"Parsimonious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been parsimonious with the tints. It reminds me of some of Lenbach's work which I saw at Florence; it is in the ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... days after the funeral, the will was opened before proper witnesses, and John was found to be left sole heir to his uncle's property, which, though originally moderate, had, by his grasping habits, and parsimonious life, become very considerable. ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... such as chose rather to live upon the folly of others, than their own labour, with such thoughtless liberality, that he left a third part of his estate mortgaged. His successor, a man of spirit, scorned to impair his dignity by parsimonious retrenchments, or to admit, by a sale of his lands, any participation of the rights of his manour; he therefore made another mortgage to pay the interest of the former, and pleased himself with the reflection, that his son would ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... increasing conformity to the requirements of the new thrift. I think it true that the wages are spent more prudently than of old. The sight of a drunken man begins to be unusual; he who does not belong to a "club" is looked upon as an improvident fool; but to imagine the people thus parsimonious for the pleasure of it is to imagine a vain thing. Their occasional outbursts of extravagance and generosity go to show that their innermost taste has not found a suitable outlet in wage-earning economy. That miserly "thrift" which is preached to them as the whole duty ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... were not kept with the splendour which characterised those of his rival and successor, Edward IV. Henry's habits were religious, and his house expenses parsimonious—sometimes necessarily so, for he was short of money. From the introduction to the "Paston Letters" (edited by Mr. James Gairdner) it appears that the king was in such impecunious circumstances in 1451 that ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... cents' worth of ice, just as our people send round to the nearest public for six penny worth of beer. I have heard Americans who have been in London complain of the scarcity of ice with us, and the parsimonious way in which it is used. But then we have not the enormous natural stores of ice close to our doors, as they have at Chicago and many other of the ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... nineteenth day will require to pray for grace to subdue the natural disposition. The individual born that day will be churlish, perverse, and combative; and the infant who first draws the breath of life on the following day will be covetous and parsimonious. ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... is, you would be miserable." The summer was intensely hot at Bologna, and the plague broke out. In these circumstances it seems miraculous that the four sculptors in one bed escaped contagion. Michelangelo's parsimonious habits were not occasioned by poverty or avarice. He accumulated large sums of money by his labour, spent it freely on his family, and exercised bountiful charity for the welfare of his soul. We ought ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... another kind of couple who coddle themselves, and who do so at a cheaper rate and on more spare diet, because they are niggardly and parsimonious; for which reason they are kind enough to coddle their visitors too. It is unnecessary to describe them, for our readers may rest assured of the accuracy of these general principles:—that all couples who coddle themselves are selfish and slothful,—that they ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... transmitted to posterity. Candid, but decided in his judgment of motives and actions, if we except his invectives against Pompey, he shows little propensity to censure; but in awarding praise, he is not equally parsimonious, and, on some occasions, risks the imputation of hyperbole. The grace, however, and the apparent sincerity with which it is bestowed, reconcile us to the compliment. This author concludes his history with a prayer for the prosperity ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... become extreme. So early as the eighth of June horseflesh was almost the only meat which could be purchased; and of horseflesh the supply was scanty. It was necessary to make up the deficiency with tallow; and even tallow was doled out with a parsimonious hand. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... money,—not in a griping, hard-fisted, prosaic spirit; but that she might participate in that feeling of his own which had in it so much that was grand, so much that was delightful, so much that was picturesque. He would never ask her to be parsimonious,—never even to be economical. He would take a glory in seeing her well dressed and well attended, with her own carriage and her own jewels. But she must learn that the enjoyment of these things must be built upon a conviction that the most important ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... in it led the life of a dog. Disappointed both in love and in friendship, and looking upon human learning as vanity, he had come to a conclusion that there was but one good thing in the world, videlicet, a good dinner; and this his parsimonious lady seldom suffered him to enjoy: but, one morning, like Sir Leoline in Christabel, 'he woke and found his lady dead,' and remained a very consulate ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... commonest fare, and rewarded their faithfulness by very moderate wages. One of his servants, who survived till lately, described him as a master who exacted obedience in trifles—was prudent in the matter of pins—a saver of bits of thread—a man hard and parsimonious, who never thought he had enough of labour out of his dependents, and always suspected that he overpaid them. To this may be added the public opinion, which pictured him close, cautious, and sordid. On the other side, we have the open testimony ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... exactly in their previous state. He then proceeded to give his opinion as to what reforms should be made in the practice of vivisection. The greatest physiologists, he remarked, such as Harvey, Asselli, Haller, were parsimonious and discreet in their use of vivisection. To-day we have before our eyes a very different spectacle. Under pretence of experimentally demonstrating physiology, the professor no longer ascends the rostrum; he places himself before a vivisecting-table, has live animals brought to him, ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... the consent of the Boards which have the power of the purse. A Vice-President who had not these bodies at his back would be powerless, in fact would have to resign. Thoughtless criticism has now and again condemned not only the parsimonious action of the Department, but the invertebrate conduct of the Council of Agriculture and the Boards in tolerating it. The time will soon come when the service rendered to their country by the members of the first Council and Boards, who gave their representative ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... leaves are narrow, lance-shaped, acute, saw-edged, rough. From Massachusetts and Florida westward to Minnesota and Arkansas one finds the plant blooming in dry fields from June to August, after the parsimonious manner ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... not be displeased, from the virtue he found in her; for he would not be burdensome, but would pay the hire for his entertainment, and spend his own money. To which she replied, that he guessed right as to the humanity of her parents; but complained that he should think them so parsimonious as to take money, for that he should have all on free cost. But she said she would first inform her brother Laban, and, if he gave her leave, she would conduct ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... from the consequences of legislating for the country in the absence of the men, whose efforts, if present, they would not hesitate to scoff at. The disturbing influence of the resolution became at once perceptible, and the earliest means were taken to bring the question to an issue. Mr. Hume, a parsimonious economist, of niggard principle and grovelling sentiment, undertook the office of coercing the Irish. He gave notice of a motion for a call of the House. This man, a mean utilitarian, had been rejected by the country ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... that says, 'Traveling trains youth.' My faith! you are not wrong after all, and life is sweet. That's the reason why I take such care you shall not deprive me of mine. There only remains, then, the question of the five shillings to be settled. You think me rather parsimonious, don't you? That's because I don't care to leave you the means of corrupting your jailers. Besides, you will always have your charms left to seduce them with. Employ them, if your check with regard to Felton has not disgusted you with attempts of ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the same With straitened habits and with tastes starved small, And take at once to his impoverished brain The sudden element that changes things, 130 That sets the undreamed-of rapture at his hand And puts the cheap old joy in the scorned dust? Is he not such an one as moves to mirth— Warily parsimonious, when no need, Wasteful as drunkenness at undue times? All prudent counsel as to what befits The golden mean, is lost on such an one: The man's fantastic will is the man's law. So here—we call the treasure knowledge, say, Increased beyond the fleshly faculty— 140 Heaven opened ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... foolhardy confidence, Sport with the power of heaven? Of bounded mind, Man, who is not omniscient, must not dare To guide the helm of destiny. 'Tis just! But why these thoughts of self. This hour is precious As life can be to man: and who can tell Whether the parsimonious hand of fate May not have measured my ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the first time it seemed to him he had begun to understand that she was incapable of love—in other words, of giving herself wholly to anybody. A strange mystery it was that one who could give her body so unreservedly should be so parsimonious about her soul. To give her body and retain herself was her gift, above all other women, thereby remaining always new, always unexpected, and always desirable. In the few visits to Paris which had been allowed to him by her, ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... drawing wherever the eye falls. Each section of the vast expanse is a picture of tossed crests and complicated undulations. And over the whole sea of stationary billows, light is shed like an ethereal raiment, with spare colour—blue and grey, and parsimonious green—in the near foreground. The detail is somewhat dry and monotonous; for these so finely moulded hills are made up of washed earth, the immemorial wrecks of earlier mountain ranges. Brown villages, not unlike those of Midland England, low houses built of stone and tiled ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... light in every little ripple; in the late, sunless afternoon the light lay deeply within it, and it seemed jealous of giving back the least particle. He compared it then to an opal or a sapphire, which shine with the same parsimonious radiance. ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... "It was not to postpone their reward, that I selected those remote places, but to leave a memorial to posterity, that, under your reign, Antioch and the Oxus were subject to the same sovereign." But this description of his limits was unjust and parsimonious: beyond the Oxus, he reduced to his obedience the cities of Bochara, Carizme, and Samarcand, and crushed each rebellious slave, or independent savage, who dared to resist. Malek passed the Sihon or Jaxartes, the last boundary of Persian civilization: ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... spring (April, I think), but was summarily dissolved. A small quarto volume, of not unfrequent occurrence, I believe, contains some good specimens of the eloquence then prevalent—it was rich in thought, never wordy—in fact, too parsimonious in words and illustrations; and it breathed a high tone of religious principle as well as of pure-minded patriotism; but, for the reason stated above—its narrow circuit and very limited duration—the general character of ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... some respects a man of parsimonious habits; and though his bounty might now be the better excused, yet in the more prosperous days of his dominion he had the character of a selfish and greedy priest, whose charity was less than that of his predecessor, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... action, Peepi, by reason of these revolving souls in him, was one of the most unreliable of beings. What the open-handed Zonoree promised freely to-day, the parsimonious Titonti withheld to-morrow; and forever Raymonda was annulling the doings of Voyo; and Voyo the doings ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... fine, rambling old house, which had recently come into Jack Cheriton's possession through the death of a parsimonious relative. ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... soul. Alexander was only nineteen when he sighed for more worlds to conquer. He didn't have to wait long before he found that this one had conquered him. Youth considers itself immortal, and its powers without limit, but as a man approaches thirty he grows economical of his resources and parsimonious of his emotions. Men of thirty, or so, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... The only one who was self-respecting among the lot was old 'Eliza Countess' as they designated her. It struck Bridget that Eliza Countess and Colin McKeith had points of character in common—it was true they both came from Glasgow. She thought of the parsimonious rectitude—which had of course included linen sheets and fine porcelain and shining silver—of old Lady Gaverick's establishment, of its stuffy conventionality—though that had been soothing sometimes after a dose of Upper Bohemia; and Bridget ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... struggled bravely with adversity at the end of the raised silver arm of the statuette which had kept to a hair's breadth its graceful pose on the toes of its left foot; and the staircase lost itself in the shadows above. Therese was parsimonious with the lights. To see all this was surprising. It seemed to me that all the things I had known ought to have come down with a crash at the moment of the final catastrophe on the Spanish coast. And there was Therese herself descending ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... noticed that he was more likely to linger and become talkative if I had a comfortable chair for him to sit in, and if he found a bottle of Benedictine and plenty of the kind of cigarettes he liked, at his elbow. He was, I had discovered, parsimonious about small expenditures—a trait absolutely inconsistent with his general character. Sometimes when he came he was silent and moody, and after a few sarcastic remarks went away again, to tramp the streets of Lincoln, which were ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... will wear well is what this type asks for when he drops in to buy a suit. Musculars are not parsimonious nor stingy. Their buying the most durable in everything is not so much to save money as for the purpose of having something they do not need to be ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... very ill-used on our first night in Paris, when, having been wiled into a grand hotel near the Bourse, we were stowed away on the fifth floor, three in a room, and charged six francs for our beds, one more for a candle, and one for service. Our parsimonious Dane was so highly irritated, that he took possession of the candle and carried it off in his pocket. But Alcibiade was soon by our side, to give us help and advice with his old kindness; and under his guidance we removed ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... above the fall there projected from the water a rock which had, by parsimonious saving during a long course of years, hoarded a little soil, out of which a small tuft of bushes struggled to support a decent vegetable existence. The high waters had nearly submerged it, but a few slender twigs were seen above ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Finding, then, that he was unable to resist his propensity, he resolved to divest himself of the instrument and cause of his prodigality and lavishness, to divest himself of wealth, without which Alexander himself would have seemed parsimonious; and so calling us all three aside one day into a room, he addressed us in words somewhat ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... short-lived. There is none that may revive him since the small feet of Dorothy trod out this small love's life. Yet when this life of ours too is over—this parsimonious life which can allow us no more love for anybody,—must we not win back, somehow, to that faith we vowed against eternity? and be content again, in some fair-colored realm? Assuredly I think this thing ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... What was the intelligence that made him change his mind? That is the grand question." Captain Paget dined alone at a West-End restaurant that evening. He dined well, for he had in hand certain moneys advanced by his patron, and he was not disposed to be parsimonious. He sat for some time in meditative mood over his pint bottle of Chambertin, and the subject of his meditation ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... expression of Jakoff's face and the way in which he twitched his fingers showed that this order had given him great satisfaction. He was a serf, and a most zealous, devoted one, but, like all good bailiffs, exacting and parsimonious to a degree in the interests of his master. Moreover, he had some queer notions of his own. He was forever endeavouring to increase his master's property at the expense of his mistress's, and to ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... Citizen has long been to devote its columns mainly to the exploitation of what is known in newspaper terminology as "the local story." Of the news of the great outside world we're parsimonious, recognising the fact that the coronation of King Edward VII. is a matter of much less import to our community than the holocaust which was responsible for the destruction of Sir Higginbottom's new hen-house. Similarly a West Indian tornado involving losses running up into hundreds of ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... under the surface, and exactly contrary, the latter is often neglected. This was why the rapidly spent capital of the prodigal was supposed formerly to employ more labour than the invested savings of the parsimonious, and the purchase of native goods to encourage native industry more than ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... is done, with more precision and steadiness than in the merchant service. Merchantmen are invariably manned with the least possible number, and often go to sea short-handed, even according to the parsimonious calculations of their owners. The only way the heavier work can be done at all is by each man doing his utmost at the same moment. This is regulated by the song. And here is the true singing of the deep sea. It is not recreation; it is an essential ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... individuals with so much vigilance, as not to leave their private conduct without restraint? Can it enter into a reasonable mind to imagine, that men of every other nation are not equally masters of their own time or houses with ourselves, and equally at liberty to be parsimonious or profuse, frolick or sullen, abstinent or luxurious? Liberty is certainly necessary to the full play of predominant humours; but such liberty is to be found alike under the government of the many or the few, in ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... king has not had the good fortune to be justified by any party, but is often considered, on what grounds I shall not determine, as one of the greatest mistakes, if not blemishes, of his reign. It is the sale of Dunkirk to the French. The parsimonious maxims of the parliament, and the liberal, or rather careless disposition of Charles, were ill suited to each other; and notwithstanding the supplies voted him, his treasury was still very empty and very ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... too, the needs of the poorer clergy and the hospitals, while to Pope Urban and Edward III. he left splendid legacies. His funeral, as his life, was simple and economical. For his magnificent presents, his gorgeous works on the structure of his church, were made possible by his own simple, almost parsimonious manner of living. He was buried in the chapel of St. Radegunde, but the tomb was destroyed in Elizabeth's time, and his ashes ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw
... streets about the Marche Saint-Honore as usual, and I could not see that prices of food had risen abnormally in spite of complaints in the newspapers and the discussion about cold storage in the Chamber of Deputies. Restaurant portions were parsimonious and prices high as usual, but the hotels made specially low rates, "pendant la guerre," which the English took advantage of in large numbers. The Latin Quarter seemed harder hit by the war than other quarters, emptier, as at the end ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... when he described George the Second as, on the whole, rather worse than George the First. George the Second was born at Hanover on October {274} 30, 1683, and was therefore in his forty-fourth year when he succeeded to the throne. He had still less natural capacity than his father. He was parsimonious; he was avaricious; he was easily put out of temper. His instincts, feelings, passions were all purely selfish. He had hot hatreds and but cool friendships. Personal courage was, perhaps, the only quality becoming a sovereign which George the Second possessed. He had ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... Hayes and his wife were vastly different. He had the repute of a sober, sedate, honest, quiet, peaceable man, and a very good husband, the only objection his friends would admit of against him was that he was of too parsimonious and frugal temper, and that he was rather too indulgent of his wife, who repaid his kindness with ill usage, and frequently very opprobious language. As to his wife, she was on all hands allowed to be a very turbulent, vexatious person, always setting people together by the ears, ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... commodity cheap, and at a rate not to be undersold in foreign markets. The Dutch, whose labour and manufactures are dear by reason of home excises, can notwithstanding sell cheap abroad, because this disadvantage they labour under is balanced by the parsimonious temper of their people; but in England, where this frugality is hardly to be introduced, if the duties upon our home consumption are so large as to raise considerably the price of labour and manufacture, ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty
... have dined with him at taverns and coffee-houses when it was convenient to him not to pay his reckoning, have assured me, that though the youngest and poorest, he always obtained, without exacting it, a sort of deference or even submission from the rest of the company. Though never parsimonious, he was at that period of his life extremely attentive to the details of expense, the price of provisions, and of other necessary articles, and, in short, to every branch of domestic economy. The knowledge thus early acquired ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... all the while she kept right on renovating the Little Girl's personal appearance, smoothing a wrinkled stocking, tucking up obstreperous white ruffles, tugging down parsimonious purple hems, loosening a pinchy hook, tightening a wobbly button. Very slowly, very complacently the Little Girl drowsed off to sleep with her weazened little iron-cased legs stretched stiffly out before her. "Poor little legs! ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... seas no battle "fought to a finish." In all the fighting the English showed that they had grasped the essential ideas of the new warfare, and proved themselves better sailors and better gunners, but the number of the ships they took or destroyed was insignificant. Howard was so crippled by parsimonious mismanagement on the part of his Government that he had to be content with "half-doings," instead of decisive results. But there was worse mismanagement on the Spanish side, and this led first to failure, ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... youth of sixteen years, I fear it must be admitted that I was unnaturally parsimonious, and a good deal of what schoolboys used to call a smug and a swatter. It really was curious, because I do not recall that I had any ambition to be actually rich. Mr. Smiles and his Self Help would have ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... he was liberal to the poor, and generous in the aid which he administered to men of genius and talent, who often found a comfortable asylum under his roof. In his domestic economy he was frugal without being parsimonious. His hospitable board was ever ready for the reception of his friends; and, though he was himself abstemious in his diet, he seems to have been a lover of good wines, of which he received always the choicest varieties out of the Grand Duke's cellar. This ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... heart, thrilled at the approach of great and perilous enterprises, amidst which he rivalled his brother in activity and resourcefulness. Accordingly, his Viceroyalty of India moved Bonaparte to envy, patriotic Britons to rapturous applause, and the parsimonious Directors of the Company to carping criticisms. Those who deny to Pitt the gift of choosing able and inspiring men, forget that he made Wellesley Governor-General of India, and supported him in his quarrels with the India House. As Earl of Mornington, Wellesley had helped the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... gratitude for the exertions of those about him, and his sense of the trouble they underwent, in a very affecting way. With regard to his man-servant in particular, he was very anxious that he should be rewarded by liberal presents; and he pressed me earnestly on no account to be parsimonious. Indeed Kant was nothing less than princely in his use of money; and there was no occasion on which he was known to express the passion of scorn very powerfully, but when he was commenting on mean and penurious acts or habits. Those who knew him ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... during the last generation, the suggestions and strong recommendations of educators relative to physical education in our schools been acted upon by the public? Ah! The fault was not with educational principles; they were sound. The educational forces of the country knew what was needed, but a parsimonious public would not follow intelligent leadership. We could say, all along the line, "I told you so," if we felt so inclined. Instead of being the "laughing stock" we could—if the matter were not too serious—throw the laugh upon the other fellow. The purpose ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... said, 'Things that are done, it is needless to speak about; things that have had their course, it is needless to remonstrate about; things that are past, it is needless to blame.' CHAP. XXII. 1. The Master said, 'Small indeed was the capacity of Kwan Chung!' 2. Some one said, 'Was Kwan Chung parsimonious?' 'Kwan,' was the reply, 'had the San Kwei, and his officers performed no double duties; how can he be considered parsimonious?' 3. 'Then, did Kwan Chung know the rules of ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge
... brother-in-law. Pitt was utterly regardless of money. He would scarcely stretch out his hand to take it; and, when it came, he threw it away with childish profusion. Grenville, though strictly upright, was grasping and parsimonious. Pitt was a man of excitable nerves, sanguine in hope, easily elated by success and popularity, keenly sensible of injury, but prompt to forgive; Grenville's character was stern, melancholy, and pertinacious. Nothing was more ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Peyster, to the general envy, had led in his entertainment; there had been whispers of another international marriage. And then, after respectful adieus, the Duke had sailed away—and within a month the papers were giving columns to his scandalous escapades with a sensational Spanish dancer of parsimonious drapery. Whereupon the rumors of Mrs. De Peyster's previously gossiped-of marriage with the now notorious Duke were revived—by the subtle instigation, and as an act of social warfare, so Mrs. De Peyster believed, of her aspiring rival, Mrs. Allistair. And there was ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... the bills, and her liability was to cease within a year. She was likewise to be collaterally secured by pledges from certain cities in the Netherlands. This amount was certainly not colossal, while the conditions were sufficiently parsimonious. At the same time a beginning was made, and the principle of subsidy was established. The Queen, furthermore, agreed to send five thousand infantry and one thousand cavalry to the provinces, under the command of an officer of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... state in which the individual and his wishes and aspirations have been entirely absorbed by the interests of the community as a whole this Prussia dates back to the father of Frederick the Great. Frederick William I was a hard working, parsimonious Prussian sergeant, with a great love for bar-room stories and strong Dutch tobacco, an intense dislike of all frills and feathers, (especially if they were of French origin,) and possessed of but one idea. That idea was Duty. Severe with ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... her: her dress, though parsimonious, was too neat for a beggar, and she considered a moment what she could offer her. The poor woman continued to move forward, but with a slowness of pace that indicated extreme weakness; and, as she approached and raised her head, ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... and every curtain rent. The corners of the room had been given over for twenty years as the happy hunting-ground of spiders. Although Bideabout had taken some pains to put his house in order before his marriage, repairs had been executed only on what was necessary, and in a parsimonious spirit. The spare room had been passed over, as not likely to be needed. To that as to every other portion of the house, Mehetabel had turned her attention, and it was now in as good condition to receive a guest as the bedrooms ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... lingered about the northern metropolis, expecting a settlement with Creech, and with the hope that those who dispensed his country's patronage might remember one who then, as now, was reckoned an ornament to the land. But Creech, a parsimonious man, was slow in his payments; the patronage of the country was swallowed up in the sink of politics, and though noblemen smiled, and ladies of rank nodded their jewelled heads in approbation of every new song he sung and every witty sally he uttered, they reckoned any further ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... early days, as also to meet with quiet matronly dignity the extraordinary honours showered on her as the mother of the French Emperor. She was inured to habits of frugality, which reappeared in the personal tastes of her son. In fact, she so far retained her old parsimonious habits, even amidst the splendours of the French Imperial Court, as to expose herself to the charge of avarice. But there is a touching side to all this. She seems ever to have felt that after the splendour there would come again ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... be allowed that a democratic state is most parsimonious toward its principal agents. In America the secondary officers are much better paid, and the dignitaries of the administration much ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... She didn't have to. For the first, last, and only time on The Road, I got all I wanted. I abandoned the bumpers and managed to get out on a side-ladder; it was ticklish work, for I had never encountered car-ends that were so parsimonious of hand-holds and foot-holds ...
— The Road • Jack London
... the foregoing; good-natured old maid, ugly and parsimonious, who lived with her brother. Almost every evening she played boston at the Hauteserres and was terrified by Corentin's visits. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... beauty of womanhood, the young, handsome, and now rich Sabbatai, went his lonely, parsimonious way, and a wondering band followed him, scarcely disturbing his loneliness by their reverential companionship. When he entered the sea, morning and night, summer and winter, all stood far off; by day he would pray ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... just entering on; and the lighter elements, present as carbonic-acid gas is in champagne; and the envious girls, the women absorbed in wondering if their dress is a success, the poor relations whose parsimonious "get-up" contrasts with that of the officials in uniform; and the greedy ones, thinking only of the supper; and the gamblers, thinking only ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... she held no communication with her sister,—Willoughby, after that lady had offended her father by marrying, yet she had little doubt of Helen's capability; and thought, after the energy and self reliance she had manifested, she might, for she was, though rich, a most parsimonious woman, turn it to her own account and for a few years, at least, get her children cheaply educated. It was Helen's determination, if she obtained the compassionate allowance, to keep it, as a reserve for her brother's education. She mentioned her intention to Dr. Sherman, who ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... of collectorships, of titles of nobility, of places in parliament, and of nominations to numerous judicial offices, brought in considerable sums to the treasury. The higher classes surnamed the king Le Roitelet, because he was sickly and of small stature, parsimonious and economical. The people called him their "father and master," and he has always been styled the father of ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... house is to be seen in her streets, scarce a desk—Earthquakes swallow up this mercantile city and its gripple merchants, as Drayton hath it, "born to be the curse of this brave isle." I invoke this not on account of any parsimonious habits the mercantile interest may have, but, to confess truth, because I am not fit for ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... himself, as an intimate friend of the family that Bernard's mother ventured to tell him they knew of his kind deed done in secret,—a revelation which caused him much confusion. Bernard had discovered long before that their eccentric neighbor, far from being a parsimonious hoarder of untold wealth, was, in fact, almost a poor man. He possessed a life-interest in the house in which he dwelt, and the income of a certain investment left to him by the will of a former employer in acknowledgment of faithful service. It was a small amount, intended merely to insure ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... seemed to please him best;—perhaps because it involved the least risk; for Dammit had become excessively parsimonious. Had any one taken him up, his head was small, and thus his loss would have been small too. But these are my own reflections and I am by no means sure that I am right in attributing them to him. At all events the phrase in question grew ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... each supplies what is most needed in the other. Some natures require sedatives and others tonics; and it will often be found in a happy marriage that the union of two dissimilar natures stimulates the idle and inert, moderates the impetuous, gives generosity to the parsimonious and order to the extravagant, imparts the spirit of caution or the spirit of enterprise which is most needed, and corrects, by contact with a healthy and cheerful nature, the morbid and ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... requirements of the case were lavish, the traditional law of the Great Supper ordaining that not fewer than seven different sweets shall be served. Mise Fougueiroun, however, was not the person to stand upon the parsimonious letter of any eating law. Here had been her opportunity, and she had run amuck through all the range of ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... provide for their marriage-expenses and home. Such cares as these never seem to afflict the English costermonger. So strongly did Mr. Mayhew find these characteristics marked among the Irish, that he is at times inclined to accuse them of carrying them too far, even to the display of a sordid and parsimonious spirit. According to him, they apply to the various "unions," or to the parish, even when they have money, or sometimes go with wretched food, dwelling, or clothing, in order to have a small fund laid by, in case of any ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... that no study of psychology in the ordinary acceptance of the term can give us any clue to these variations in individuals. Yet successful persuasion depends upon as accurate a knowledge as possible of these very differences among people. The parsimonious salesman who takes it for granted that every one's motives are the same as his own, and, therefore, talks to every prospect about the money-saving possibilities of his commodity, will most certainly fail in trying to persuade those to purchase who care nothing about saving a few ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... President to protect the frontiers and to sustain the arm of the western generals. The mean and niggardly support accorded the commander-in-chief, was largely instrumental in bringing about the lamentable result. The jealous and parsimonious states of the east, had regarded only their own selfish ends, to the utter ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... the one was English, the other French; both were tall and thin, but the latter was sallow as are the southern Provencals, while the former was ruddy like a Lancashire gentleman. The Anglo-Norman, formal, cold, grave, parsimonious of gestures and words, appeared only to speak or gesticulate under the influence of a spring operating at regular intervals. The Gaul, on the contrary, lively and petulant, expressed himself with lips, eyes, hands, all at ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... a concession for drainage of land which he is too parsimonious to take full advantage of, ii. 21; complains of seizure of his ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... a spendthrift only of what she has the most. Behold the clouds of pollen from the blooming pines and from the grasses in the meadow. She is less parsimonious with her winged seeds, such as of the maple and the elm, than with her heavy nuts—butternuts, hickory-nuts, acorns, beechnuts, and so on. All these depend upon the agency of the birds and squirrels to scatter them. She offers them the wage of the sweet ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... had made a free gift of a large sum of money—it was in tens of thousands—to an institution of long standing and high character in the city of which he was a quiet resident. The source of such a gift could not long be kept secret. It, was our economical, not to say parsimonious Capitalist who had done this noble act, and the poor man had to skulk through back streets and keep out of sight, as if he were a show character in a travelling caravan, to avoid the acknowledgments of his liberality, which met him ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... with Harley, St. John, Atterbury, and Prior, in the defence of the Tory party; but he never relinquished his friendship with Addison, for whom he had profound respect and admiration. Swift's life was worldly, but moral. He was remarkably temperate in eating and drinking, and parsimonious in his habits. One of his most bitter complaints in his letters to Stella—to whom he wrote every day—was of the expense of coach-hire in his visits to nobles and statesmen. It would seem that he creditably discharged his clerical duties. He attended the daily service in the cathedral, and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... Matthew Peel-Swynnerton's. Mr. Critchlow, aged and unaccustomed to interference, had to render accounts of his trusteeship to this young man, and was incensed. The estate was proved at over thirty-five thousand pounds. In the main, Sophia had been careful, and had even been parsimonious. She had often told Constance that they ought to spend money much more freely, and she had had a few brief fits of extravagance. But the habit of stern thrift, begun in 1870 and practised without any intermission till she came to England ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... mortgage by raising another. He might perhaps have used other means, letting his sporting rights and using economy, but this would have jarred. The only Osborn who bothered about money was his wife, and Alice was parsimonious enough for both. Money was certainly what his agent called tight; but as long as he could give his friends some shooting and a good dinner and live as an Osborn ought to live, he was satisfied. Still, Gerald must ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... nursery for seamen. Will she become a marine power in the New World? It is one of her dreams. It is also one of England's dreams. No country subsidizes her merchant liners more heavily than Canada[8]—in striking contrast with the parsimonious policy of the United States. It is Canada's policy of ship subsidies that has established regular merchant liners—all liable to service as Admiralty ships—to Australia, to China, to Japan and to every harbor on ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... king's accession to the throne, Guy de Dampierre, of noble Champagnese origin, had been for five years Count of Flanders, as heir to his mother, Marguerite II. He was a prince who did not lack courage, or, on a great emergency, high-mindedness and honor; but he was ambitious, covetous, as parsimonious as his mother had been munificent, and above all concerned to get his children married in a manner conducive to his own political importance. He had by his two wives, Matilda of Bethune and Isabel of Luxembourg, nine sons and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... "that the great industrial corporation, civilisation, is parsimonious of everything except human lives and the best that is in the human being. It places no value upon them. It lets them rot. But I think there is one comfort. I think civilisation possesses this one good, that it breaks us away once for all with the ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... had more facts concerning him, for he must have been a great man and humorist. The story is told of Hogarth that on being commissioned to paint a scriptural picture of the Red Sea for a too parsimonious patron who had beaten him down and down, he rebuked him for his meanness by producing a canvas entirely covered with red paint. "But what is this?" the patron asked. "The Red Sea—surely." "Where then are the Israelites?" "They have all crossed over." "And Pharaoh's hosts?" "They are all drowned." ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... complaisantly deliver up your Penelope to him, as preferable [to yourself]. What—do you think so sober and so chaste a woman can be brought over, whom [so many] wooers could not divert from the right course. Because, forsooth, a parcel of young fellows came, who were too parsimonious to give a great price, nor so much desirous of an amorous intercourse, as of the kitchen. So far your Penelope is a good woman: who, had she once tasted of one old [doting gallant], and shared with you the profit, like a hound, will never be frighted away ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... Marquis. More than half of the money had been spent in buying off lawsuits; the lad's extravagance had squandered the rest. Of the Marquis' income of ten thousand livres, five thousand were necessary for the housekeeping; two thousand more represented Mlle. Armande's allowance (parsimonious though she was) and the Marquis' expenses. The handsome young heir-presumptive, therefore, had not a hundred louis to spend. And what sort of figure can a man make on two thousand livres? Victurnien's tailor's bills alone absorbed his whole allowance. He had his linen, his clothes, ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... such resources, the Horn of Plenty should run dry: did it not use to flow? Nevertheless Necker, with his revenue of parsimony, has 'suppressed above six hundred places,' before the Courtiers could oust him; parsimonious finance-pedant as he was. Again, a military pedant, Saint-Germain, with his Prussian manoeuvres; with his Prussian notions, as if merit and not coat-of-arms should be the rule of promotion, has disaffected military men; the Mousquetaires, with much else ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... to be the richest subject in Europe, very profuse in gardening, birds, and household furniture, but mighty frugal and parsimonious in everything else; of a very lofty mien, and yet not proud; of no deep understanding.—Swift. As great a dunce as ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... specimens of which she had providentially become possessed in her lap, and they looked very pretty against the navy-blue of her skirt. Diva was very ingenious: she used up all sorts of odds and ends in a way that did credit to her undoubtedly parsimonious qualities. She could trim a hat with a tooth-brush and a banana in such a way that it looked quite Parisian till you firmly analysed its component parts, and most of her ingenuity was devoted to dress: the more was the pity that she had such a roundabout figure that her waistband always ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... troubled him. He knew his father was very proud, and considered the honour of an alliance with his family so great that but few presents would be required to be made. On the other hand, the old Brule was exceedingly parsimonious, and, no doubt, would take this opportunity to enrich himself by demanding a great price for ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... again, bringing messengers from the Master, and none departed empty-handed. I never durst reason with Mr. Henry; he gave what was asked of him in a kind of noble rage. Perhaps because he knew he was by nature inclining to the parsimonious, he took a backforemost pleasure in the recklessness with which he supplied his brother's exigence. Perhaps the falsity of the position would have spurred a humbler man into the same excess. But the estate (if I may say ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... person, of inexpensive habits, she began forthwith to save, and, perhaps, to be a little parsimonious, in favour of her boy. There were no entertainments, of course, at Fairoaks, during the year of her weeds. Nor, indeed, did the Doctor's silver dish-covers, of which he was so proud, and which were flourished all over with the arms of the Pendennises, and surmounted ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for a rainy day, provide against a rainy day, save against a rainy day; feather one's nest; look after the main chance. cut costs. Adj. economical, frugal, careful, thrifty, saving, chary, spare, sparing; parsimonious &c.819. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus |
