenial aspirant to service. But his place was taken by his son, Robert ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... work, a cattleman would tell you. Yet the TJ up-and-down herd never seemed to increase beyond a niggardly three hundred or so, though the Quirt ranch was older than its lordly neighbors, the Sawtooth Cattle Company, who numbered their cattle by tens of thousands and whose riders must have strings of fifteen horses apiece to keep them going; older too than many a modest ranch that had flourished ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... she would begin and say, "Good pork:" "Yes," says the mother, "good pork." Then he cries, "Yes, very good pork." And so they said of all things; to which nobody made any answer, they going there not out of love or esteem of them, but to eat his victuals, knowing him to be a, niggardly fellow; and with this he is jeered now all over the country. Met Mr. Cooling, who tells me of my Lord Duke of Buckingham's being sent for last night by a Sergeant at Armes to the Tower for treasonable practices, and that the King is infinitely angry with him, and declared him no longer one of his ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... befell a certain knight of Pistoia. Know then that at Pistoia there lived a knight, Messer Francesco, by name, of the Vergellesi family, a man of much wealth and good parts, being both wise and clever, but withal niggardly beyond measure. Which Messer Francesco, having to go to Milan in the capacity of podesta, had provided himself with all that was meet for the honourable support of such a dignity, save only a palfrey handsome enough for him; and not ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... they were received for more than two months, and here they were rejoined by Pao-yun and his friends. At the end of that time the people of Woo-e neglected the duties of propriety and righteousness, and treated the strangers in so niggardly a manner that Che-yen, Hwuy-keen, and Hwuy-wei went back towards Kao-ch'ang, hoping to obtain there the means of continuing their journey. Fa-hien and the rest, however, through the liberality of Foo Kung-sun, managed to go straight forward in a southwest direction. They found the ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... waiters, after haranguing a group of customers on the philosophy of living, amid a tumult of mock cheers and laughter, would rush in exasperated to Dora, to say that never again would he trust her niggardly ways—she would be the ruin of him ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... thinks that the courtier is telling the truth. He who believes another anent some quality which he does not possess knows himself ill; for even if he is faithless and stubborn, base and as cowardly as a hare, niggardly and foolish and malformed, worthless in deeds and in words, yet many a man who mocks at him behind his back, extols and praises him to his face; thus then the courtier praises him in his hearing when ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... first attempt to open the book during business hours, which extended from 8 in the morning to bedtime, was suppressed. My employer, who had the complexion of a dill pickle, by the way, proved to be a severe taskmaster, absurdly exacting, and so niggardly that I dared not take a decent-looking pickle ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... everybody to his own purposes. The task he set before Hunter now was to steer the Inglesby ship through a perilous passage into the matrimonial harbor he had in mind. Let Hunter do that—no matter how—and the pilot's future was assured. Inglesby would be no niggardly rewarder. But let the venture come to shipwreck and Hunter must go down with it. Hunter was not left in any ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... not the only quarrel they had during these days when they were occupied in moving from their suite and in looking for new quarters. Every hour the question of money came up. Trina had become more niggardly than ever since the loss of McTeague's practice. It was not mere economy with her now. It was a panic terror lest a fraction of a cent of her little savings should be touched; a passionate eagerness to continue to save in spite of all that had happened. ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... professed to be) rags flying when he walked upon the streets. He was taken in by us in this pitiful condition, and we put him into the printing-office and gave him enormous wages, not because he could earn it, but merely out of pity.... A truly niggardly spirit manifested itself in ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... Pole fumed, "I don't. They put me in the wrong, between them. They make me uncomfortable. I've a good mind to withdraw my subscription to those rascals who came first, and have nothing to do with any of them. Then, you see, down I go for a niggardly fellow. That's the reputation I get. Nothing of this in London! you make your money, pay your rates, and nobody ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... proposition for the purchase of the paper when written; but as he could offer me only fifty guineas a sheet, I thought it better to let our society have it, than sacrifice it for so paltry a sum. Notwithstanding this niggardly spirit, however, the gentleman showed his consideration for me in all other respects, and indeed treated me with the greatest civility. His parting words made a deep impression upon my heart, and I hope I shall always remember ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... protect the rights and to advance the welfare of the Colonies. His words are significant, and it seems well to quote them, since they gather up the policy which he consistently followed: 'If Great Britain gives up her supremacy from a niggardly spirit of parsimony, or from a craven fear of helplessness, other Powers will soon look upon the Empire, not with the regard due to an equal, as she once was, but with jealousy of the height she once held, without the fear she once inspired. ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... the very Way of Life? But they will guide her over and beyond them, and leave her kneeling in the Sanctuary of Truth and Freedom and broad Humanity, virgin and undefiled. Sadly did the Old South err in human education, despising the education of the masses, and niggardly in the support of colleges. Her ancient university foundations dwindled and withered under the foul breath of slavery; and even since the war they have fought a failing fight for life in the tainted air of social unrest and commercial selfishness, stunted by the death of criticism, ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... polite, and generous abroad, she is sullen, rude, and niggardly at home; return the visit, and she admits you with all the suspicion of a miser, and all the reluctance of an antiquated beauty retired to replenish her charms. Bred up in antediluvian notions, she has not yet acquired the European taste of receiving visitants in her dressing-room: she locks and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... Printed Books.[338] This little thin folio volume afforded a delicious treat to all honest bibliomaniacs. It revived the drooping spirits of the despondent; and, like the syrup of the renowned Dr. Brodum, circulated within the system, and put all the generous juices in action. The niggardly collector felt the influence of rivalship; he played a deeper stake at book-gambling; and hastened, by his painfully acquired knowledge of what was curious and rare in books, to anticipate the rustic collector—which latter, putting the best wheels and horses ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... of Charles by France, niggardly as that reception was—war with England broke out, and the French army of invasion was moved from Dunkirk to Flanders. The prince, not permitted to serve in the French army, returned to Paris, where he had been falsely assured by Semple and AEneas Macdonald ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... I, to a niggardly Host, and more sparing guest: But though my cates be meane, take them in good part, Better cheere may you haue, but not with better hart. But soft, my doore is lockt; goe ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... is not any such grotesque or fragmentary immortality that God has given us. The Creator does not administer the universe on so niggardly a plan. Either there is no immortality for us which is intelligible or satisfying, or childhood, youth, manhood, age, and all the other persons who make up an individual, live for ever, and one day will meet and be together in God's eternal present; and ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... Behind him, a couple of juniors and the office boy supplied reenforcements. They all had the settled conviction that their employer was a rogue, but he paid them in no niggardly fashion, and they would not suffer anyone to ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... is stronger than death; it rises superior to adversity, and towers in sublime beauty above the niggardly selfishness of the world. Misfortune cannot suppress it; enmity cannot alienate it; temptation cannot enslave it. It is the guardian angel of the nursery and the sick bed; it gives an affectionate concord to the partnership of life and interest, circumstances cannot modify it; ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... only of its violence in passing through our system by its suddenly distending the muscles, like any other mechanical violence; and that it is general pain alone that we feel, and not any sensation analogous to the specific quality of the object. Nature may seem to have been niggardly to mankind in bestowing upon them so few senses; since a sense to have perceived electricity, and another to have perceived magnetism might have been of great service to them, many ages before these fluids ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... moral strength, of fearless independence, and of, in his son's opinion, "a natural faculty" equal to that of Burns; and Margaret Aitken was "a woman of the fairest descent, that of the pious, the just, and the wise." Frugal, abstemious, prudent, though not niggardly, James Carlyle was prosperous according to the times, the conditions of his trade, and the standard of Ecclesfechan. He was able, therefore, to give such of his sons (he had a family of ten children in all, five sons and five daughters) as showed an aptitude for culture an excellent ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... dishonored, compared with the heritage of uncomplaining suffering and heroism which we boast of to-day because those modest martyrs were working people, proud that by the sweat of their brows they wrung from a niggardly soil the food they ate, proud also that they could leave the plough to govern or to legislate, able also to survey a ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... of holy charity to communicate to our neighbour the representation of our mind, imparting to him without dissimulation or jealousy what we have learnt concerning the science of salvation, so we ought to be still less niggardly in pleasing our friends by placing before their eyes the picture of our outward self which they ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... man, unless perhaps submarine navigation, or the invention of explosives. It cannot be prosecuted except with a perfect willingness to risk life. No doubt this is one of the reasons why practical results seemed so long in the coming. Nor have men been niggardly in this enforced sacrifice. Though no records of assured accuracy are available, the names of forty-eight aeronauts who gave up their lives in the century following the Montgolfiers' invention are ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... had I to do for to marry? My wife she drinks posset and wine o' Canary; And ca's me a niggardly, thrawn-gabbit cairly. O gin my wife wad drink hooly and fairly! Hooly and fairly, hooly and fairly; O gin my wife wad ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... special attention to the need of strict economy in expenditures. The fact that our national needs forbid us to be niggardly in providing whatever is actually necessary to our well-being, should make us doubly careful to husband our national resources, as each of us husbands his private resources, by scrupulous avoidance of anything like wasteful or reckless expenditure. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the live-forever, not so well by the variable flower - for it is a niggardly bloomer - as by the thick leaf that they delight to hold in the mouth until, having loosened the membrane, they are able to inflate it like a paper bag. Sometimes dull, sometimes bright, the flower clusters never fail to attract many ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... wilderness, for the sake of reconciling their sense of religious duty with their affections for their country, few, perhaps none of them, formed a conception of what would be, within two centuries, the result of their undertaking. When the jealous and niggardly policy of their British sovereign denied them even that humblest of requests, and instead of liberty would barely consent to promise connivance, neither he nor they might be aware that they were laying the foundations of a power, and that he was sowing the seeds ...
— Orations • John Quincy Adams
... men of strong minds, was a good critic of the substance of poetry, but somewhat niggardly in the allowance he made for those subsidiary qualities which make it the charmer of leisure and the employment of minds without definite object. It may be doubted, indeed, whether he set much store by any contemporary writing but his own, and ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... chickweed to his bird and fish-bones to his cat, interrupting the signing of a lease to whistle to a canary, suspicious as a jailer, but apt to put his money into a bad business and then endeavor to get it back by niggardly avarice. The evil savor of this hybrid flower was only revealed by use; its nauseous bitterness needed the stewing of some business in which his interests were mingled with those of other men, to bring it fully out. Like all Parisians, Molineux had the lust of dominating; he craved ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... Government decided to depart from the niggardly policy it had hitherto pursued towards the City of New York, and to take steps toward the erection of a Post-office adequate to the needs of the great and growing community which demanded this act of justice at its hands. It was decided to erect an edifice which should be an ornament ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... success; New Haven, girt with flat marshes that look like monstrous billiard-tables, with haycocks lying about for balls,—romantic with West Rock and its legends,—cursed with a detestable depot, whose niggardly arrangements crowd the track so murderously close to the wall that the peine forte et dure must be the frequent penalty of an innocent walk on its platform,—with its neat carriages, metropolitan hotels, precious old college-dormitories, its vistas of elms and its dishevelled weeping-willows; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... its leaders that they be alert. Its appetite for variety is insatiable, but its appreciation, when given, is fullhanded and whole-hearted. The American public never holds back from the man to whom it gives; it never bestows in a niggardly way; it gives ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... away after 1857 (and how many poor fellows had died in the meantime!) before a mean and niggardly Government distributed to the remnant of the Delhi army the first instalment of prize-money, and three years more elapsed before the ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... ill, and I believe a doctor was fetched from Barrow. When I returned, next morning, he had gone, but had left me sixpence with which to get a glass of rum, which I hastily swallowed. My captain was provoked by (what he thought) this man's niggardly gift, and said, 'John, why did you drink it? I would have given you a glass of rum without your being indebted to him.' I am told that this gentleman is often in Hull; if he is, I am sorry he has never had gratitude enough to give me a call. I saved his life and he must know it. I may ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... furnished with a number. By that number he was to be known while in the company's employ. Each man showed his number and drew what he needed—overalls, lamps, and heavy boots. There was nothing niggardly in the credit. The deeper the debt the tighter the grip on the debtor. The goods cost just one hundred per cent. more than anywhere else. The company paid wages once a month. If a labourer borrowed of his own within that time, he paid ten per cent. ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... ago that school-teachers are paid so niggardly, I didn't mean that their remuneration was insufficient, considering the quality and quantity of the goods delivered—knowledge, scholarship, education. I only had in mind the bitterness of their lot, and the poor indemnity given to the man who ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... they are neither so much in haste as the French to grow rich, nor so niggardly as the Dutch to save; that their houses are richly furnished, and their tables well served. You are neither soothed nor soured by the merchants of London; they seldom ask too much, and foreigners buy of them as cheap as others. They are punctual in their ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... a noble devotion as honorable to himself as it was ill-deserved by its object. Time would not suffice, had I as many hours as I have minutes before me, to tell you of all the acts of generosity that this mean man, this niggardly actor, performed in his lifetime. One characteristic anecdote will suffice. When Whitfield was building his Tabernacle in Tottenham Court Road, he employed one of the carpenters who worked for Garrick at Drury Lane. Subscriptions for the Tabernacle do not seem to have come in as fast ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... left the land, but the spring that year was a meagre starveling, niggardly of smiles. He seemed to have borrowed winter's breath, and the pale young leaves shuddered in the unfriendly blasts. The fruit blossom struggled into a nipped existence, and fell like thin snow to the ground. An eerie spring, and men said there was a ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... possible to engage in a combat, either on horseback or on foot, for her sake! I did not promise Germans enough to her! To such a lady, I ought to vow as many as she has years. If the Lord Jesus will only release me from this tower, I will not be niggardly with her!" He raised his eyes, full ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... pitiable than a poor, pinched mind spending the rich days and years clutching a few bits of metal? What can be fine about paring the necessities of life to the very quick? We all know "economical people" who seem to be niggardly even about the amount of air they breathe and the amount of appreciation they will allow themselves to give to anything. They shrivel—body and soul. Economy is waste: it is waste of the juices of life, the sap of living. For there are two kinds of waste—that of the prodigal who ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... to-day I call attention to the air of prodigality which pervades this story. There seems to be an immense amount of seed wasted. Some of it falls on the roadway; some of it is snatched away by the birds; some of it is caught among the bushes. Yet the sower proceeds in no niggardly fashion. He strides away across the field scattering the seed broadcast, far beyond the border where he expects a crop, for he knows that, though much shall be wasted, whatever seed may fall on good ground will have miraculous ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... were any purchases to be made, she let George do it and, if we may judge from the long list of tabby colored velvet gowns, silk hose, satin shoes, "Fashionable Summer Cloaks & Hatts," and similar articles ordered from the English agents she had no reason to complain that her husband was niggardly or a poor provider. If her "Old Man"—for she sometimes called him that—failed in anything she desired, tradition says that the little lady was in the habit of taking hold of a button of his coat and hanging on until he ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... superior in numbers and composed of the best fighting men the ancient world ever saw, had come against him to be broken, scattered, and destroyed. His career through Italy had been, in the words of Horace, as the rush of the flames through a forest of pines. But after Cannae the tide turned. His niggardly, short-sighted countrymen denied him the support without which success was impossible. As his veterans were lost to him he had no means of filling their places, while the Romans could put army after army into the field. But through ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... on a frigate bound for the Chinchas Islands for a cargo of guano, manned by a crew of many races—deserters from the English navy, bargemen from Valparaiso, Peruvian Indians, black sheep of every family, all under command of a Catalonian, a niggardly ruffian, more prodigal with blows than with the mess. The outbound trip was uneventful, but on the return voyage, after passing the Straits of Magellan, they ran into the calms, and the frigate lay motionless in the Atlantic almost a month, ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... monotony there was bound to be in what is really a variation upon a single theme. Though the author cunningly avoids this, I think it might justly be observed that he has made Olivia's plunges almost too uniformly successful. But perhaps not; after all, while you are handling fairy-gold, why be niggardly of it? The heroine's introduction to horse-racing comes about through the unconscious agency of her husband, who takes her with him on a visit to Newmarket in search of local colour for a "sporting" novel. The resulting situation reaches its climax in what is the best scene of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... sorrowful, and fling away on us, your friends, that vile and worthless laughter. You must have an ample store of it in reserve: it cannot be said you have squandered it on yourself, or ever wasted a smile on friend or foreigner if you could help it. So you have no excuse to be niggardly now, and ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... however, reverence for Shakespeare had increased to an intensity that made Johnson's admiration seem feeble and niggardly. This transformation was due to many causes, but in the main it was a part of the vast changes in European literature known as the Romantic movement. This resulted in a rejection of the rules and models of neo-classicism, a new interest ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... in the actions of our life, who seeth not the filthiness of evil, wanteth a great foil to perceive the beauty of virtue. This doth the comedy handle so in our private and domestical matters, as with hearing it we get as it were an experience, what is to be looked for of a niggardly Demea: of a crafty Davus: of a flattering Gnatho: of a vainglorious Thraso [Footnote: All characters in the Plays of Terence.]: and not only to know what effects are to be expected, but to know who be such, by the signifying ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... in the release of the strain of dissonance, as in the returning melody of the Adagio. Only we may feel we have been waiting too long. The desert was perhaps too long for the oasis. Est modus in rebus: the poet seems niggardly with his melody; he may weary us with too long waiting, with too little staying comfort. He does not escape the modern way of symbolic, infinitesimal melody, so small that it must, of course, reappear. It is a little like the wonderful arguments ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... are women to whom nature has been niggardly in the matter of roundness of form, but even these need not despair; if they cannot show their own busts, they can show something nearly as good, since we read the following, which we forbear to translate:—"Autre excentricite. ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... it." The hair was worn neither short nor long. The moustache was rather thick and heavy. The lower jaw, otherwise clean-shaven, was made remarkable by a tuft of hair, too small to be called a goatee, upon the lower lip. The head was of a good size. There was nothing niggardly, nothing abundant about it. The face was pale, the cheeks were rather drawn. In my memory they were rather seamed and old-looking. The eyes were at once smoky and kindling. The mouth, not well seen below the moustache, had a great play of humour on it. But for this humorous mouth, the kindling in ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... tale to tell and many questions to ask. Tom Teeter came over after tea to give his opinion upon poor old Sandy's case. Jake Martin across from him was trying to buy Sandy's land, folk said, and if Martin did such a thing, then he, Tom Teeter, considered him a more penurious and niggardly miser, that would skin his neighbor's grasshoppers for their hide and tallow, than he had already proven himself ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... between Pretty Willie and the Lost Soul, which are great bare heads. You get a glimpse of the Tickle from the deck of the mail-boat: this when she rounds the Cocked Hat and wallows off towards Gentleman Cove. 'Tis but a niggardly glimpse at best, and vastly unfair to the graces of the place: a white house, wee and listlessly tilted, gripping a rock, as with expiring interest; a reach of placid water, deep and shadowy, from which rise the hills, gray, ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... consisting of blankets, broadcloths or strouding, calicoes, guns, kettles, traps, silver-works (comprising arm-bands, bracelets, brooches; and ear-bobs), looking-glasses, combs, and various other trinkets distributed with no niggardly hand. ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... clasped her in his arms, and begged her to be his; but P'ing Erh snatched her hands out of his grasp and ran away out of the room; which so exasperated Chia Lien that as he bent his body, he exclaimed, full of indignation: "What a dreadful niggardly young wench! she actually sets her mind to stir up people's affections with her wanton blandishments, and then, after all, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... How he had stood, with all the power of his "divine soul" in his will, and told her,—he,—a man,—that he put away her love from him then, forever! He spared himself nothing,—slurred over nothing; spurned himself, as it were, for the meanness, the niggardly selfishness in which he had wallowed that night. How firm he had been! how kind! how masterful!—pluming himself on his man's strength, while he held her in his power as one might hold an insect, played with her shrinking woman's nature, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... of all vices. Fifthly, To be frugal in your way of living; if you do not squander your estate away, it will maintain you in time of necessity. I do not mean you should be either too liberal or too niggardly; for though you have but little, if you husband it well, and lay it out upon proper occasions, you will have many friends; but if, on the contrary, you have great riches, and make a bad use of them, the world will forsake you, and ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... nothing," replied Skipton; "we were very calm and peaceable this morning; but with respect to that baronet, he's a niggardly fellow. Only think of him, never once offering us the slightest compensation for bringing him home his property! There's not another man in Ireland would send us off empty-handed as he did. The thing's always usual ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... should undertake the character. My concurrence failed to give the full satisfaction I expected, and they so habitually did what they pleased with me, that, like all men so disposed, I never got the credit for concession which a man more niggardly of his services ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... closely to the arms and bust, and at the neck gathered to a frill, which is enclosed by a torque, or gold necklet. Over this hangs a garment, which falls gracefully down in front, and is crossed at the breast over the left arm. The jewellery of the widow is of no common description, nor niggardly bestowed. Upon the breast, below the torque, is a rose-shaped ornament or brooch, and beneath that a couple of fibulae; two more of a similar pattern fasten the upper garment near the right shoulder, and upon the left arm, just above the elbow; an ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... the harmony of the evening. His voice was strong, but, like many strong things, under imperfect control; his tune was nowhere, and his intended pathetic unction was simply maudlin. Coristine could recall but little of the long ballad to which he listened, the story of a niggardly and irate father, who followed and fought with the young knight that had carried off his daughter. Two verses, however, could not escape his memory, on account of the disinterested and filial light in which they ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... vineyard, deeply deplored the hardness of the sinners' hearts, their proneness to err, and the worldliness of even professing Christians, who seemed now to be wholly given over to the love of pleasure. She told also of the niggardly contributions; the small congregations. It was, indeed, a sad and discouraging tale that she unfolded. Only once did she show any enthusiasm, and that was in her closing words: "But I thank my Lord and Heavenly Master that the other church in our ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... describing modern manners; but those manners, because they are familiar, artificial, and polished, are, in their very nature, unfit for any lofty effort of the Muse. Whatever poetical enthusiasm he actually possessed he withheld and stifled. Surely it is no narrow and niggardly encomium to say, he is the great Poet of Reason, the first of Ethical authors in verse." Warton illustrated his critical positions by quoting freely not only from Spenser and Milton, but from recent poets, like Thomson, Gray, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... as he was usually called, was a man of business of the old school, moderate in his charges, economical and even niggardly in his expenditure, strictly honest in conducting his own affairs and those of his clients, but taught by long experience to be wary and suspicious in observing the motions of others. Punctual as the clock of Saint Giles tolled nine, the neat dapper form ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... bloated, good-for-nothing, impudent, and happy dogs, never before fed upon a baronet's substance, contradicted him to his very face, and fought for him behind his back. The females in my establishment bear but a most niggardly proportion to the males—in the ratio of Falstaff, one pennyworth of bread to his many gallons of sack: and these few are the most hideous, pox-marked, blear-eyed damsels that the country ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... build him a house portionable to that bulk and bigness. And do you not observe, O Chersias, continues he, many poor men,—how one while they pinch their bellies, upon what short commons they live, how sparing and niggardly and miserable they are; and another while you may observe the same men as distrustful and covetous withal, as if the plenty of the city and county, the riches of king and kingdom were not sufficient to preserve them from want ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... one ox and one sheep. Suppressing his rage, Balaam thought, "Is that all that he offers me! He will have to pay for this to-morrow," for he instantly determined to have him offer up many sacrifices on the following day to punish him for having treated him in so niggardly a fashion. ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... than that for which the patent laws grant protection for industrial property. Many of them, indeed, have formed the subjects of patents which, from one reason or another, lapsed long before the expiration of the maximum terms. Nature is ever prodigal of seeds and of "seed-thoughts" but comparatively niggardly of places in which the young plant will find exactly the kind of soil, air, rain, and sunshine which the young ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... think of this man, O Phaeacians? Is he not tall and good looking, and is he not clever? True, he is my own guest, but all of you share in the distinction. Do not be in a hurry to send him away, nor niggardly in the presents you make to one who is in such great need, for heaven has blessed all of ...
— The Odyssey • Homer |
