"Pittance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... could no longer be reproached it transpired that he had left "to Allan Delcher Linford, son of one Clayton Linford," a beggarly pittance of five thousand dollars; and "to my beloved grandson, Bernal Linford, I give, devise and bequeath the residue of my estate, both ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... discuss the wisdom of this conclusion; but from the premises no man can dissent. It is unquestionably true that thousands of women in America suffer an oppression little less cruel than slavery; that they toil incessantly in shops and garrets for a pittance that half sustains life, and at last drives them to guilt as the alternative of starvation; it is true that women are shut out from the practice of the liberal professions; it is true that in the trades to which they are educated they often receive less pay than men for the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... been for a collection of more than three hundred parrots, with which we sailed from the river, and which died very fast while we were in the northwest trades. Sai's allowance was one per diem, but this was so scanty a pittance that he became ravenous, and had not patience to pick all the feathers off before he commenced his meal. The consequence was, that he became very ill, and refused even this small quantity of food. Those around tried to persuade me that he suffered ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... the Irish, who were mostly Roman Catholics, were ground down by such oppressive laws that they were really serfs to those landlords who owned the soil on which they toiled for a mere pittance,—about fourpence a day,—resulting in a general poverty such as has never before been seen in any European country, with its attendant misery and crime. The miserable Irish peasantry lived in mud huts or cabins, covered partially with thatch, but not enough to keep out the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... power of confession, As said himselfe, more than a curate, For of his order he was licentiate. Full sweetely heard he confession, And pleasant was his absolution. He was an easy man to give penance, *There as he wist to have a good pittance:* *where he know he would For unto a poor order for to give get good payment* Is signe that a man is well y-shrive. For if he gave, he *durste make avant*, *dared to boast* He wiste* that the man was repentant. *knew For many a man ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... unfortunate lady, relict of his lordship's then recently deceased elder brother, has for many years been afflicted with total blindness. Lord Nelson now kindly condoled with her; and generously made up the small pittance left by his brother, whom he most tenderly loved, a regular annuity of two hundred pounds, besides providing for immediate exigences. It is greatly to be regretted, that his lordship's repeated solicitations for Mr. Maurice Nelson's advancement ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... labourer—the hewer of wood, the drawer of water—slouching wearily to his toil; sleep clinging still about his leaden eyes, his pittance of food carried tied up in a dish-clout. The first stroke of the hour clangs from Big Ben. Haste thee, fellow-slave, lest the overseer's whip, "Out, we will have no lie-a-beds here," descend upon ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... It will be easy to show that the benefits and blessings anticipated from the actual enjoyment of cheap postage, have fully equalled the most sanguine expectations of the friends of the measure, and have far exceeded in public utility, the pittance of income to the treasury, which used to be wrung out by the tax upon letters. The same examination will also show, that there is no substantial reason, either in the system itself, or in any peculiarity of our circumstances, why the same system is not equally ...
— Cheap Postage • Joshua Leavitt
... the saloon, and after many rebuffs succeeded in getting employment as errand-boy in a large importing house. The salary was a mere pittance, but it kept him in clothes and coarse food, until one day, about a year after his apprenticeship there, he chanced to save the life of Mr. Belgrade, the senior partner. A gas-pipe in the private office of the firm exploded, and the place took fire, and Mr. Belgrade, ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... Jackson refusing a $1,200 pension, while indigent widows and veterans only get a pittance, may cause them to get $150,000 more than heretofore. It is the happiest thought that our countrymen still appreciate most highly the principle that money can not buy. Mrs. Jackson belongs to history, linked to a name that will live through ...
— The Southern Soldier Boy - A Thousand Shots for the Confederacy • James Carson Elliott
... which oppressed her like a physical pain would give place to gaiety and peace. Her father would be happy and stop working so hard, and her mother would not have to worry—all if she, Wilhelmina, could just sell her stock and salvage a pittance from ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... wardrobe in a bundle, which he slung over his shoulder by a stick, and a mere pittance in his purse, he set out from Waldorf, on foot, for the Rhine. "Soon after I left the village," said he, in after-life, "I sat down beneath a tree to rest, and there I made three resolutions: to be honest, to be industrious, and not to gamble." He had but two dollars in his ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... "It is different with my father. My father has what is called a regular income. One of these days I shall inherit it. It will keep us out of the poorhouse. But meanwhile I have only the pittance that he allows me." ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... England, and more especially London, with hordes of disbanded soldiers; thousands of whom, rather than starve, or turn highwaymen (which no few of their comrades did, stopping coaches at times in the most public streets), would work for such a pittance as to bring down the wages of all the laboring classes. Neither was our adventurer the least among the sufferers. Driven out of his previous employ—a sort of porter in a river-side warehouse—by this sudden influx of rivals, destitute, honest men like ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... the grounds on which geologists and palaeontologists of the highest rank assert that the theory of evolution has not the slightest scientific basis; and they support their assertion with an amount of evidence of which the above items are a miserable pittance. ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... comparison. The hour when gold was entrusted to his charge found him feverish and irritable. He asked himself whether he was a mere machine to transfer money from spot to spot, and he spurned at the pittance bestowed upon honesty in this life. Where could Boyne's Bank discover again such an honest man as he? And because he was honest he was poor! The consideration that we alone are capable of doing the unparalleled thing may sometimes ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... friend who happier days have known And each calm comfort of a home your own, This is bad living: I have spent my life In hardest toil and unavailing strife, And here (from forest ambush safe at least) To me this scanty pittance seems a feast. I was a plough-boy once; as free from woes And blithesome as the lark with whom I rose. Each evening at return a meal I found And, tho' my bed was hard, my sleep was sound. One Whitsuntide, to go to fair, I drest Like a great bumkin in my Sunday's best; ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... the old pieces. Day after day he unpacked and dusted and polished them with loving devotion. They spoke to him of other days, and when he was quite sure that the last freight bill had been paid, he seemed really to enjoy them. The unexpected drain had reduced his savings to a pittance, but were not the pullets which he could ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... By means of this connection, Charlotte presently found employment for her skill in fine needlework. Mrs. Peak was incapable of earning money, but the experiences of her early married life enabled her to make more than the most of the pittance ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... which community is only valid through his consent. In the Jura and the Nivernais, he may pursue fugitive serfs, and demand, at their death, not only the property left by them on his domain, but, again, the pittance acquired by them elsewhere. At Saint-Claude he acquires this right over any person that passes a year and a day in a house belonging to the seigniory. As to ownership of the soil we see still more clearly that he once had entire possession ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... severed this country from the communion of Peter,"[1] meaning that Egypt was full of heretics, with whom those that dwelt there were obliged either to join in communion, or be deprived of the sacraments. The liberality and hospitality of Fulgentius to the poor, out of the small pittance he received for his particular subsistence, made Eulalius condemn himself of remissness in those virtues, and for the future ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... dedication of some of these books to the pope secured for him certain small preferments, which, in his most profitable condition, aggregated about thirty scudi a month (perhaps equal to $20 of our money). On this miserable pittance he supported his wife and four children. In 1556 he was discharged from his place as a pontifical singer, on account of his marriage, a fact which had been ignored by the pope who appointed him. He then held the post of chapel ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... forenoon: the poor fellow came for sympathy and conversation. It is difficult to imagine a situation more forlorn and isolated than that of this man,—a Greek at Seville, with scarcely a single acquaintance, and depending for subsistence on the miserable pittance to be derived from selling a few books, for the most part hawked about from door to door. "What could have first induced you to commence bookselling in Seville?" said I to him, as he arrived one sultry day, heated and fatigued, with a small ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... father. I swore I would be an honest woman, and I sought employment to earn a living for my babe and myself, but every avenue was closed to me. I washed and scrubbed while I was able to teach music splendidly, but I could get no pupils. I made shirts for a pittance and daily refused, to me, fortunes for dishonor. I have gone hungry and almost naked to pay for my baby's board, but I was ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... does not flourish among them, is true," answered Andrea, who loved so well to discourse on such subjects, that he would have stopped to reason on religion or manners with the beggar to whom he gave a pittance, did he only meet with encouragement; "but it is not as bad in France, on this important head, as it has been; and we may hope that there will be further improvement in ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... state of the drama; and the drama was the department of polite literature in which a poet had the best chance of obtaining a subsistence by his pen. The sale of books was so small that a man of the greatest name could hardly expect more than a pittance for the copyright of the best performance. There cannot be a stronger instance than the fate of Dryden's last production, the Fables. That volume was published when he was universally admitted to be the chief of living English poets. It contains about twelve thousand lines. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... theatrical house, at once put him in possession of a few more shillings weekly, and enabled him to gratify his old propensity. Even this resource shortly failed him; his irregularities were too great to admit of his earning the wretched pittance he might thus have procured, and he was actually reduced to a state bordering on starvation, only procuring a trifle occasionally by borrowing it of some old companion, or by obtaining an appearance at one or other of the commonest of the minor ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... from her room—" "Yes," she cried vehemently, seeing my look of sarcastic incredulity, "taken from her room; she never went of her own accord; and she must be found if I spend every dollar of the pittance I have laid up in the bank ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... beseech you for Esau's pottage: Remember Balaam, who was cast away by the deceit of the wages of unrighteousness; forget not how miserable Judas was, who lost himself for a trifle of money, that never did him good. Better be pined to death by hunger, than for a little pittance of the earth, to perish for ever, and never be recovered, so long as the days of heaven shall last, and the years of eternity shall endure. Why should ye distress your own brethren, sons and servants of the Lord Jesus; this is not the ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... the house, which displayed eight lofty windows on each of the stories of its ornate Renaissance facade, he laughed lightly as he thought: "These folks don't have to wait for a monthly pittance of three hundred francs, with just thirty sous ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... judiciously chosen. If such gentlemen arrive to be great scholars, it must, I think, be either by means supernatural, or by a method altogether out of any road yet known to the learned. But I conceive the fact directly otherwise, and that many of them lose the greatest part of the small pittance they receive at ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... English education, because with the disadvantages of her birth, her after settlement would be doubly difficult. Abroad, with a fair foreign education and a portion of five or six thousand pounds, she might and may marry very respectably. In England such a dowry would be a pittance, while elsewhere it is a fortune. It is, besides, my wish that she should be a Roman Catholic, which I look upon as the best religion, as it is assuredly the oldest of the various branches of Christianity. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... o'er his forgotten name And call Captivity a kindness—meant To shield him from insanity or shame— Such shall be his meek guerdon! who was sent To be Christ's Laureate—they reward him well! Florence dooms me but death or banishment, Ferrara him a pittance and a cell,[309] Harder to bear and less deserved, for I 140 Had stung the factions which I strove to quell; But this meek man who with a lover's eye Will look on Earth and Heaven, and who will deign To embalm with his celestial flattery, As poor a thing as ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... this most odious, this most galling tax, is felt even in the cottage of the labourer, who cannot return to refresh himself after his day of toil with his favourite beverage without paying twice its value out of his hard-earned pittance, to swell the dividend of the Company, and support these pruriencies of ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of the door, and headed in the direction of the store where he gave his valuable services daily from seven in the morning until late in the evening, for a miserable pittance. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... it was not worth while. What is a native poet to the great German king? A phantom that he knows not, and believes not. As great as he is, the king showed himself very small to me. I sang him as a poetess and he bestowed a pittance upon me as one would to a beggar ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... lie: and there this night Weele passe the businesse priuately and well: Send for your daughter by your seruant here, My Boy shall fetch the Scriuener presentlie, The worst is this that at so slender warning, You are like to haue a thin and slender pittance ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... burial until a considerable sum has been paid. It is only too true, but who is to blame? The priest must live and bring up his family, and you cannot imagine the humiliations to which he has to submit in order to gain a scanty pittance. I know it by experience. When I make the periodical visitation I can see that the peasants grudge every handful of rye and every egg that they give me. I can overbear their sneers as I go away, and I know they have ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... revealed the stalworth figure of Simon Patterson, the plantation parson. Our plantation parsons, be it known, are a singular species of depraved humanity, a sort of itinerant sermon-makers, holding forth here and there to the negroes of the rich planters, receiving a paltry pittance in return, and having in lieu of morals an excellent taste for whiskey, an article they invariably call to their aid when discoursing to the ignorant slave-telling him how content with his lot he ought to be, seeing that God intended him only for ignorance and servitude. The parson did, indeed, ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... shepherd, goatherd, or neatherd: a lazy Coridon, occupied in milking and shearing his herds and flocks, but more rudely and harshly than the herd or shepherd himself. Do you repute any man the greater for being lord of two thousand acres of land? they laugh at such a pitiful pittance, as laying claim themselves to the whole world for their possession. Do you boast of your nobility, as being descended from seven rich successive ancestors? they look upon you with an eye of contempt, as men who have not ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... perilous life, and sad as life may be, Hath the lone fisher, on the lonely sea, O'er the wild waters labouring far from home, For some bleak pittance e'er compelled to roam: Few hearts to cheer him through his dangerous life, And none to aid him in the stormy strife: Companion of the sea and silent air, The lonely fisher thus must ever fare: Without the comfort, hope,—with scarce ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... have come to some decision. If you can save the property of course you ought to do so. If you can live on what pittance is left ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... relations being determined that she should do something for her living, had advanced some money on condition that she set up an establishment. Having no experience in hotel-keeping, she soon dissipated the little capital and lived afterwards on a pittance in ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... them. I hope they were not a just sample of their whole nation; for these gentry would exercise every imposition, and even insinuate the thing that was not, the more easily to plunder us of our hard earned pittance of small change. Had they shown any generosity, like the British tar, I should have passed over their conduct in silence; but after they had stripped our men of every farthing, they would say to them—"Monsieur, you have won all our money, now lend us a little change to get us some coffee ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... going to make him some promise; to tell him something of her intention towards his son, and to make some tender of assistance to himself; being now in that mind to live on the smallest possible pittance, of which I have before spoken, when he ceased speaking or listening, and hurried her on ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... intact until the church was sold. The remodeling and addition cost $1,100. This property proved to be very valuable, as they decided after many years to make it one of its most fashionable thoroughfares. Bought for almost a pittance, this property had advanced in value to such an extent that the business interests offered a high price for it and it ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... was to be a sailor—not that he knew anything of the sea, except that his father had spent his life on it. His mother could not read or write, and, unable to instruct him or to pay for his instruction, being, indeed, too poor to do without the pittance his labours brought, she had allowed him to grow up in extreme ignorance— though, according to the faint light that was in her, she had taught him, to the best of her power, to do right. Still, poor Ned knew nothing of religion. He had ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston
... to hire troops, and without difficulty engaged ten thousand men to meet, on the plains of Milan, the six thousand of their brethren whom Ludovico had hired, to hew each other to pieces for the miserable pittance of a few pennies a day. But Louis XII. was as great in diplomacy as in war. He sent secret emissaries to the Swiss in the camp of Ludovico, offering them larger wages if they would abandon the service of Ludovico and return home. They promptly closed the bargain, unfurled the banner of ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... to the voice of a wife who adores him—never, never shall he spend a shilling upon so worthless a young man. He has a small income from his mother (I cannot but think that the first Lady Fitz-Boodle was a weak and misguided person); let him live upon his mean pittance as he can, and I heartily pray we may not hear of him ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and harlot and degenerate; the crime of armies of unemployed and starving men, of millions of women forced into the factories and shops, there to compete with men and lower wages and lose their finest feminine attributes in the sordid and heartless drudging for a pittance. ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... him. To be in the service of such a man, whose personal character was as infamous as some of the books he published, was a humiliation. It meant the prostitution of his faculties. He shuddered at the prospect of becoming one of Curll's slaves to some of whom he paid a mere pittance and who were sunk so low they had no alternative ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... advertisement in the newspapers—when I say 'our,' I'm alluding to the advertisements of my friend in the city, and one or two others who embark their capital in the same way, and are so friendly towards me as sometimes to give me a lift with my little pittance— if at that time you could have helped us, Mr. George, it would have been the ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... and deeper into debt. She had read of the contract system under which ignorant Negroes, not knowing the contents of the papers signed, practically sold themselves into slavery, agreeing to work for a number of years for a mere pittance and further agreeing to be locked up in a stockade at night and to pay for the expense of a recapture in case they attempted to escape. She had heard much of the practice of peonage, how that planters and contractors would enter into collusion ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... fell heavy on his breast. 'Why do I go in cruel sport to say, "I love thee, Jane; appoint the happy day?" 'Why seek her sweet ingenuous reply, 'Then grasp her hand and proffer—poverty? 'Why, if I love her and adore her name, 'Why act like time and sickness on her frame? 'Why should my scanty pittance nip her prime, 'And chace away the Rose before its time? 'I'm young, 'tis true; the world beholds me free; 'Labour ne'er show'd a ...
— Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs • Robert Bloomfield
... will most readily," cried the sacrist. "The pittance-master can stop the fifty shillings from my very own weekly dole, and so the Abbey be none the poorer. In the meantime here is Wat with his arbalist and a bolt in his girdle. Let him drive it to the head through this cursed creature, for his ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... trusting confidence of a child. The responsibility for the neglected stepdaughter had similarly been flung upon his shoulders. And, satisfied with this manner of disposing of his worldly concerns, Standing intended to fare forth, shorn of any possession but a bare pittance for his daily needs, to lose himself, and all the shadows of a haunted mind, in the dim, remote interior of the unexplored forests of Northern Quebec. The whole ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... with the spear, from which came both blood and water to heal my dirty wounds. When thou hast so done if thou canst, take part of thy bread and of thy fish, and lay it by itself, and say thus quietly in thine heart, "Lord, what wilt Thou give me for this pittance I make to Thee? how many tears, how many love-yearnings and longings after Thee? how many comforts of the Holy Ghost, how many stirrings to good things, how many lookings towards me with Thy lovely eyes? Lord, wilt Thou for this meat that the poor hungry man shall have for Thy sake, ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... that the uninviting pittance set aside for his midday repast, remained for several days untouched. Samuel made his appearance regularly as ever, and bore with the same meekness the gibes of his fellow-pupils, or the taunts of ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... truth; namely, that his sleepy old absentee rector, Lord Scoutbush's uncle, would yawn and grumble at the move, and wondering why Frank "had not the sense to leave ill alone," would give him no manner of assistance beyond his pittance of eighty pounds a-year, and five pounds at Christmas to ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... taking up weak or poor cows that looked like needing it, putting them in a separate pasture and feeding them on just two pounds of cotton-seed meal once a day; no hay, only the dry, wild grass in the small pasture. The good effect of even such a pittance of meal was simply astounding. Thereafter I do not think I ever lost a single cow from poverty or weakness. This use of meal on a range ranch was in its way also a novelty. Afterwards it became general and prices of cotton-seed and cotton-seed meal ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... immediately. "Dimitri has received a mere pittance from that which they had stolen from him. It is a thing which is done everywhere. On the banks of the Rhine, when a traveler is ruined at roulette, the conductor of the game gives him something wherewith ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... you noticed that some who possess a mere pittance not only find this sufficient, but actually succeed in getting a surplus out of it; while others do not find a large fortune ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... who freely bared his breast to the shock of a hundred battles for his country, his fireside and his little ones, could then have sent his pittance of eleven dollars a month to that fireside, with the consciousness it might buy those dear ones bread at least. But long before the darkest days fell upon the South, his whole month's pay would not buy them one ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... was with a youth whose intellectual tendencies were the very reverse of my own. I shall call him Charles Meunier; his real surname—an English one, for he was of English extraction—having since become celebrated. He was an orphan, who lived on a miserable pittance while he pursued the medical studies for which he had a special genius. Strange! that with my vague mind, susceptible and unobservant, hating inquiry and given up to contemplation, I should have been drawn towards a youth whose strongest passion was science. ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... annoyance cognizance vengeance compliance conveyance ignorance grievance fragrance pittance alliance defiance acquaintance deliverance appearance accordance countenance sustenance remittance connivance resistance nuisance utterance variance vigilance maintenance forbearance ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... course, from doing much of his business; and the people, as was said, being few and poor, he was at this time exposed to great hardships. I have been assured that he and his family have lived for a great while together without tasting animal food, and with but a scanty pittance of other provision." ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... an Irish spirit,—who will cost me, sooner or later, above 20,000 livres annually [have rents in our INDIA COMPANY, say 1,000 pounds a year, as my Angels know], which used to be the readiest item of my Pittance. But M. le Duc de Choiseul will triumph over Luc in one way or other; then what joy! I suppose he shows you my impertinent reveries. Do you know, Luc is so mad, that I don't despair of bringing him to reason [persuading him to give up Cleve, and knuckle as he should, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... sitting opposite to me, and desires to be remembered. James Brock is likewise at Kingston. I believe he considers it more his interest to remain with the 49th than to act as my private secretary; indeed, the salary is a mere pittance. Poor Leggatt is dead, and has left his family in the most distressing circumstances. His ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... herself of it. Long hours of thought led her invariably to the one possible conclusion—to avoid every one, keep wholly to herself, and, by starvation, if need be, save enough of her insignificant pittance to take her ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... which sovereign princes coveted. Lands and money had been bestowed on him so liberally that he was one of the richest subjects in Europe. Albemarle had as yet not even a regiment; he had not been sworn of the Council; and the wealth which he owed to the royal bounty was a pittance when compared with the domains and the hoards of Portland. Yet Portland thought himself aggrieved. He could not bear to see any other person near him, though below him, in the royal favour. In his fits of resentful sullenness, he hinted an intention of retiring from the Court. William omitted nothing ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... ceased; she had in vain tried to obtain a renewal of it from the widow, or even an account of the state of her brother's affairs. Her letters for three years past had remained unanswered, and she would have been exposed to the horrors of the most abject want, but for a pittance quarterly doled out to her by ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... Elleray were destined to be fleeting. The fortune of its master was melted away by the mismanagement of others, leaving him but a slender pittance. He bore his loss like a man, sorrowing, but not repining. The estate was given up, and a new home found with his mother, in Edinburgh. This was in 1815. Four years later, fortune had smiled on his cheerful labors, and given him the wherewithal to provide a home of his own for his wife ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... need them. These are all heavy charges on slave labor. Hence, in all countries where the denseness of the population has reduced it to a matter of perfect certainty, that labor can be obtained, whenever wanted, and the laborer be forced, by sheer necessity, to hire for the smallest pittance that will keep soul and body together, and rags upon his back while in actual employment—dependent at all other times on alms or poor rates—in all such countries it is found cheaper to pay this pittance, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... well qualified to speak upon this subject, 'I say not merely look at the pittance of men like John Dalton, or the voluntary starvation of the late Graff; but compare what is considered as competency or affluence by your Faradays, Liebigs, and Herschels, with the expected results of a life of successful commercial enterprise: then compare the amount of ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... country," they observed, and then told us that thirty of their own number had died of smallpox, having been bewitched by the people of Tette, who envied them because, during the first year, none of their party had died. Six of their young men, becoming tired of cutting firewood for a meagre pittance, proposed to go and dance for gain before some of the neighbouring chiefs. "Don't go," said the others, "we don't know the people of this country;" but the young men set out and visited an independent half-caste chief, a few miles to the north, named Chisaka, ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... gouty, a bad sleeper, kicking in his old dreams, and snoring; to march down my vale of years at word of command, accommodating my tottering old steps to those of the other prisoners in my dingy, hopeless old gang; to hold out a trembling hand for a sickly pittance of gruel, and say, "Thank you, ma'am," to Miss Prim, when she has done reading her sermon. John! when Goody Twoshoes comes next Friday, I desire she may not be disturbed by theological controversies. You have a fair voice, and ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... Blaessel was also spared him. With sticks and steed, therefore, he quitted his native place, and began to take his rounds abroad, scarcely hoping to gather what was denied him amongst his own people—a scanty pittance. It was little that poor Nicholas got to break and bite upon his road; he made amends for the deficiency by consulting the brandy flask, from which the deserted one sucked his temporary solace. With the hot liquor in his head, he could ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... dish of fat pickles, luscious to the eye and cooling to the palate. Mrs. Murdison brought a jar of marmalade of her own making—a rare delicacy; though the oranges were purchased of an Italian vender who had sold out an over-ripe stock at a pittance. Mrs. Lukens supplied a plate of fat doughnuts, and Mrs. Burke sent over a big platter of molasses candy. Thus the people of the neighbourhood had come to feel the affair one to which not only had they been bidden, but in which they were ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... Russian "field-hand" are as follows: Laborers by the day, 37-1/2 kopecks (about 25 cents) per diem; by the month, 23 kopecks (15 cents); by the season, 17 kopecks (11 cents); in harvest, 75 kopecks (half a dollar). For this pittance the peasants toil from twelve to fifteen, and often sixteen, hours a day; and, thanks to their insufficient food, the constant strain soon begins to tell. A few seasons of such overwork and their strength breaks down altogether, while, instead of the substantial diet ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... Lebrun lives for Victor, and for Victor alone. She has spoiled him into the worthless creature he is. She worships him and the ground he walks on. Robert is very well in a way, to give up all the money he can earn to the family, and keep the barest pittance for himself. Favorite son, indeed! I miss the poor fellow myself, my dear. I liked to see him and to hear him about the place the only Lebrun who is worth a pinch of salt. He comes to see me often in the city. I like to play to him. That Victor! hanging would ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... greater number of the cahiers of the clergy were composed under the prevailing influence of the parish priests. These men felt themselves to be wronged in the distribution of church property. They thought it outrageous that the working part of the clergy should receive but a pittance, while useless drones fattened in idleness.[Footnote: C., Paroisse de St. Paul, A. P., v. 270, Section 11.] Their proposals were radical. They would take from the few who had much and give to the many who had little. The salaries ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... Englishmen in Berlin employed by the German Government, notably Aubrey Stanhope, who for well-known reasons was unable to enter England at the outbreak of war, and so remains and must remain in Germany, where, for a very humble pittance, he conducts this campaign ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... only establishment in Ireland for the propagation and diffusion of scientific and antiquarian knowledge—the Royal Irish Academy—receives annually the munificent sum of L300 from the Government! And yet, notwithstanding this pittance, the members of that society have made a step in the right direction by the purchase of the late Dean of St. Patrick's Irish Archaeological Collection, of which a fine series of drawings is now being made ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... February. But then it must be own'd, that we have but very little Spring, unless it be of Grass and Weeds; and that our Autumn lasts but very few Weeks, without any Harvest to gather in, but a little pittance of Corn and some half made Hay; and as for our Summers (as we call them) they come as it were by Chance, now and then one, when Spain and Italy have done with them. Nay, even then, we only get them, as Servants ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... the further payment of debts,—with the exception of a small sum vested in trustees for the use of Mrs. Byron, who thus found herself, within the short space of two years, reduced from competence to a pittance of 150l. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... listened patiently to the arguments of counsel, whose fees for advocacy of claims before them would have paid the life income of half the bench. There was Mr. Attorney-General and his assistants still protecting the Government's millions from rapacious hands, and drawing the yearly public pittance that their wealthier private antagonists would have scarce given as a retainer to their junior counsel. The little standing army of departmental employes,—the helpless victims of the most senseless and idiotic ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... a very serious matter to Miss Joliffe from the material point of view; he was her sheet-anchor, the last anchor that kept Bellevue Lodge from drifting into bankruptcy. Mr Sharnall was dead, and with him had died the tiny pittance which he contributed to the upkeep of the place, and lodgers were few and far between in Cullerne. Miss Joliffe might well have remembered these things, but she did not. The only thought that crossed her mind was that if Mr Westray went away she would lose yet another friend. She did ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... 'missus' and 'de chillun' with a respectful but eager 'Merry Christmas,' and are sure to get in return a new coat or pair of boots, a gingham dress, or ear-rings more showy than expensive. They have saved up, too, a pittance from their wages, to expend in a souvenir for 'Dinah' or 'Pompey,' the never-to-be-forgotten belle ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... francs, was now bringing in eighteen thousand francs per annum. Eve began to understand the motives lurking beneath the apparent generosity of the brothers Cointet; they were leaving the Sechard establishment just sufficient work to gain a pittance, but not enough ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... in and aid popular education in some way. To-day it has been only by the most strenuous efforts on the part of the thinking men of the South that the Negro's share of the school fund has not been cut down to a pittance in some half-dozen States; and that movement not only is not dead, but in many communities is gaining strength. What in the name of reason does this nation expect of a people, poorly trained and hard pressed in severe economic competition, ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... In Ulster, where no such tithe is required, these insurrections are unknown. The double Church which Ireland supports, and that painful visible contribution towards it which the poor Irishman is compelled to make from his miserable pittance, is one great cause of those never-ending insurrections, burnings, murders, and robberies, which have laid waste that ill-fated country for so many years. The unfortunate consequence of the civil disabilities, and the Church payments under which the Catholics labour, is ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... almost too small to bother about. It was the sort of sum which they had been mentally setting aside for the heiress's car fare. Then they managed to adjust their minds to it. After all, one could do something even with a pittance like twenty-five thousand. ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... while the two peered into the mercers' shops, gloating on satin and muslin. Mrs Gunning, as improvident, was almost drawn in by them, when word came of a card debt that their papa owed to Sir Horatius Blake, and the unfortunate lady received not even the pittance that provided herrings for six hungry mouths; so that they were like to come down to dry bread, which event fairly ended ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... heard, with all my heart. Well, then, Jack, I have been considering that I am so strong and hearty, I may continue to plague you a long time. Now, Jack, I am sensible that the income of your commission, and what I have hitherto allowed you, is but a small pittance for a lad of ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... two others, one of whom had even been proposed as confessor to Madame la Dauphine. One was long ill of a malady he died of. He was not properly nourished, and I sent him his dinner every day, for more than five months, because I had seen his pittance. I sent him even remedies, for he could not refrain from admitting to me that he suffered from the treatment ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... paid at all, indeed, appears to have been a favor, for it has not been done in full now for several years in succession. Spain regularly remains indebted to the unlucky peasants in the amount of the miserable pittance allowed, from one year's end to another. The Government ordered the officials to exact a higher return from the impoverished population of the tobacco districts; and even rewarded informers who, after pointing out fields already owned, but ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... found himself enthralled by it and made the marvelous flute-player a rich offer, the old man refused peremptorily even to talk the matter over with him—to the great delight of the small manager, who was paying but a pittance for ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... Odysseus, too, entered in the guise of a forlorn old beggar, and sat down near the door. Telemachos handed Eumaios a whole loaf of bread and as much meat as he could hold in his two hands, and bade him take it to the beggar. And he told him to tell the poor old man to ask a pittance ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... to show our miserable bondage and slavery, and unto what small pittance and allowance we were tied, for every five men had allowance but five aspers of bread in a day, which is but twopence English, and our lodging was to lie on the bare boards, with a very simple cape ...
— Voyager's Tales • Richard Hakluyt
... law-makers and tax-makers thought it right to limit the poor pittance which personal labour can produce, and on which a whole family is to be supported, they certainly must feel themselves happily indulged in a limitation on their own part, of not less than twelve thousand a-year, and that of property they never acquired (nor probably any of their ancestors), ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... learning art under him, thinking that the friars were not giving them proper food, had counterfeited, without the knowledge of Mariotto, the keys of those windows opening into the friar's rooms, through which their pittance is passed; and sometimes, in secret, they stole some of it, now from one and now from another. There was a great uproar about this among the friars, since in the matter of eating they are as sensitive as any other person; but the lads ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... claim to rank among the fine arts consists. This character the builders of the good times, accordingly, never left out of sight; so that, if their means were limited, they lavished all upon one point,—made that overflow with riches, and left the rest plain and bare; never did they spread their pittance thin to cover the whole, as we do. It is for this reason that so few of the great cathedrals were finished, and that in buildings of all kinds we so often find the decoration in patches, sharply marked off from the rest of the structure. This noble ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... heart, did not at all thank Captain Aylmer for his generosity. She would have had everything from him, or nothing. It was grievous to her to think that she should owe to him a bare pittance to keep her out of the workhouse to him who had twice seemed to be on the point of asking her to share everything with him. She did not love her cousin Will as she loved him; but her cousin Will's assurance ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... fortunate. Almost at once, she procured a humble employment in the Emporium, the great department store owned by Edward Gilder. To be sure, the wage was infinitesimal, while the toil was body-breaking soul-breaking. Still, the pittance could be made to sustain life, and Mary was blessed with both soul and body to sustain much. So she merged herself in the army of workers—in the vast battalion of those that give their entire selves to a labor most stern and unremitting, and most ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... satins, velvets, laces, woolen goods, and the richest articles of beauty and luxury, in which to array themselves, were put upon the market at a trifling cost, compared to what they were manufactured at in my own country. Pallid and haggard women and children, working incessantly for a pittance that barely sustained existence, was the ultimatum that the search after the cause of cheap prices arrived at in my world, but here it traveled from one bevy of beautiful workwoman to another until it ended at the Laboratory where Science ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... was danger was the proper office To forbear doing is often as generous as to do To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind to't To fret and vex at folly, as I do, is folly itself To give a currency to his little pittance of learning To go a mile out of their way to hook in a fine word To keep me from dying is not in your power To kill men, a clear and strong light is required To know by rote, is no knowledge To make little ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... against some standing trees and instantly filled with water and sunk. Potts who was with them is an indifferent swimer, it was with much difficulty he made the land. they lost three blankets a blanket coat and their pittance of merchandize. in our bear state of clootheing this was a serious loss. I sent Sergt. Pryor and a party over with the indian canoe in order to raise and secure ours but the debth of the water and the strength of the current baffled every effort. I fear that ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... to experience another literary distress. One Thestorides, who aimed at the reputation of poetical genius, kept Homer in his own house, and allowed him a pittance, on condition of the verses of the poet passing in his name. Having collected sufficient poetry to be profitable, Thestorides, like some would-be literary publishers, neglected the man whose brains he had sucked, and left him. At his departure, Homer is ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... for years. But why can't I be her friend? Why can't I share with her the things that give me pleasure—books—art—and all the rest? Why should you condemn me to see her living on a pittance, with nobody but a sister who is as hard as nails to look after her?—lonely, and unhappy, and dull—when I know that I could help her, turn her mind away from her trouble—make her take some pleasure in life again? You talk, Hester, as though we had a dozen ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Newbridge, Adrian IV. would seem to have pushed integrity in money matters to a harsh extreme; and so to have proved himself the antipodes of those popes who afterwards practised nepotism. For it is related of him, that rather than award a pittance towards the relief of his aged and destitute mother out of those ample revenues, which as pope he had at his disposal, but which he did not feel himself justified in diverting to private uses, he allowed her to subsist as best she could on the alms of the Chapter of Canterbury. ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby
... before, head butler in my grandmother's house, and stood particularly high in her favour. But suddenly falling into disgrace, he was as suddenly degraded to being herdsman, and did not long keep even that position. He sank lower still, and struggled on for a while on a monthly pittance of flour in a little hut far away. At last he had died of paralysis, leaving his family in ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... probably a greater burden; in Canada it never exceeded a few sous for a whole farm. The rate of cens was not uniform: each seigneur was entitled to what he and the habitant might agree upon, but it never amounted to more than the merest pittance, nor could it ever by any stretch of the imagination be deemed a burden. With the cens went the rentes, the latter being fixed in terms of money, poultry, or produce, or all three combined. 'One fat fowl of the brood of the month of May or twenty sols (sous) for ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... be appalled in the dark of night by the silhouette of old Zelig in nightdress, sitting up in bed and counting a bundle of bank notes which he always replaced under his pillow. She frequently upbraided him for his niggardly nature, for his warding off all requests outside the pittance for household expense. She pleaded, exhorted, wailed. He invariably answered: "I haven't a cent by my soul." She pointed to the bare walls, the broken furniture, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... instructed, but under Rodolph III the second Burgundian kingdom rapidly approached its dissolution. Weakly subservient to the church, and dispossessing himself of his revenues to such an extent that he was forced to beg a small pittance for his daily necessities from his churchly despoilers, it was said of him that "Onc ne fut roi comme ce roi." Ceding the whole of the province of Vaud, including part of the possessions of Count ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... the scales Are held by some just woman, who maintains By spinning wool her household,—carefully She poises both the wool and weights, to make The balance even, that she may provide A pittance ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... was therefore a strange thing in this house, the faltering, irresolute way in which its young but despotic mistress addressed that person, who in a domestic sense was less important than Martin Wittenhaagen, or even than the little girl who came in the morning and for a pittance washed the vessels, etc., and went ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... cartoonist toiled long in early life at some uncongenial task for a pittance. Meanwhile he drew pictures for fun, and one day a journalist, seeing one of his sketches, offered him fifty dollars for it—the salary of many days. "And when," said the cartoonist, "I found I could get more money by playing than by working, I swore I would ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... what he has, and is about to blow out his somewhat unimportant brains. But Constance, in the truest spirit of melodrama, and having long sought him in vain under the guidance of a quarta persona, of whom more presently, realises almost the whole of her fortune, except a small pittance, dashes it down before him in the nick of time, and saves him ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... your officers are composed of such persons as are actuated by principles of honour and a spirit of enterprise, you have little to expect from them. They ought to have such allowances as will enable them to live like, and support the character of gentlemen; and not be driven by a scanty pittance to the low and dirty arts which many of them practise, to filch the public of more than the difference of pay would amount to, upon an ample allowance. Besides, something is due to the man who puts ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... encouraged to recruit her crops, her growing infirmities, and, above all, the tortures, of a stubborn hip gout, which she found would yield to no remedy, determined her to break up her business, and retire with a decent pittance into the country, where I promised myself, nothing so sure, as my going down to live with her, as soon as I had seen a little more of life, and improved my small matters into a competency that would create in me an independence on the world: for I was now, thanks to Mrs. Cole, ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... home which death has entered, where "Joseph is not, and Simeon is not," and where some sobbing heart, under the tattered garb of poverty, mourns, unsolaced and unpitied, its "loved and lost." Are there none such within your reach, to whom a trifling pittance would be as an angel of mercy? How it would hallow and enhance all you possess, were you to seek to live as almoner of Jehovah's bounties! If He has given you of this world's substance, remember it is bestowed, ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... vessels with impunity. Besides, there is a heavy penalty in all the Southern States, if the thing is proved. You see, Gerald, it is every way for my interest to make sure of returning those negroes; and your interest is somewhat connected with mine, seeing that the small pittance saved from the wreck of your father's property is quite insufficient to supply your ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... miserable creature she was, you would have pitied her, just as I did. She belonged to our village. Her mother was an old, old woman, and they used to sell string and thread, and soap and tobacco, out of the window of their little house, and lived on the pittance they gained by this trade. The old woman was ill and very old, and could hardly move. Marie was her daughter, a girl of twenty, weak and thin and consumptive; but still she did heavy work at the houses around, day by day. ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... good worthy masters, a pittance bestow, Some oatmeal, or barley, or wheat for the Crow. A loaf, or a penny, or e'en what you will;— From the poor man, a grain of his salt may suffice, For your Crow swallows all, and is not ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Reviserships! No paltry pittance For Themis' harvesters, too often sheafless! Is this the Constitution, once Great Britain's; This, your ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, March 4, 1893 • Various
... Adam's Ale. A very ancient colloquialism for water. In Scotland 'Adam's wine' and frequently merely 'Adam'. Prynne in his Sovereign Power of Parliament (1648), speaks of prisoners 'allowed only a poor pittance of Adam's ale.' cf. Peter Pindar (John Wolcot), The Lousiad, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... had for freedom. But her Majesty knew what the public thought, and what became her own dignity. She could not for very shame suffer a woman of distinguished genius, who had quitted a lucrative career to wait on her, who had served her faithfully for a pittance during five years, and whose constitution had been impaired by labour and watching, to leave the Courts without some mark of royal liberality. George the Third, who, on all occasions where Miss Burney was concerned, seems to have behaved like an honest, good-natured gentleman, felt ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay |
