"Penury" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... time was Whittington. In his own words: 'The fervent desire and busy intention of a prudent, wise, and devout man, should be to cast before and make secure the state and the end of this short life with deeds of mercy and pity, and especially to provide for those miserable persons whom the penury of poverty insulteth, and to whom the power of seeking the necessaries of life by act ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... reared in penury extreme, Could scarcely read or write ere he attained eighteen, And yet, by the observant force of a self-guided brain, He lived to benefit a world, and gain ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... Government, and shew'd, that every Man was born free, and had as much Right to what would support him, as to the Air he respired. A contrary Way of arguing would be accusing the Deity with Cruelty and Injustice, for he brought into the World no Man to pass a Life of Penury, and to miserably want a necessary Support; that the vast Difference between Man and Man, the one wallowing in Luxury, and the other in the most pinching Necessity, was owing only to Avarice and Ambition on ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe
... Which bursts when Nature's feelings newly flow; Yet tenderness and time may rob the tear Of half its bitterness for one so dear: A nation's gratitude perchance may spread A thornless pillow for the widow'd head; May lighten well her heart's maternal care, And wean from penury the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... where poor human nature, aided and abetted by weak philanthropy, and demagogic fishing for votes by eleemosynary legislation, provides him with a mild form of riotous living, and a fatted calf of doles in case of accident, sickness, penury, or old age. ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... all her days from the date of her widowhood been a tender woman; but no change made any alteration on the Christian contentment of her mind. She bore adversity with an honest pride; she toiled in the day of penury and affliction with thankfulness for her earnings, although ever so little. She bent her head to the Lord in resignation when her first-born fell in battle; nor was she puffed up with vanity when her daughters were married, as it was said, so far above their degree, though they ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... he; "and has a mere dream scared thee to penury and want, with all this wealth in thy possession?" Philip replaced the sacks, and locked up the cupboards, after having taken out of one, already half emptied, a few pieces for his immediate wants. His attention was next ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... meantime Russia had resumed her southward march, setting to work with the doggedness that she usually displays in the task of avenging slights and overbearing opposition. The penury of the exchequer, the plots of the Nihilists, and the discontent of the whole people after the inglorious struggle with Turkey, would have imposed on any other Government a policy of rest and economy. ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... old noble family; grand-nephew of the succeeding, but renounced his title and devoted his life and all his means of living to the promotion of his Socialist scheme, reducing himself in the end to utter penury; he made few disciples, though some of them were men of distinction; he is credited by Carlyle with having discovered, "not without amazement, that man is still man, of which forgotten truth," he bids us remark, "he had made a false application"; that is, we presume, by reorganisation from without ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... read it in thine eyes! Though thou sing'st, art gay, thy secret bravely keeping, That I may not be sad, yet all alone thou'rt weeping— My head aches for thy misery; Yet leave her, for thine own good, my dear Pascal; She would so greatly scorn a working smith like thee, With mother old in penury; For poor we are—thou ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... spurns parental influence; the selfishness which would trade in principles, and bargain away public measures for private gain,—these, and such as these, are the conclusive proofs of public vice. Even the deplorable appearances which penury exhibits are counterfeited, and we hesitate to give alms lest we should encourage an impostor. The benevolent man distrusts the beggar who asks for a night's lodging, and turns him away, fearful that he might prove an assassin ...
— Reflections on the Operation of the Present System of Education, 1853 • Christopher C. Andrews
... store-room; and there is generally a second wicket for timely escape. The only furniture consists of mats, calabashes, and a standing bedstead of rude construction, or a bamboo cot like those built at Lagos,—in fact, the four bare walls suggest penury. But in the "small countries," as the "landward towns" are called, where the raid and the foray are not feared, the householder entrusts to some faithful slave large stores of cloth and rum, of ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... Black Hole, in a word? Jos's position in life was not grand enough to entitle him to a house in Moira Place, where none can live but retired Members of Council, and partners of Indian firms (who break, after having settled a hundred thousand pounds on their wives, and retire into comparative penury to a country place and four thousand a year); he engaged a comfortable house of a second- or third-rate order in Gillespie Street, purchasing the carpets, costly mirrors, and handsome and appropriate planned furniture by Seddons from the assignees of Mr. Scape, lately ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... importance of these punishments we must remember that they implied confiscation of property. Thus whole families were orphaned and consigned to penury. Penitence in public carried with it social infamy, loss of civil rights and honors, intolerable conditions of ecclesiastical surveillance, and heavy pecuniary fines. Penitents who had been reconciled, returned to society in a far more ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... wherewith to clothe my bride," and the crone cried out, "Robber, whence shalt thou find cloth and coin? unhappy some one whom thou designest to seize and deprive of his daily bread and reduce to poverty and penury!" The Commander of the Faithful held his peace and went forth intending for his Palace, where he donned the royal robes and taking seat upon his throne bade summon marble-cutters and carpenters and plasterers and house- painters. Then, as they came ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... steps towards Mossgiel and Mauchline. He had several reasons, and all serious ones, for taking Ayrshire in his way to the Nith: he desired to see his mother, his brothers and sisters, who had partaken of his success, and were now raised from pining penury to comparative affluence: he desired to see those who had aided him in his early struggles into the upper air—perhaps those, too, who had looked coldly on, and smiled at his outward aspirations after fame or distinction; ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... to his eyes her ample scroll, Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll. Chill penury suppressed his noble rage, And froze the genial current ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... this ye affluent, And when the overplus of your fortunes disturb Your minds, think how little stops the lash of penury, And makes the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Whittington • T. H.
... motley Jerusalem throng. There were endless diversities and phases, doubtless, of human character and history there. The once proud formalist, the once greedy extortioner, the hated tax-gatherer, the rich nobleman, the child of penury, the Roman officer, the peasant or fisherman of Galilee, the humbled publican, the woman from the city, the reclaimed victim of misery and guilt! All were there as types and samples of that diversified multitude who, in every age, were to own Him as ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... who withholds the giving of himself to the world, does it at his peril, at the cost of mental and moral penury. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... say that he had faith that the Almighty would keep him from being dashed to pieces on the pavement. There is a high authority as to such cases,—"Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." If God had promised that people should never fall into the miseries of penury under any circumstances, it would be faith to trust that promise, however unlikely of fulfilment it might seem in any particular case. But God has made no such promise; and if you leave your children without ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... pity. A guilty passion, amounting to a madness, left on the moral character of the unhappy man a stain at which even libertines looked grave. He tried to make the errors of his private life forgotten by splendid and perilous services to a public cause; and, having endured in that cause penury and exile, the gloom of a dungeon, the prospect of a scaffold, the ruin of a noble estate, he was so unfortunate as to be regarded by the party for which he had sacrificed every thing as a coward, if not a traitor. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of the Directors?" Then, without giving him time to answer, he continued: "What have they done with that France I left so brilliant? I left peace; I find war. I left victories; I find reverses. I left the millions of Italy, and I find spoliation and penury. What have become of the hundred thousand Frenchmen whom I knew ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... branch of an English potentate. During his early youth he had to contend against the machinations of a malignant uncle, who would have robbed him of his large possessions, and left him in black despair, to have eaten the bread of penury. His courage and understanding, however, conquered this difficulty, and at the age of fourteen he was quietly admitted to an university. Here he continued peacefully to wander amid the academic bowers, until the blast of war rung in his ears, and ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... Thus we make answer: Richard is a king, In Cyprus, Acon, Acre, and rich Palestine. To get those kingdoms England lent him men, And many a million of her substance spent, The very entrails of her womb were rent: No plough but paid a share, no needy hand, But from his poor estate of penury Unto his voyage offer'd more than mites, And more, poor souls, than they had might to spare. Yet were they joyful; for still flying news— And lying I perceive them now to be— Came of King Richard's ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... pieces of gold—the only money he had left, from his once exhaustless riches. He had little apprehension of what was to follow—that Yussef would leave him without support; that his future life was to be passed in penury; nay, that his daughters would be compelled to earn his subsistence and their own by the labor of their hands. Yet even in that indigent condition, says Aben Lebuna, and through the sadness which covered their countenances, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... Shore, did either of the succeeding kings redress her wrongs, though she lived to the eighteenth year of Henry the Eighth, She had sown her good deeds, her good offices, her alms her charities, in a court. Not one took root; nor did the ungrateful soil repay her a grain of relief in her penury and comfortless old age. ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... liberties of his country; to the scenes of his manhood, when he had preached the gospel of his divine Master to the heathen of the remote wilderness; and to the scenes of riper years, when the hard hand of penury had lain heavily upon him. While thus occupied, almost forgetting himself in the multitude of his thoughts, he was suddenly disturbed, and even terrified, by loud hurrahs from behind, and by a furious pelting and clattering ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... and usefulness and love and God, are not subject to the tariff of gold. Poverty, we conclude, is not in itself grievous. Indeed, there are in poverty blessings which many of us know, and from which we would not be separated without keen regret. But penury is hard. When poverty pinches like winter's night, when fuel fails, and hunger is our company, then poverty becomes harsh and unpalatable, and not to be boasted of; though even penury has spurred many a sluggish life to conquering moods. ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... them without measure. In time of Ahaz, an hundred thousand and twenty Were slain at one time for their idolatry. Two hundred thousand from thence were captive led, Their goods dispersed, and they with penury fed. Seldom they fail it, but either the Egyptians Have them in bondage, or else the Assyrians. And alone they ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... subject his meager resources to the least strain possible, Dennis at last succeeded in securing, in one of the more pretentious stores on Baxter Street, a contrivance for the relief of penury and threadbare gentility known at that time by the name ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... be no controversy; the poetry of Burns has had most powerful influence in reviving and strengthening the national feelings of his countrymen. Amidst penury and labour his youth fed on the old minstrelsy and traditional glories of his nation, and his genius divined that what he felt so deeply must belong to a spirit that might lie smothered around him, but could not be extinguished. Burns "knew his own worth, and reverenced ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... female to some individual, in which she complained that herself and daughter were reduced to the greatest misery, on account of the dishonesty of a lawyer. The secretary was part of a lot of furniture, which a woman of middle age had been compelled by her penury to sell; and I was told by the dealer that the woman and her daughter seemed to belong to the upper classes of society, and to bear their reverses with great ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... wharves, and vessels tugging idly at their chains, then looking out to sea past Fort Sumter, could see the ships of the blockading-squadron maintaining the watchful guard that was slowly reducing the city to penury. What wonder that the blood of the good people of Charleston boiled, and that they built, and hurled against their hated enemy, weird naval monsters, shapeless torpedo-boats running beneath the water, or huge rams that might even batter in the ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... Passed each other without heeding, in their travail, teen, or joy, Some in void unvisioned listlessness inwrought with pallid traces Of keen penury's annoy. ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... merely defends it because it makes for him a good living with little work on his part. Ofttimes he will not drink a drop himself or allow any of his employes to touch liquor. He is in the business for the money he can get out of it, not caring how much poverty and penury others get. With a low idea of his duty toward his fellow-beings, he argues that as long as men and boys will drink the deadly stuff which he sells, he as well as anyone else, has a right to profit by ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... her life be with you? A constant battle with hardship and penury on a little prairie farm, where with her own hands she must bake and wash and sew for you, or, even worse, a lonely waiting in some poor lodging while you were away months together railroad building. Is this the lot you would propose for her? Now, and there is no reason ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... and honored friend, Joseph Bridau. She who is to be my wife, with an instinctive divination of my dearest wishes, has declared her intention of living far from the world in complete retirement. You, who have done so much to lighten my penury, have been left in ignorance of my love; but you will understand ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... account? I hope to see their canals running blood by the flight of their burning houses. Oh, the kind, noble, generous lord, whom they have slaughtered!—Other vassals have rebelled under the pressure of imposts and penury but the men of Liege in the fullness of insolence ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... the poor man can abide Oppression, want, the scorn of pride, The curse of penury. Companion of his lonely state, He is no longer desolate, And still can brave an adverse fate With ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... to be aristocratic;—why so is a puzzle; as its plain meaning is a tenant-farmer, and nothing more nor less. So he had played with the name till he became fond of it, and considered that he had a right to it, through seven long years of weary struggles, penury, disappointment, as he climbed the Parnassian Mount, writing for magazines and newspapers, subediting this periodical and that; till he began to be known as a ready, graceful, and trustworthy workman, and was befriended by one kind-hearted ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... ought equally, or even more so, to enjoy these things— inasmuch as his age is better suited for the enjoyment of them— him, poor {youth}, have I driven away from home by my severity! Were I to do this, really I should deem myself deserving of any calamity. But so long as he leads this life of penury, banished from his country through my severity, I will revenge his wrongs upon myself, toiling, making money, saving, and laying up for him." At once I set about it; I left nothing in the house, neither movables[27] nor clothing; every thing I scraped together. Slaves, ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... means of subsistence. I was unknown to my neighbours, and desired to remain unknown. I was unqualified for manual labour by all the habits of my life; but there was no choice between penury and diligence,—between honest labour and criminal inactivity. I mused incessantly on the forlornness of my condition. Hour after hour passed, and the horrors of want began to encompass me. I sought with eagerness for an avenue by which I might escape from it. The ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... the time of his death had no relations living; two years earlier he had married a girl as penniless and as noble as himself, and had lived to see a daughter born, destined to inherit his nobility, his penury, and the bare walls ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... town to town and through wide scattered realms Journeyed with ponderous folios in their hands; And often, starting from some covert place, Saluted the chance comer on the road, 475 Crying, "An obolus, a penny give To a poor scholar!" [I]—when illustrious men, Lovers of truth, by penury constrained, Bucer, Erasmus, or Melancthon, read Before the doors or windows of their cells 480 By moonshine through mere lack of ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... mountains of difficulties which father Fray Rodrigo had to conquer in softening the harshness of those beasts; and the sweat and labor that it would cost him to make them comprehend the dictates of reason (from which they were very far), while he was suffering extreme penury in all things necessary to life, can be imagined. His food was only wild herbs and some fruit, which was not on all occasions accompanied by a mouthful of biscuit, sent as a great treat, if possible, from Manila. His rest, day and night, was so little, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... world. There you will find whatever delicacy is brought from France, and whatever is curious from the Indies. Even the commonest meats have the rarest relish imparted to them. There is neither a plenty which gives a notion of extravagance, nor a frugality that discovers penury or meanness.' ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... fulfill its function and before the rural child can have educational opportunities even approximating those given the town child. And until this is accomplished, the exodus from the farm will continue and ought to continue. Pride, prejudice, and penury must not be allowed to deprive the farm boys and girls of their right to ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts
... of her sex. Moreover, a social odium goes with her loss. Other women regard her as a sort of permanent tyro, and treat her with ill-concealed disdain, and deride the very virtue which lies at the bottom of her experiential penury. There would seem to be, indeed, but small respect among women for virginity per se. They are against the woman who has got rid of hers outside marriage, not because they think she has lost anything intrinsically valuable, but because ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... appearance; and its quick and plentiful reproduction in all the chief cities, not only of Spain but of the outside Spanish dominions, though highly flattering to the author, could not have greatly helped to lighten his life of toil and penury. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... regard to the suitors, who, as Telemachus had learned, were plotting to intercept and kill him. When Eumaeus was gone, Minerva presented herself to Ulysses, and directed him to make himself known to his son. At the same time she touched him, removed at once from him the appearance of age and penury, and gave him the aspect of vigorous manhood that belonged to him. Telemachus viewed him with astonishment, and at first thought he must be more than mortal. But Ulysses announced himself as his father, and accounted for the change ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... a new man, who acts upon new principles; he must therefore entertain new ideas and form new opinions. From involuntary idleness, servile dependence, 20 penury, and useless labor, he has passed to toils of a very different nature, rewarded by ample subsistence.—This is ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... He was a man at least twenty years the senior of his visitor—a handsome man of his kind, dark, deliberate of his movements, bred in the courtesies, but seemingly, to the acuter intuitions of Montaiglon, possessed of one unpardonable weakness in a gentleman—a shame of his obvious penury. ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... had been one of the many unfortunates who are swept off by rum, and in the prime of early manhood he had gone, leaving a young wife with four children in absolute penury. ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... he was so good a poet, and sang such religious songs." It may be that in a few years Fable, who changes mortalities to immortalities in her cauldron, will have changed Mary Hynes and Raftery to perfect symbols of the sorrow of beauty and of the magnificence and penury of dreams. ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... that contained so little furniture and so many emaciated human beings, into which his charitable zeal led him every day, he pictured himself, pale and thin, without food, without books; and although he had the harmless vanity to believe that privation and penury would affect him less deeply than the poor devils he visited, the idea that he saw his own face before him, as it might have been had he not had the good luck to be his father's heir opened his hand still wider, and added to the money ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... priest had then suggested that it was his host's intention to banish him from Carbury Hall. Roger had made no reply, and the priest had of course been banished. But even this added to his misery. Father Barham was a gentleman, was a good man, and in great penury. To ill-treat such a one, to expel such a one from his house, seemed to Roger to be an abominable cruelty. He was unhappy with himself about the priest, and yet he could not bid the man come back to him. It was already being ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... Smithhouse is yet fresh in memory. He had a fair estate, which in a few years he so lost at play, that he died in great want and penury. Since that Mr Ba—, who was a clerk in the Six-Clerks Office, and well cliented, fell to play, and won by extraordinary fortune two thousand pieces in ready gold; was not content with that, played on, lost all he had won, and almost all his own estate; sold his ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... penury, indigence, need, destitution, privation, neediness, impecuniosity, pauperism; deficiency, paucity, infecundity, dearth, lack, meagerness, sterility, barrenness. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... the screan, and the man handed him a raged shirt over the top of it, while I sat in a chair and dreamed. What I reflected, would the School say if it but knew! I felt no remorce. I was there, and beyond the screan, changing into the garments of penury, was the only member of the Other Sex I had ever felt I could truly ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... all the strange circumstances would take upon them the charge of an infant, about to be immediately forsaken by its mother. At length, one of the maid-servants at the inn remembered to have heard Mrs Brandon say, that rather than live on among all her squalidness and penury, she would endeavour to suckle another child besides her own; and, as she was then in redundant health, and had two fine breasts of milk,—for a fine breast of milk would not have served my turn, or, rather, Mary and I must have taken it ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... rebuff, to sneer upon sneer! Leave it to the endless, never-ceasing sight of ugliness; the endless, never-ceasing sight of selfishness; of pettiness, emptiness, heartlessness, hatefulness! Leave it to heat and to cold, to dust and to dirt, to hunger and penury, to headache and heartache, and bitter, bitter loneliness! Leave it to time! Leave it to time!—Oh ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... Their first efforts have been for the destitute and sick. At the home they minister daily to the suffering and destitute sick wherever found; some requiring only temporary medical aid and nursing; others, whom God has chastened with more continuous suffering, requiring, in their penury, constant care and continual ministration." There is also under their charge a church school for vagrant children, and one also for the children of those comfortably ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... "My daughter and myself have lived for many years in Christchurch, Hants. We keep the inn there—not the principal inn, but a small public-house on the outskirts of the village. It will be a change for us both to come into five thousand a year after such penury. Of course, Mr. Pash, you will act for my daughter ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... trustees on the marriage of Madame Phoebus, to accumulate, "and when the genius and vanity of her husband are both exhausted, though I believe they are inexhaustible," remarked Mr. Cantacuzene, "it will be a nest's-egg for them to fall back upon, and at least save them from penury." The duke had no doubt that Mr. Cantacuzene was of imperial lineage. But the latter portion of the letter was the most deeply interesting to Lothair. Bertram wrote that his mother had just observed that she thought the Phoebus family would like to meet Lothair, and begged Bertram to invite ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... is briefly as follows: Strepsiades, a wealthy country gentleman, has been brought to penury and deeply involved in debt by the extravagance and horsy tastes of his son Phidippides. Having heard of the wonderful new art of argument, the royal road to success in litigation, discovered by the Sophists, he hopes ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... soon will be adopted by their children, and by this means the little substance they may gain through hard toil, for you well know their gain is small if your profit is what you desire, falls through the grated bars of drunkenness and waste, into the waiting pit of penury and pauperism. Bear with me, gentlemen, if I speak thus plainly, and believe me it is for your own comfort as well as for the cultivation of the untouched soil in the minds of your workmen, that I feel called ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... sleeping, wake—if feasting, rise before I turn away. It is the hour of fate, And they who follow me reach every state Mortals desire, and conquer every foe Save death; but those who doubt or hesitate, Condemned to failure, penury, and woe, Seek me in vain and uselessly implore. I answer not, ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... tide of thought still swiftly flows Rejoicing onward, ere the icy breath Of sorrow falls upon the sunny fount, And chains the music of its dancing waves.— What is the end of all his lovely dreams— The bright fulfilment of his earthly hopes? Too often penury and dire disease, Neglect, a broken heart, an early grave!— Oh, had he tuned his harp to truths divine, With saints and martyrs sought a heavenly crown, How had his ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... nymph, whose wanton eye Transfix'd his soul, and kindled amorous flames, Chloe, or Phillis, he each circling glass Wisheth her health, and joy, and equal love. Meanwhile, he smokes, and laughs at merry tale, Or pun ambiguous, or conundrum quaint. But I, whom griping penury surrounds, And Hunger, sure attendant upon Want, With scanty offals, and small acid tiff, (Wretched repast!) my meagre corpse sustain: Then solitary walk, or doze at home In garret vile, and with a warming puff Regale chill'd fingers: or from tube as ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... no less Her honour and her sweetness, Soon her small hand to kiss Taketh he, Saying, "Now for that stress Drave thee here thou shalt bless God, for so ending this Thy penury." ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... Madeleine had, besides the visible signs which we have mentioned, another symptom which was none the less significant for not being visible. This never deceives. When the population suffers, when work is lacking, when there is no commerce, the tax-payer resists imposts through penury, he exhausts and oversteps his respite, and the state expends a great deal of money in the charges for compelling and collection. When work is abundant, when the country is rich and happy, the taxes are paid easily and cost the state nothing. It may be said, that there is one ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... eventide, whilst the Solons of the little commonwealth were making laws, solving problems and building defences against the common enemy—the wolf of penury and hunger—I was sitting on the steps or on the low window-sills at the Eyry, meditating and thinking ever of the beautiful things with which I was surrounded; thinking of the glowworms I found in the path to Cow ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... and Madame Nourrisson gave him startling details as to the secret penury of certain so-called fashionable women. This dealer in cast-off clothes, getting lively as she talked, pictured herself unconsciously while telling of others. Without betraying a single name or any secret, she made the three ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... together no considerable part of the said inadequate pension was paid; and not being able to maintain the attendants necessary for their protection in a city in which all magistracy and justice was abolished, they were not only liable to suffer the greatest extremities of penury, but their lives were exposed to the attempts of assassins: the condition of one of the said princes, called the Nabob Bahadur, being by himself strongly expressed in three letters to the said Resident Bristow,—the first dated the 28th ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... great; his disposition, easy, generous and liberal. His friends profited by the one, and abused the other. Loss succeeded loss; misfortune crowded on misfortune; each successive day brought him nearer the verge of hopeless penury, and the quondam friends who had been warmest in their professions, grew strangely cold and indifferent. He had children whom he loved, and a wife on whom he doted. The former turned their backs on him; the latter died broken-hearted. He went with the stream—it had ever been his failing, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... the fall of 1783, the Continental army was disbanded, the war-worn and victorious soldiers, who had at last wrung victory from the reluctant years of defeat, found themselves fronting grim penury. Some were worn with wounds and sickness; all were poor and unpaid; and Congress had no means to pay them. Many among them felt that they had small chance to repair their broken fortunes if they returned to the homes they had abandoned seven weary years before, when the guns of the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... where lay the habitations of men, nothing audible anywhere but the deep rumble of the waves' bellow, or the chirp of the birds overhead, or, perhaps, when the wind was southerly, the church bells on Sunday morning. Never have I looked upon such lonely penury, and yet there, even there, these forlorn women kept their souls alive. "Yes," they said, "we're working when we can get the work, and trusting, ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... Brandes; and would follow to the end. Why? Neither knew. It seemed to be their destiny, surviving everything—their bitter quarrels, the injustice and tyranny of Brandes, his contempt and ridicule sometimes—enduring through adversity, even penury, through good and bad days, through abundance and through want, through shame and disgrace, through trickery, treachery, and triumph—nothing had ever broken the occult bond which linked these two. And neither understood why, but both seemed to be vaguely conscious that neither was entirely ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... original pioneers of New England, and they had been born and reared in rude settlements. They never indulged the delusion that this region was a land flowing with milk and honey. Before they came they knew that they were to wrest their living from an uncongenial soil, to struggle with penury and to conquer only by constant toil and self-denying thrift. The forest would supply them with the materials for shelter and fuel and to some extent with food and clothing. All the rest must depend upon their own exertions. There was a pleasure ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport
... exigencies into which he is thrown. The poor man may thus possess a capital of which none of the misfortunes and calamities of life can deprive him. We have known men who have been suddenly reduced from affluence to penury by misfortunes, which they could neither foresee nor prevent. A fire has swept away the accumulations of years; misplaced confidence, a flood, or some of the thousand casualties to which commercial men are exposed, have stripped them of their possessions. To-day they have been prosperous, to-morrow ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... name, but should confront Kent himself—should sit a quiet spectator of a ceremony which would publicly declare the invalidity of her right to bear his name— should by her own act consign her child to degradation and penury— should be a witness and a consenting party to the utter destruction of all her hopes of happiness. She knew that the lark might as well plead with the iron bars as she with Henry of Bolingbroke. And the penalty of her refusal was not merely poverty ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... courage, and told his highness that you could not possibly live on less than fifteen thousand florins, and that you appealed to him to assist you in maintaining the dignity of the ducal house of Savoy, and saving its representatives from absolute penury." ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... thousand, to provide a competent maintenance for them. If these last remain obstinate, and it be idle to hope that youths of talents without fortune, whatever be their piety, will serve the church of God at the expense of devoting themselves to infallible penury, and all the wretchedness which belongs to it—is it wise to weaken the hands and discourage the hearts of those ministers already settled pastors, or to furnish their people with arguments in their own vindication for leaving them ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... which shall graduate its volume to the amount needed and which shall prevent times of artificial stringency that frighten capital, stop employment, prevent the meeting of the pay roll, destroy local markets, and produce penury and want. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft
... Correspondent I had met in the Transvaal led me to expect. Indeed, after six months of successful lecturing on the subject of the Boers before various lyceums in the country, I was reduced to a state of penury which actually drove me to thievery of the pettiest and most vulgar sort. There was little in the way of mean theft that I did not commit. During the coal famine, for instance, every day passing the coal-yards to and ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... sentimental girl, who had been spoiled by early novel-reading. Her father had a small place at court, lived beyond his fortune, educated his daughter, to whom he could give no portion, as if she were to be heiress to a large estate; then died, and left his widow absolutely in penury. This widow was the old lady who lived in the cottage in the New Forest. It was just at the time of her husband's death, and of her own distress, that she heard of the elopement of her daughter from school. Mr. Hartley's parents were so much incensed by the match, that he ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... in penury, and he was taught by charity. Even when a boy he was forced to labor for his bread. In the first opening of manhood a terrible calamity fell upon him, in magnitude fit to form the mystery or centre of an antique drama. He had to dwell, all his days, with ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... this time seemed like one in a dream:—she had ever loved Dorilaus with a filial affection; and to find herself really his daughter, to be snatched at once from all those cares which attend penury, when accompanied with virtue, and an abhorrence of entering into measures inconsistent with the strictest honour, to be relieved from every want, and in a station which commanded respect and homage, was such a surcharge of felicity, that she was less able to support than all the fatigues ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... union, Mary. Afterward, in his distress over this loss, Ray Turner seemed even more incompetent for the management of business affairs. As the years passed, the daughter grew toward maturity in an experience of ever-increasing penury. Nevertheless, there was no actual want of the necessities of life, though always a woful lack of its elegancies. The girl was in the high-school, when her father finally gave over his rather feeble effort of living. Between parent and child, the intimacy had been ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... offered, so far as wealth was concerned, she remembered the injunction of the Scriptures, "Be ye not unequally yoked to unbelievers," and like Moses, who refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, but chose rather to suffer affliction, penury, and loss with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season, she declined to enter into the proposed matrimonial connection. And then she decided to emigrate to the ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... "Oh objects of penury and want!" again exclaimed the incognito; "Oh vassals of famine and distress! Come and listen to this wantonness of wealth! Come, naked and breadless as ye are, and learn how that money is consumed which to you might bring raiment ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... of the Holy Spirit being limited to the pulpit or the platform, or to the inward experiences of the religious life, He is just as truly and properly concerned with the affairs of the shop and the street, the nursery and the kitchen, the chamber of suffering and the home of penury, as with preaching the Gospel or ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... of youth. Youth is the only season for enjoyment, and the first twenty-five years of one's life are worth all the rest of the longest life of man, even though those five- and-twenty be spent in penury and contempt, and the rest in the possession of wealth, honours, respectability, ay, and many of them in strength and health, such as will enable one to ride forty miles before dinner, and over one's pint of port—for the best gentleman in the land should not drink a bottle—carry on one's argument, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... met his downfall, it was also a Waterloo for General Hugo. His property was confiscated, and penury took the place ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... to learn reading at the little village schoolhouse of Kirkton; and this was all the education he received; the rest he acquired for himself. He found his way to Edinburgh to attend the college there, setting the extremest penury at defiance. He was first discovered as a frequenter of a small bookseller's shop kept by Archibald Constable, afterwards so well known as a publisher. He would pass hour after hour perched on a ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... melon seed and water-chestnuts; men working in teak and blackwood; fan makers and jade cutters; eggs preserved in what appeared to her as petrified muck; bird's nests and shark fins. She glimpsed Chinese penury when she entered a square given over to the fishmongers. Carp, tench, and roach were so divided that even the fins, heads and fleshless spines were sold. There were doorways to peer into, dim cluttered holes with shadowy forms ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... turnspits in the palace were clamouring for their unpaid wages. The unfortunate monarch had already sold his jewels and precious trinkets. Even his clothes showed signs of poverty and patching, and to such a state of penury was he reduced that his bootmaker, finding that the King was unable to pay him the price of a new pair of boots, and not trusting the royal credit, refused to leave the new boots, and Charles had to wear out his ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... even the priest's marriage fees for his life was always one of penury, so he gave him an old silver watch. When he was Head of the Italian Legion he was content to sit in the dark, because he discovered that candles were not served out to the common soldiers. The red shirts of his following ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... generations. That favor he continues in laying those family burdens on another's shoulders, to spare you the toil and care, anxiety and slow decay, that this violent change of circumstances means. It would be a sin to relapse from this perfection to that penury." ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... sermons ready printed and piled up, on every text that is not difficult, our London trading St. Thomas in his vestry, and add to boot St. Martin and St. Hugh, have not within their hallowed limits more vendible ware of all sorts ready made: so that penury he never need fear of pulpit provision, having where so plenteously to refresh his magazine. But if his rear and flanks be not impaled, if his back door be not secured by the rigid licenser, but that a bold book may now and then issue forth and give the assault to some of his old collections ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... had been born in an aristocratic age, in the midst of a nation where the hereditary wealth of some, and the irremediable penury of others, should equally divert men from the idea of bettering their condition, and hold the soul as it were in a state of torpor fixed on the contemplation of another world, I should then wish that it were possible for me to rouse that people to a sense of their ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... reason the specific word that appeals to him most may be of no value in addressing others. "Free silver" means to one set of men the withdrawal of money from investment, consequent stagnation in business, followed by the closing of factories and penury among laborers. To others it means three dollars a day for unskilled labor, fire, clothes, and something to eat. Again, if one wished to present the horrors of devastating disease, in the South he would mention yellow fever, in the North smallpox; but to a lady who saw six little brothers and ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... book and switched off the electric light. He lay a long while in the moonlight, thinking himself far away to earthen walls and guttering candles. He thought of the chill penury of lack of blankets that he had known in winter. Also of the sun's summer glare on white wagon-roads and Kaffir paths. What wonder that wayfarers' eyes amass many wrinkles around them? Yet how young one had kept after all; and at what speed one would age here with ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... peeping over the fences, one takes a long breath. I think I never before quite realized the place of the Fence in civilization. This is the Land of the Unfenced, where crouch on either hand scores of ugly one-room cabins, cheerless and dirty. Here lies the Negro problem in its naked dirt and penury. And here are no fences. But now and then the crisscross rails or straight palings break into view, and then we know a touch of culture is near. Of course Harrison Gohagen,—a quiet yellow man, young, smooth-faced, and diligent,—of ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... God whom he had often met amid the moss on the sea-cliffs and in the offing was the God who pardoned sin and by His grace saves painter and boor. The Lord bless the unappreciated artists; they do a glorious work for God and the world, but for the most part live in penury, and the brightest color on their palette is ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... Leslies, but they had been long since sold. The vicarage, still in their gift, might be worth a little more than L100 a year. The present incumbent had nothing else to live upon. He was a good man, and not originally a stupid one; but penury and the anxious cares for wife and family, combined with what may be called solitary confinement for the cultivated mind, when, amidst the two legged creatures round, it sees no other cultivated mind with which it can exchange an extra-parochial thought—had lulled him into a lazy mournfulness, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... Shem endure in the years that I was with him. Penury and persecution were often his portion, and how his wife's death wounded him I have already intimated. But it was the revival of the Sabbatian heresy by Jacob Frank that caused him the severest perturbation. This Frank, who was by turns a Turk, a Jew, and a Catholic, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... turned very red. She had unfortunately seen many such certificates of penury, but all that was part of her private life, and she had been shocked beyond measure to be confronted with this too-familiar evidence of impecuniosity in the home of a lady who represented to her an assured income ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape. I can now look back upon three score and four years, in which little has been done, and little has been enjoyed; a life diversified by misery, spent part in the sluggishness of penury, and part under the violence of pain, in gloomy discontent or importunate distress. But perhaps I am better than I should have been if I had been less afflicted. With this I will try ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... cried, "has shown that Count Robert was your uncle, and brought you up, and battled with Stephen for sixteen years for your sake, and for you was at last made captive? Had you called to mind his services you would not have driven my brothers to penury and ruin. My eldest brother's tenure, given him by your grandfather, you have curtailed. My youngest brother, a stout soldier, you have driven by stress of want to quit a soldier's life and give himself to the perpetual service of ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... and then to the rich men who had cast in much more. "This poor widow hath cast in more than they all. For all these have of their abundance cast in unto the offerings of God: but she of her penury hath cast in all the living ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... expensive Madrid. It is one of the dearest capitals in Europe. Foreigners are never weary decrying its high prices for poor fare; but Castilians live in good houses, dress well, receive their intimate friends, and hold their own with the best in the promenade, upon incomes that would seem penury to any country parson in America. There are few of the nobility who retain the great fortunes of former days. You can almost tell on your fingers the tale of the grandees in Madrid who can live without counting the cost. The ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... throngs of henchmen brokers, they create untold ravage and despair. Fearful cruelty is shown by them then. The law cannot reach it, though years of imprisonment would be far too good for it. Families are plunged into penury by their subtly circulated frauds; forgery and embezzlement in hundreds of individual cases result; banks are betrayed and shattered; disgrace and suicide are sown broadcast like seeds fecund in poison. One often marvels that assassination does not ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... Jaffier Ali Khan, who had been deposed to make room for the last actor, was brought from penury and exile to a station the terms of which he could not misunderstand. During his life, and in the time of his children who succeeded to him, parts of the territorial revenue were assigned to the Company; and the whole, under the name ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... is incalculable and incredible, and yet there is no diminution of desperation. The prosperity which made a mock of honest poverty is now, as by the retributive judgment of God, sinking itself into penury, and the planter who spoke of the Northern serf as a creature just one remove above the brute, is himself learning by bitter experience to be a mud-sill. Verily the cause of the poor and lowly is ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... not face the world with any assurance if she lost her beauty. She had charm, cleverness, rank, position, money. She knew all her advantages. But at that moment she seemed to be confronting penury. And as she continued to look into the mirror ugliness seemed to grow in the woman she saw like a spreading disease till she felt that she would be frightened to show herself to anyone, and wished she could hide ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... your hogs, and eat huskes with them? what prodigall portion haue I spent, that I should come to such penury? Oli. Know you where you are sir? Orl. O sir, very well: heere ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... some he silenced. He invited all to withdraw their lands and moneys from his charge, and some accepted the invitation. They spurned his parting advice to sell, and the policy they then adopted, and never afterward modified, was that "all or nothing" attitude which, as years rolled by, bled them to penury in those famous cupping-leeching-and-bleeding establishments, the courts of Louisiana. You may see their grandchildren, to-day, anywhere within the angle of the old rues Esplanade and Rampart, holding up their heads in unspeakable poverty, their ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... coolly; "it is the only way out of all our difficulties, and it is not the first time I have had the thought. Is it not better to put an end to this dog's life than to die by inches in penury and distress?" ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... sentiment of respect to bravery, nor consideration for the habits and feelings of their prisoners, influenced the British Government during that time of triumph. The mode in which those unfortunate captives were left in the utmost penury and necessity to petition for some provision, after their estates were escheated, plainly manifests how little there was of that sympathy with calamity which marks the ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... with very little notice on our part. He left us near Glenelg, and we thought on him no more till he came to us again, in about two hours, with a present from his master of rum and sugar. The man had mentioned his company, and the gentleman, whose name, I think, is Gordon, well knowing the penury of the place, had this attention to two men, whose names perhaps he had not heard, by whom his kindness was not likely to be ever repaid, and who could be recommended to him ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... granary, underground, Or burrow for their bed the purblind moles, Or toad is found in hollows, and all the swarm Of earth's unsightly creatures; or a huge Corn-heap the weevil plunders, and the ant, Fearful of coming age and penury. Mark too, what time the walnut in the woods With ample bloom shall clothe her, and bow down Her odorous branches, if the fruit prevail, Like store of grain will follow, and there shall come A mighty winnowing-time ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... his poor unsheltered head Did Penury her sickly mildew shed; Ah! where are fled the charms of vernal grace, And joy's wild gleams ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... receiving the numerous foreign literati who resorted to him. Of all the promised preferments, he would have chosen the mastership of St. Cross for its seclusion. Here is a great man making great demands, but reposing with dignity on his claims; his wants were urgent, but the penury was not in his spirit. The commissioners, as they listened to his autobiography, must often have raised their eyes in wonder, on the venerable and dignified ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... your own establishment—at least, I suppose you have—-your own chambers, your own servant. I live with an aunt. If I broke away and set up a separate menage, I should be talked about. To be her own mistress and excite no remark, a girl must be in penury." ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... think that Bouchalka's wildness had been the desperation which the tamest animals exhibit when they are tortured or terrorized. Naturally luxurious, he had suffered more than most men under the pinch of penury. Those first beautiful compositions, full of the folk-music of his own country, had been wrung out of him by home-sickness and heart-ache. I wondered whether he could compose only under the spur of hunger and loneliness, and whether his talent might not subside with his despair. ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... Borrow had failed to find remunerative work. Wherever he wandered there had always been a home in the Willow Lane cottage. It is probable that much the greater part of the period of his eight years of penury was spent under her roof. Yet we may be sure that the good mother never once reproached her son. She had just that touch of idealism in her character that made for faith and hope. In any case never more was Borrow to suffer penury, or to be a burden on his mother. Henceforth she was to ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... something to do with the matter, we can hardly doubt. At the dissolution of the monasteries, the more idle, ignorant, and profligate members of the mendicant orders, unable to live any longer on the alms of the public, sunk, probably, into vicious penury. The frightful misgovernment of this country during the minority of Edward the Sixth, especially the conversion of tilled lands into pasture, had probably the effect of driving the surplus agricultural population into the great towns. But the social history ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley |
