"Penurious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Bible, and polemics against tri-theism. Sympathy with the great problems then beginning to agitate men they had none. Socially they were cold, and the entertainment at their houses was pale and penurious. They never considered themselves bound to contribute a shilling to my support. There was an endowment of a hundred a year, and they were relieved from all further anxiety. They had no enthusiasm for their chapel, and came ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... for the necessary neatness, and the public rightly would not trust politicos in any operation too confusing for them to be watched, and preferred to leave such businesses to private operation, accepting the danger for the profit of efficient and penurious ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... behind thy back (if that can be done), by wilful abstaining from thy congregations and omitting thy service, and I have sinned before thy face, in my hypocrisies in prayer, in my ostentation, and the mingling a respect of myself in preaching thy word; I have sinned in my fasting, by repining when a penurious fortune hath kept me low; and I have sinned even in that fulness, when I have been at thy table, by a negligent examination, by a wilful prevarication, in receiving that heavenly food and physic. But as I know, O my gracious ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... for, although surrounded with gay apparel as their staple in trade, they wore the most filthy rags themselves. It is said that they had no bed, and, to save the expense of one, always slept on a bundle of packing-cloths under the counter. In their housekeeping they were penurious in the extreme. A joint of meat did not grace their board for twenty years. Yet when the first of the brothers died, the other, much to his surprise, found large sums of money which had been ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... have scraped up sufficient to turn to advantage in their own country; and as I have served in all the great houses in Madrid, I am acquainted with the greatest part of them. I have nothing to say against the Asturians, save that they are close and penurious whilst at service; but they are not thieves, neither at home nor abroad, and though we must have our wits about us in their country, I have heard we may travel from one end of it to the other without the slightest fear of being either robbed or ill treated, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... and enterprising seaman, was now displayed in the most ridiculous interference in his own domestic affairs, and those of his neighbours. With a great deal of low cunning, he mingled the most insatiable curiosity; while his habits were so penurious, that he would stoop to any meanness to gain a trifling pecuniary advantage for himself ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... genius of building prevailed, and the palace is fixed in a gloomy bottom, from which it can be overlooked by every body, and from which nothing can be seen. Frederick, though sometimes superb in his expenses, was habitually penurious. He seems to have thought that war was the only thing on which it was worth his while to spend money. The salaries of his gentlemen and attendants were all on the narrowest scale. Lord Malmesbury observes that even the Prince of Dessau's marriage, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... cataclysm of Waterloo. That event terminated Decaen's military course. For a while he was imprisoned, but his life was not taken, as was that of the gallant Ney; and in a few months he was liberated at the instance of the Duchesse d'Angouleme. Thenceforth he lived a colourless, quiet, penurious life in the vicinity of his native Caen, regretting not at all, one fancies, the ruin of the useful career of the enterprising English navigator. His poverty was honourable, for he had handled large funds ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... mim cat's never gude at the mice," and she lifted him out by the scruff of his neck, crying, "Run, mousie, or I'll catch ye!" On that day her popularity in Barbie was assured for ever. But she was as keen on the penny as a penurious weaver, for all her heartiness and laughing ways. She combined the commercial merits of the East and West. She could coax you to the buying like a Cumnock quean, and fleece you in the selling like the ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... follows: Labor applied to natural resources is the source of the wealth of capitalistic society, but the greatest part of the wealth produced goes to non-producers, the producers getting only a part, in the form of wages—hence the paradox of wealthy non-producers and penurious producers. ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... number of the London Magazine to bear Taylor & Hessey's name, and (in my opinion) to contain anything by Lamb, was August, 1825. We have no definite information on the matter, but there is every indication in Lamb's Letters that Taylor was penurious and not clever in his relations with contributors. Scott Lamb seems to have admired and liked; but even in Scott's day payment does not seem to have been prompt. Lamb was paid, according to Barry Cornwall, two or three times the amount of other writers, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... modify Miss Calhoun's colloquial charms. Many of her delightful "way down south" phrases and mannerisms were blighted by the cold, unromantic atmosphere of a seminary conducted by two ladies from Boston who were too old to marry, too penurious to love and too prim to think that other women might care to do both. There were times, however,—if she were excited or enthusiastic,—when pretty Beverly so far forgot her training as to break forth with a very attractive "yo' all," "suah 'nough," or ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... a century the honor of his familiar presence, nor the recollections of that brilliant literary circle with whom he lived in the metropolis, have yielded much more than such an outline of his history, as is oftentimes to be gathered from the penurious records of a grave-stone. That he lived, and that he died, and that he was "a little lower than the angels;"—these make up pretty nearly the amount of our undisputed report. It may be doubted, indeed, whether at this day we arc as accurately acquainted with the life of ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... unfeeling, unmusical, penurious old ladies and gentlemen back into the lounge, glaring at them as belligerently and offensively as a gentleman could and maintain his self-respect. Then he went into the waiting-room and embarked upon a positive orgy of letter-writing. Looking up from the ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... motives of the Earl: he knew him to be anything but a penurious man; and he had long seen and been aware of the motives on which that nobleman acted towards him. He knew that it was with a wish to give him everything that was necessary and appropriate to the situation in which ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... was the wonder of the place; people were never tired of talking about him—of describing his strange appearance, his odd ways and penurious habits. He formed a lasting theme of conversation to the gossips of the village, with whom the great man at the Hall enjoyed no enviable notoriety. That Mark Hurdlestone was an object of curiosity, fear, and hatred, to his humble dependents, created no feeling of surprise in those ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... an otherwise respectable family, went off and spent his portion in riotous living, afterward bought a tract of ground above Harlem, turned hermit, raised geese and ducks and pigs, married and had three daughters and they in turn married, glad, I suppose, to get away from the penurious living. So it went on. He had to give up the pigs and geese, did a little gardening and two years ago died without a will. Oddly enough he had kept a family record which has been of great service to us. The old shanty was ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... overlook the Coscile river, the Sybaris of old, and from a spot in the quarter a steep path descends to its banks. Here you will find yourself in another climate, cool and moist. The livid waters tumble gleefully towards the plain, amid penurious plots of beans and tomatoes, and a fierce tangle of vegetation wherever the hand of man has not made clearings. Then, mounting aloft once more, you will do well to visit the far-famed chapel that sits at the apex of the promontory, Santa Maria del Castello. ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... sported the red coat; and perhaps under the immediate patronage of his royal friend, been advanced in time to no mean rank in the army of Britain. Nor in that case would we have had to follow him, as at last we shall, through long, long years of obscure and penurious wandering. ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... great nobles of the last century. Under the Restoration the nobility cannot forget that it has been beaten and robbed, and so, with two or three exceptions, it has become thrifty, prudent, and stay-at-home, in short, bourgeois and penurious. Since then, 1830 has crowned the work of 1793. In France, henceforth, there will be great names, but no great houses, unless there should be political changes which we can hardly foresee. Everything takes the stamp of individuality. The wisest invest in ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... nearly an inch in length. His features were dull and expressionless, and over the lower portion of his wrinkled face a scraggy, mud colored beard seemed struggling for existence. His clothing appeared to indicate a penurious, grasping nature. ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... jade, that Jezebel!" came the ringing denunciation. "The tricky, shameless, penurious, graspin' unprincipled little she-devil! She's after you, my boy, after you hard. An', you poor miserable blind worm of a fool, you ain't got the sense to see it! Everybody knows it; the whole country's talkin' about it; how Temple's baitin' his trap with her ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... a very penurious gentleman of our acquaintance[756], he observed, that he exceeded L'Avare in the play[757]. I concurred with him, and remarked that he would do well, if introduced in one of Foote's farces; that the best way to get it done, would be to bring ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... that Henry, the most sagacious prince since the conquest, loaded him with honours for filling the royal coffers with wealth, which the penurious monarch durst never enjoy: but his successor, Henry the Eighth, enjoyed the pleasure of consuming that wealth, and executed the father for collecting it! How much are our best laid schemes defective? How little does expectation and event coincide? It is no disgrace to a man that he died ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... ligatures strained and muscles actually torn apart. When the Major was well enough to travel—and he came very near losing his leg, it seemed, he joined us, and we journeyed on to New York. Meanwhile the Major's brother had died, a queer, penurious old fellow who had never given up his rights in the estate and now it all came to the Major, besides a large amount of money. He resigned from the army and they came home. Mrs. Crawford had kept her mind through all this and had been most brave, recovering ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... thread much tarnished; to the right hand stood a prie-dieu. Between these isolated articles of furniture, and behind an unpainted table sat, in a high-backed chair, a wizen and shabbily-clad old man. This was Theodoret, most pious and penurious of monarchs. In attendance upon him were Fra Battista, prior of the Grey Monks, and Melicent's near kinsman, once the Bishop, now the Cardinal, de Montors, who, as was widely known, was the actual monarch of this realm. The ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... is related of Buffalmacco's ingenuity to rid himself of annoyance. Soon after he left Tafi, he took apartments adjoining those occupied by a man who was a penurious old simpleton, and compelled his wife to rise long before daylight to commence work at her spinning wheel. The old woman was often at her wheel, when Buonamico retired to bed from his revels. The buzz of ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... Mrs. Mott's rigid economy, such as sewing together the smallest rags to be woven into carpets, and writing letters on infinitesimal bits of paper; but it must not be inferred from this peculiarity that she was penurious, as she was generous in her charities, and in the support of every good cause. Considering her means and the self-denial she practiced in her personal expenses, her gifts were lavish. Alfred Love, President of the Peace Society, who frequently received letters from Mrs. Mott, says: "The ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... uneasiness. To be sure, he is despotic, but he is neither irritable nor unamiable. Besides, he has a great desire for social position (it aids in carrying out his plans), in which his wife is of real service. Hiram, although close and careful in all matters, is not what would be called penurious. In other words, he makes liberal provision for his household, while he rules it with rigor; besides, in petty things he has not proved ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... nephew Hugh. She had never been tenderly affectionate to Hugh, or she would hardly have asked him to live in London on a hundred a year. She had never really been kind to him since he was a boy, for although she had paid for him, she had been almost penurious in her manner of doing so, and had repeatedly given him to understand, that in the event of her death not a shilling would be left to him. Indeed, as to that matter of bequeathing her money, it was understood that it was her purpose to let it all go back to the Burgess family. ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... a trying position for a boy to fill, and at that time I was not popular with the other boys, who resented my exemption from part of my legitimate work. I was also taxed with being penurious in my habits—mean, as the boys had it. I did not spend my extra dimes, but they knew not the reason. Every penny that I could save I knew was needed at home. My parents were wise and nothing was withheld from me. I knew every week the receipts of each ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... these wild scenes haste; The unfinish'd farm awaits your forming taste: Plan the pavilion, airy, light, and true; Through the high arch call in the length'ning view; Expand the forest sloping up the hill; Swell to a lake the scant, penurious rill; Extend the vista; raise the castle mound In antique taste, with turrets ivy-crown'd: O'er the gay lawn the flow'ry shrub dispread, Or with the blending garden mix the mead; Bid China's pale, fantastic fence delight; ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... not, Line your Cause warmly, Sir, the times are Aguish, That holds a Plea in heart; hang the penurious, Their Causes (like their ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... wearing on,—the slow, penurious winter of exhaustion after the acute fury of the spring and summer. These were hard times in earnest, not with the excitement of failures and bankruptcies, but with the steady grind of low wages, no employment, and general depression. The papers said things would be better ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... income. This office he held for nearly half a century, and simultaneously was the incumbent of other lucrative posts. Offices were created by Governor Dongan apparently for his sole benefit. His passion was to get together an estate which would equal the largest. Extremely penurious, he loaned money at frightfully usurious rates and hounded his victims without a vestige of sympathy.[21] As a trader and government contractor he made enormous profits; such was his cohesive collusion with high officials that competitors found it impossible to outdo him. A current saying of him ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... a double reply. He who is born a ruler, and maintains a foreign army, governing by fear, should be penurious. He who is made ruler, who courts the people, and would reign by love, must win their affection by generosity, and dazzle their fancies by pomp. Such, I believe, is the usual maxim in Italy, which is rife in all experience of ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... abuse him, and when to praise him; I will allow no man to speak ill of David that he does not deserve; and as to Sir John, why really I believe him to be an honest man at the bottom; but to be sure he is penurious, and he is mean, and it must be owned he has a degree of brutality, and a tendency to savageness, that cannot easily be defended.... He said that Sir John and he once belonged to the same club, but that ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... each other, and with the Circumstances of the Family. Mistaken Economy. Education of Daughters away from Home injudicious. Nice Sewing should be done at Home. Cheap Articles not always most economical. Buying by wholesale economical only in special cases. Penurious Savings made by getting the Poor to work cheap. Relative Obligations of the Poor and the Rich in Regard to Economy. Economy of Providence in the Unequal Distribution of Property. Carelessness of Expense not a Mark of Gentility. ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... always bore a bold and cheerful countenance, and took fortune's worst as it were the showers of spring. But now his mother sits alone by the side of Fontainebleau woods, where he gathered mushrooms in his hardy and penurious youth. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "but see what our Skinner's habits have been in the past—penurious. Why the sudden change? You know just as well as I do that a clerk can't travel around ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... high heads, and are aspiring, aim high, and seek conspicuousness, while short ones have flat heads, and seek the lower forms of worldly pleasures. Tall persons are rarely mean, though often grasping; but very penurious persons ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... was coming forward which remembered nothing of what Englishmen had suffered in New England for want of the necessaries and comforts of life. The occupations of industry were various and remunerative. Land was cheap, and the culture of it yielded no penurious reward to the husbandman; while he who chose to sell his labor was at least at liberty to place his own estimate upon it, and found it always in demand. The woods and waters were lavish of gifts which were to be had simply for the taking. The white wings of commerce, in their long flight ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... enough to wonder about the contrariness of things mortal looked sadly at the still inviting tables and marveled that a thoughtful and farseeing Providence should have made a boy's stomach in so careless and penurious ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... before me. It was the only civilised word in his vocabulary. But I felt the compliment with patriotic fervency, and in spirit thanked the bard for the barbarian's acknowledgment of my poetic and penurious country. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... notions of what constitutes a gentleman, many citizens are people of utterly penurious, niggardly habits. Frequently enough the fellow who can discuss all Socrates's theories with you is quarreling with his neighbor over the loan of salt or a lamp wick or some meal for sacrifice.[*] If one of the customary "club-dinners"[] is held at his house, he will be caught secreting ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... these tickets at an immense reduction, and by such not very creditable means, with some windfalls during the South Sea agitation, he realised a fortune of L500,000. Half a million was then almost a fabulous sum, and it was constantly increasing, owing to his penurious habits. He died at the age of eighty-one, leaving by will L240,000 to the hospital which bears his name. His body lay in state at Mercers' Chapel, and was interred in the asylum he raised, where, ten years after his death, a statue ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... oppressive, uncomfortable, muggy, unventilated; narrow, cramped; close-mouthed, secretive, reticent, reserved, uncommunicative, taciturn; dense, solid, compact, imporous; near, adjacent, adjoining; intimate, confidential; parsimonious, stingy, penurious niggardly, miserly, illiberal, close-fisted; exact, literal, faithful; intent, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... came when he had returned to his home in the back street of Twybridge, and was endeavouring to spend the holidays in a hard 'grind'. He loathed the penurious simplicity to which his life was condemned; all familiar circumstances were become petty, coarse, vulgar, in his eyes; the contrast with the idealised world of his ambition plunged him into despair: Even Mr. Gunnery seemed an ignoble figure when compared with ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... might resurrect Gathbroke from his ivory tomb; lie would do admirably for her present needs, and when she found it difficult to visualize him after so long a period, she could pay Gora a sisterly visit) to a penurious attempt to increase her capital. At the same time she had no intention of diminishing it. To quote Tom Abbott (when Maria was elsewhere): She might be a fool, or even a——fool, but she was ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... pressed me earnestly on no account to be parsimonious. Indeed Kant was nothing less than princely in his use of money; and there was no occasion on which he was known to express the passion of scorn very powerfully, but when he was commenting on mean and penurious acts or habits. Those who knew him only in the streets, fancied that he was not liberal; for he steadily refused, upon principle, to relieve all common beggars. But, on the other hand, he was liberal to the public charitable institutions; he secretly ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... base that I never heard of any man who would confess that he had ever been guilty of it. Philip was my best friend, and I was always loath to think unkindly of him, but at this time I really think he began to be rather penurious—not avaricious, certainly not. But he was not a hermit of the holiest kind. He began to save money and acquire stock. He had not been long on the hill before he owned a horse, two dogs, a cat, ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... small a share has a person in the work of controlling his own destiny. Had only the necessarily penurious and now almost degraded Kai Lung been born a brief span before the great writer Lo Kuan Chang, his name would have been received with every mark of esteem from one end of the Empire to the other, while taels and honourable ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... not penurious, following the example of the righteous Job, of whom the sages relate that he declined to receive the change due him after ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... said of the Order, that it is one which, although little known in Italy, had several houses in England up to the reign of Henry VIII. Like so many other Orders at that time, its members moved first to France and then to Italy, where it has survived in penurious dignity ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson
... his stiffened hands to the blaze. The light brought out a thoughtful look on his large, uncouth, yet kindly visage. Life had laid hard lines on his brown skin, but it had not entirely soured a naturally kind and simple nature. It had made him penurious and dull and iron-muscled; had stifled all the slender flowers of his nature; yet there was warm soil ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... too glad, I see, Too lifted for the scant degree Of life's penurious round; My little circuit would have shamed This new circumference, have blamed The ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... produced a strange physiological phenomenon in Germinie's physical being. One would have said that the passion that was alive within her renewed and transformed her lymphatic temperament. She did not seem, as before, to extract her life, drop by drop, from a penurious spring: it flowed through her arteries in a full, generous stream; she felt the tingling sensation of rich blood over her whole body. She seemed to be filled with the warm glow of health, and the ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... terms, Index, for after all you know it must come to that, and I am satisfied you will be as liberal as you can afford." Put in this way, the most penurious of the speculating tribe in paper and print would have strained a point, to overcome their natural infirmity: with Index it was otherwise; nature had formed him with a truly liberal heart: the practice ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... friends supplied Spoon with money for these only too obvious processes of vote-obtaining. It was not the Honorable, it was not De La Lande, it would not be penurious Benoit? ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... secure the lives of his own troops.[266] But no vigilance of the besieged could insure the safety of a detached position on the borders of so powerful a state as France. Elizabeth was too weak, or too penurious, to afford the recruits that were loudly called for. And now a new and frightful auxiliary to the French made its appearance. A contagious disease set in among the English troops, crowded into a narrow compass and deprived of their usual allowance of fresh meat ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... assimilation, as it were, of that metal with his own substance, became closer and closer, and age intensified it. His sister herself excited his suspicions, though she was perhaps more miserly, more rapacious than her brother whom she actually surpassed in penurious inventions. Their daily existence had something mysterious and problematical about it. The old woman rarely took bread from the baker; she appeared so seldom in the market, that the least credulous of the townspeople ended by attributing to these strange beings the knowledge of some secret ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... small portion of the western world, the yellow fever, made its appearance on board. Our navy certainly was not then under so good regulations as at present. The medical department might perhaps be almost as good then as it now is, or rather as it was when I was in the service; the disgracefully penurious compensation allowed our naval surgeons rendering their station contemptible and degrading in the estimation of medical men of any pride or ability. Besides this, the sick at sea can never receive assistance from female attendance; for ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... provision that could have been devised. It will readily be understood that the fluctuations in the value of money and in the state of society rendered a fixed rate of compensation in the Constitution inadmissible. What might be extravagant to-day, might in half a century become penurious and inadequate. It was therefore necessary to leave it to the discretion of the legislature to vary its provisions in conformity to the variations in circumstances, yet under such restrictions as to put it out of the power of that body to change the condition of the individual ...
— The Federalist Papers
... scraps of poetry and history recurred to him—a single tattered volume of 'Monte Cristo,' which he had lately bought with an odd lot at a sale—but nothing that suggested to his fancy anything like the peasant farm in the Mont Ventoux, within sight of Arles, where Louise Suveret's penurious childhood had been ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Philip to follow her, and they went into her father's room, where, to his surprise, he found some coffee ready for him—at that time a rarity, and one which Philip did not expect to find in the house of the penurious Mynheer Poots; but it was a luxury which, from his former life, the old ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... he invariably adhered to the costume of the age in which he was born. A three-cocked hat, and a plum-coloured coat, both rather the worse for wear, in which we have seen him frequently, invariably designated his person and habits; while a penurious economy, that bid defiance to all vulgar imitation, accompanied him to his grave. His death occurred in 1819, in the 80th or 81st year ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... penurious government it must be! Two weeks, tramping about the country in this unholy garb, following false trails half the time, living on crusts and cold meats. Ah, you have led me a merry dance, nephew, but ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... insomuch that, not only did he keep a tight grip upon his purse when honour was to be done to another, but in his personal expenditure, even upon things meet and proper, contrary to the general custom of the Genoese, whose wont is to array themselves nobly, he was extremely penurious, as also in his outlay upon his table. Wherefore, not without just cause, folk had dropped his surname de' Grimaldi, and called him instead Messer Ermino Avarizia. While thus by thrift his wealth waxed greater and greater, it so chanced that there came to Genoa a jester of good parts, a man debonair ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... man had all the inclination of a profligate of the first water, and only lacked the one good trait in the common catalogue of debauched vices—open-handedness—to be a notable vagabond. But there his griping and penurious habits ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... hears of a Bible, in any part of the world, different in any respect from those he owns, he at once endeavors to obtain it, no matter how difficult the undertaking, or how much it may cost. Except in the matter of Bibles he is disposed to be some what penurious—although his estate is large—and has been known to refuse to have a salad for his dinner on account of the high price of good olive-oil. He makes his will, and dies, and then it is found that his whole property is left in trust to be employed in the maintenance of his library ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... the very embodiment of the principle of fidelity to the interests of the General Government. He possessed a native strong intellect, and far more knowledge of the principles of civil government and law than he got credit for. In private and public expenditures he was extremely economical, but not penurious. In cases where the officers had to contribute money for parties and entertainments, he always gave a double share, because of his allowance of double rations. During our frequent journeys, I was always caterer, and paid all the bills. ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... not help comparing the irregular yet extensive and commodious pile of building before her to the "Manses" in her own country, where a set of penurious heritors, professing all the while the devotion of their lives and fortunes to the Presbyterian establishment, strain their inventions to discover what may be nipped, and clipped, and pared from a building ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... on. Could Captain Roland, the rigid, the thrifty, the penurious, be a gambler? The light broke on me at once: the unhappy father sought his son! I leaned against the post, and ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... letter from my father's lawyer informing me of the death of my only surviving parent, at the same time informing me that he had left all his property to be divided equally between my brother and myself. His wealth was large, for his habits had been penurious, and I found myself the possessor of at least $10,000 a year. This of course entirely altered my prospects in life and it was natural that I should immediately throw up my engagement as governess and return home for ...
— The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival - The Belle of the Delaware • Kate Percival
... involve the exercise of many intellectual faculties, such as generalization, foresight, calculation, at the same time that the moral faculties are strengthened by the constant exercise of self-control. For, granted that the naturally economical are neither shabbily penurious nor deficient in the duty of almsgiving, it is still evident that it cannot be the same effort to them to deny themselves a tempting act of liberality, or the gratification of elegant and commendable tastes, as it must be to those who are destitute of equally instinctive feelings ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... generally spoken, my ignorance of Welsh was of but little importance, especially as the foreman of the printing-office was a Cambrian, who could correct any errors I might make in Taffy's orthography, which, prodigal as it is of consonants and penurious of vowels, and, as it regards pronunciation, embarrassing to the last degree, might drive Elihu Burritt back to his smithy in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... him sweet Timandra, for his wits Are drown'd and lost in his Calamities. I haue but little Gold of late, braue Timon, The want whereof, doth dayly make reuolt In my penurious Band. I haue heard and greeu'd How cursed Athens, mindelesse of thy worth, Forgetting thy great deeds, when Neighbour states But for thy Sword and Fortune ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... who bore that name, married Catherine Innes of Rosieburn, and by her became the father of Catherine Gordon, born in 1765, afterwards Mrs. Byron. Both her parents dying early, Catherine Gordon was brought up at Banff by her grandmother, commonly called Lady Gight, a penurious, illiterate woman, who, however, was careful that her granddaughter was better educated than herself. Thus, for the second time, Gight, which, with other property, was worth between L23,000 and L24,000, passed to ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... father to son or next heir. All in good time Roger Stephen would marry and install his wife in the manor-house. But the shop in Coinagehall Street was no place for a woman. She would be a nuisance, sweeping the place out and upsetting him and Malachi; an expense, too, and Roger—always a penurious man—incurred no ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... harpoon a half dozen walrus on the sea. They laboriously towed the catch ashore and rejoiced over the unexpected wealth of oil and blubber. But the white men claimed the entire prize, loaded their extra sledges, liberally fed their dogs, and doled out but a penurious allotment of meat and blubber to ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... she had known to a dime before the robbery, at, and after that time, she had recklessly tossed aside the little that remained. This wasted portion belonged with the whole amount, and being as truthful as she was penurious, she hesitated. Her color came and went, as she looked anxiously into John's face, realizing that he had laid a trap for her ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... only lose many signatures, but should in many instances be considered as very unwelcome visitors, and probably even be treated as downright intruders My companion, who was a narrow-minded politician, and of a penurious disposition, followed me in, grumbling, to the next house that we called at, which was a tradesman's, who, I recollect, sold salt. I accosted this tradesman in the usual way, by informing him of our business, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... blackthorns, and then to the dogs, the biggest of which had eat the loins and greatest share of the hind parts of the little one." Mr. Hanbury states the deaths of these two sisters in the course of a few months after. The sums they accumulated by their penurious way of living, were immense. They bequeathed legacies by will to almost every body that were no kin to them except their assiduous attorney, Valentine Price, to whom they left nothing. "But what is strange and wonderful, ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... than in America. Since the United States of America is rich, well governed, and provided with more material comforts than China, Americans, one would think, should be happier than we are, but are they? Are there not many in their midst who are friendless and penurious? In China no man is without friends, or if he is, it is his own fault. "Virtue is never friendless," said Confucius, and, as society is constituted in China, this is literally true. If this is not so in America I fear there is something wrong with that boasted civilization, ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... of a male and female knit and united together. In very deed it was the fashion of old in the city of Rome at marriage festivals to light five wax tapers; nor was it permitted to kindle any more at the magnific nuptials of the most potent and wealthy, nor yet any fewer at the penurious weddings of the poorest and most abject of the world. Moreover, in times past, the heathen or paynims implored the assistance of five deities, or of one helpful, at least, in five several good offices to those that were to be married. Of this sort were the nuptial Jove, Juno, president ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... usually expose to the fire on a wooden spit untill it is pretty well warmed through and then eat it either alone or with the roots of the rush, squawmash, fern wappetoe &c. The natives although they possessed large quantities of this blubber and oil were so penurious that they disposed of it with great reluctance and in small quantities only; insomuch that the utmost exertions of Capt. C. and the whole party aided by the little stock of merchandize he had taken with him and some small articles which the men ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... I don't reckon I ever will, either. I don't take to the idea of back-trackin' to this farm an' gettin' old in overalls, like you say. I'm sort of penurious an' I aim to keep what little sense I got. A feller as dull as I am ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... instance of this, Hecaton calls the case of Arcesilaus silly, and not to the purpose. Arcesilaus, he says, refused to receive a large sum of money which was offered to him by a son, lest the son should offend his penurious father. What did he do deserving of praise, in not receiving stolen goods, in choosing not to receive them, instead of returning them? What proof of self-restraint is there in refusing to receive another ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... "Ha! By Hector, that penurious Herod was a builder!" they seemed to say. "There is enough stone insolence in these walls to trouble Rome for ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... year. Despite the apparent success of his publisher's enterprises (A Most Complete Compendium was in its eighth edition by 1713, and The Gazetteer's or Newsman's Interpreter reached a twelfth in 1724), little of the profit reached the penurious Echard. In 1717 Archbishop Wake wrote to Addison that "His circumstances are so much worse than I thought, that if we cannot get somewhat pretty considerable for Him, I doubt He will sink under the weight of his debts . . ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... cap, and straggling bunches of quite white hair behind his ears. A little, meagre man, not more than five feet high, in a shabby, patched dressing-gown, almost as old as himself, leading a quiet, cold, penurious life. He never married. He had never even been in love. He had never had the time, or he had never had the passion necessary for such pursuits, or he was too deeply devoted to his profession. He was ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... and sent all the way to Denver for Queen Esther's flowers. There were bouquets from half a dozen townspeople, too, but none from Scott. Scott was a prosperous hardware merchant and notoriously penurious, though he saved his face, as the boys said, by ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... Also in their penurious, laborious character; the individual only satisfies his necessary appetites, and confines his expenditure to them; his other desires he subdues, under the idea that they ...
— The Republic • Plato
... painted board and give it to the janitor for safekeeping. There were imitation Oriental rugs and imitation-leather chairs and imitation-mahogany furniture, plated silver, and imitations of china and of linen were to be found in the small three-cornered dining room, which resembled a penurious wedge of cake, Mary thought as she tried saying something polite. The imitation extended to the bedroom with its wall bed and built-in chiffonier and dresser of gaudy walnut. Trudy had promptly cluttered ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... spent some hard and penurious years, trying to make a livelihood as a journalist and man of letters. Some of his friends suspected that the Lie family were subsisting on very short rations; but they were proud, and there was no way to help them. The ex-lawyer ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... relations with Mr. Graham. I am still in the post office, and thus far nearly the whole work devolves upon me. Except in one respect, I am well treated. Mr. G-. is, as you know, very penurious, and grudges every cent that he has to pay out. When he paid me last Saturday night the small sum for which I agreed to assist him, he had much to say about his large expenses, fuel, lights, etc., and asked me if I wouldn't agree to work for two dollars a week, instead of three. I confess, I ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... introduces a voyage from the Temple Stairs to Vauxhall, in which he is accompanied by his friend, Sir Roger de Coverley. In the "Connoisseur," No. 68, we find a very humourous description of the behaviour of an old penurious citizen, who had treated his family here with a handsome supper. The magnificence of these gardens calls to recollection the magic representations in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... wished to take the child to the hospital again, and as the weather was very bad she would have to pay an omnibus fare. Bob growled at the demand, as was nowadays his custom. Since he had found a way of keeping his own pocket tolerably well supplied from time to time, he was becoming so penurious at home that Pennyloaf had to beg for what she needed copper by copper. Excepting breakfast, he seldom took a meal with her. The easy good-nature which in the beginning made him an indulgent husband had turned in other directions since his ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... obtaining a situation in a large dry-goods store, where his labours were onerous in the extreme, and his wages a mere pittance. Though Russell's employer, Mr. Watson, shrank from committing a gross wrong, and prided himself on his scrupulous honesty, his narrow mind and penurious habits strangled every generous impulse, and, without being absolutely cruel or unprincipled, he contrived to gall the boy's proud spirit and render his position one of almost purgatorial severity. His eldest son was just Russell's age, had been sent to various ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Charles that it was useless to expect the Empire unless he would spend at least as much as the French.[251] "It would be lamentable," he said, "if we should now lose all through some pitiful omission or penurious neglect;" and Francis was "going about covertly and laying many baits,"[252] to attain (p. 099) the imperial crown. To Henry himself Maximilian had more than once offered the prize, and Pace had declared that the offer was only another design for extracting Henry's gold "for ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... Stair gravely. "Notwithstanding diminishing tithes and increasing taxes, Tommy is still left to us. Apparently he thrives on a penurious diet, for he is ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... stay right here and tell my penurious friends to whistle for their profits. It seems I'm cursed with a fatal beauty. You may have noticed it? No? Well, perhaps it's a magnificent business ability that I have. Anyhow, the president of my company has a notion that I'd make him a ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... leader of 1000 horse), Gore (fair-coloured), Dongardiya (a lamp on a hill), Pinjara (a cotton-cleaner), Gadria (a shepherd), Khaparia (a tyler), Khawasi (a barber), Chiknya (a sycophant), Kinkar (a slave), Dukhi (penurious), Suplya toplya (a basket and fan maker), Kasai (a butcher), Gohattya (a cow-killer), and Kalebhut (black devil). Among the territorial sections may be mentioned Sonpuria, from Sonpur, and Patharia, from the hill country. The name Badnagrya is ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... the house of a cousin of my wife. He is a mean man, and his wife is also penurious and mean. They have made my sickness still more bitter by their taunts. They complain that I am an expense to them, and they would turn me out of doors, sick as I am, I am convinced, if they were not ashamed to do so. Poor Philip will be left to their tender mercies, but I hope only for ...
— Mark Mason's Victory • Horatio Alger
... coerce clear, transparent sound, reverberate echo, reverberate toil, labor false, perfidious prove, verify join, unite join, annex try, endeavor carry, convey save, preserve save, rescue safe, secure poor, pauper poor, penurious poor, impecunious native, indigenous strange, extraneous excuse, palliate excusable, venial cannon, ordnance corpse, cadaverous parish, parochial fool, stultify fool, idiot rule, govern governor, gubernatorial ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... that Miss Marty would make him an excellent wife. Admirable creature, she bore every test he could apply. She was gentle, companionable, intelligent in converse, yet never forward in giving an opinion; too studious, rather, to efface herself; in household management economical without being penurious; a notable cook and needlewoman; in person by no means uncomely, and in mind as well as person so scrupulously neat that her unobtrusive presence, her noiseless circumspect flittings from room to room, ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... facts depend on proofs of weight, Reason declares thy love can't be too great, And, in this light could he our country view, A very Hottentot must love it too. But if, by Fate's decrees, you owe your birth To some most barren and penurious earth, 190 Where, every comfort of this life denied, Her real wants are scantily supplied; Where Power is Reason, Liberty a joke, Laws never made, or made but to be broke; To fix thy love on such a wretched ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... she could relieve her feelings. The preparations for the evening meal were therefore accompanied by a dreary monotone of lamentation. She bewailed her lost youth, her brief courtship, the struggles of her early married life, her premature widowhood, her penurious and helpless existence, the disruption of all her present ties, the hopelessness of the future. She rehearsed the unending plaint of those long evenings, set to the music of the restless wind around her bleak dwelling, with something of its stridulous reiteration. The young man listened, ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... now that Francis was awake to his duty, the best of his nature awoke to meet its calls, and he drew upon a growing store of love for strength to thwart the desires of her he loved. 'Entire affection hateth nicer hands,' and Francis learned not to mind looking penurious and tyrannical, selfish, heartless, and unsympathetic, in the endeavour to be truly loving and lovingly true. He had not Kirsty to support him, but he could now go higher than to Kirsty for the help he needed; he went to the ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... being as yet respectful to his own wife, and standing in awe of his mother, he engaged Otho underhand to solicit her. For Nero lived familiarly with Otho, whose prodigality won his favor, and he was well pleased when he took the freedom to jest upon him as mean and penurious. Thus when Nero one day perfumed himself with some rich essence and favored Otho with a sprinkle of it, he, entertaining Nero next day, ordered gold and silver pipes to disperse the like on a sudden freely, like water, throughout the room. As to Poppaea, he was beforehand with Nero, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Unkle Oliver is expected here— and tho' He has been so penurious to you, I'll try ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... likewise to yourself, you will do a real service both to me and to the German stage; it is also my wish to write it expressly for the Berlin Theatre, as no new opera can ever succeed in being properly given here under this very penurious direction. Answer me soon, very soon—quickly, very quickly—as quickly as possible—as quick as lightning—and say whether such a thing is practicable. Herr Kapellmeister B. praised you up to the skies to me, and he is right; well may ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... enterprising to a degree; despising and contemning luxury and refinement, courting labour, and even making a pride of the privations which they, without any necessity, continue to endure with their families. They are prudent without being at all mean or penurious, and are fond of money without having a tittle of avarice. This may at first sight appear stated from a love of paradox, yet nothing can be more strictly and simply true; this is, in fact, a singular ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... utter indolence, yet, at the same time, of considerable display, is a curious problem. It is true, that many of them have places at court, and flourish on sinecures; it is equally true, that their manner of living at home is generally penurious in the extreme; it is also true that gaming, and other arts not an atom more respectable, are customary to supply this yawning life. Yet still, how the majority can exist at all, is a natural question which it must require a deep insight into the mysteries of Italian ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... the French academy, one day made a collection of a pistole a head from the members, for some general expense. Not observing that the President Rose, who was very penurious, had put his money in the hat, he presented it to him a second time. M. Rose assured him that he had put in his pistole. "I believe it," said the Abbe, "though I did not see it." "And I," said Fontenelle, "saw it, and ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... were acceptable to employers or where they were not prevented by law. Back of the exodus, universal as it is, there is an urge of elemental force. A common accounting for it, the nearest at hand, is that parents of working class children are penurious; or that they are too ignorant to understand the deteriorating effect of factory life on children; or that they are too hard pressed in their physical needs to consider the best interest of the children. ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... rising high. Cushions of silk, interchanged with others covered with the furs of animals of the chase, were arranged round a repast, which a Norman cook had done his utmost to distinguish, by the superior delicacy of his art, from the gross meals of the Saxons, and the penurious simplicity of the Welsh tables. A fountain, which bubbled from under a large mossy stone at some distance, refreshed the air with its sound, and the taste with its liquid crystal; while, at the ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott |
