"Pittance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to plead often in the court, and to covet a base pittance, and with this pursuit he comforts his sluggish life, doing with venal tongue ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... with thy thoughts high cheer, Say grace for others dining, And keep thy pittance clear From poison ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... they soon learnt to their disgust and indignation that they were only to receive one month's pay, a miserable pittance to men long in want. On the smouldering embers of mutiny someone wilfully, or from mere expediency, threw the spark: "Go to the British Embassy and demand pay; there is lots of money there." The idea caught like wildfire, and the whole mass ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... table, be it said—in a curious language which might have been mistaken for French. To B. and me he spoke an equally curious language, but a perfectly recognizable one, i.e., Cockney Whitechapel English. He showed us a perfectly authentic mission-card which certified that his family had received a pittance from some charitable organisation situated in the Whitechapel neighbourhood, and that, moreover, they were in the habit of receiving this pittance; and that, finally, their claim to such pittance was amply ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... cluttered up with documents of musty interest. Among them are a number that gain a pathetic interest by the frequence of the appeals of musicians or their widows for a pittance of charity from the hand of some royal or ducal patron. If there be in these democratic days any musician who feels humiliated by the struggle for existence with its necessities for wire-pulling and log-rolling and sly advertisement, ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... Robinson was thrust in, and his pittance of bread and water with him; the door, which fitted like mosaic, was closed. The steps retreated carrying away hope and human kind; there was silence, and the man shivered in the thick black air that seemed a ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... life fell to the lot of Kepler. The most crushing poverty all his life oppressed him. For, though his nominal salary as Astronomer Royal was large enough, yet the treasury was so exhausted that it was impossible for him ever to obtain more than a pittance. What a sad tragedy do these words, in a letter to Maestlin, reveal:—"I stand whole days in the antechamber, and am nought for study." And then he adds the sublime compensation: "I keep up my spirits, however, with the thought that I serve, not the Emperor alone, but the whole ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... came!" exclaimed the virago. "My husband is not a wild animal on exhibition, and I am not going to let in every idle stranger that interferes with his work and cuts off my bread. God knows he gives me little enough, without lessening the pittance by wasting his time talking to you or ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... had just returned from playing tennis, and the sculptor had to leave the place, but not without receiving a warm glance from the lady interrupted in her pleasure. This was all his substance, pittance and enjoyment during a whole month, since on the brink of his joy always came the said husband, and he always arrived wisely between a point-blank refusal and those little sweet caresses with which women always season their refusals—little things which reanimate love and ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... coveted. Lands and money had been bestowed on him so liberally that he was one of the richest subjects in Europe. Albemarle had as yet not even a regiment; he had not been sworn of the Council; and the wealth which he owed to the royal bounty was a pittance when compared with the domains and the hoards of Portland. Yet Portland thought himself aggrieved. He could not bear to see any other person near him, though below him, in the royal favour. In his fits of resentful sullenness, he ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... — 'I am sure (added he) I meant nothing more than to lay down a comfortable plan of living within the bounds of our fortune, which is but moderate.' 'Sir (said she), you are the best judge of your own affairs — My fortune, I know, does not exceed twenty thousand pounds — Yet, even with that pittance, I might have had a husband who would not have begrudged me a house in London' — 'Good God! my dear (cried poor Baynard, in the utmost agitation), you don't think me so sordid — I only hinted what I thought — But, I don't pretend to impose —' 'Yes, sir (resumed ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... Phalanx. Their ambition to learn to read and write was as strong as their love of freedom, and no opportunity was lost by them to acquire a knowledge of letters. So ardent were they that they formed squads and hired teachers, paying them out of their pittance of seven dollars per month, or out of the bounty paid to them by the State to which they were accredited. In a number of instances the officers themselves gave instructions to their command, and made education a feature and ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... Cimarosa, from memory." At hearing this amazing declaration, the rest of the competitors slunk away abashed, and Berlioz, after singing an aria from Spontini, was accorded the place, which guaranteed him fifty francs per month—a pittance, indeed, and yet a substantial addition to his resources. This pot-boiling connection of Berlioz was never known to the public till after he became a distinguished man, though he was accustomed to speak in vague terms of his early dramatic career as if it were ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... still more unmerciful embargo and non-importation laws, calculated as it were to fill up the little chasm in the ills which the enemy alone could not inflict; the entire coasting trade destroyed, and even the little pittance of intercourse from one port to the other in the same state destroyed [by the embargo], the planters of the Southern and Middle states, finding no market at home for their products, are driven to the alternative of wagoning them hundreds ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... the distant and respectful air with which the wife of the warlike baron was addressed by the spouse of the humble feuar. And now, so much was her pride humbled, that she was to ask to share the precarious safety of the same feuar's widow, and her pittance of food, which might perhaps be yet more precarious. Martin probably guessed what was passing in her mind, for he looked at her with a wistful glance, as if to deprecate any change of resolution; and answering ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... night, at some low theatrical house, at once put him in possession of a few more shillings weekly, and enabled him to gratify his old propensity. Even this resource shortly failed him; his irregularities were too great to admit of his earning the wretched pittance he might thus have procured, and he was actually reduced to a state bordering on starvation, only procuring a trifle occasionally by borrowing it of some old companion, or by obtaining an appearance at one or other of the commonest of the minor theatres; and when ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... "sportularii," or basket-clerks, because, according to Origen, Tertullian, Cyprian, and others, they had their portion of sustenance, given them in baskets. These portions consisted but of a small pittance, sufficient only for their livelihood, and were given them on the principle laid down by St. Matthew, that the ministers of Jesus Christ were to eat and drink only such things as were ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... Vernon; "how can a poor fellow with my small pittance pretend to aspire to the hand of one with such splendid expectations? My poverty, as I've long foreseen, must mar my every hope, even if every other ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... earlier years, he had risked well nigh all he possessed. He did not live to learn that it had completely failed, and that his wife and child were left with what would have seemed to him the merest pittance for their support. ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... to know that some of the investments poor father made would turn out badly, and that our income would be reduced to a mere pittance? For I tell you, Miss Belding," added the invalid less vehemently, "that we have almost nothing, divided by three, to live on. That is, an income for one must support us three. Aunt Jinny is ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... they were not in community with the defunct at the moment of his death, which community is only valid through his consent. In the Jura and the Nivernais, he may pursue fugitive serfs, and demand, at their death, not only the property left by them on his domain, but, again, the pittance acquired by them elsewhere. At Saint-Claude he acquires this right over any person that passes a year and a day in a house belonging to the seigniory. As to ownership of the soil we see still more clearly ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... a quarter; though I tell her that so much wealth will be a heavy burden to me. Eight hundred a year—that is all she will accept, and it is to be settled on her children. Eight hundred; it is a mere pittance." ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... were amused with games and festivals. From the stately baths they might be seen to issue without shoes and without a mantle. They loitered in the public streets, and dissipated in gaming their miserable pittance. They spent the hours of the night in the lowest resorts of crime and misery. As many as four hundred thousand sometimes assembled to witness the chariot races. The vast theatres were crowded to see male and female dancers. The amphitheatres were still more largely attended by the better populace. ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... was not easy for Violet to stay in the house. She needed a thousand little things—or thought she did. And there was the old track and the easy money. But she knew what the pittance that came from Henry Fenn meant to him, so in pride and in shame one night she turned back home when she had slipped clear to the corner of the street with her paint on. When she got home she threw herself upon the bed and wept like a child ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... are actuated by principles of honour and a spirit of enterprise, you have little to expect from them. They ought to have such allowances as will enable them to live like, and support the character of gentlemen; and not be driven by a scanty pittance to the low and dirty arts which many of them practise, to filch the public of more than the difference of pay would amount to, upon an ample allowance. Besides, something is due to the man who puts his life ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... answered the hermit, "your thoughts, like those of the ignorant laity, are according to the flesh. It has pleased Our Lady and my patron saint to bless the pittance to which I restrain myself, even as the pulse and water was blessed to the children Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego, who drank the same rather than defile themselves with the wine and meats which were appointed them by ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... the scales Are held by some just woman, who maintains By spinning wool her household,—carefully She poises both the wool and weights, to make The balance even, that she may provide A pittance for her babes."— ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... crew had escaped she knew not, as she had seen none of them since her being cast ashore on a plank; but as now the hopes of her reaching the sacred house were cut off, if the sultan would allot her a small hut, and a trifling pittance for her support, she would spend the remainder of her days in prayers for the prosperity ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... value of the minor estate entailed on him, of which he had the absolute right of disposal. This estate, on Sir Timothy's death, was found to be burdened to the extent of L50,000, which Mary borrowed on mortgage at 3-1/2 per cent. This large sum included L13,000 due to Lady Shelley for "the pittance" Mary had received; L4,500 to John Shelley for a mortgage Shelley signed to pay his debts, probably for the L2,000 borrowed on leaving Marlow, when he paid all his debts there; so that if any trifle was left unpaid ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... shone the yellow haired madam of the Peoria Street resort, the star patron of that great gambling room for women, each one of whom was eagerly beckoning the well-groomed book-maker, feverishly anxious to get her pittance on the race-track favorite, when a connecting door was pushed suddenly open and in rushed a fashionably dressed, brutal-faced young Russian Jew, holding loosely an immense roll of money. Tens, twenties, hundreds—he counted them until three hundred dollars ...
— Chicago's Black Traffic in White Girls • Jean Turner-Zimmermann
... Harry, quite sincerely, poor old man, grew compassionate and grandly benignant. The young people were prudent, but he would come to their aid. His pittance added to theirs—even now would set all things straight. He would never stand in the way ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... novels, the meager sum of fifty dollars. I sold some of my wife's trinkets to purchase paper and ink, and worked diligently, you can guess how many weeks, until they were in English as readable as the French of their author. The task accomplished, I went to my patron, expecting of course to have the pittance counted down in current notes or gold; but——the market for such literature was by this time over stocked; he had supplied it too liberally; and with some insulting excuse ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... of those who are living up to the utmost verge of a narrow income. As she reviewed the endless instances of her mother's self-abnegation which memory supplied—her cheerful industry, her brave struggle to live like a gentlewoman on a pittance, her tender thought for the welfare and happiness of her children—she felt she could walk through a burning fiery furnace if by so doing she could earn ease and repose for her mother's ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... one or two trundle-beds in a single room. Here the whole family and all the visitors sleep. We have sought to rest with thirteen of us in a room, perhaps 15 by 20 feet, and not a window in it and the doors shut. Fortunately the large-mouthed fireplace gave a pittance of ventilation. No carpets are used, and furniture is very limited. I believe nine-tenths of the people could put all their goods on a couple of loads and be ready to move ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 01, January, 1884 • Various
... the county—the municipal authorities have no voice in it; and the State, in its legislative benevolence, has provided thirty cents a day for the maintenance of each prisoner. This small sum, in the State of South Carolina, where provision is extremely high, may be considered as a paltry pittance; but more especially so when the magnificent pretensions of South Carolina are taken into consideration, and a comparison is made between this meagre allowance and that of other States. Even Georgia, her sister State, and one whose ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... replied I, immediately. "Dimitri has received a mere pittance from that which they had stolen from him. It is a thing which is done everywhere. On the banks of the Rhine, when a traveler is ruined at roulette, the conductor of the game gives him ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... responsibilities. You have found for yourself a beautiful corner of the world. That is all very well for you, but how about the rest? How about the millions who are chained to the cities that they may earn their living pittance, whose wives and children fill the churchyards, the echoes of whose weary, never-ceasing cry must reach you even here? They are the people, the sufferers, fellow-links with you in the chain of humanity. You may ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... kind of inspiring music in the whir and clatter, that spoke of food and warmth and raiment. Good feeling and sympathy had been touched; and though some of the workmen, who were harassed by back debts, looked rather ruefully at their small weekly pittance, still it was so much better than no money and ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... she; "and nothing seek. 'Twere base in me to rob my lord unware; Our hands will earn a pittance ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... at a time when Victor Hugo had revived an admiration for Shakspeare among the French. He married her, but did not live with her long, owing to her bad temper and ungovernable jealousy; though after the separation he honorably contributed to her support out of the pittance he was earning. Among his great works are the opera, "Benvenuto Cellini;" the symphony with chorus, "Romeo and Juliet;" "Beatrice and Benedict;" "Les Troyens," the text from Virgil's "AEneid;" the symphony, "Harold in Italy;" the ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... send our girls—our own girls whom we have been so proud and fond of, that have been making the old house brighter and brighter ever since they were born—out into a cold world, to have to struggle for a pittance, to lose their youth and its privileges, to be knocked about, and perhaps ill-treated, and looked down upon by people ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... experienced many hardships. It was charged that they were worked hard, badly treated and deprived of all their wages except what was given them for rations and a scanty pittance, wholly insufficient to purchase necessary clothing and provide for their families.[20] Not a few of the refugees for these reasons applied for permission to return to their masters and sometimes such permission was granted; for, although under ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... has had without responsibility— and now she's away; and if I may be allowed the remark, I should say you were well rid of her. An excellent dinner awaits you here—more than enough for one, a bare pittance for two; a courteous banker awaits you in Florence. Old Palamone will scratch his eyes out to save you. After dinner, sir, ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... on cakes made of unleavened dough, which he kneaded on a stone and baked in the hot ashes, now here, now there, is a hole dug out in the ground, and heated with dead wood. Potatoes, milk, hard cheese, blackberries, and a small cask of old gin that he had distilled himself, were his daily pittance; but he knew nothing about love, although he was accused of all sorts of horrible things, and therefore nobody dared abuse him to his face; in the first place, because Bru was a spare and sinewy man, who handled his shepherd's crook like a drum-major does his staff; next, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... Jewish artisans who were legally entitled to residence in that city to sell eatables in the market, on the technical ground that under the law artisans could only trade in the articles of their own manufacture, thus robbing the poor Jewish workman of the miserable pittance which his wife was anxious to contribute by her honest labor towards the ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... strength, he might perhaps continue to hold his own in this merciless conflict; perhaps, only; but what if some accident, such as befalls this man or that in every moment of time, threw him among the weaklings? He saw his mother, in her age and ill-health, reduced to the pittance of the poorest; his sister going forth to earn her living; himself, a helpless burden upon both.—Nay, was there not ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... dinner—to my story I. To you my friend who happier days have known And each calm comfort of a home your own, This is bad living: I have spent my life In hardest toil and unavailing strife, And here (from forest ambush safe at least) To me this scanty pittance seems a feast. I was a plough-boy once; as free from woes And blithesome as the lark with whom I rose. Each evening at return a meal I found And, tho' my bed was hard, my sleep was sound. One Whitsuntide, to go to fair, I drest Like a great bumkin in my Sunday's best; A primrose posey in my ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... articles of beauty and luxury, in which to array themselves, were put upon the market at a trifling cost, compared to what they were manufactured at in my own country. Pallid and haggard women and children, working incessantly for a pittance that barely sustained existence, was the ultimatum that the search after the cause of cheap prices arrived at in my world, but here it traveled from one bevy of beautiful workwoman to another until it ended at the Laboratory where Science sat throned, ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... aboard a crowded ferry-boat, And held him through his plunges till he fell, Subdued by pain. The boy for no reward, But for the devil in him, did the thing. But had he been a man, and sought reward, Had he been banged about this rocking world As I have, holding terror by the horns, Could he not ask a pittance?—Leave me, friend. I am exhausted, taking all the brunt And getting kicks for pay. Nay, leave me, Sir, The argument is over. Let ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... was the proper office To forbear doing is often as generous as to do To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind to't To fret and vex at folly, as I do, is folly itself To give a currency to his little pittance of learning To go a mile out of their way to hook in a fine word To keep me from dying is not in your power To kill men, a clear and strong light is required To know by rote, is no knowledge To make little things ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... masses of the students who go to Tuskegee the general public can have no idea. It is a great thing for a boy who never earned more than the merest pittance a day to go to a school where he can secure an education by working for it, and at the same time be fitted to earn wages, as many of them do, three and even five times as high as before going there. This accounts, in a large measure I am sure, for the fact that ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... he did not know it before. It struck him as interesting now; the Van Heigens had a blue daffodil then, and Julia went to them for some purpose besides earning a pittance as companion. She had not taken a blue daffodil; she said so; she also said at another time she had failed in the object of her coming and that failure and success would have been alike discreditable. Poor Julia! And now here was some one in Norfolk exhibiting a ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... if you left a thousand pounds to the old aunt who brought your mother up, and has a very scanty pittance, it would be worthy of your kindly nature, and no more ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... Letitia is to leave her and the children to starve. For how could Luttrell support them all on a miserable pittance of five hundred pounds a year? The idea is preposterous. It is the same old story over again; the same now as it was four months ago, without alteration or improvement; and, as she tells herself, will be ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... death is another blot on Greece, and on what is called the English party in Greece, by whom he was treated with the greatest neglect. Colonel Hane was removed from active employment in 1842, when King Otho placed many Philhellenes and Greeks on a trifling pittance of half-pay, in order to retain a number of Bavarian officers in his service, who were richly endowed with staff-appointments. As a Philhellene, a constitutionalist, and an Englishman, it was natural that Colonel Hane should ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... and three companions were, on the third day, put on board the Baltic-Merchant, a hospital ship, then lying in the sound. The wretchedness of his situation was in some degree alleviated by a small pittance of pork and parsnip which a good- natured sailor spared him from his own mess. The fourth day of their captivity, Rawlings, Hanson, M'Intire, and himself, all wounded officers, were put into one common dirt-cart and dragged through the city of New York as objects of derision, reviled as rebels, ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... huddled together like beasts of the field, without regard to health or comfort. And they live thus, not because they are worthless or because they are wholly without ambition or desire to live otherwise, but because they must thus continue as economic slaves receiving still the miserable pittance of a wage of eighteen pence or 36 cents a day that was paid to their forefathers at the dawn of emancipation. The system is now so well established that the employers apparently regard it as their sacred right and privilege to exploit the laborers, and the laborers themselves have been led ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... on the table which his noble guest could eat or drink. Lord Byron did not touch meat, fish, or wine; and as to the biscuits and soda-water he asked for, there were, unfortunately, none in the house. He declared he was equally pleased with potatoes and vinegar, and on this meagre pittance he succeeded ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... residing in his own country. But his appointment was hastily bestowed on another; and it was fortunate for him that a private friend stepped in and presented him with the living of Milston, near Ambrosebury, Wilts, worth L120 a-year. This, which Miss Aiken calls a "pittance," was probably equivalent to L250 now. At all events, on the strength of it, he married Jane, daughter of Dr Gulstone, and sister to the Bishop of Bristol, who, in due time, became the mother of our poet. Lancelot was afterwards made Prebendary ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... commerce must be at the backbone of every great nation. Tradesmen!" exclaimed my grandfather. "Where would any of us be were it not for trade? We sell our tobacco and our wheat, and get money in return. And your father makes a deal here and a deal there, and so gets rich in spite of his pittance." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... that the uninviting pittance set aside for his midday repast, remained for several days untouched. Samuel made his appearance regularly as ever, and bore with the same meekness the gibes of his fellow-pupils, or the taunts of Madame Durer, and worked with the same ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... obtain a renewal of it from the widow, or even an account of the state of her brother's affairs. Her letters for three years past had remained unanswered, and she would have been exposed to the horrors of the most abject want, but for a pittance quarterly doled out to her ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... up his abode in Gratz, where, living upon a mere pittance, which was all that remained to him of the once princely estates of his family, in Upper Styria, he devoted himself to the minute and laborious investigation of the marvelously authenticated tradition of Vampirism. He had at his fingers' ends all the great and little works ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... hand while she is helpless otherwise, and who has had a very bad husband, and several very careless and cold-hearted children; but she has one son who comes to see her regularly once every three months, and brings her the scanty pittance on which she subsists; and surely I, with youth, and health, and work to do, should try to be cheerful, even though the work is not such as I could prefer.—— And you have been in France as well as England since ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... end! The little warmth and love of his cherishing arms about her cold body completed the pittance of happiness she ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... did not enter on that line of business, and similar failures in numerous efforts made me feel, as so many others have found, that the world-oyster is hard to open. However, I was resolute to build a nest for my wee daughter, my mother, and myself, and the first thing to do was to save my monthly pittance to buy furniture. I found a tiny house in Colby Road, Upper Norwood, near the Scotts, who were more than good to me, and arranged to take it in the spring, and then accepted a loving invitation to Folkestone, where my grandmother and two aunts were living, to look for work there. And ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... rose, looking at his kinsman with an incredulous gaze. He could not believe that all his hopes were utterly ruined; that he was, indeed, cast off with a pittance which to him seemed ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... I go in cruel sport to say, "I love thee, Jane; appoint the happy day?" 'Why seek her sweet ingenuous reply, 'Then grasp her hand and proffer—poverty? 'Why, if I love her and adore her name, 'Why act like time and sickness on her frame? 'Why should my scanty pittance nip her prime, 'And chace away the Rose before its time? 'I'm young, 'tis true; the world beholds me free; 'Labour ne'er show'd ...
— Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs • Robert Bloomfield
... measure!" Mr. Nowell thought savagely. "That means a pittance that would serve to keep life in a pauper, I suppose; and that is to be contingent upon her husband's permission." He made no audible reply to his daughter's speech, and seemed, indeed, so much absorbed in his own thoughts, that Marian doubted if he had heard her; and so the rest of the long evening ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... Azuria. Well, many years ago a friend of mine, daughter of our King Christopher, fell to worrying about her cousin, a profligate who divided his time between the palace and Paris. As a punishment for various escapades the King had curtailed his allowance to a mere pittance, yet he seemed in spite of this to have as much money as before. It was this fact that worried my ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... legacy, and whom she is determined to disappoint. Her money shall all go in a lump to a distant relation of her husband's, and Janet shall be saved the trouble of pretending to cry, by finding that she is left with a miserable pittance. ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... Cuthbert, with his merry smile. "Oh, yes, I have a profession. It does not pay me quite so well as it might do, but I think I shall do better by-and-bye. Then I have a couple of hundreds a year of my own. Is it too much of a pittance to begin upon?" ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... merely of reeling off by rote, and imperfectly, to their pupils lessons which they themselves imperfectly understand. The total number of teachers engaged in primary education exceeds 100,000, but their salaries barely average Rs.8 (10s. 8d.) a month. So miserable a pittance abundantly explains their inefficiency. But there it is, and a new army of teachers—nearly half a million altogether—would have to be trained before primary education, whether free and compulsory, as Mr. Gokhale would have it, or optional and for payment, ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... it is; money paid, and I've had to borrow; and engaging that Italian firm for the job was the best thing I could manage. What English firms wanted was out of all reason. I don't wonder at Lloyds selling wrecks for anything they will fetch. A pittance in cash is better than getting into the hands of these sharks" (sharks was heavily underscored). "And what guarantee have I that the firm will pocket even that pittance? How do I know that I shall see even the ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... dear to an Englishman exactly in comparison as he knows, or does not know, the ways of the place. A Turk, I have no doubt, could live there in a very genteel sort of manner on what you would consider a moderate pittance." ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... contemptuous defiance. "What have you to do with us?" that expression seemed to say. "The little power you might have once possessed over the tribe of unrealities is gone! You have bartered it for a pittance of the public gold. Go then, and earn your wages!" In short, the almost torpid creatures of my own fancy twitted me with imbecility, and not ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... else I must speak as I found them. I hope they were not a just sample of their whole nation; for these gentry would exercise every imposition, and even insinuate the thing that was not, the more easily to plunder us of our hard earned pittance of small change. Had they shown any generosity, like the British tar, I should have passed over their conduct in silence; but after they had stripped our men of every farthing, they would say to them—"Monsieur, you have won all our money, now lend us a little change to get ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... gentlemen arrive to be great scholars, it must, I think, be either by means supernatural, or by a method altogether out of any road yet known to the learned. But I conceive the fact directly otherwise, and that many of them lose the greatest part of the small pittance they ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... recognizing by instinct the priceless worth of them, and almost afraid at the idea of living a common, daily life on them. For Julia Cloud had read about rugs. She knew that in far lands poor peasant people, whole families, sometimes wove their history into them for a mere pittance; and they had come to mean something almost ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... to this department, offered him large inducements to engage in a private school, but Mr. Freese had faith in the success of the experiment, and was determined not to abandon it until its success was insured. The pay given by the city was but a beggarly pittance, and his labors inside and out of the school room were exceedingly arduous, but no discouragement could daunt his zeal, and he resisted blandishments as he treated opposition, with indifference. The unexpected and severe ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... division. There ought to be wealth enough—there is wealth enough for all in this blessed country. The earth gives it; the sun gives it: labour extracts and piles it up. Why should one class take three-fourths of it and leave you and your fellow-workers in the cities the miserable pittance which is all you have to starve and breed on? Why?—why? I say. Why!—because you are a set of dull, jealous, poor-spirited cowards, unable to pull together, to trust each other, to give up so much as a pot of beer a week for the sake of your children and your liberties and your ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 'I find myself without sympathy or help from any who are associated with me, whose interests, one would think, would impell them at least to inquire if they could render some assistance. For nearly two years past I have devoted all my time and scanty means, living on a mere pittance, denying myself all pleasures, and even necessary food, that I might have a sum to put my telegraph into such a position before Congress as to insure success to the common enterprise. I am crushed for want of means, and means of so trifling a character too, that they who ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... from my hand he took His pittance every night, He did it with a jealous look, And, when he could, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... sleep with another gentleman of my own age, gouty, a bad sleeper, kicking in his old dreams, and snoring; to march down my vale of years at word of command, accommodating my tottering old steps to those of the other prisoners in my dingy, hopeless old gang; to hold out a trembling hand for a sicky pittance of gruel, and say, "Thank you, ma'am," to Miss Prim, when she has done reading her sermon. John! when Goody Twoshoes comes next Friday, I desire she may not be disturbed by theological controversies. You have a very fair ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... were her warm friends. Here she settled down to systematic work, trying to keep her expenses for six months within four hundred dollars. Still, when most cramped for means herself, she was always generous. Once, when living on a mere pittance, she loaned fifty dollars to a needy artist. In New York she gave an impecunious author five hundred dollars to publish his book, and, of course, never received a dollar in return. Yet the race for life was wearing her out. So tired was she that she said, ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... else? [Touches the piano.] You think you produce this wealth because you've got your money in it? You pass out a pittance to those who do produce it, and when they ask for more than a pittance you take their tools away from them! If they rebel you set the police on them. That's ...
— The Gibson Upright • Booth Tarkington
... Captivity a kindness—meant To shield him from insanity or shame— Such shall be his meek guerdon! who was sent To be Christ's Laureate—they reward him well! Florence dooms me but death or banishment, Ferrara him a pittance and a cell,[309] Harder to bear and less deserved, for I 140 Had stung the factions which I strove to quell; But this meek man who with a lover's eye Will look on Earth and Heaven, and who will deign To embalm with his celestial flattery, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... saloon, and after many rebuffs succeeded in getting employment as errand-boy in a large importing house. The salary was a mere pittance, but it kept him in clothes and coarse food, until one day, about a year after his apprenticeship there, he chanced to save the life of Mr. Belgrade, the senior partner. A gas-pipe in the private office of the firm exploded, and the place took ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... that if these terms were accepted, the debts, if paid at all, must come out of Lucilla's fortune. Owen's own portion would barely clothe him and afford the merest pittance for his child until he should be able to earn something after his three years' apprenticeship. She trusted that he was convinced, and went up-stairs some degrees less forlorn for having a decided plan; but a farther discovery awaited her, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... deep reverence that flesh of the dead was used to sustain the living in more than one cabin near the lake. But it was not used until after the pittance of food left by the First Relief had long been consumed; not until after the wolves had dug the snow from the graves. Perhaps God sent the wolves to show Mrs. Murphy and also Mrs. Graves where to get sustenance ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... they entered into a solemn compact that they would thenceforward devote themselves body and soul to the attainment of an academical degree. Yet they were both poor. One was but a shoemaker's apprentice, while the other was a pupil teacher earning but a miserable weekly pittance. One could do the parts of speech; the other could not. One had struggled with the pans asinorum; the other had never seen it. I may mention that the young pupil teacher is now a curate in the Church of England. He is a graduate of Cambridge University ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... his darkened youth. Hilda and her mother would live as they could, and when the mother died Sigmundskron must go to the hammer. At all events it was not encumbered with debts, and its sale would leave the child a pittance to save her from starvation; possibly she would have more than before, but Frau von Sigmundskron could not judge of that. Possibly, too, Hilda's sixty-four quarterings would help her to gain admittance as a lady-canoness ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... I blest indeed, and crown'd of fate As kings are crowned, as bards in their estate Are rapture-fraught, re-risen above the dust. Then were I torture-proof, and on the crust Of one kind word, though as a pittance thrown, I'd live for weeks! My tears I would disown And pray, contented with my discontent, As hermits ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... the doctor, whom Mrs. P. does not condescend to visit: that man educates a mirific family, and is loved by the poor for miles round: and gives them port-wine for physic and medicine, gratis. And how those people can get on with their pittance, as Mrs. Ponto says, is a wonder ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... The responsibility for the neglected stepdaughter had similarly been flung upon his shoulders. And, satisfied with this manner of disposing of his worldly concerns, Standing intended to fare forth, shorn of any possession but a bare pittance for his daily needs, to lose himself, and all the shadows of a haunted mind, in the dim, remote interior of the unexplored forests of Northern Quebec. The whole ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... "Therefore," urged the good man, his voice trembling with emotion, "redeem the time, my unhappy brethren, which is yet left; and remember, that, with the grace of Him to whom space and time are but as nothing, salvation may yet be assured, even in the pittance of delay which the laws of your country ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... years he managed to dispose of all but a mere pittance of her fortune, and humiliated her in a thousand ways besides. His only decent act was to die and leave her undisturbed for the remainder of her life. Your uncle assisted in her support and saved the remnant of her ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... satin and muslin. Mrs Gunning, as improvident, was almost drawn in by them, when word came of a card debt that their papa owed to Sir Horatius Blake, and the unfortunate lady received not even the pittance that provided herrings for six hungry mouths; so that they were like to come down to dry bread, which event fairly ended all talk ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... the same frugality, if we may dignify it by that name. He was a large dealer in ready-made under-clothing, for the making of which he paid starvation prices; but, unfortunately, the poor sewing-girls, whom he employed for a pittance, were not so well able to defend themselves against imposition as the smart little boot-black, who "knew his rights, and ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... separate, never to see each other again voluntarily. But that idea, even as a possibility, had not entered the mind of either. They had lived a long time; they were practical people. They knew from the outset that somehow they must arrange to go on together. The alternative meant a mere pittance of alimony for her; meant for him social ostracism and the small income cut in half; meant for both ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... the ladies it was a great delight to go on Sunday evenings to the parlour, where they met the good fathers, each one a master of his own particular instrument. These were the only concerts in those days, and with their pittance assured, and no anxiety as to housing or clothing themselves, and with the love of art as their only duty, you may imagine, Gabriel, what musicians they could become. For this reason, when the friars were expelled from their convents the Jeronomites were not the worst ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... will not spare us according to his merciful capitulation at Sodom; if his goodness please not to pass over a great deal of bad for a small pittance of good, or to look upon us in the lump, there is slender hope for mercy, or sound presumption of fulfilling half his will, either in persons or nations: they who excel in some virtues being so often defective ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... toiling away in a place like this for a mere pittance," he went on; "probably hardly enough to keep soul and body together. That's a confounded shame for a pretty girl like you. Work isn't for such as you—you ought to be out in the sunshine, dressed in silks and velvets and diamonds galore. It's bad enough for the old and ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... persuaded Opie to leave his straggling meadow, that carpets our vista to the river, for a wild garden this summer, instead of selling it as "standing grass," which the purchasers had usually mown carelessly and tossed into poor-grade hay, giving a pittance in ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... of eighteen or nineteen, and his mother, a lady of about fifty, or it might be less. The mother wore a widow's weeds, and the boy was also clothed in deep mourning. They were poor—very poor; for their only means of support arose from the pittance the boy earned, by copying writings, and translating ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... positions in which a man can find himself, with the external appearance of large estates and an established and important position, but in reality with scarcely any income at all, just enough to satisfy the mortgagees, and leave himself a pittance not much more than the wages of a gamekeeper. If his aunt, Lady Randolph, had not been so good to him it was uncertain whether he could have existed at all, and when the heiress, whom an eccentric will had consigned to her charge, fell in his way, all her friends concluded as ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... to their labour and toil, cold, and half naked upon the roads, and divide their eight or ten pence worth of food at night among a sick family of five or eight persons. Some one is often kept at home, and prevented from earning this pittance, by the fear that some one of their family will die before their return. The first habitation we entered in the Castle-haven district was literally a hole in the wall, occupied by what might be called in America, a squatter, or a man who had burrowed a place for himself and ...
— A Journal of a Visit of Three Days to Skibbereen, and its Neighbourhood • Elihu Burritt |
