"Prodigal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Wicked prodigal! What shall we do to reform him, Mr. Douglas? He has not been to see us for three years past, and during that time we have had the ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... as prodigal of his life, which was now that of a victorious king, as he had formerly been when only an obscure soldier, persisted in attacks upon these woods, notwithstanding the heavy fire which proceeded from them. But he was soon made sensible that a furious ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... ordinary life-times before you and if you have come to the conclusion that you have but one, and a good share of that gone already, perhaps there will be some peace in the house for the time to come." My aunt always complained that her brother had one very serious fault, he was prodigal of time, and took too little thought for the future, and on this ground she replied in rather a snappish voice: "Well, at any rate, if every one was as slack and careless as you, they would hardly survive for one life time; and I can tell you one thing Nathan Adams, this old house has got to ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... daring vice, for which the whole age suffers. The blood of our bold youth, that heretofore Was spent in honourable action, Or to defend, or to enlarge the Kingdom, For the honour of our Country, and our Prince, Pours it self out with prodigal expence Upon our Mothers lap, the Earth that bred us For every trifle; and these private Duells, Which had their first original from the Fr[enc]h (And for which, to this day, we are justly censured) Are banisht from all civil Governments: Scarce ...
— The Little French Lawyer - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont
... household of Roper Ellwell where the wife had fitted boys "in the classical tongues" for Camberton, the family had come to this uncertain state, feverish, like the fickle fluctuations of the stock market; now prodigal and easy, again in a panicky distress with dire fear of unknown depths of poverty and humiliation. Whatever happened—reckless, with a philosophy that ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... work, and is prodigal to her favorite. As one drop of water hath an attraction for another, so do felicities run ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... somewhat the worse for the wetting it had got in salt-water, and, at a sign from Mr Manners, he went up to the stranger, and offered to read to him. Mr Manners told him to select the parable of the Prodigal Son, and several other portions of Scripture likely to interest a person whose mind had long been dormant to spiritual matters. The young man was evidently very much interested. Suddenly ...
— Ben Hadden - or, Do Right Whatever Comes Of It • W.H.G. Kingston
... in their distress. And Clarice! she has been to me as an angel of light. You remember that she gave me a book. I took it to please her, not intending to read it; but I did read it, and it showed me what I was—a wretched, lost sinner. I learned that I was like the prodigal son; and as I heard that my earthly father was no more, I determined to go to my Heavenly Father, knowing that he would receive me. He has done so, and I can now say honestly that I am a Christian, and fit to take charge ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... tea and started down the road weeping. What a bitter day that was for me! I dreaded to face my aunt and uncle. Coming through the grove down by our gate I met Uncle Peabody. With the keen eyesight of the father of the prodigal son he had seen me coming "a long ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... Cornwall: and many, of the royal family especially, were afterwards raised to the same honour. However, in the reign of queen Elizabeth, A.D. 1572[e], the whole order became utterly extinct: but it was revived about fifty years afterwards by her successor, who was remarkably prodigal of honours, in the person of George Villiers ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... "Talk about prodigal sons," Westy said; "when this old car gets back home, they ought to kill the fatted ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the Abbassides, was at length rewarded for his presumption of merit with the usual gratitude of courts. A mean, perhaps a foreign, extraction could not repress the aspiring energy of Abu Moslem. Jealous of his wives, liberal of his wealth, prodigal of his own blood and of that of others, he could boast with pleasure, and possibly with truth, that he had destroyed six hundred thousand of his enemies; and such was the intrepid gravity of his mind and countenance, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... you something of Orange Park, the town, the school established there, and the trouble connected with it. The village is situated on the west bank of the St. John's River, which at that point is a beautiful expanse of water three miles wide. Nature has been very prodigal in that section. The trees and plants are of a luxurious growth. Flowers are numerous. Every kind of fruit is plentiful. Because of these natural advantages, general climate and apparent fitness for orange growing, a Northern settlement was made. The people were from various Northern ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 1, January, 1896 • Various
... different animals the various gifts of courage, strength, swiftness, sagacity; wings to one, claws to another, a shelly covering to a third, etc. But when man came to be provided for, who was to be superior to all other animals, Epimetheus had been so prodigal of his resources that he had nothing left to bestow upon him. In his perplexity he resorted to his brother Prometheus, who, with the aid of Minerva, went up to heaven, and lighted his torch at the chariot of the sun, and brought down fire ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... story passed through many forms and many phases—the myth, e.g. The Labors of Hercules; the legend, e.g. St. George and the Dragon; the fairy tale, e.g. Cinderella; the fable, e.g. The Fox and the Grapes; the allegory, e.g. Addison's The Vision of Mirza; the parable, e.g. The Prodigal Son. Sometimes it was merely to amuse, sometimes to instruct. With this process are intimately connected famous books, such as "The Gesta Romanorum" (which, by the way, has nothing to do with the Romans) and famous ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... dress and her most becoming mood, welcomed him with careful cordiality as a prodigal whose husks, clinging about his coat, were to be handled tenderly as if they were pearls. She saw that something was gravely wrong, and she grasped the line of connection if she did not understand the issue; but, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... cruel turn I had done my father brought me almost to the verge of suicide. On Sunday morning I entered a church in Toronto, and tears flowed down my face as I heard the minister read the parable of the Prodigal Son. It seemed to me as a voice from home, and I determined to go to my father. Without hesitating, or stopping an hour, I took all the money I had to pay my way, and in about six days afterward, sitting beside the driver on the stage-coach, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... boy, the first of all. Oh, that my beloved spouse, Philippus Primus, could rise from his grave—what would he say to his lost son, who, like the prodigal in Scripture, loves strange women and keeps company ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... her, as if in a dream that was blurred by pain, and the sight infused into her soul, that was already harassed by pain and anxiety, a feeling of bitter aversion, and the envious thought that the mere trappings of the horses of this extravagant prodigal would suffice to keep her and her family above misery for ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of her dress, and the way her warm youth became it, drew her back to memories of a childhood nestled in beauty and gentle ways, before her handsome prodigal father had died, and her mother's face had grown pinched in the long struggle with poverty. But those memories were after all less dear to Justine than the grey years following, when, growing up, she had helped to clear a space in the wilderness for their tiny hearth-fire, when ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... with the precision of a practical man, it eludes him, slips away, as the glow of the wine he has drunk is slipping away, leaving him cross, and conscious of his liver. He feels that he has been extravagant, prodigal of something; virtue has gone out of him. He did not desire this glimpse of what lay under the three stars of his catalogue. God forbid that he should know anything about the forces of Nature! God forbid that he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... doughnut and a cup of coffee almost anywhere, or we could eat a sandwich in the park, but the matter of a bed, the business of sleeping in a maelstrom like New York was something more than serious—it was dangerous. Frank, naturally of a more prodigal nature, was all for going to the Broadway Hotel. "It's only for one night," said he. He always was rather careless ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... of the Prodigal Son may be read the history of what are known as the Protestant nations. What happens logically when the individual is suddenly freed from the restraint of external authority occurred when Martin Luther released the vital ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... place of the apathy and indifference with which she regarded the sated pleasures of that jaded world from which she had departed so recently. She had come to be bored—fully resigned for Blanch's sake to endure the ennui of mere vegetation until the prodigal Jack had been safely gathered within the fold once more. After the rude shock of first impressions had passed and she had found time to pause and breathe, she began to cast her eyes about her for something ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... with the love of her people, than any two of her predecessors that took most; which was a fortune strained out of the subjects, through the plausibility of her comportment, and (as I would say, without offence) the prodigal distribution of her grace to all sorts of subjects; for I believe no prince living, that was so tender of honour, and so exactly stood for the preservation of sovereignty, was so great a courtier of the people, yea, ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... throne looked like a quiet, quieting emerald-green. The One on the throne is at perfect rest regarding things down here. He knows all. His ears hear all, the cry of distress and despair, the defiance and arrogance and blasphemy. His eyes see His children down here, creative children all of them, prodigal children so many of them, and trusting children walking in the shadows. He sees all. And He feels all with His ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... impending famine I have obtained from St. John's some most substantial and highly colored candies at very little a pound which are just now quite as popular to an undiscriminating taste. I wish I had not been so prodigal ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... made a silent thanksgiving to Heaven. "God will accept your tears, my dear prodigal child. Come, ere it be too late. See, I have gold. My family diamonds have yielded enough to maintain us in ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... were elected by about one hundred thousand voters out of thirty millions of people. They were all men of property, and as aristocratic as the peers themselves. They began their sessions by granting prodigal compensations, indemnities, and endowments to the crown and to the princes. They appropriated thirty-three millions of francs annually for the maintenance of the king, besides voting thirty millions more for the payment of his debts; they passed a law restoring ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... LUCASTA, she that holy makes the day, And 'stills new life in fields of fueillemort, Hath back restor'd their verdure with one ray, And with her eye bid all to play and sport, Ant, to work still! age will thee truant call; And to save now, th'art worse than prodigal. ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... within 800 yards of the hill, when the guns about Bireh and Ramallah opened on them and they were compelled to withdraw, and a Turkish counter-attack forced our forward line back slightly in the afternoon. The enemy had a plentiful supply of ammunition and made a prodigal use of it. While continuing to shell fiercely he put more infantry into his fighting line, and as we had only 1200 rifles and four mountain guns, which the enemy's artillery outranged, it was clear we could not dislodge him from the Beitunia ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... ever seeing him again. About eleven o'clock I was returning from the kitchen garden, with my hands full of fruit and flowers, when, to my intense delight, poor little Richard came slowly out from under a laurel, and stood in the path before me, as veritable a type of a birdish prodigal son ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... That prodigal is our own splendid planet. Some of us down here have gladly welcomed the Father's plan and the Father's Son. His Son is His plan. But most of us don't seem to understand the Father. And that is hard on Him. And the greater number of us, by far the greater ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... 1830. In the year 1838, he quitted England to fulfil his purpose. For eight years he had patiently and steadily worked towards his object, and gathered about him all that was necessary for its accomplishment. Nothing had been omitted to insure success. A man of fortune, he had been prodigal of his wealth; free from professional and other ties, he had given up his time wholly to the cause. One year was passed in the Mediterranean, that his vessel, The Royalist, might be put to the severest tests. Three years were spent in educating a crew worthy of ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... the sound of the hall clock. At last he ventured into the kitchen, entering by the window and creeping to the kitchen hearth, where he dozed off to the music of the cricket, to be welcomed like another Prodigal Son. ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... natural grudge, however, I generously believe him a great artist or at least a great genius—a creature who despises any prompting short of absolute inspiration. For the rich, the multitudinous melody around me seemed but the offering to my ear of the prodigal spirit of tradition. The wood was ringing with sound because it was twilight, spring and Italy. It was also because of these good things and various others besides that I relished so keenly my visit to the Capuchin convent upon which I emerged after half-an- hour ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... life—the true power and spirit of America; gigantic, crude with the crudity of youth, disdaining rivalry; sane and healthy and vigorous; brutal in its ambition, arrogant in the new-found knowledge of its giant strength, prodigal of its wealth, infinite in its desires. In its capacity boundless, in its courage indomitable; subduing the wilderness in a single generation, defying calamity, and through the flame and the debris of a commonwealth in ashes, rising suddenly ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... kind of illusive advertisement which I answered in prodigal numbers in the greenness of these early days. These were those deceitfully worded requests for "bright, intelligent ladies—no canvassing." And not less prodigal were the returns I got. They came in avalanches by every mail, from ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... opponents on the Treasury Bench to a line of exhausted volcanoes. They had taken office when they were full of mighty aspirations; they had poured forth measures of all sorts with prodigal vigour; and at last they were reduced to wait, supine and helpless, for the inevitable swing of the political pendulum. A similar process of exhaustion goes on among literary men; and there are certain ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... everything upon it. A kind of Jack's beanstalk, and every morning starred with turquoise blue trumpet mouths of ravishing beauty, which were dead at noon. The poor thing was constrained to be a hierodule, gave no seed. Nature is the prodigal's foster-mother. ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... The past, like the country through which we walk, becomes indistinct as we advance. My position is like that of a person wounded in a dream; he feels the wound, though he cannot recollect when he received it. Come, then, thou regenerate man, thou extravagant prodigal, thou awakened sleeper, thou all-powerful visionary, thou invincible millionaire,—once again review thy past life of starvation and wretchedness, revisit the scenes where fate and misfortune conducted, and where despair received thee. Too many diamonds, too much gold and splendor, are now reflected ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the busy passer, a frangipanni-tree, the native sumboya or "flower of the dead," just opening a white crowd of golden-hearted blossoms to the sun, adds another wave of perfume to the floral incense, steaming from earth to sky with prodigal exuberance. ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... about Aunt Catherine, the black sheep of the family, who is supposed to have run off with another woman's husband. It is the day of the village bazaar, and amid a lot of hustle and bustle Catherine enters—the prodigal daughter most inopportunely returned! As the day progresses Old Mrs. Deveral becomes fractious, the Fete entertainment falls through and Judy decides to run away with the unpleasant Rodney. Things are going from bad to worse when ...
— Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act • Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden
... was a clamant and manifold astonishment in the kitchen of the inn, together with prodigal and ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... people consider it a waste of time to learn of some of the wonders God has placed about them, yet, God loved beauty or never would He have been so prodigal of it. If we really try, we too can see wherein it is good. "Consider the lilies of the field," for their consideration will in no ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... graphicness gave rise to such an idea, it would seem to have its foundation as well in Nature as in superstition. Matthew has more detail, more thought; Luke is more picturesque, more descriptive. John has more deep feeling; Luke more action, more life. The Annunciation, the Widow of Nain, the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, the Rich Man and Lazarus, and the incident to which we shall presently advert, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... things, instead of being run, and Agatha would quickly find it out. Nevertheless, he wanted Agatha to come to him for his own sake. So it was that he had put on his frontier rig. He would be the prodigal father, returning as penniless as when he left, and it would be up to her whether or not she killed the fatted calf. Empty of hand, and looking it, he would come back wondering if he could get his old job in the general store. Whatever followed would ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... foolish women in whom there is no ineradicable taint of cruelty or hate will always receive the prodigal who returns. And when Daddy had been fed and clothed, he turned out for a time to be so amiable, so grateful a Daddy, such good company, as he sat in the chair by his wife's fire and told stories of his travels to her and anybody else who might drop in, that not only the ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Barn The Patch of Blue Girl from Montana The Ransom Rose Galbraith The Witness Sound of the Trumpet Sunrise Tomorrow About This Time Amorelle Head of the House Ariel Custer In Tune with Wedding Bells Chance of a Lifetime Maris Crimson Mountain Out of the Storm Exit Betty Mystery Flowers The Prodigal Girl Girl of the Woods Re-Creations The White Flower Matched Pearls Time of the Singing of Birds Ladybird The Substitute Guest Beauty for Ashes Stranger Within the Gates The Best Man Spice Box By Way of the Silverthorns The Seventh Hour Dawn of the Morning ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... was never to be achieved but by postponement, deference, and modesty. Nor can the prodigality of the meadows in May be quoted in dispute. For Nature has something even more severe than moderation: she has an innumerable singleness. Her butter-cup meadows are not prodigal; they show multitude, but not multiplicity, and multiplicity is exactly the disgrace of decoration. Who has ever multiplied or repeated his delights? or who has ever gained the granting of the most foolish of his wishes—the prayer for reiteration? It is ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... lingers in the popular tradition. Count Jean gave her his fairest mountain as a gage of his affection and villages and rich pasture lands to her brave son, his namesake, who had fought by his side at the Bicoque. The gallant count was, according to tradition, very prodigal in his favors, and a certain road, leading to the neighboring village of Charmey where the unhappy Countess Marguerite could watch her faithless lord as he rode away on his various adventures, is still known as ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... adjurations, calling him father, assuring him she was wholly cured and entirely repentant of her disobedience, and entreating forgiveness; and I soon saw that she need fear no great severity from Mr. Greensleeves, who showed himself extraordinarily fond, loud, greedy of caresses and prodigal of tears. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you are too prodigal Of your wit's treasure, thus fu pour it forth Upon so mean a subject as ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... said, arresting Peter Ferguson as he tried to escape down a byroad, and eyeing the prodigal sternly, who had fled from discipline to London, and there lost a leg; "the' 'll be a meetin' o' Session next week afore the Saicrament; wull a' tell the Doctor ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... conscious husband bids her rise, When some rich factor courts her charms, Who calls the wanton to his arms, And, prodigal of wealth and fame, Profusely buys the costly ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... only too closely, that which you try to imitate, that which my mouth has been so vile as to conjure up before you. Lay aside those flowers and that dress. Let us wash away such mimicry with a sincere tear; do not remind me that I am but a prodigal son; I remember the past ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... Foljambe had not arrived at that point; he was in a condition less unhappy, but quite as perilous. To him the world had offered a fresh apple of Sodom, and he had grasped it as eagerly as the first. The prodigal son was in a better condition when he grew weary of the strange country, than while he was spending his substance on riotous living. Sir Godfrey had laid aside the riotous living, but he was not weary of the strange ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... dozen distorted, misshapen specimens. If given space, every kind of tree and shrub will develop its own individuality; and herein lies one of their greatest charms. If the oak typifies manhood, the drooping elm is equally suggestive of feminine grace, while the sugar-maple, prodigal of its rich juices, tasselled bloom, and winged seeds, reminds us of wholesome, cheerful natures. Even when dying, its foliage takes on the earliest and richest hues ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... the hands of writers like Miss Jewett and Miss Murfree; but in Mr. Allen's romances Nature is not behind the action; she is involved in it. Her presence is everywhere; her influence streams through the story; the deep and prodigal beauty which she wears in rural Kentucky shines on every page; the tremendous forces which sweep through her disclose their potency in human passion and impulse. There was a fine note in Mr. Allen's ...
— James Lane Allen: A Sketch of his Life and Work • Macmillan Company
... no honor in misery; it is picturesque to read about, but it is a sorry state in reality to be very poor. Some poets have been scamps. I shall not start as the prodigal son, Bessie, for I love not swinish company nor ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... unfit, Would steer too nigh the sands, to boast his wit. Great wits are sure to madness near allied, And thin partitions do their bounds divide; Else why should he, with wealth and honour blest, Refuse his age the needful hours of rest? Punish a body which he could not please; Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease? And all to leave what with his toil he won, To that unfeather'd two-legg'd thing, a son; 170 Got, while his soul did huddled notions try; And born a shapeless lump, like anarchy. In friendship false, implacable in hate; Resolved to ruin, or to rule the state. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... Maintaining as we did a large body of wild and reckless warriors, together with their families, it may be naturally supposed the excesses of these people were not few; but it would have required one to have seen, to have believed, the prodigal waste of which they were often guilty. Acknowledging no other law than their own will, following no other line of conduct than that suggested by their own caprice, they had as little respect for the property of the Canadian inhabitant as they would have ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... the idea of getting him to spend some of the money that was rightfully his, had been trying to persuade him to make a visit to his own island in one of our schooners—a special voyage which I had hoped to make a record breaker in the matter of prodigal expense. ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... ruin must succeed, Fresh cities sink in flame, fresh thousands bleed! What want'st thou more, thou prodigal of guilt! Oppression's sword is buried to the hilt In unoffending blood—what want'st thou more, Thou sanguinary pest of an unhappy shore? Far as thy sight can stretch, look round, and see All Sweden piled with monuments of thee; Behold her ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... him suit and service and gave him joy of the kingship. So the preachers preached in his name[FN76] and the poets praised him; and he lavished gifts upon the troops and the officers of his household and overwhelmed them with favours and bounties and was prodigal to the people of justice and equitable dealings and goodly usance and polity. When he had accomplished this much of his desire, he caused bring forth the cook and his household to the divan, but spared the old woman who had tended him, for that she had been the cause of his deliverance. Then ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... which a moment of human weakness betrayed him. Let him return to us the aristocrat he has attempted to save, and we will forget his indiscretion and receive him back amongst us with open arms, as was the prodigal son received." ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... hardest kind of times prevailed in the "Quaker City," on my arrival there. It was almost impossible to obtain employment of any description; and many actors, authors and artists, as well as mechanics, were most confoundedly "hard up." I soon exhausted the contents of my purse; and, like the Prodigal Son, "began to ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... Joy-Energy of God being insupportable to the very nature of flesh, in His tender love and pity He provides us, through the Person of His Son, with degrees of union of such sweet gentleness that we may continually enjoy them through every hour of life; and through His Son He comes out to meet the prodigal "while ...
— The Romance of the Soul • Lilian Staveley
... intimately the figure and the voice of this quiet lady with his memories of another and a younger one,—quite impossible, that he should not feel his whole chivalrous nature stirred in him, and become prodigal of attentions. If there were hypocrisy, it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... carried back to his friends of the sunny skies, the salubrious clime, the fertile soil, and the majesty and loveliness of the landscape; of mountain, valley, lake and river which Providence had lavished with a prodigal hand in this "Garden ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... that the German painters at the beginning of the sixteenth century succeed in representing with perfect mastery these scenes of country life, as, for instance, Albrecht Durer, in his engraving of the prodigal son. But it is one thing if a painter, brought up in a school of realism, introduces such scenes, and quite another thing if a poet, accustomed to an ideal or mythological framework, is driven by inward ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... unity in this infinite variety; the shell and the skin bear witness equally. What! deny God because shell does not resemble leather! And journalists have been prodigal of eulogies about these ineptitudes, eulogies they have not given to Newton and Locke, both worshippers of the Deity who ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... waters of Hudson Bay—the grave of its discoverer. Familiar as the story is of Henry Hudson's fate, for John King's sake how gladly we repeat it. While sailing on the waters he discovered, in 1611, his men mutinied; the mutiny was aided by Henry Green, a prodigal, whom Hudson had generously shielded from ruin. Hudson, the master, and his son, with six sick or disabled members of the crew, were driven from their cabins, forced into a little shallop, and committed helpless to the water and the ice. But there was one stout ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... is supposed to be so: and thus everything is as it should be. As long as we are young, and Wagnerites into the bargain, we regard Wagner as rich, even as the model of a prodigal giver, even as a great landlord in the realm of sound. We admire him in very much the same way as young Frenchmen admire Victor Hugo—that is to say, for his "royal liberality." Later on we admire the one as well as the other for the opposite reason: as masters and paragons in ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... miseries as these any more. Now I saw plainly the goodness of his observations about the middle station of life, how easy, how comfortably he had lived all his days, and never had been exposed to tempests at sea or troubles on shore; and I resolved that I would, like a true repenting prodigal, go home to ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... of the feudal prince, and its railings and stairways accepting willingly the bronze caps and ornaments. In front of its main edifice was the imposing gateway with proportions almost as massive as the temple itself, with prodigal wealth of curiously fitted and richly carved, painted and gilded supports and morticings, with all the fancies and adornments of the carpenter's art, and having as its frontlet and blazon the splendidly gilt name, style or title. Often these were ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... Never mind, we would make amends for lost time by spending more money! In very truth the years following the Centennial witnessed an extraordinary awakening of worship of beauty, almost religious in its fervor. Passionate pilgrims ransacked Europe and the Orient; a prodigal horde of their captives, objects of luxury and of art, surged into galleries and museums and households. No cold, critical taste weeded out these adorable aliens. The worst and the best conquered, together. Our architecture, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... heavenly intercourse, and renovates The blessed image of obedient love That Eden forfeited. Out of the depths Of true contrition sigh'd a trembling tone In utter abnegation, "I repent! In dust and ashes. I abhor myself." —Thus the returning prodigal who cries Unclothed and empty, "Father! I have sinn'd, And am not worthy to be called thy son," Finds full forgiveness, and a free embrace, While the best robe ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... in the colonies by the press of Thomas Fleet, already mentioned as a printer of small books. This book of 1736, being intended for ready sale, was such as every Puritan would buy for the family library. Entitled "The Prodigal Daughter," it told in Psalm-book metre of a "proud, vain girl, who, because her parents would not indulge her in all her extravagances, bargained with the devil to poisen them." The parents, however, were warned by an angel ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... found it to be him whom they reckoned as lost: and not dead, though he were in a Swound most like Death. They then, who had gone forth as Mourners came back rejoycing, and set to by all means to revive their Prodigal. Who, being come to himself, and hearing of their Anxieties and their Errand of that Morning, "Ay" says he "you may as well finish what you were about: for, for all I have brought back the Jewel (which he shew'd them, and 'twas indeed a rare Piece) I have brought back ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... including double sense, The double guilt of his incontinence Might be express'd, that had no stay t' employ The treasure which the love-god let him joy In his dear Hero, with such sacred thrift As had beseem'd so sanctified a gift; 30 But, like a greedy vulgar prodigal, Would on the stock dispend, and rudely fall, Before his time, to that unblessed blessing Which, for lust's plague, doth perish with possessing: Joy graven in sense, like snow[48] in water, wasts: Without preserve of virtue, nothing lasts. What man is he, that with a wealthy eye ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... minister to Denmark who complained of the smallness of his salary, and said that he could keep neither an equipage nor a table; the king's remark to him was—"You are a prodigal; you ought to know that it is more healthy to go on foot than it is to go in a carriage; and that, so far as eating is concerned, another man's table is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... here: Thackeray only once; neither Tennyson nor Carlyle. Donne came up for a day to see as to the morality of the 'Prodigal Son' {268} at Drury Lane, which the Bishop of London complained of. Donne is deputy Licenser for Jack Kemble. I went to see it with him; it was only stupid ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... he cares very much!" said Howard, gravely. "If you were the Prodigal Son he couldn't ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... took accordingly. No poor, simple, virtuous body was ever cajoled by the attentions of an electioneering politician with more ease than Aunt Chloe was won over by Master Sam's suavities; and if he had been the prodigal son himself, he could not have been overwhelmed with more maternal bountifulness; and he soon found himself seated, happy and glorious, over a large tin pan, containing a sort of olla podrida of all ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... ages of heroism and crime, of war and massacre, of preaching and praying, of blustering and trimming; after all this prodigal waste of blood and tears, and labour and treasure, and genius and sacrifice, we have nothing better to show for Christianity than European ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... like living at the foot of Mount Pelee, the home of awful eruption, and therefore the realm of gloom and uncertainty and fear. We are not saved by law, neither indeed can we be. Neither can law heal us after our transgressions and defeats. The law has nothing for prodigal men but "blackness, and darkness, and tempest." It has no sound but dreaded decree, no message but menace, no look but a frown. Who will build his house at the ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... see you" she continued drily, "and killed the fatted calf, and—and that kind of thing. Though why I say calf, I don't know, nephew George, for you never were the prodigal. I may say calf to thee, my poor Harry! Thou hast been amongst the swine sure enough. And evil companions have robbed the money out of thy pocket and the ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... bountiful hand, was of an inexhaustible fertility, and bore readily year after year a threefold harvest—first a grain crop, and then two crops of grasses or esculent vegetables. The wheat sown returned a hundredfold to the husbandman, and was gathered at harvest-time in prodigal abundance—"as the sand of the sea, very much,"—till men "left numbering" (Gen. xli. 49). Flax and doora were largely cultivated, and enormous quantities were produced of the most nutritive vegetables, such as lentils, garlic, leeks, onions, ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... life of man, to bring round the ill effects of an abuse of power upon the power itself. If hoards were made by violence and tyranny, they were still domestic hoards; and domestic profusion, or the rapine of a more powerful and prodigal hand, restored them to the people. With many disorders, and with few political checks upon power, Nature had still fair play; the sources of acquisition were not dried up; and therefore the trade, the manufactures, and the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... was splendid in its promise and prodigal in its favors. The rains fell just right, and all that the pioneers planted came up in abundance. The soil, so kind to the wheat, was not less so to the corn and the gardens. Henry surveyed with pride the ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... these fortunate variations were wiped out. The process of Nature, certainly, in the development of biological life thus appears to be no economical convergence of means upon an end. Nature has been recklessly prodigal. Millions more seeds of life are produced than ever come to fruition. And only animals perfectly adapted to their environment survive, while an incomparably ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... there. Valerie inherited these courtesan tastes from her mother, on whom General Montcornet had lavished luxury when he was in Paris, and who for twenty years had seen all the world at her feet; who had been wasteful and prodigal, squandering her all in the luxurious living of which the programme has been lost since the fall ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... tree, calling and singing, and there fell pleasantly upon Pearl's ears the ripple and splash of the mountain brook. The joy in her heart at Harry's recovery mingled pleasantly with nature's joy in her prodigal, flowering summer. ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... a wheel; labor in vain &c. (useless) 645; cut blocks with a razor, pour water into a sieve. leak &c. (run out) 295; run to waste; ebb; melt away, run dry, dry up. Adj. wasted &c. v.; at a low ebb. wasteful &c. (prodigal) 818; penny wise and pound foolish. Phr. magno conatu magnas nugas[Lat]; le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle[Fr]; " idly busy rolls their world away ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... action to the word, Mr. Gibney grasped the whistle cord and a strange, sad, sneezing, wheezy moan resembling the expiring protest of a lusty pig and gradually increasing into a long-drawn but respectable whistle rewarded his efforts. For once, he could afford to be prodigal with the steam, and while it lasted there could be no mistaking the fact that here was a ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... was fitted up without any regard to expense; and they played mysteries, or danced the morris-dance, every evening, for the amusement of himself and household, and such strangers as were sharing his prodigal hospitality. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... wasted in a prodigal way. Forests have been recklessly cut, fires been invited and the soil itself has been sacrificed. Natural gas and oil have been burned with no regard for the future. Coal and other minerals have not been husbanded. It ...
— Social Justice Without Socialism • John Bates Clark
... taken to display their fine linen, of which, indeed, they have great plenty, their furniture, plate, housekeeping, and variety of wines, in which article, it must be owned, they are profuse, if not prodigal — A burgher of Edinburgh, not content to vie with a citizen of London, who has ten times his fortune, must excel him in the expence as well as ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... worked into oratorio-books, and the most straitlaced portion of the community applauds their combination with music. But when a subject is in itself solemn, let it be solemnly treated. Opinions may be divided as to whether the story of the Prodigal Son can with propriety be represented in the form of serious opera or spectacle, but that it is an improper theme for burlesque there cannot be the shadow of a doubt. Our dramatic authors have too long been in the habit of trying to raise ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... often says it to us. When argument and appeals to duty and the like fail, there is nothing more to be done but to let us have our request, and find out the poison that lurked under the fair outside. The prodigal son gets his coveted portion, and is allowed to go into the far country, that he may prove how good and happy it is to starve among the swine, not because his father is angry with him, but because such experience is the only way to re-awaken his dormant love, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... intelligence would breed perhaps some viler swindle than my facetious rappings. That's the line our doubting bishops take, and why shouldn't I? For example, these people might give it to Public Charities, minister to the fattened secretary, the prodigal younger son. After all, at worst, I am a sort of latter-day Robin Hood; I take from the rich according to their incomes. I don't give to the poor certainly, I don't get enough. But—there are other good works. Many a poor weakling have I comforted ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... Lincoln, pressing with redoubled might, Broke thro their squadrons and confirmed the flight; When this brave leader met a stunning blow, That stopt his progress and avenged the foe. He left the field; but prodigal of life, Unwearied Francis still prolong'd the strife; Till a chance carabine attained his head, And stretch'd the hero mid the vulgar dead. His near companions rush with ardent gait, Swift to revenge, but soon to share his fate; ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... invitation or of their own accord, he made liberal presents; not neglecting even the freed-men and slaves, who were favourites with their masters and patrons. He offered also singular and ready aid to all who were under prosecution, or in debt, and to prodigal youths; excluding from (19) his bounty those only who were so deeply plunged in guilt, poverty, or luxury, that it was impossible effectually to relieve them. These, he openly declared, could derive no benefit from any other means ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus |
