"Prodigality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... half-hour or so, we had eyes for nothing but the varied beauties of nature which lay spread before us in such luxuriant prodigality. ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... failure—how far off they seem from the scale upon which the universe is managed or deports itself! If the earth should be blown to pieces to-day, and all life instantly blotted out, would it not be just like what we know of the cosmic prodigality and indifference? Such appalling disregard of all human motives and ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... knocked at his door without getting a dollar, and some of them got twenty. For several years Clarkson and I had him on our minds because of this gentle and yielding disposition until at last we discovered that in one way or another, in spite of a reckless prodigality, he prospered. The bread which he cheerfully cast upon these unknown waters, almost always returned (sometimes from another direction) in loaves at least as large as biscuits. His fame steadily increased with his charity. I did not understand the principle of his manner ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... of the party-strife at Rome, kept up an illicit intercourse with the wife of Milo; but how much the hostility of party may have had to do with such a report, cannot be decided. In his writings, Sallust expresses a strong disgust of the luxurious mode of life, and the avarice and prodigality, of his contemporaries; and there can be no doubt that these repeated expressions of a stern morality excited both his contemporaries and subsequent writers to hunt up and divulge any moral foibles in his life and character, especially as in his compositions he struck into a new ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... were discovered. In certain diggings men picked pure gold from the rock crevices with a spoon or a knife point. As to values, they were guessed at, the only currency being gold dust or nuggets. Prodigality was universal. All the gamblers of the world met in vulture concourse. There was little in the way of home; of women almost none. Life was as cheap as gold dust. Let those who liked bother about statehood and government and politics; the average man was too busy digging ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... it be gently urged that in travelling from Paradise to Sunrise City an accurate name is prodigality. When Judge Menefee— sanctioned to the act by his grey hair and widespread repute—had introduced himself to the lady passenger, she had, herself, sweetly breathed a name, in response, that the hearing ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... seemed much glad of that it was no more, though in my mind I think it too much, and I pray God keep me so to order myself and my wife's expenses that no inconvenience in purse or honour follow this my prodigality. So by coach home. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... production. In some localities legislation was invoked to urge us toward the fields and gardens. We have shown ourselves a wasteful people, and in the wake of our wastefulness have followed a dismal train of disasters, cold, hunger, and many another form of distress. Deplore and repent of our prodigality as we may, the effects abide to remind us of our decline from the high plane of industry, frugality, and conservation of leisure. Nor can we hope to avert a repetition of this crisis unless education comes in to guide ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... did nothing for a whole year but feast and make merry, wasting and consuming, with the utmost prodigality, the great wealth that his predecessors, and the good vizier his father, had with so much pains ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... followed this there was a great ringing of bells in Casterbridge, and the combined brass, wood, catgut, and leather bands played round the town with more prodigality of percussion-notes than ever. Farfrae was Mayor—the two-hundredth odd of a series forming an elective dynasty dating back to the days of Charles I—and the fair Lucetta was the courted of the town....But, Ah! the worm i' the ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... as soon as my six sheets (at fifty dollars a sheet, that would be three hundred dollars) were printed and published, the editor would say to me, 'We are even now.' So you see that it would be unpardonable prodigality on my part to publish anything; therefore I have determined not to work at all, in order to avoid spending my money, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... should wreck the fraternal moral sense. It was plain that Charles had entered upon the broad road which leads from the cradle to the workhouse—and that he rather liked the travelling. So profuse was his prodigality that there were grave suspicions as to his method of acquiring what he so openly disbursed. There was but one opinion as to the melancholy termination of his career—a termination which he seemed to regard as eminently desirable. But one day, when the good pastor put it at him in so many words, Charles ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... and the Puerta del Perdon. It was a heavy and complicated erection, of a sumptuous and rococo style, which had cost the second Cardinal de Bourbon a fortune at the beginning of last century. A real forest of woodwork formed the basis of the monument; the riches of the cardinal had created a prodigality of solidity and sumptuousness, and several days were required to fit together the Holy Catafalque, and not ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... empire of fashion was the only one in which the young Catholic could distinguish himself. Let us then charitably set down to the score of his political disabilities the fantastic dissipation and the frantic prodigality in which the liveliness of his imagination and the energy of his soul exhausted themselves. After three startling years he married the Lady Barbara Ratcliffe, whose previous divorce from her husband, the Earl of Faulconville, Sir Ferdinand had ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... in a sense, told against it; for men are prone to call the well-balanced nature cold and the well-regulated life Pharisaic. Addison did not escape charges of this kind from the wild livers of his own time, who could not dissociate genius from profligacy nor generosity of nature from prodigality. It was one of the great services of Addison to his generation and to all generations, that in an age of violent passions, he showed how a strong man could govern himself. In a time of reckless living, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... of winter has a deep moral. The return of Nature, after such a career of splendor and prodigality, to habits so simple and austere, is not lost either upon the head or the heart. It is the philosopher coming back from the banquet and the wine to a cup of water and a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... quoth he, 'you very well know that it is not easy for a people to be filled with our things, and not to have some of our Diabolonians as retainers to their houses and services. Where is a Mansoulian that is full of this world, that has not for his servants and waiting-men, Mr. Profuse, or Mr. Prodigality, or some other of our Diabolonian gang, as Mr. Voluptuous, Mr. Pragmatical, Mr. Ostentation, or the like? Now these can take the castle of Mansoul, or blow it up, or make it unfit for a garrison for Emmanuel, and any of these will do. Yea, these, for aught I know, may do it for us sooner than ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... that appear always clean and bright under the dullest skies, so that when the sun shines every view seems freshly painted and blazing with colour. The freshness of the atmosphere, too, is seldom tainted with those peculiar odours that some French towns produce with such enormous prodigality, and Lisieux may therefore claim a further point in ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... presented itself; new topics were in fact at a premium. Lydia sometimes had premonitions of a famine-stricken period when there would he nothing left to talk about, and she had already caught herself doling out piecemeal what, in the first prodigality of their confidences, she would have flung to him in a breath. Their silence therefore might simply mean that they had nothing to say; but it was another disadvantage of their position that it allowed infinite ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... had been talking, Mrs Morgan had scarcely been able to keep from asking who could possibly have suggested such a carpet. Mr Proctor's chair was placed on the top of one of the big bouquets, which expanded its large foliage round him with more than Eastern prodigality—but he was so little conscious of any culpability of his own in the matter, that he had referred his indignant hostess to one of the leaves as an illustration of the kind of diaper introduced into the new window which had lately been put up in the chapel of All-Souls. "A naturalistic ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... strong hand of a monarch in Russia. These climatic differences produced the frugal Northerner, who had to provide in advance for the winter season, and the hospitable planter of the South, in whom prodigality was induced by the very lavishness of nature about him. It was not strange that by contrast, and seen through the haze of distance, the frugality of the North should appear to be avarice to the South; while the hospitality upon which that section prided itself should seem to be ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... the excess Prodigality, the defect Stinginess: here each of the extremes involves really an excess and defect contrary to each other: I mean, the prodigal gives out too much and takes in too little, while the stingy man takes in too much and gives ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... water, numerous packets of coffee, and immense quantities of sugar and preserved milk. Brown was the fountain-head. The ladies were the distributing pipes—if we may say so; and although the fountain produced can after can of the coveted liquid with amazing rapidity, and with a prodigality of material that would have made the hair of a private housewife stand on end, it was barely possible to keep pace with ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... who swarmed about us, but of such tenuity that they passed through our substance, and we through theirs, without the slightest disturbance of their continuity. All that we knew of Nature taught us that she was tireless in the prodigality of her creative force, and boundless in the diversity of her workmanship; and we now knew that what the ancients called spirit was simply an attenuated condition ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... the meetings of the parliament, when the abuses and prodigality of the court were denounced, a member, punning upon the word etats, (statements,) exclaimed, "It is not statements but States General ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... An union shall he throw,] i.e., a fine pearl. To swallow a pearl in a draught seems to have been equally common to royal and mercantile prodigality. It may be observed that pearls were supposed to possess an exhilarating quality. It was generally thrown into the drink as a compliment to some distinguished guest, and the King in this scene, under the pretence of throwing a pearl into the cup, drops some ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... was unable to resist the temptation to introduce passages of mockery, which are here omitted. Part of his description of the Isles of the Blest has a close and singular resemblance to the New Jerusalem of the Apocalypse. The clear River of Life and the prodigality of gold and of precious ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang
... writing a choric wail. But he would never lose sight of her: he would watch over her—if he gave up everything else in life he would watch over her, and she should know that she had one slave in the world, Will had—to use Sir Thomas Browne's phrase—a "passionate prodigality" of statement both to himself and others. The simple truth was that nothing then invited him so strongly as the ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... but dissolute cardinal, and the prodigality of his charity, rendered him almost as popular as his warlike brother. When he went abroad, his valet de chambre invariably prepared him a bag filled with gold, from which he gave to the poor most freely. His reputation for charity was ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... and Testament The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntington The Death of Robert Earl of Huntington Contention between Liberality and Prodigality Grim ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... free grants of land will be conferred no more." Lord Ripon's regulations were published in London, January 20th, 1831. They were framed to obviate the theoretical and practical evils attributed to the easy acquisition of land; to terminate the prodigality of governors, and the frequent quarrels occasioned by their favoritism; and above all, to prevent laborers from becoming landholders, and the tendency of colonists to scatter over territories they ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... appreciate the excessive confidence, and dissipates in one day a large proportion of your fortune, in the first place it is not probable that this prodigality will amount to one-third of the revenue which you have been saving for ten years; moreover you will learn, from the Meditation on Catastrophes, that in the very crisis produced by the follies of your wife, you will have brilliant opportunities ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... at leisure through the dim vastness of the great Flemish churches, where the eye is satisfied everywhere with the wealth of brass and iron work, and where the Belgian passion for wood-carving displays itself in lavish prodigality. Such wealth, indeed, of ecclesiastical furniture you will hardly find elsewhere in Western Europe—font covers of hammered brass, like those at Hal and Tirlemont; stalls and confessionals and pulpits, new and old, that are mere masses of sculptured wood-work; tall tabernacles ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris
... the amphitheatre. More than twenty years afterwards, when the courtiers of Diocletian represented to their frugal sovereign the fame and popularity of his munificent predecessor, he acknowledged that the reign of Carinus had indeed been a reign of pleasure. [83] But this vain prodigality, which the prudence of Diocletian might justly despise, was enjoyed with surprise and transport by the Roman people. The oldest of the citizens, recollecting the spectacles of former days, the triumphal pomp ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... With what a prodigality of stains, Is fashioned this last entry and design, By one aware of cold, approaching rains,— Who senses, through each iridescent line, A presence at the shoulder—chills and blights, Winds that will snuff ...
— Ships in Harbour • David Morton
... for the interests of both parties. The gradual and inevitable process of ruin which exhibits itself in the long run on every property involving slavery, naturally suggests some element of decay inherent in the system; the reckless habits of extravagance and prodigality in the masters, the ruinous wastefulness and ignorant incapacity of the slaves, the deterioration of the land under the exhausting and thriftless cultivation to which it is subjected, made it evident to me that there were but ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... in Mr. Blithers' eyes but he wiped them time and again as he read this amazing letter,—this staggering exhibition of prodigality. He swore a little at first, but toward the end even that prerogative failed him. He set out in quest of his wife. Not that he expected her to say any more than he had said, but that he wanted her to see at a glance what kind of a child she had brought into the world and to forever hold ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Marquis de Chastellux, is given in the following words: "I wish only to express the impression General Washington has left on my mind; the idea of a perfect whole, brave without temerity, laborious without ambition, generous without prodigality, noble without pride, virtuous without severity." Gen. Scott, Lord Cornwallis, Dr. Wistar, Bishop Soule John Bright, Jenny Lind Goldsmidt, and Dr. Gall are good representatives of this temperament. Fig. 86 is an excellent illustration ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... — N. consumption, expenditure, exhaustion; dispersion &c. 73; ebb; leakage &c. (exudation) 295; loss &c. 776; wear and tear; waste; prodigality &c. 818; misuse &c. 679; wasting &c. v.; rubbish &c. (useless) 645. mountain in labor. V. spend, expend, use, consume, swallow up, exhaust; impoverish; spill, drain, empty; disperse &c. 73. cast away, fool away, muddle away, throw away, fling away, fritter away,; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the general appropriation bills should be conducted with the greatest care and the closest scrutiny of expenditures. Appropriations should be adequate to the needs of the public service, but they should be absolutely free from prodigality. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... Toomey's character had come with his misfortunes. So long as he had money to spend and could ride, arrogant and high-handed, over the obsequious shopkeepers who benefited by his prodigality, and the poor ranchers who had not the means, or often the spirit, to oppose him, he continued to appear to her in the light in which she had first seen him. She adored his imperious temper, his erratic lavish generosity, his Quixotic standards, but with the reversal of their fortunes ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... confirmed the truth of this particular. Lousteau paid the cabman, giving him three francs—a piece of prodigality following upon such impecuniosity astonishing Lucien more than a little. Then the two friends entered the Wooden Galleries, where fashionable literature, as it is called, used ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... the money in his hand, his love for prodigality once more awoke. He rode pampered steeds, clothed himself in the finest furs, went back to his wine, and led such an extravagant life that the money gradually came to an end. Instead of wearing brocade he had to wear cotton, and instead of riding horseback he went to ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... not aware that the philosophic truth contained in these lines has ever before been pointed out. The beautiful lines which the poet, in his prodigality, put into the mouth of one of his gay frolicsome characters, the meaning of them he no doubt thought might have been understood by every one; but his commentators do not seem to have done so. In some editions ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various
... trifling subjects; an unbridled desire to publish family secrets, also to quarrel, to strike, to take revenge, to do evil, to steal, to tell lies, to deceive, to blaspheme; carelessness about the children, intemperance, luxury, excessive prodigality, drunkenness, uncleanness, immodesty, application to magic and witchcraft, impiety, with several other causes. By legitimate causes we do not here mean judicial causes, but such as are legitimate in regard to the other married partner; separation from ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... superstition, and on the other, as Quesnay and Turgot, who opposed unjust taxation. It was through them that the nation awoke to a consciousness of its wrongs, and saw for the first time, in the clear light of truth, the inveterate pride of the nobles, the rapacity of the clergy, and the prodigality of the court. The farmer then realized to the full the injustice of a government which could calmly allow taxes and feudal claims to swallow all but the twentieth part of the profit of his labor. Citizens discovered the ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... that the sewing woman, Carolina, who had only made five shirts in a week, not being sick, should make nine. He entered in his account "thread and needle, one penny," and used said thread and needle himself. All this closeness and contempt for shiftlessness and prodigality were perfectly consistent with a large and hospitable way of living; for during many years of his life he kept open house at Mt. Vernon. This frugal and prudent man knew exactly what it meant to devote his "life ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot
... conversation sparkled. Quip and repartee shot across the "festive board," and all went merry as a dinner-bell. The host was satisfied, and proud withal. The next morning he approached Delmonico's cashier with an air of reckless prodigality. ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... helpless animal creation any where more remorselessly practised; or the pride of pedantry, and the vain-glory of human learning, any where more vaunted? In short, are the vices of gluttony, drunkenness, pugilism, and prodigality, any where more indulged? Yet, may we not say, as in the days of William of Wykeham, that "Manners make the man!"—and, on the subject of public duties, might we not derive a lesson even from the ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... general state of society under William and the general state of society under George II. If we compared the courts of George IV. and William with the company of a low tap-room, we should not flatter the tap-room. Broad-blown coarseness, rank debauchery, reckless prodigality, were seen at their worst in the abode of English monarchs. A decent woman was out of place amid the stupid horrors of the Pavilion or of Windsor; and we do not wonder at the sedulous care which the Queen's guardians employed to keep her beyond reach of the prevailing ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... means, fair or foul, were, sad to say, prominent characteristics in the American nation in many other respects so great. To counteract these evils, which were great enough to have ruined any European state in a couple of years, there was, however, the marvellous prodigality of nature—a bounteousness and richness in the yield of the soil and the depths of the earth hardly equalled in any other part of the world, and in consequence princely fortunes were accumulated in an incredibly short space of time. Millionaires abounded, and monopolists, compared with ...
— The Dominion in 1983 • Ralph Centennius
... beginning any tendency in public or private station to regard frugality and economy as virtues which we may safely outgrow. The toleration of this idea results in the waste of the people's money by their chosen servants and encourages prodigality and extravagance in the home life ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... had preceded him hours before. Andrew McBain had hid out, the idle women were all a-twitter; but Mary Roget Fortune was calm. She had heard the news from the very first moment, when L. W. had dropped in on McBain; but the more she heard of his riotous prodigality the more it left her cold. His return to town reminded her painfully of that other time when he had come. She had watched for him then, her knight from the desert, worn and ragged but with his ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... river so renowned has its wreath of myths and legends, characterised, in this instance, by the prodigality of the Eastern mind. It is not necessary to linger over these, save in so far as to note that they ascribe a divine origin to the sacred stream; the sense of power and movement issuing from the world of the unseen is no less strong than that aroused by the Nile; ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... paragraph or two, a few examples have been given. But they really have very little, if anything, to do with literature; and what they have to do with it is common to all times and subjects. The excessive prodigality to minstrels of which we have record parallels itself in other times in regard to actors, jockeys, musicians, and other classes of mechanical pleasure-makers whose craft happens to be popular for the moment. And it was never ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... upon its walls, and replaced the sources of good housekeeping and hospitality, that, exhausted in the last age by fine and sequestration, were now in a fair way of being annihilated by careless prodigality. Elsewhere, under cover of observing the gamester, or listening to the music, the gallantries of that all-licensed age were practised among the gay and fair, closely watched the whilst by the ugly or the old, who promised themselves at least the pleasure of observing, and it may be that of proclaiming, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... thing left to me was my money. I had always kept a good deal of it about me, although the only use I had had for it was to put it in the plate at church, and to scatter it with foolish prodigality to the boys who tossed somersaults behind ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... bottom to the Medici purse; but actually the Capo della Repubblica was playing rather fast and loose with his opulent patrimony. There came a day when the strain grew excessive, and Lorenzo was unable, had he been willing, to make advances to princely suitors, and he lived to repent his prodigality. ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... is still periodically made in New York, may be said to have had its beginning in April, 1792. Seldom has an election been contested with such prodigality of partisan fury. The rhetoric of abuse was vigorous and unrestrained; the campaign lie active and ingenious; the arraignment of class against class sedulous and adroit, and the excitement most violent and memorable. If a weapon of political warfare ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... triumphant or funeral, according to the sentence. Bailleul, though invisible, kept his promise through the agency of a friend. The funeral supper was set out in the large dungeon; the daintiest meats, the choicest wines, the rarest flowers, and numerous flambeaux decked the oaken table—prodigality of dying men who have no need to save aught ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... last to feel little inconvenience from the exposure, which is silently undermining their constitutions. Is it extraordinary that people thus exposed should be attacked by violent maladies? Would it not be more wonderful that such a careless prodigality of life could pass with impunity? These remarks might be extended; the food of the first settler, consisting chiefly of fresh meat without vegetables and often without salt; the common use of ardent spirits, the want of medical aid, by which diseases, at first simple, ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... retirement of the country. The death of his maternal grandfather, Jean de Craon, in 1432, made him so enormously wealthy, that his revenues were estimated at 800,000 livres; nevertheless, in two years, by his excessive prodigality, he managed to lose a considerable portion of his inheritance. Maulon, S. Etienne de Malemort, Loroux-Botereau, Pornic, and Chantol, he sold to John V., Duke of Brittany, his kinsman, and other lands and seigneurial rights he ceded ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... animals. [127] He further imposed on himself a noviciate of five years silence. At the death of his father, he divided his patrimony equally with his brother; and, that brother having wasted his estate by prodigality, he again made an equal division with him of what remained. [128] He travelled to Babylon and Susa in pursuit of knowledge, and even among the Brachmans of India, and appears particularly to have addicted ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... perfection, its immense fields, where a tropical sun and the water conserved in its clayey texture do all the work of cultivating, and lastly its prairies of pineapples, yams, tobacco, rice, cotton, and sugarcanes, which extended as far as the eye could reach, spreading out their riches with careless prodigality. ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... discipline which is requisite to secure the well-being of a servant. Luxury and ostentation require that the servants of these people should be numerous; their number unavoidably makes them idle; idleness makes them debauched; debauchery renders them often necessitous; the affluence or the prodigality, the indolence or indulgence; or indifference of their masters, affords them every possible facility for being dishonest; and, beginning with the more venial kinds of peculation, their conscience has ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... in pleasantly representing real good qualities in a false light of shame, and bantering them as ill ones. So generosity may be treated as prodigality; oeconomy as avarice; true courage as foolhardiness; and so ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... as she had always been called, was clever, rich, and pretty, and knew well how to ingratiate herself with the friend of the hour. She was a greedy, grasping little woman, but, when she had before her a sufficient object, she could appear to pour all that she had into her friend's lap with all the prodigality of a child. Perhaps Mrs. Bonteen had liked to have things poured into her lap. Perhaps Mr. Bonteen had enjoyed the confidential tears of a pretty woman. It may be that the wrongs of a woman doomed to live with Mr. Emilius as his wife had touched their hearts. Be that as it might, they ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... suggest the sterner thought of rations and queues. The corn-fields, not yet "white to harvest," acquire new dignity from the thought of all that is involved in "the staff of life." The smoke-cloud over the manufacturing town is no longer a mere blur on the horizon, but tells of a prodigality of human effort, directed to the destruction of human life, such as the world has never known. Even from the towers of the village churches floats the Red Cross of St. George, recalling the war-song of an older patriotism—"In the name of our ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... noble rivers, feeding it. He liked them at dawn when the hose-pipe had been newly at work and these great spaces of emptiness lay gleaming in the mild sunlight, exhaling freshness like that of dewy lawns. When, under the glare of noon, they lay slumbrous, they were impressive by their prodigality of width and scope; in the bustle and hum of dusk, with the cafes filling, and spilling over on to the pavements, he could not tire of them; but at night, the mystery of their magic enthralled him. How could one sleep in such a city? ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... less qualified than his father to found a dynasty on principles which should endure. Allied to his many virtues were many compromising defects. He was volatile, thoughtless, and unsteady. He was swayed by no strong sense of duty. His generosity was apt to degenerate into prodigality; his attachments into weakness. He was unable to concentrate his energies for a time in any serious direction, whilst for comprehensive legislation he had neither the genius nor the inclination. He was thus eminently ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... all his vices, prodigality was the most remarkable, and that which in some measure gave rise to the rest. The luxuries of former emperors were simplicity itself when compared to those which he practised. He contrived new ways of bathing, when the richest oils ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... from the dead, thereby connecting the feast with that incident; the woman who broke the box of ointment and poured the perfume on the head and feet of Jesus was Mary; the first critic of her action was Judas. Selfishness blames love for the profusion and prodigality, which to it seem folly and waste. The disciples chimed in with the objection, not because they were superior to Mary in wisdom, but because they were inferior ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... Mozart into intense, restless energy. His life had no lull in its creative industry. His splendid genius, insatiable and tireless, broke down his body, like a sword wearing out its scabbard. He poured out symphonies, operas, and sonatas with such prodigality as to astonish us, even when recollecting how fecund the musical mind has often been. Alike as artist and composer, he never ceased his labors. Day after day and night after night he hardly snatched an hour's rest. We can almost fancy he foreboded ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... of frugality is avarice, which, as it both deprives a man of all use of his riches, and checks hospitality and every social enjoyment, is justly censured on a double account. PRODIGALITY, the other extreme, is commonly more hurtful to a man himself; and each of these extremes is blamed above the other, according to the temper of the person who censures, and according to his greater or less sensibility to pleasure, either ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... tendered, to Rev. M. Sheehan, D.D., D.Ph., Rev. Paul Walsh, Rev. J. MacErlhean, S.J., M.A., as well as to Mr. R. O'Foley, who, at much expense of time and labour, have carefully read the proofs, and, with unselfish prodigality of their scholarly resources, have made many valuable ...
— The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore • Saint Mochuda
... for the good of living, but because the meat is savory and the appetite is keen. The vegetable life does not content itself with casting from the flower or the tree a single seed, but it fills the air and earth with a prodigality of seeds, that, if thousands perish, thousands may plant themselves; that hundreds may come up, that tens may live to maturity; that at least one may replace the parent. All things betray the same calculated profusion. The excess of fear with which the ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... soldier receives a full ration, all his clothes, and sixty dollars a year.[10] It is true, that this would make an army very costly, and, to bear the charge, it might be necessary to curtail some of the useless magnificence and prodigality of the other branches of the government; and herein is just the point of difference between the expenditures of America and those of France. It must be remembered, too, that a really free government, by enlisting the popular ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... The prodigality of the mass of indictments Louise launches against royalty as every-day occurrences, reminds one of the great Catharine Sforza, Duchess of Milan's clever mot. When the enemy captured her children she merely said, "I retain the ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... with all just policy, it is still true to itself, and faithful to its own perverted order. Those who are bountiful to crimes, will be rigid to merit, and penurious to service. Their penury is even held out as a blind and cover to their prodigality. The economy of injustice is, to furnish resources for the fund of corruption. Then they pay off their protection to great crimes and great criminals by being inexorable to the paltry frailties ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... debaser of the people as well as of the peerage. By the most wasteful prodigality both in finance and war, he was enabled to distribute more wealth among his friends and partisans than has been squandered by the uncontrolled profusion of French monarchs from the first Louis to the last. [86] Yet ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... the long repose which it has enjoyed from rude volcanic upheavals has mingled a great depth of vegetable mould with the decomposed lava. Rich soil, rain, heat, sunshine, stimulate nature to supreme efforts, and there is a luxuriant prodigality of vegetation which leaves nothing uncovered but the golden margin of the sea, and even that above high-water- mark is green with the Convolvulus maritimus. So dense is the wood that Hilo is rather suggested than seen. ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... Prodigal Son was a rather different form of prodigality. According to the Church interpretation, the Father had two sons; the older was the people of the Jews; the younger, the Gentiles. The Father divided his substance between them, giving to the older the divine law, to the younger, the law of nature. The younger went off and dissipated ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... decided that Constance should greet the Rodneys upon their arrival; the Medcrofts were not to appear until dinner time. Afterwards the entire party would attend the opera, which was then in the closing week. Brock, with splendid prodigality, had taken a box for the final performance of "Tristan and Isolde." It is not out of place to remark that Brock loathed the Wagnerian opera; he was of "The Mikado" cult. He took the seats with a ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... example, in the beginning of the Empire there was some little extravagance in certain parts of the palace, notably at Saint-Cloud, where the aides-de-camp kept open table; but this was, nevertheless, far from equaling the excessive prodigality of the ancient regime. Champagne and other wines especially were used in great quantities, and it was very necessary that the Emperor should establish regulations as to his cellar. He summoned the chief of the household service, Soupe Pierrugues, and said to him, "Monsieur, ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... satirists and comic writers, many reputations lost. The building was destroyed in the fire of London; and the divines of that day, according to their custom, pronounced this catastrophe a judgement on the avarice and unfair dealing of the merchants and shopkeepers, and the pride, prodigality and luxury of the purchasers and idlers by whom ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... doorway or lounging about the premises, the children running round half naked or entirely so. Most of these people are freed Jamaica slaves. They seemed to be a happy but indolent race. Fruits grow about them with such prodigality as to require but little exertion to obtain the necessities of life. Their huts are made of bamboo rods, thatched ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson
... oracles of our parsimonious ancestors have informed us, that the fatal waste of fortune is by small expenses, by the profusion of sums too little singly to alarm our caution, and which we never suffer ourselves to consider together. Of the same kind is the prodigality of life; he that hopes to look back hereafter with satisfaction upon past years, must learn to know the present value of single minutes, and endeavour to let no particle of time fall useless to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... have met my Lord Bellasses and Commissioners of Excise, but they did not meet me, he being abroad. However Mr. Finch, one of the Commissioners, I met there, and he and I walked two houres together in the garden, talking of many things; sometimes of Mr. Povy, whose vanity, prodigality, neglect of his business, and committing it to unfit hands hath undone him and outed him of all his publique employments, and the thing set on foot by an accidental revivall of a business, wherein he had three ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... jewels. He played with them nervously. The sky seemed immeasurably distant. For some little time it had been hesitating between different shades of blue, but now it chose a fathomless indigo; Night unloosed her draperies, and, with the prodigality of a queen who reigns only when she falls, flung ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... England and of Amsterdam, which they were looking forward to distributing among themselves and their friends. Your friend the Comte de Cambray would no doubt have come in too for his share in this distribution. But M. de Talleyrand is a very wise man! always far-seeing, he knows the improvidence, the prodigality, the ostentation of these new masters whom he is so ready to serve. Ere Dudon reached Paris with his booty, M. de Talleyrand had very carefully eliminated therefrom some five and twenty million francs in bank-notes and bankers' drafts, which he felt would come in very ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... never caring for the future. He ruled a little set of newcomers, he had friendships—or rather, habits of fifteen years' standing, and men with whom he supped, and dined, and indulged his wit. He earned from seven to eight hundred francs a month, a sum which he found quite insufficient for the prodigality peculiar to the impecunious. Indeed, Lousteau found himself now just as hard up as when, on first appearing in Paris, he had said to himself, "If I had but five hundred francs a month, ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... balcony overhanging three sides of it, was occupied. Waiters were scurrying up and down the wide stairway; the general hubbub was punctuated by the sound of exploding corks as the Klondike spendthrifts advertised their prosperity in a hilarious contest of prodigality. ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... father as well as for myself. Thousands, Mr. Bygrave—thousands of pounds sterling out of my pocket!!!" He clasped his hands in despair at the picture of pecuniary compulsion which his fancy had conjured up—his own golden life-blood spouting from him in great jets of prodigality, under ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... I have ever known whose talk is like his books. The prodigality of humour, intuition and searching thought that he puts into his pages he also puts into what he says. And he is the only man I ever met who can sing his stories as well as tell them. Like the rest of the Irish writers of to-day, ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... is so strange,' she said, 'to find nothing changed. To think that everything has gone on quietly in the usual way. As if I hadn't spent an eternity in exile!' And at the corner of one street, before a vast flaunting 'bazaar,' with a prodigality of tawdry Oriental wares exhibited on the pavement, and little black shopmen trailing like beetles in and out amongst them, 'Oh,' she cried, 'the "Mecque du Quartier"! To think that I could weep for joy at seeing ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... not new to him, they were common from end to end of the island; but not until now had he appreciated the warm magenta coloring of gorgeous poinsettias and bougainvillea, the glowing-hearted, waxy white flowers of frangipani; not until now did he realize the prodigality of Nature towards Java in the matter of weird ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... the outlay made by the mortgagee up to that date. Instalment payments were expressly ruled out. The entire sum intact was made obligatory. Therefore the danger of speedy redemption did not disquiet Charles. He knew the man he had to deal with. Sigismund's lack of foresight and his prodigality were notorious. There was faint chance that he could ever command the amount in question. Accordingly, Charles was fairly justified in counting the mortgaged territory as annexed ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... be hard to please, if he is not satisfied!" growled the duke, enraged at such prodigality, though it did not cost ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... that ever I resembled a candle-box in my life," she replied, rather annoyed that the article in question came in for such a prodigality of his hugs, kisses, and embraces, of ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... explained the necessity of curbing your reckless extravagance. Were I possessed of Rothschild's income, it would not suffice to keep upon his feet a man who sells himself to the Devil of the gaming table, and entertains with the prodigality of a crown prince. I never dreamed until last night that the real estate at home is encumbered by mortgages, and it will be an everlasting shame if the homestead should be sacrificed; but I can do no more for you. This failure of Ames is a disgraceful affair, and ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... warmly grasped his hand with both of her own, which were imprisoned in tight new gloves, while her bonnet spoke of regardlessness of expense and recent prodigality. She fell back ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... attempt has been made, since his day, to provide a humane protection for the unfortunate debtor. But has it not, at the same time, exposed the confiding tradesman to deception and to consequent ruin, by destroying all adequate punishment, and therefore removing every check upon vice and prodigality? In a Dictionnaire des Gens du Monde, insolvency has been, not unaptly, defined, a mode of getting rich by infallible rules! ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... the king's favour from Esther. He did not know her lineage, but by plunging the king in every excess, by keeping all safe counsellors at a distance, he intended to increase his own influence and perpetuate his own power, while he was accumulating great wealth from the prodigality of his master and from the presents offered as bribes to obtain ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... place.—Besides appointing Norina heiress of half his wealth, Don Pasquale at once makes her absolute mistress of his fortune. Having succeeded in attaining her aim, Norina throws aside her mask, and by her self-willedness, prodigality and waywardness drives her would-be husband to despair. She squanders his money, visits the theatre on the very day of their marriage ignoring the presence of her husband in such a manner, that he wishes ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... which you play a part. How delightful was the morning room at Beaumanoir; from which gentlemen were not excluded with that assumed suspicion that they can never enter it but for felonious purposes. Such a profusion of flowers! Such a multitude of books! Such a various prodigality of writing materials! So many easy chairs too, of so many shapes; each in itself a comfortable home; yet nothing crowded. Woman alone can organise a drawing- room; man succeeds sometimes in a library. And the ladies' work! How graceful they look bending over their embroidery ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... Trench's disquisition regarding the latent union between covetousness and prodigality, involving a proof that the discourse about the rich man was applicable to the Pharisees who were not of prodigal habits, although very good in itself, is scarcely relevant; inasmuch as it is not the parable of the rich man, but the reproofs intervening ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... seems to me, that"—Honoria extended one hand towards the sunset—"is Cousin Katherine's outlook on life and humanity, full of colour, full of warmth. It burns with a certain prodigality of beauty, a superb absence of economy in giving. And that"—with a little shrug of her shoulders she turned towards the severe, and sombre, eastern landscape—"that, it strikes me, comes a good deal nearer my own. ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... juices from members of the state, where the public inanition is far more sorely felt than in the local exchequer of England. Not content with winking at these abuses, whilst he attempts to squeeze the laborious, ill-paid drudges of English revenue, he lavishes, in one act of corrupt prodigality, upon those who never served the public in any honest occupation at all, an annual income equal to two thirds of the whole collection of the revenues of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... one expect of such a book that it should be neatly composed? It is crowded with life, at whatever point we face it; intensely vivid, inexhaustibly stirring, the broad impression is made by the big prodigality of Tolstoy's invention. If a novel could really be as large as life, Tolstoy could easily fill it; his great masterful reach never seems near its limit; he is always ready to annex another and yet another tract of life, ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... of livres, but this had been wiped out by the heroic operations of Law; operations, by the way, which have never yet been scientifically criticised. But the debt soon grew again, by foolish wars, by the prodigality of the court, and by the rapacity of the nobles. It amounted in 1789 to something like two hundred and forty millions sterling; and it is interesting to notice that this was exactly the sum of the public debt of Great Britain at the same time. The year's excess ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... country for the political economist, beyond affording an example of the decline of the wealth of nations, and offering a wide topic on errors to be avoided, as well as for experimental theories, plans of reform and amelioration. In Spain, Nature reigns; she has there lavished her utmost prodigality of soil and climate which a bad government has for the last three centuries been endeavouring to counteract. El cielo y suelo es bueno, el entresuelo malo, and man, the occupier of the Peninsula entresol, uses, or rather abuses, with incurious apathy the goods with which the gods have ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... would commend itself as at least plausible; but it is foolish as applied to the version in the folio, where the piece is found to be remarkable for nimbleness of invention, strength and variety of natural character, affluent prodigality of animal spirits, delicious quaintness, exhilarating merriment, a lovely pastoral tone, and many touches of the transcendent poetry of Shakespeare. Dennis probably repeated a piece of idle gossip that he had heard, the same sort of chatter that in the present day constantly ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... away. Torella returned in a few years, and became wealthier and more prosperous than ever. When I was seventeen, my father died; he had been magnificent to prodigality; Torella rejoiced that my minority would afford an opportunity for repairing my fortunes. Juliet and I had been affianced beside my father's deathbed—Torella was to be a second ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... forgotten by charming manners and complying speeches. The poet of the faubourg Saint-Germain, who did not choose to bow before this social dictum, was made before long to feel that an insulting provincial indifference had succeeded to the dazed fascination of the earlier evenings. The prodigality of his wit and wisdom had produced upon these worthy souls somewhat the effect which a shopful of glass-ware produces on the eye; in other words, the fire and brilliancy of Canalis's eloquence soon wearied people who, to use their own words, ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... men from the most distinguished of the nobility. Lafayette was one. In a letter to Washington he humorously remarked that "wicked people called them not-ables." Lafayette's part in the assembly consisted in making a bold protest against the prodigality of the crown. "All the millions given up to cupidity or depredation," he forcefully exclaimed to the noble gathering, "are the fruit of the sweat, the tears, and perhaps the blood, of the nation"; and he concluded by requesting that the King convoke a real National Assembly, made up of representatives ...
— The Spirit of Lafayette • James Mott Hallowell
... French, English, and Dutch, deserters and outlaws, the scum of their nations, made the rich merchant and treasure ships of Spain their prey, slaughtering their crews, torturing them for hidden wealth, rioting with profuse prodigality at their lurking-places on land, and turning those fair tropical islands into a pandemonium of outrage, crime, and slaughter. As they troubled little the ships of other nations, these nations rather favored than sought to suppress them, and Spain seemed powerless to bring their ravages to an end. ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... dislike for steady and difficult toil by its promise of sudden wealth and its appeal to the emotions, with the lotteries, with the prodigality and hospitality of the Filipinos, went also, to swell this train of misfortunes, the religious functions, the great number of fiestas, the long masses for the women to spend their mornings and the novenaries to spend their ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... Jacob Grebel may be pointed out as belonging to this class. On the other hand, there was yet a third class, who, were ready to desert any cause, and to help on and take part in any bold, disorderly proceeding. Accustomed to splendor and good-living, they had been reduced to poverty by idleness and prodigality, and hence were always in the market for the highest bidder. And yet by reason of their noble descent, and their extensive connections they were able to wield a considerable influence, for most of them were members of the aristocracy. Among these appear the G[oe]ldins, the Stapfers, ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... far-off skies filled with drifting fleets of sunny vapor, summer green piled deep over the land, the gurgle of falling waters, the shimmer of near grain fields, deep-hued flowers glowing in the garden borders, all the prodigality of splendor that July pours over the world. And floating through these memories, scarce recognized, but giving hue and tone to them like a far-off, half-heard strain of music—a woman's presence. By some fine, subtile ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... began to press after the first week flew away. We had a long discussion, in which each hurled at the other reproaches on the spendthrift prodigality with which we threw away our money. The discussion ended in our agreeing, that, the moment the next instalment of our income should be received, I should keep a severe account of our expenses, in order that no more quarrels should disturb ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... built by Francis I, facing the Rue de la Tonnellerie. Paul Niquet's, with its "bowel-twisting brandy" and its crew of drunken ragpickers, was certainly before my time; but I can readily recall Baratte's and Bordier's and all the folly and prodigality which raged there; I knew, too, several of the noted thieves' haunts which took the place of Niquet's, and which one was careful never to enter without due precaution. And then, when the German armies were beleaguering Paris, and two millions of people were shut off ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... indeed, often only through the alternative of pawning clothing and furniture to provide the means for this ephemeral transformation. I remember being warned, also, that the buffoonery was coarse, and some of the slang hardly fit for "ears polite." But I am afraid that I was not shocked at the prodigality of these poor people, who purchased a holiday on such hard conditions; and, as to the coarseness of the performance, I felt that I certainly might go where these ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... have been more bitterly scouted than that of meanness in money matters. Of the two, prodigality has been thought the better. The man who is poor has not been censured for being careful; rather has he been praised for not being ashamed to own his poverty. But the spectacle of the rich man hoarding his wealth and not living according ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... and the agreeableness of his person, by a splendour in his table and furniture, and by the most profuse magnificence that ever was known in a private person, the King's liberality enabling him to bear such an expense. This Prince was bounteous even to prodigality to those he favoured, and though he had not all the great qualities, he had very many; particularly he took delight and had great skill in military affairs; he was also successful, and excepting the Battle of St. Quintin, his reign had been a continued ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... choice. The golden mean between two extremes of excess and defect respectively has been already explained, and may be further shown by a review of the virtues. Besides fortitude and temperance, already described, liberality is a mean between prodigality and stinginess; magnificence between vulgar display and pettiness: magnanimity between vainglory and pusillanimity; truthfulness between exaggeration and dissimulation; friendship between complaisance, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... keeping her ignorant, terrorizing her with threats and punishments, Rome sought to secure by training. It inculcated in every way by means of education, religion, and opinion the idea that she should be pious, chaste, faithful, devoted alone to her husband and children; that luxury, prodigality, dissoluteness, were horrible vices, the infamy of which hopelessly degraded all that was best and purest in woman. It tried to protect the minds of both men and women from all those influences of art, ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... Simonides said, in a low voice; then louder, "Malluch, the curse of the time is prodigality. The poor make themselves poorer as apes of the rich, and the merely rich carry themselves like princes. Saw you signs of the weakness in the youth? Did he display moneys—coin of Rome ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... rhyme-harmony as the ear of the average lover of poetry can carry. It is needless to say that there are born rhymers, who think in rhyme and whose fecundity of imagery is multiplied by the excitement of matching sound with sound. They are often careless in their prodigality, inexact in their swift catching at any rhyme-word that will serve. At the other extreme are the self-conscious artists in verse who abhor imperfect concordances, and polish their rhymes until the life and freshness disappear. For sheer improvising cleverness of rhyme Byron is still unmatched, ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... watercourses brawled in their familiar channels, nor dreamed of ever shifting their regular tide. The wonders of the Yosemite and Calaveras were as yet unrecorded. The Holy Fathers noted little of the landscape beyond the barbaric prodigality with which the quick soil repaid the sowing. A new conversion, the advent of a Saint's day, or the baptism of an Indian baby, was at once the chronicle and marvel of ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... the more modern offices all is barren. Since the late Mr. Ayrton was First Commissioner of Works a squalid cheapness has reigned supreme. Deal and paint are everywhere; doors that won't shut, bells that won't ring, and curtains that won't meet. In two articles alone there is prodigality—books and stationery. Hansard's Debates, the Statutes at Large, treatises illustrating the work of the office, and books of reference innumerable, are there; and the stationery shows a delightful variety of shape, size, and texture, adapted to every conceivable ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... and bounteously furnished—lacking, perhaps, some of the elegance of the Philadelphia tables I had been accustomed to, but with a lavish prodigality native to the South. Two new guests had arrived while I had been so engrossed in talking to the comtesse that I had not observed their entrance, a gentleman and his wife. The lady was amiable-looking, but of no great distinction of appearance. The ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... Farm-houses went to decay, and Strangers forestalled the Markets. Few People, however, could find in their Heart to hate him. They had a Love for him, though he was daily undoing them: For it was always their Humour to like a boon Companion; and instead of crossing his Prodigality, they followed his Example, wh——ed it away from the highest to the lowest, revelled and caroused for dear Blood, and were never better pleased than when the last Penny was a going. It became a Fashion to be Bankrupt; ...
— The True Life of Betty Ireland • Anonymous
... clime which have followed his discovery. His genius and faith gave succeeding generations the opportunity for life and liberty. We, the heirs of all the ages, in the plenitude of our enjoyments, and the prodigality of the favors showered upon us, ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... occurred. On the day when the Emperor left England, the King and all the Court went over to Calais, and thence to the place of meeting, between Ardres and Guisnes, commonly called the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Here, all manner of expense and prodigality was lavished on the decorations of the show; many of the knights and gentlemen being so superbly dressed that it was said they carried their ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... new—many of the rivets were already gone. The small boats had been stolen from some of them, and the ropes and oars from others. There they lay, thirty-eight in number, up against the mud banks of the Ohio, under the boughs of the half-clad, melancholy forest trees, as sad a spectacle of reckless prodigality as the eye ever beheld. But the contractor who made them no doubt was a ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... sold with him, or travelled for him. But while Bernardone was a hard, avaricious man, the son differed from him greatly in disposition; being fond of dress, of song, and feasting, gayety, and gaming. He was generous even to prodigality, full of wit and imagination, very sympathetic withal, and compassionate. Thomas of Celano thus describes him: "His figure was above the middle height and well set. He was thin, and of a very delicate constitution. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... obliged to take part in another festival of the kind unless another near relative dies. He pays off all old scores of hospitality and lays his friends under future obligations by his presents. He is often beggared by this prodigality, but he can be sure of welcome and entertainment wherever he goes, for he is a man who has discharged all his debts to society and is therefore deserving of honor for the rest of ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes
... and that of every flower on your own window-sill the words of Christ stand literally true—that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these: and bow your hearts and souls before the magnificent prodigality, the exquisite perfection of His work, who can be, as often as He will, greatest in that which is least, because to His infinity nothing is great, and nothing small; who hath created all things, and for His pleasure they are, and ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... now, sir, you see, by his prodigality, he is become my dependent; and accordingly I have made my bargain with him:—the devil a baubee he has in the world but what comes thro' these clutches— for his whole estate, which has three implicit boroughs upon it,—mark—is now in my custody at ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin |
