"Paltry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cabinet had turned out to be delusive, and, it was soon found, was based upon the hope of a lottery! When the time for action came, the promised millions melted away, and all that the unfortunate monarch could scrape together, on the eve of entering upon a campaign on which hung his life, was a paltry fifty thousand dollars! ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... returns; and from this list I learned the appalling news that, of our entire complement of fifty-eight, all told, we had lost no less than seventeen killed, and thirty-two more or less severely wounded, leaving only a poor paltry nine of us untouched, of whom I was one. Fortunately, of the thirty-two wounded only about half of them were hurt severely enough to be rendered totally unfit for duty; but that was bad enough in all conscience, with the ship dismantled and leaking, and something ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... teeth and a wild passionate hate flashed from his eyes, but, at the same time, he probably reflected that he would not have been the first of the Indian princes to be deprived of the last remnant of sham sovereignty for a paltry indiscretion. ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... acknowledged the rightness of the demand for arbitration. So the danger vanished, but Roosevelt, and every other thoughtful American, said to himself, "Suppose England had taken up the challenge, what had we to defend ourselves with?" And we compared the long roll of the great British Fleet with the paltry list of our own ships, and realized that we should have ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... please. Excellent! Excellent! We will try again. Practice of this kind makes for perfection, you know, Parrot. Good, good—very good! If you should be spoiled in the making, Parrot, you will not in your old age ascribe it to any paltry desire on my part to spare the rod, will ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... affronting his parents but by venturing to kill his wife and the heir of the crown? A baby that wounds itself to vex its nurse is no more void of reflection. The scene which commenced by unfeeling idiotism closed with paltry hypocrisy. The Queen on the first notice of her son's exploits, set out for St. James's to visit the Princess by seven in the morning. The gracious Prince, so far from attempting an apology, spoke not a word to his mother; but on her retreat ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... Three days.... Three miserable, paltry, insufficient days, blighted by the chaperoning Evershams.... Frantically he hoped against his dark foreboding that one menace at least might be averted—that by now Luxor would have ceased to shelter a certain ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... in love. It was when he first began guiding the cloth over the hot roller, and it was with the daughter of the superintendent. She was much older than he, a young woman, and he had seen her at a distance only a paltry half-dozen times. But that made no difference. On the surface of the cloth stream that poured past him, he pictured radiant futures wherein he performed prodigies of toil, invented miraculous machines, won to the mastership of the mills, ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... be merely trying to pay back a debt? He, Mahony, might shrink from lying under an obligation to John, but, so far, the latter had not scrupled to accept favours from him. But that was always the way with your rich men; they were not troubled by paltry pride; for they knew it was possible to acquit themselves of their debts at a moment's notice, and with interest. This led him to reflect on the great help to him the loan of his wealthy relative's name would be: difficulties would melt before it. And surely no undue risk was involved ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... chiefs, and soon filled them with all sorts of ideas concerning the alarming want of public spirit in the people of Imeeo. More especially did he dwell upon the humiliating fact of their living in paltry huts of bamboo, when magnificent palaces of boards might ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... is indeed sad to see professors, for the sake of paltry pelf, or to escape from persecution, denying the Lord Jesus. It subjects religion to scorn and contempt, and doubles the sorrows and sufferings of real Christians. Bunyan expresses himself here in a ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... wonderful pleasure park I ever saw. O King, your garden here is a paltry affair in comparison ...
— The Buddha - A Drama in Five Acts and Four Interludes • Paul Carus
... was something final and convincing in his companion's measured words. His own protest, when at last he spoke, sounded paltry. ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... he seemed ashamed of the paltry booty his followers had obtained, and Denham seized the favourable moment to advise that the Arabs should give everything back, and have a few sheep and an ox for a feast. He gave the order, and the property was restored, with the exception of ten ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... knaves cannot be better expressed than by Chesterton. 'They are real somewhere. We are talking to a garrulous and peevish sneak; we are watching the play of his paltry features, his evasive eyes and babbling lips. And suddenly the face begins to change and harden, the eyes glare like the eyes of a mask, the whole face of clay becomes a common mouthpiece, and the voice that ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... which the villain now stood accused was that of robbing a farmer of the paltry sum of eight shillings, in the neighborhood of Ilfracombe. He pleaded not guilty, but put in no defence. A verdict was recorded against him, and in due form A —— sentenced him to be hanged. An expression of fiendish malignancy gleamed over the haggard features of the felon as he asked leave ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... to throw away upon two paltry bits of cardboard!" chafed Miss Carlyle. "You always were a noodle in money matters, Archibald, and always will be. I wish I had the keeping of ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... surely be well when you read this, so what's the use of writing? I should like well to have some details of your life, but how can I hope for it? I have often tried to give you a picture of mine, but I have not the skill. I get a heap of details, mostly paltry in themselves, and not enough to give you an idea of the whole. Oh, for one hour's talk! You are getting too far off and beginning to look strange to me. Do you look as you used to do, I wonder? What do you and Ellen Nussey talk about when ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... with which they herd to their own level, they are apt to sink to theirs; and persons with talents that might have served for nobler purposes are suffered to degenerate into diseurs de bons mots and raconteurs de societe, content with the paltry distinction of being considered amusing. How many such have I encountered, satisfied with being pigmies, who might have grown to be giants, but who were consoled by the reflection that in that world in which ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... same time, to obtain the love of my people, not from any weak thirst for love, but from a queenly ambition. But I am set aside, and Amelia will be a queen; my fate will be that of my elder sisters, I shall wed a poor margrave, or paltry duke, and may indeed thank God if I am not an old maiden ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... emotion; and to steal impurity into their hearts, by gently perverting the most simple and generous of their affections. In the execution of this unworthy task, he labours with a perseverance at once ludicrous and detestable. He may be seen in every page running round the paltry circle of his seductions with incredible zeal and anxiety, and stimulating his jaded fancy for new images of impurity, with as much melancholy industry as ever outcast of the muses hunted for ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... it was an ordeal. I believe I have wept since: for Benjy scratched my door often yesterday evening, and looked most wistful when I came out. Merely paltry self-love, dearest:—I am so ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... there isn't a shadow of war in the sky. Money that might be spent, and should be spent, on the betterment of the lives of the people and destroying, the possibility of poverty and want, is spent in Dreadnoughts and weapons to kill. Hundreds of millions are being spent on the Army and Navy, while paltry sums are grudged for education and all those things which go to make up ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... society, and all of them, so he judged, just excuses for putting unwanted fingers into unwanted, dangerous pies. He thought of it like that—he could not help it; he saw too far into motive and internal action; was too impatient of the little storms, the paltry, tea-cup things. She, with her unique gift of serenity—her place was not among the busybodies grinding axes that were better blunt; interfering with the slow, slow working of the Mills of God. Her gift was example—rare and delicate; her light the silver light of a soul, that through ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... "Well, she's had paltry food for a lover since he went away. He's got certain ideas, and she'll hear direct when—but there, I must shut my mouth, for I swore by ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... Mr. Yates. "What are you talking of? The most trivial, paltry, insignificant part; the merest commonplace; not a tolerable speech in the whole. Your sister do that! It is an insult to propose it. At Ecclesford the governess was to have done it. We all agreed that it could not be offered to anybody else. A little more justice, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... were at the other end of the large tent, and seemed occupied with a loud argument over some paltry matter. The Rupun, stooping low, and making pretence to tuck me ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... in a more or less perfect state, and all correspond in design, proportion, and execution to the tower. The ruins of the old Hindoo temples about the place, and about every other place in India, are totally different in all three; here they are all exceedingly paltry and insignificant, compared with the church and its tower, and it is evident that it was the intention of the founder to make them appear so to future generations of the faithful, for he has taken care to make his own great work support rather than destroy ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... Wan chimed in. "This, if actually adopted, will delight the heart of Madame Wang. Pecuniary economies are of themselves a paltry matter; but there will be then in the garden those to sweep the grounds, and those whose special charge will be to look after them. Besides, were the persons selected allowed to turn up an honest cash by selling part of the products, they will ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... rents and Factors, rights of chace, Sheriffs, and Lairds and their domains 70 Would all have seem'd but paltry things, Not ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... Would you be humble, daughter? You must look up, not down, and see yourself A paltry atom, sap-transmitting vein Of Christ's vast vine; the pettiest joint and member Of His great body. ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... outer world into his service and that of religious art. It is said also that his Madonnas seem 'amiable beings imbued with a lofty grace;' while his saints are 'powerful and noble forms.' But he never descended to the paltry or the vulgar. He knew from the depths of his own soul how to invest a face with moral grandeur. Especially in his representations of our Saviour Gian Bellini 'displays a perception of moral power and grandeur seldom equalled in ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... said her master, in angry, stammering tones. "John, my brother, has left all his money to this Judas of a girl! A hundred and fifty pounds a year, if you please! and only a paltry 100 pounds to me, and the same to Jim Harris, the sailor. Ach y fi! the greediness of people is enough to turn ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... Through our paltry stir and strife, Glows the wished Ideal, And longing molds in clay, what life Carves in the ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... when he does go off? Mother said one day she thought it wouldn't be more than five hundred pounds. She doesn't know; he does not tell her about his private affairs—never has told her. Five hundred pounds! If he left me a paltry sum such as that, I'd fling it in the ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... man who doesn't want to be bothered; but he is only deferring the bother—he is like a man who stays in bed because he doesn't like dressing. But it isn't a solution to stay in bed—it is only suspending the solution. No, we mustn't have any regard for human consistency—it's a very paltry attribute; it's the opposite of anthropomorphism. That makes out God to be in the image of man, but consistency claims for man the privilege of God. And that isn't wholesome, you know, either for ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Specious petitions were continually addressed to the easy magistrates of Rome, which stated the want of stones or bricks, for some necessary service: the fairest forms of architecture were rudely defaced, for the sake of some paltry, or pretended, repairs; and the degenerate Romans, who converted the spoil to their own emolument, demolished, with sacrilegious hands, the labors of their ancestors. Majorian, who had often sighed over the desolation of the city, applied a severe remedy to the growing evil. [43] He reserved ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... startled out of his lethargy by this appalling suggestion. Was he, the man who, after planking down thirty-two thousand eight hundred and fifty-nine dollars, sixty-eight cents for "props" and "frames" and "rehl," had sold out for a paltry ten thousand, to be ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... incidents—of that direful night? The lean figure in the black frock-coat, and black silk waistcoat, with that great gleaming watch-chain, the long, shabby, withered face, and flushed, bald forehead; and those paltry little eyes, in their pink setting, that nevertheless fascinated her like the gaze of a serpent. How had that horrible figure come there—why was this meeting—whence his knowledge? An evil spirit incarnate ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... of a colony—the patronage of the Crown, the right over the public domain, the civil list, the customs, the post office have all been relinquished ... she guards our coasts, she maintains our troops, she builds our forts, she spends hundreds of thousands among us yearly; and yet the paltry payment to her representative is made a topic of grumbling and popular agitation."[49] In the same spirit he fought annexation, and killed it, among his followers; and, when confederation came, he helped to make the new dominion not only Canadian, but British. In that age when British faith ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... Leinster, no military movement of much importance was made, in consequence of the jealousy the Justices entertained of Ormond, and the emptiness of the treasury. In June, the Long Parliament remitted over the paltry sum of 11,500 pounds to the Justices, and 2,000 of the troops, which had all but mutinied for their pay, were despatched under Ormond to the relief of Athlone. Commissioners arrived during the summer, appointed by the Parliament to report on the affairs of Ireland, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... nothing to make me uneasy! It was simply physical! A glass of beer and a mouthful of biscuit were all that was necessary to restore my strength of mind and make my thoughts clear and resolution fixed. How paltry all this is!" ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... refined women will object to this mean and jealous sentiment in a woman of like passions with themselves. I know, myself, that a lofty love will regard the good of the beloved object first, and itself last,—that jealousy is a paltry and sinful emotion; but, my dear creatures, I can't help it,—so it was. And if any one of you can, with a serene countenance and calm mind, see your husband devote himself to a much prettier, more agreeable, younger woman than ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... with an old man's pride in a handsome only son, had left the bulk of his fortune to Bertie, while Hannah, who had ministered to his comfort and borne his ill-humor, inherited only a paltry couple of hundred a year, with a fairly well furnished house in Wilton Street, Hyde Park. Her brother would have willingly added to this pittance, but she sternly refused to accept what did not of right belong to her. Bertie went with ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... affections, one great emotional upheaval exhausts the possibilities of nature; leaving only the capacity for feeble and ineffective echoes. The edifice of love that is raised upon the ruins of a great passion can compare with the original no more than can the paltry mosque that perches upon the mound of Jonah with the glories of the palace that lies entombed beneath. I had made a pretext to write to Juliet and had received a reply quite frank and friendly in tone, ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... not. Olga had always been quite sure that she was not romantic. She had always loved cricket and hockey and all outdoor sports. She had even—quite privately—been a little scornful over such shreds of romance as had come beneath her notice, dismissing them as paltry and ridiculous. Possibly also Violet's scoffing attitude towards her ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... of Orleans hath not made me smart; These words of yours draw life-blood from my heart: On that advantage, bought with such a shame, To save a paltry life and slay bright fame, Before young Talbot from old Talbot fly, The coward horse that bears me fall and die! And like me to the peasant boys of France, To be shame's scorn and subject of mischance! Surely, by all the glory ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... such a nature, if it does not change it at last. But I see I fail to make myself understood by you; let me try again. I don't know how it may be in your country, but here, at least as far as my personal observation has extended, the remuneration received by ministers is insufficient, not to say paltry. I don't mean that in many cases they and their families actually suffer, but there are few of them so situated as regards income, that economy need not be the very first consideration in all their arrangements. Comparing them with other professional men they may ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... insisted on side recesses, that might serve as chantry chapels when the church became Roman Catholic. Wren was accused of delays and chidden for the faults of petty workmen, and, as the Duchess of Marlborough laughingly remarked, was dragged up and down in a basket two or three times a week for a paltry L200 a year. The narrow escape of Sir James Thornhill from falling from a scaffold while painting the dome is a tradition of St. Paul's, matched by the terrible adventure of Mr. Gwyn, who when measuring the dome slid down the convex surface till ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Rhinoceros indicus is being rushed into oblivion. We marvel at the fossil shell of the gigantic turtle called Collosochelys atlas, while the last living representatives of the gigantic land tortoises are being exterminated in the Galapagos Islands and the Sychelles, for their paltry oil and meat; and only one man (Hon. Walter Rothschild) is doing aught to save any of them in their haunts, where they can breed. The dodo of Mauritius was exterminated by swine, whose bipedal descendants have exterminated many other ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... been given a sample of the Englishmen's brazen daring already. After his troops mutinied, and pandemonium reigned in the village where he was quartered, the Englishman had steamed up with his paltry stem-wheel launch, and by sheer dash and recklessness had carried him and his last parcel of faithful men away in ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... strength: I would, therefore, entreat those who with myself are seeking to carry out this scheme, and to arrive at a better state of things, to persevere, nothing daunted at the first repulse, but to continue their course, rising superior to the paltry prejudices that may and will assail them, until they have succeeded in procuring for their brethren, a name and a station worthy of them in the ranks ...
— Suggestions to the Jews - for improvement in reference to their charities, education, - and general government • Unknown
... should be presented to her by the hostess. He wore no shirt-collar,—he had on black gloves,—and was flourishing a red bandanna handkerchief! Match me this, ye proud children of poverty, who boast of your paltry sacrifices for each other! Virtue in humble life! What is that to the glorious self-renunciation of a martyr in pearls and diamonds? As I saw this noble woman bending gracefully before the social mendicant,—the white billows of her beauty heaving under the foam of the traitorous laces that ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... the offended Mr. Vickers, regarding him fiercely, "stick to it like leeches. Now, suppose I was a young man keeping company with a gal and her father wanted to borrow a couple o' quid—a paltry couple o' thick'uns—what ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... I, "that's not his name; he is Lord Privilege." (I was very much surprised that he knew that my grandfather was a lord.) "And do you suppose," continued I, "that I would forfeit the honour of my family for a paltry seven shillings?" ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... this time, I would have told you that it was quite impossible without enormous capital. Quite impossible. Understand that, if you please. But, negatively, you have profited, because others have failed—hundreds of firms and contractors—while you have lost but the paltry fifteen thousand or so with which you began. And you have acquired great knowledge and experience. Therefore, on the whole, you have been the gainer. In balancing an account one takes but the sordid debit and credit and compares ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... favour me to-day! For sooth this is a man with whom I play. No paltry risk—but life and death at stake; As Sarkap does, so do, for ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... modesty, and unerring sureness in dealing with the things of sense, never conceive aught base or ignoble of themselves: but the multitude the contrary. Why, what am I?—A wretched human creature; with this miserable flesh of mine. Miserable indeed! but you have something better than that paltry flesh of yours. Why then cling to the ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... azaleas make themselves delightfully at home. It is wild as a hawk, an untamable creature that slowly pines to death when brought into contact with civilization. Greedy street venders, who ruthlessly tear up the plant by the yard, and others without even the excuse of eking out a paltry income by its sale, have already exterminated it within a wide radius of our Eastern cities. How curious that the majority of people show their appreciation of a flower's beauty only by selfishly, ignorantly picking every specimen they ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... our hands are gripped tightly—a faint foretaste of that last terror, when he or I shall pass away into the shadows and the other will be left alone for ever. It is when I ponder upon that scene that I realize what our friendship has become, that I realize how paltry every other familiar or even relative appears by comparison. Let me treasure this friendship carefully, healthfully, old friend, for, by my love of life, it is rare enough in ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... from my audience!" wailed Jane, falling into convenient arms. "Why not install a ghost in Madison if you are all so keen on it? I can't see how you expect one paltry spook to ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... object of the war, we had supposed, was to abolish all fallacies of sectional distinction in a patriotism that could embrace something wider than a township, a county, or even a State. But Mr. Johnson has chosen to revive the paltry party-cries from before that deluge which we hoped had washed everything clean, and to talk of treason at both ends of the Union, as if there were no difference between men who attempted the life of their country, and those who differ from him in their ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... scenes of their youth after a long absence, to see into what small dimensions Langholm had shrunk. That High Street, which before had seemed so big, and that frowning gaol and court-house in the Market Place, were now comparatively paltry to eyes that had been familiar with Shrewsbury, Portsmouth, and London. But he was charmed, as ever, with the sight of the heather hills and the ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... poet's height? What puts a full house in a merry mood? More closely view your patrons of the night! The half are cold, the half are rude. One, the play over, craves a game of cards; Another a wild night in wanton joy would spend. Poor fools the muses' fair regards Why court for such a paltry end? I tell you, give them more, still more, 'tis all I ask, Thus you will ne'er stray widely from the goal; Your audience seek to mystify, cajole;— To satisfy them—that's a harder task. What ails thee? ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... considered what urgent need there will be for those new fields? It is no paltry question of an outlet for the surplus products of a mere nation of seventy-five millions that confronts you. Your mathematical professors will tell you that, at the ratio of increase established in this Nation by the census returns for the century ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... married i' the afternoon, for, do you mark, I am none of these sneaking fellows that will stand thrumming of caps and studying upon a matter, as long as Hunks with the great head has been about to show his little wit in the second part of his paltry poetry,[156] but if I begin with wooing, I'll end with wedding, and therefore, good clerk, let me have it done with all speed; for, I promise ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... the paper aside with the bill receipt. In the man to whom the bright New Orleans itself almost owed its brightness, it was a paltry act to search and pick for a debtor. Friends had betrayed and deserted him; relatives had forgotten him; merchants had failed with his money; bank presidents had stooped to deceive him; for he was an old man, and had about run the ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... wounded Indian soldiers in the Pavilion Hospital at Brighton (with the Scottish accent underlying them all), and noted the thorough understanding there was between him and the men. Young as he was, he had managed to get inside the Oriental mind. He was killed in a paltry frontier affray, six months after the Armistice. I am convinced that Norman Kemp would have made a great name for himself had he lived. He had the peculiar faculty of gaining the confidence of the Oriental, and I think that he would have ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... this paltry discussion, had stood up on the high stool "Farva" had made for him, and personally inspected the big mush-pot. Then he turned to Mac, and, pointing a finger like a straw (nothing could fatten those infinitesimal hands), he said ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... famous scene where Amelia is spreading, for the recreant who is losing his money at the King's Arms, the historic little supper of hashed mutton which she has cooked with her own hands, and denying herself a glass of white wine to save the paltry sum of sixpence, "while her Husband was paying a Debt of several Guineas incurred by the Ace of Trumps being in the Hands of his Adversary"—a scene which it is impossible to read aloud without a certain huskiness in the throat,—the visits to the pawnbroker and ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... my tabernacle take my rest, With those nine columns round me, two and two, The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands: Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse. 30 —Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone, Put me where I may look at him! True peach, Rosy and flawless: how I earned the prize! Draw close: that conflagration of my church —What then? So much was saved if aught were missed! My sons, ye would not be my death? Go dig The white-grape vineyard where ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... all over the front of your tavern with scorpion-words. For my girl, who has fled from my embrace (she whom I loved as ne'er a maid shall be beloved—for whom I fought fierce fights) has seated herself here. All ye, both honest men and rich, and also, (O cursed shame) all ye paltry back-slum fornicators, are making hot love to her; and thou above all, one of the hairy-visaged sons of coney-caverned Celtiberia, Egnatius, whose quality is stamped by dense-grown beard, and teeth with Spanish ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... readily enough to this paltry gossip, but found that it robbed the poet's memory of some of the reverence that was its due. Indeed, this talk over his grave had very much the same tendency and effect as the home-scene of his life, which we had been visiting just previously. Beholding his poor, mean dwelling and its surroundings, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... swallowed-up of Time, and there remains no wreck of them any more; and Arcturus and Orion and Sirius and the Pleiades are still shining in their courses, clear and young, as when the Shepherd first noted them in the plain of Shinar. Pshaw! what is this paltry little Dog-cage of an Earth; what art thou that sittest whining there? Thou art still Nothing, Nobody: true; but who, then, is Something, Somebody? For thee the Family of Man has no use; it rejects thee; ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... explain away the apparently miraculous incidents in his story, but he lacks the persevering ingenuity that partly compensates for her frauds. On a single page he calmly discloses secrets which have harassed us for four volumes, and his long-deferred explanations are paltry and incredible. The bleeding figures that wrought so painfully on the sensitive nerves of Ippolito are merely waxen images that spout blood automatically. Disappearances and reappearances, which seemed supernatural, are simply effected by private exits and entrances. Other startling ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... been here twice, almost three times. He taunted me with being angry at his being a simple devil and not Satan, with scorched wings, in thunder and lightning. But he is not Satan: that's a lie. He is an impostor. He is simply a devil—a paltry, trivial devil. He goes to the baths. If you undressed him, you'd be sure to find he had a tail, long and smooth like a Danish dog's, a yard long, dun color.... Alyosha, you are cold. You've been in the snow. Would you like some tea? ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of an English country gentleman of the old type. He was tall and thin, aristocratic of mien, with white hair and faded blue eyes. His face was not impressive. At first sight it seemed merely that of a tired old man, weary of the paltry exactions of life, and longing for rest; but, at odd moments, one caught a passing resemblance to a caged eagle in a swift turn of the falcon profile, or in a sudden flash of the old eyes beneath the straight Heredith brows. At such times the Heredith face—the warrior ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... is not love that steals the heart from love: 'Tis the hard world, and its perplexing cares; Its petrifying selfishness, its pride, its low ambition, and its paltry aims." ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... the gentle mother who had risen at the Master's call to go up higher. And as she so sat, a peace, born of the surrounding silence, brooded down over her troubled soul. Her anger at the boys' mutiny died out. Somehow, among the silent sleepers round about her, it seemed small and paltry to fume over the wranglings of the schoolroom. The wind that stole up from the bay dried the tears on Theo's cheek. New resolves stirred her heart. She would pluck up courage and try, once again, to move Alick's stubborn will. Not that she had much ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... fill up the first volume with Waltzes. Why make this paltry concession to the trifling requirements of the drawing- room? Chopin's Waltzes are certainly charming, elegant and full of invention...still his Polonaises and Mazurkas have a ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... people, and its care for poor children, it sinks immeasurably below the level I had placed it upon, and England, even England, bad and faulty as the old land is, and miserable as millions of her people are, rises in the comparison.... Freedom of opinion; where is it? I see a press more mean and paltry and silly and disgraceful than any country I ever knew.... In the respects of not being left alone, and of being horribly disgusted by tobacco chewing and tobacco spittle, I have ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... adversaries—this hero according to some—this illustrious warrior, and mighty sovereign—should have stooped to be guilty of an act of mean and petty malice worthy of a spiteful old woman,—a piece of paltry cruelty which could not at all conduce to his success in the war, or produce any effect except to degrade his country, and exasperate ours;—this, surely, is quite incredible. "Pizarro," says Elvira in Kotzebue's play, ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... to him that there was nothing real in that religion, but that reality in presence of it was so paltry that it deserved not the time for thought. Expanses of some kind, of which hitherto he had not had a suspicion, surrounded him,—certain immensities, certain clouds. That cemetery began to produce on him the impression of a ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... will be turned to brine; Thou'lt hardly make one petty, paltry wave. Lovest thou the sun? He will not know thee there. Is't sweet to run, Know thine own whence and where? 'Tis here thy joy, thy love, thy life are thine; There thou wilt neither be, nor do, nor have. The mighty sea Will blindly number thee To bear the ships, send thee to shape the shore ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... prepared for the fight gayly, never doubting for a moment that victory would be on their side. So paltry had been the resistance that the Confederates had heretofore been able to oppose to the Northern arms, by sea, that the blue-jackets felt that they had only to open a fight in order to win it. The officers were more serious. Rumors had reached them that the "Merrimac" was a most ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... was made an earl not long since—you may have heard of the fuss about it. Uncle Sam's only a miserable baron yet. And Uncle Cuthbert is that paltry insect—a baronet. ...
— The Title - A Comedy in Three Acts • Arnold Bennett
... do me the honor to listen," I said, scornful of his paltry attempt at wit, "you would see that the book is the object of my travelling. I travel to write. I do not write because I have travelled. I am not going to subordinate my book to my adventures. My ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... tenanted by the Canterbury pilgrims; the gallery probably differing but little in appearance from what it was when Chaucer frequented it in search of good wine. The landlord eventually became insolvent; the paltry tavern was shut up, and the bedrooms were dismantled. In that plight they might be seen some years ago, may still possibly be seen—empty, dusty, dreary—ranged above ground-floor premises which do duty as a parcels' conveyance office, and abutting on a mean, ill-kept yard. Until within ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... 10s. 8d. a little later. It is an impudent misstatement of fact when Socialist leaders tell the workers, "We are not killed by rates, we are killed by rent."[680] "The whole of our municipal expenditure is only a paltry 110 millions a year. What do we pay in rent? Two hundred and seventy-five millions!"[681] After all, people in other countries, where the blessings of Socialist local government are unknown, and where poverty is much rarer than in Great Britain, also pay rent. On an average the rates ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... addressing the benchers in the true Junius style. He contrasts Stephen with his persecutors. Stephen might not know Law Latin, but he had read Bracton and Glanville and Coke; he knew French and had read Latin at Aberdeen; he had been educated, it was true, in some 'paltry principles of honour and honesty,' while the benchers had learnt 'more useful lessons;' he had written letters to Wilkes copied in all the papers; he had read Locke, could 'harangue for hours upon social feelings, friendship, and benevolence,' and would trudge miles to save a family ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... endeavoring to effect an entrance into the door way, for it is within the hive that their instinct teaches them they must deposit their eggs. You can hardly find them by day, for they are cunning and secrete themselves. "They love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil." They are a paltry looking, insignificant little grey-haired pestilent race of wax-and-honey-eating and bee-destroying rascals, that have baffled all contrivances that ingenuity has devised ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... rather discouraging for them. They were now talking about their respective ways of procuring the sums of money needed, and the trifle they had managed to save, and the small amounts they earned in one way or another, to augment the original sums, seemed so paltry to Toinette, who never stopped to ask whence came the five-dollar bills so regularly sent her each week, and who, had a fancy entered her head for one, would have walked out and bought a camera very much as she would have bought ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... is about a paltry gilt ring that Nerissa gave me, with words upon it like the poetry on a cutler's knife: 'Love me, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... cleverness inspires me with despairing admiration, and whose consistent falsity to all I care to call existence, with despairing wrath. If I had no better hope than to continue to revolve among the dreary and petty businesses, and to be moved by the paltry hopes and fears with which they surround and animate their heroes, I declare I would die now. But there has never an hour of mine gone quite so dully yet; if it were spent waiting at a railway junction, I would have some scattering ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ask, indeed, the following questions: (i) Has not the Treasury during the last ten years lost a large portion of its control, and since the War almost its whole control over expenditure on a large scale? (ii) Is the Treasury not more concerned with paltry details than in imposing any real check on the extravagance of spending departments? (iii) Has not the policy sometimes been actually to encourage expenditure, and has not there been one case at least, even of introducing vexatious ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... and soldiers.' Now Dent was a place of importance, in those days, and looked down on even Sedbergh as a mere village. Wherefore to be sent off to a small farm in the outskirts of Sedbergh in search of a nest of Quakers was a paltry job at best for these fine gentlemen from Dent. Naturally, they set about it, cursing and swearing with a will, to shew what brave fellows they were. For here were all these Quakers whom they had been sent to harry, brazening out their ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... necessary before the outbreak. After having thrown off the yoke of a knave—and perhaps hung the knave up by the neck, or chopped his head off with an axe—mankind not unfrequently fall under the control of a fool; frightened at their temerity in dethroning an idol of metal, they bow down before a paltry statue of wood. ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... "Still, through our paltry stir and strife, Glows down the wished ideal, And longing molds in clay what life Carves in the ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... time he had ever broken the law of its accretion. Once broken, that law was henceforth an object of scorn, and the tail grew with frightful rapidity. It was indeed a great dragon. And none of the paltry fields about Rothieden should be honoured with its first flight, but from Bodyfauld should the majestic child of earth ascend into the regions of ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... the mother-in-law. "I'm surprised at you. For a few paltry votes you—" Just here the front door bell rang, and the business of the day beginning stopped the conversation, which bade fair to ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... to me noteworthy, as showing what may be gained by concentrating even humble energies upon a paltry thing. Had Creso persevered as well upon the stage, I do not doubt that he would have made a splendid actor. If he did so well with a mere nostrum, why should he not have gained riches and a less grotesque fame by the sale of a ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... of rule and place, Though granted by the mean and base; Yet all superior merit fly, Nor will endure an equal nigh. They o'er some ale-house club preside With smoke and joke and paltry pride. Nay, e'en with blockheads pass the night; If such can read, to ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... be abased, and to obviate one of the objections that thou madest to me, when we were last together, that the pleasure which attends these nobler aims, remunerates not the pains they bring with them; since, like a paltry fellow as thou wert, thou assertedst ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... value. Ellen returned, much elated by her success; the money she had received for the ring seemed to them in their present circumstances a small fortune. "Little did once I think," said the widow, as she carefully counted the bank-notes, "that a few paltry pounds would ever seem of so much value to me; but perhaps it is well that we should sometimes experience the want of money, that we may learn how to make a proper use of it; and be more helpful to those less favored than ourselves." The money they obtained more than sufficed ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... improvement in his lodgings he was punished indirectly. Poor Sim had dislocated a bar of the window in pushing the straw into Ralph's hands, and for this offence he was apprehended and charged with prison breaking. Four days later the paltry subterfuge was abandoned, as we know, for a more serious indictment. Ralph's new abode was brighter and warmer than the old one, and had no other occupant. Here he passed the second week of his confinement. The stone walls of this cell had a melancholy interest. They were carved over nearly ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... offering, I simply requested the Sheikh to give him four yards of American sheeting, and thought no more about the matter, until presently I found the cloth returned. The "Sultan" could not think of receiving such a paltry present from me, when on the former journey he got so much; if he showed this cloth at home, nobody would believe him, but would say he took much more and concealed it from his family, wishing to keep all his goods to himself. I answered that my footing in the country had been paid for ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... Burgrave, and are consulted by the Marquis of Steyne in every think. We ought to know a thing or two, Mr. Lightfoot. You're a young man, I'm an old cove, as you say. We've both seen the world, and we both know that it ain't money, nor bein' a baronet, nor 'avin' a town and country 'ouse, nor a paltry five or ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in the calm and silent night!— The senator of haughty Rome, Impatient urged his chariot's flight, From lordly revel, rolling home. Triumphal arches gleaming swell His breast, with thoughts of boundless sway. What recked the Roman what befell A paltry province far away, In ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... now welcome the doctor. Thankfully will they pay the paltry sum he claims as a recompense for his services. We are more confident than the doctor. Experience is a sure teacher. The door does not now fly open at his approach. He gives his name to the girl who answers the bell, and in due time the lady of the ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... not seem possible, but, nevertheless, I shall prove, by quotations, that the whole theory of our author is based upon this paltry equivocation. ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... rich (O passing rich), One of the idlers, softly bred, From whom the hands of David itch To pluck their plumage, quick or dead; For then, a super-man, I'd scorn to grudge it— This super-tax on my estate, But like a bird contribute to his Budget The paltry two-and-eight. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... woodwork was painted gray. The plastered ceiling, divided in two parts by a heavy beam which started from the fireplace, seemed a concession tardily made to luxury. Armchairs, with their woodwork painted white, were covered with tapestry. A paltry clock, between two copper-gilt candlesticks, decorated the mantel-shelf. Beside Madame de la Chanterie was an ancient table with spindle legs, on which lay her balls of worsted in a wicker basket. A hydrostatic lamp ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... understand the very serious peril which overhung Denry. Multiply it by fifteen hundred and you will understand that Denry had been culpably silly to inaugurate a mighty scheme like the Universal Thrift Club on a paltry capital of two thousand pounds. He had. In his simplicity he had regarded two ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... with both hands to every paltry possession? All I have teaches me to trust the Creator for all ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... have saved the empire From ruin—with our best blood have we sealed The liberty of faith and gospel truth. But now already is the benefaction No longer felt, the load alone is felt. Ye look askance with evil eye upon us, As foreigners, intruders in the empire, And would fain send us, with some paltry sum Of money, home again to our old forests. No, no! my Lord Duke! no!—it never was For Judas' pay, for chinking gold and silver, That we did leave our King by the Great Stone[24] No, not for gold and silver have ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... some old forgotten London bills had come down and swamped this Midsummer quarter's allowance, so that the promise must stand over till—till Michaelmas; or it might be that Ferdinand's matters were arranged, and then what would such a paltry sum be? Wilmet turned away in shame and disgust at having trusted for a moment to such offers. She could only do what she had never done before—apply to Mr. Froggatt for an advance on Felix's account: and she detained him ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... against odds to make a living for herself and those she loved. But there were some compensations in this life of toil. One person wrote her, "What I am I owe in large measure to the stimulus you imparted. You roused my heart with high hopes; you raised my aims from paltry and vain pursuits to those which lasted and fed the soul; you inspired me with a great ambition, and made me see the worth ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... that young lad go free. How would you like to have one of your own boys or young brothers treated as you threaten to treat him? There's life and work and happiness in him, and you'd just knock it all to pieces for the sake of a paltry revenge. What good can killing the boy do to any of you? Why, I'll tell you— murder will out, and you'll all be hanged, every one ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... who had assented to its acts they had loaded with every species of calumny—slanders—which they knew to be such. They had not even spared that character supposed to have been clothed with inviolability—not the paltry inviolability of constitutional proscription, but an inviolability infinitely more respectable, founded on the public gratitude, and resulting ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... to insert words which have no use nor meaning to fill up the vacuities in a sentence. There are likewise some who, in imitation of Hegesias (a notorious trifler as well in this as in every other respect) curtail and mince their numbers, and are thus betrayed into the low and paltry style of the Sicilians. Another fault in composition is that which occurs in the speeches of Hierocles and Menecles, two brothers, who may be considered as the princes of Asiatic Eloquence, and, in my opinion, are by ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... assistance, since he was a very influential man. Of course I knew as long as he did not rob us we were quite safe. I then photographed him and his house, and he evidently felt quite flattered. He accompanied me for a mile down the road, and then, taking me aside, handed me back the paltry sum I had paid for the provisions, saying he did not accept payment from his guests. This was rather embarrassing, but there was no way out of it, and I had to accept it. I afterward sent him a copy of his photograph ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... indignation meeting was called in the Park, coroners' juries stultified themselves, and a senseless outcry was made generally. Twenty-two were killed and thirty wounded. It was a terrible sacrifice to make for a paltry quarrel between two actors about whom nobody cared; and in this light alone many viewed it, forgetting that when the public peace is broken, it matters not how great or insignificant the cause, it must be preserved; and if the police or military are called out to do it, and are attacked, they ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... fellow in Middlemarch than Bowyer," said Ladislaw, indignantly, "but it seems as if the paltry fellows were always ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... of each, make all the town. A mile or so up stream under palm trees are bungalows of what must have been cantonments, some machinery repair-shops, and odds and ends of railway track. It is all as paltry a collection of whitewashed houses, pitiful gardens, dead walls, and trodden waste spaces as one would wish to find anywhere; and every bit of it quivers with the remembered life of armies and river-fleets, as the finger-bowl rings when the ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... crying their goods for sale, he saw one of them hending in hand an ivory tube in length about a cubit, which he was offering for sale at the price of thirty thousand Ashrafis. Hearing such demand Prince Ali thought to himself, "Assuredly this fellow is a fool who asketh such a price for so paltry a thing."—And as the morn began to dawn ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... to deceive the girl I love. Permit me to explain the tricks." So he explained them. His eyes sought hers across the bowl of gold-fish, his fingers trembled as he taught her to manipulate the magic canister. One by one, she mastered the paltry secrets. Her respect for him waned with every revelation. He complimented her on her skill. "I could not do it more neatly myself!" he said. "Oh, dear Miss Dobson, will you but accept my hand, all these things shall ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... distinct and comparatively opaque, they do not modify, but conceal; but through the rain-cloud, and its accessory phenomena, all that is beautiful may be made manifest, and all that is hurtful concealed; what is paltry may be made to look vast, and what is ponderous, aerial; mystery may be obtained without obscurity, and decoration without disguise. And, accordingly, nature herself uses it constantly, as one of her chief means of most perfect effect; not in one country, nor another, but ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... for a suitable opportunity to regain the country; instead of which, although he had lost so great an empire by sea and land, he yet insisted on continuing his frantic and fruitless efforts to reconquer the paltry territory ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... wretched Dick had already disposed of it to these clamorous boys, and, what was worse, had stipulated with considerable forethought for payment in advance. For the first time he repented his paternal harshness. Like the netted lion, a paltry white mouse or two would have set him free; but, less happy than the beast in the ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... blind and cover to their prodigality. The economy of injustice is to furnish resources for the fund of corruption. Then they pay off their protection to great crimes and great criminals by being inexorable to the paltry frailties of little men; and these modern flagellants are sure, with a rigid fidelity, to whip their own enormities on the vicarious back ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke |
