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More "Niggard" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his pleasure to act as a providence, many a time robbing Peter to pay Paul, and stripping the niggard that he might indulge his fervent love of generosity. Of all usurers and bailiffs he had a wholesome horror, and merry was the prank which he played upon the extortionate money-lender of Warwick. ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... the first home-made party that Collumpsion had ever given; for though during his bachelorhood he had been no niggard of his hospitality, yet the confectioner had supplied the edibles, and the upholsterer arranged the decorations; but now Mrs. Applebite, with a laudable spirit of economy, converted No. 24, Pleasant-terrace, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 25, 1841 • Various
... niggard hand it was that found Thy punctual fare, nor short the measure Of garbage brought from miles around And meal that cost its weight in treasure; But ever as the U-boat u'd And lunch grew relatively lighter ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... was Of likeness lacking joy and force, Or difference reaching to divorce, Now can the finish'd lover see Marvel of me most far from me, Whom without pride he may admire, Without Narcissus' doom desire, Serve without selfishness, and love 'Even as himself,' in sense above Niggard 'as much,' yea, as she is The only part of ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... almost an American to behold, yet Captain Riga was in fact a Russian by birth, though this was a fact that he strove to conceal. And though extravagant in his personal expenses, and even indulging in luxurious habits, costly as Oriental dissipation, yet Captain Riga was a niggard to others; as, indeed, was evinced in the magnificent stipend of three dollars, with which he requited my own valuable services. Therefore, as it was agreed between Harry and me, that he should offer to ship as a "boy," at the same rate of compensation ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... his brother-in-law's betrothed bride, whose guilt he believed proved. Again he felt how ignoble and unworthy of a knight his conduct had been. Why had he pursued this course? Merely—he admitted it now—to harm Wolff, the monitor and niggard whom he hated; perhaps also because he secretly told himself that, if Wolff formed a happy marriage, he and his children, not Siebenburg's twin boys, would obtain the larger ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the niggard praise of Zosimus himself, (l. iv. p. 267.) Augustin says, with some happiness of expression, Valentinianum.... misericordissima veneratione restituit.] The empress Justina did not long survive her return to Italy; and, though she beheld the triumph of Theodosius, she was not allowed ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... meagre, his limbs finely proportioned, his countenance open and majestic, his eyes full of sweetness and vivacity, his teeth regular, and his pouting lips of the complexion of the damask rose. In short, he was formed for love, and inspired it wherever he appeared; nor was he a niggard of his talents, but liberally returned it, at least, what passed for such; for he had a flow of gallantry, for which many ladies of this land can vouch from their own experience. But he exclaimed against marriage, because he had, as yet, met with no woman to whose charms he would surrender ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... annoy groweth less. Wherefore, to the end that the unright of Fortune may by me in part be amended, which, where there is the less strength to endure, as we see it in delicate ladies, hath there been the more niggard of support, I purpose, for the succour and solace of ladies in love (unto others[1] the needle and the spindle and the reel suffice) to recount an hundred stories or fables or parables or histories or whatever you like to style ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... others are alloted offices, by virtue of which certain imposts are levied; to this man the land; to another the waters of rivers and canals; to a third the fruit-bearing trees. But money is distributed with a niggard hand, and only once a year. Every officer of revenue is permitted to pocket, and "charge to salary," a part of all that he collects in taxes, fines, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... different in the character of their scenery, can be such near neighbours, that these luxuriant valleys, nestling among the roots of these gigantic hills, are only separated by a narrow expanse of sea from those shores over which nature has strewed, with so niggard a hand, a soil capable of bearing the productions characteristic of the latitudes within which ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... characters in life," said Richmond, "and a consistent character in fiction is merely a strained form of art. In life the most arrant coward will sometimes fight; the bravest man at times lacks nerve; the generous man may sometimes show the spirit of the niggard. But your character in fiction is different. He must be always brave, or always generous, or always niggardly. He must be consistent, and consistency ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... when have you become such a niggard? You should have economized when you gave the sasandars[41] something like ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... disposed to be niggard of cheerfulness; for it has always seemed to me that one of the duties of a writer is to supply solace in a world where, amid all the beauty, so many things seem to go wrong. But, while I would fain banish cankered melancholy, sour ill-humour, cynicism, and petty complaining, I have never sought ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... Wurm. In the course of the evening, an old Scotch gardener gave it as his opinion that the "miser was fey." (When a man suddenly changes his character, as when a spendthrift becomes saving, or a niggard generous, the Scotch say that he is fey, and consider the change ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... Should, in a pet of temperance, feed on pulse, Drink the clear stream, and nothing wear but frieze, The All-giver would be unthanked, would be unpraised, Not half his riches known and yet despised; And we should serve him as a grudging master, As a penurious niggard of his wealth, And live like Nature's bastards, not her sons, Who would be quite surcharged with her own weight, And strangled with her waste fertility: The earth cumbered, and the winged air darked with plumes, The herds ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... hater of the niggard band, The chief who loves the Northman's land, Was only twelve years old when he His Russian war-ships put to sea. The wain that ploughs the sea was then Loaded with war-gear by his men— With swords, and spears, and helms: and deep Out to the sea ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... have something more to say unto you! I should have something more to give unto you! Why do I not give it? Am I then a niggard?— ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... feasting his retainers with beef and ale, was a niggard to the noble Mehevi!—All along the piazza of the Ti were arranged elaborately carved canoe-shaped vessels, some twenty feet in length, tied with newly made poee-poee, and sheltered from the sun by the broad leaves of the banana. At intervals were heaps of green bread-fruit, raised ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... shown by that old but somewhat exaggerated canon in natural history of "Natura non facit saltum." We meet with this admission in the writings of almost every experienced naturalist; or, as Milne Edwards has well expressed it, Nature is prodigal in variety, but niggard in innovation. Why, on the theory of Creation, should this be so? Why should all the parts and organs of many independent beings, each supposed to have been separately created for its proper place in nature, ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... the touch of sorrow, No love hath she, no understanding friend; O grief! when Heaven is forced of earth to borrow What the poor niggard earth has not to lend; But when the stalk is snapt, the rose must bend. The tallest flower that skyward rears its head Grows from the common ground, and there must shed Its delicate petals. Cruel fate, too surely, That ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... was the sole shelter which the proud lord of Alberoni afforded to the only surviving branches of his family, when returning to their native city they found their patrimonial estates confiscated, and themselves dependent upon the niggard bounty of a cold and selfish relative. Slowly recovering from a severe wound which he had received in the wars of Lombardy, and disgusted with the ingratitude of the prince he served, the ill-starred Francesco was at first rejoiced to obtain any refuge from the storms ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... which a niggard nature had apparently condemned to perpetual poverty and obscurity, the principle of reasonable human freedom, without which there is no national prosperity or glory worth contending for, was taking deepest and strongest root. Already in the thirteenth and fourteenth ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... very little with the hows and whens of life; so had mortgaged a month of his conventical wages in a borrachio, or leathern cask of wine, which he had disposed behind the calesh, with a large russet-coloured riding-coat over it, to guard it from the sun; and as the weather was hot, and he not a niggard of his labours, walking ten times more than he rode—he found more occasions than those of nature, to fall back to the rear of his carriage; till by frequent coming and going, it had so happen'd, that all his wine had leak'd out at the legal vent of the borrachio, before one ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... however brave you may be, do not raise factions against you. Do not be going to drinking-houses, or finding fault with old men; do not meddle with low people; this is right conduct I am telling you. Do not refuse to share your meat; do not have a niggard for your friend; do not force yourself on a great man or give him occasion to speak against you. Hold fast to your arms till the hard fight is well ended. Do not give up your opportunity, but with ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... his barn, his kitchen, cellar, nay, and his very purse too, others had the greatest use and share, whilst he keeps his keys in his pocket much more carefully than his eyes. Whilst he hugs himself with the pitiful frugality of a niggard table, everything goes to rack and ruin in every corner of his house, in play, drink, all sorts of profusion, making sport in their junkets with his vain anger and fruitless parsimony. Every one is a sentinel against him, and if, by accident, any wretched ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... the old sailor from whom he had gleaned the information he sought, he was enabled to purchase a fine vessel and equip her for sea within the space of a few days. He lavished his gold with no niggard hand, and gold is a wondrous talisman to remove obstacles and facilitate designs. In a word, on the sixth morning after his arrival at Leghorn, Fernand Wagner embarked on board his ship, which was manned with a gallant crew, and carried ten pieces of ordnance. ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... place, we shall surely get great good of him; and if thou grudge him the banquet do thou bid him and I will entertain him of my monies." Quoth he, "Dost thou know me to be niggardly, that thou sayest this Say?; and quoth she, "Thou art no niggard, but thou lackest tact. Invite him this very night and come not without him. An he refuse, conjure him by the divorce oath and be persistent with him "On my head and eyes," answered he and moulded the ring till he had finished it, after which he passed the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... concluding months of her husband's life, Mrs. Flinders had him beside her under circumstances that were certainly far from easy. Their somewhat straitened means, consequent upon the Admiralty's niggard construction of regulations, the prolonged severity of his employment, and the last agonised weeks of illness, must have gone far to detract from perfect felicity in domestic conditions. The six changes of residence in four and a half years point ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... bought and sold Are ever the prey of the traitor's gold, Wherever the fight may be. Or ever a man will sell his sword, The highest bidder may buy the gaud With a coward's niggard fee. Who buys and sells to the market goes, And sells his friends as he sells his foes, So he gain in the main by his country's woes,— But the gain is not to the free;— For the soldier bought with a price has nought ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... proportion, and as there will be a greater waste of heat, if from the existence of scale upon the flues the heat can be only imperfectly transmitted to the water, there cannot be even an economy of fuel in niggard blowing off, while it involves the introduction of other evils. The proportion of 4/33rds of saltness, however, or 16 oz. to the gallon, is larger than is advisable, especially as it is difficult to keep the saltness at a perfectly uniform point, and the ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... visible in the New World. Nowhere was any well-defined doctrine that moral turpitude was judged and punished in the next-world. No contrast is discoverable between a place of torments and a realm of joy; at the worst but a negative castigation awaited the liar, the coward, or the niggard. The typical belief of the tribes of the United States was well expressed in the reply of Esau Hajo, great medal chief and speaker for the Creek nation in the National Council, to the question, Do the red people ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... contrast between his own and hers; between the niggard spirit of the beggarly receiver, and the high bloom of the exalted giver. Nevertheless, he loved her too well not to share much of her nature, and wedding it ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... now of promise fickle, Niggard ooze, and paltry trickle, Freshet sprinkling scanty dole, Where the roaring flood ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... N. parsimony, parcity|; parsimoniousness[obs3], stinginess &c. adj.; stint; illiberality, tenacity. avarice, greed &c. 817a. miser, niggard, churl, screw, skinflint, crib, codger, muckworm[obs3], scrimp, lickpenny[obs3], hunks, curmudgeon, Harpagon, harpy, extortioner, Jew, usurer; Hessian [U.S.]; pinch fist, pinch penny. V. be parsimonious &c. adj.; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... matter of revolutions Maraquita was no niggard. She knew how the thing should be done—well, or not at all. There would be so much for rifles, machine-guns, and what not: and there would be so much for the expense of smuggling them into the country. Then there would be so much to be laid out ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... leans from that balcony. Gazing with hollow eyes, he tracks the swallows in their flight, and notes that winter is at hand. This is the last Duke of Urbino, Francesco Maria II., he whose young wife deserted him, who made for himself alone a hermit-pedant's round of petty cares and niggard avarice and mean-brained superstition. He drew a second consort from the convent, and raised up seed unto his line by forethought, but beheld his princeling fade untimely in the bloom of boyhood. Nothing is left but solitude. To the mortmain of the Church reverts Urbino's ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... me, whereupon he assigned me a shop and gave me a water-skin and gear. So I sallied forth a-morn trusting in Allah to provide, and went round about the city. I offered the gugglet to one, that he might drink; but he cried, 'I have eaten naught whereon to drink; for a niggard invited me this day and set two gugglets before me; so I said to him, 'O son of the sordid, hast thou given me aught to eat that thou offerest me drink after it?' Wherefore wend thy ways, O water-carrier, till I have eaten somewhat: then come and give me to drink.' Thereupon I accosted another ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... so effeminate in appearance that it was hard to believe he had seen famous fields and once bidden fair to be a great Captain, was nursing a dog on his lap, the while he listened with a weary air to the whispers of the beautiful woman who sat next him. Apparently he had a niggard ear even for her witcheries, and little appetite save for the wine flask. Lassitude lived in his eyes, his long thin fingers trembled. Bazan watched him drain his goblet of wine, almost as soon as he sat down, and watched him, too, hold out the gold cup to be filled again. The task ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... it to you a natural thing that they should live divinely and not as animals and humanly, they being not gods, but men and animals? It is a law of fate and Nature that everything should adapt itself to the condition of its own being, wherefore then, while you follow after the niggard nectar of the gods, do you lose that which is present and is your own, and trouble yourself about the vain hopes of others? Ought not Nature to refuse to give you the other good, if that which she at present offers ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... water. Oh, he was no niggard of his crowns, our Emperor! I had a bed-fellow of mine, a brave soldier, who was afterwards promoted to be king. This flattered us; for, if it was not one, it was the other. And so, at this game, your father became count; but, count or not, he was one of the best and bravest ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... not about to name them, who have acted with the most princely munificence, liberality, and generous feeling, involving an amount of sacrifice of which no persons out of this county can possibly have the slightest conception. I am not saying there are not instances of niggard feeling, though I am not about to name them, which really it was hardly possible to ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... mortal men: The warrior's weapons fail him; the citizen is buried beneath the ruins of his own penates, when engaged in paying his vows to the gods; another falls from his chariot and dashes out his ardent spirit; the glutton chokes at dinner; the niggard starves from abstinence. Give the dice a fair throw and you will find shipwreck everywhere! Ah, but one overwhelmed by the waves obtains no burial! As though it matters in what manner the body, once it is dead, is ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... returning to London. The coach having stopped to allow of the passengers getting refreshment, all entered the hotel except old Neild. Observing the absence of the pinched, poverty-stricken-looking old gentleman, some good-natured passenger sent him out a bumper of brandy and water, which the old niggard eagerly accepted. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... us of her store, and that often, and abundantly. We deem also that every time when she came to us our increase became more plenteous, which is well seen by this, that since she hath ceased to come, the seasons have been niggard ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... from his country's soil, By want enfeebled, and oppress'd by toil, Compelled with slow reluctance to demand The niggard pity of a stranger's hand, And forced, in silent anguish, to abide The sneer of malice, the rebuke of pride: A wretch opprest by sorrow's galling weight, Deplored his ruined peace, his hapless fate. His was such anguish as the guilty ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... steed, And bring them hitherward with speed. Forbear your mirth and rude alarm, For none shall do them shame or harm.— 'Hear ye his boast?' cried John of Brent, Ever to strife and jangling bent; 'Shall he strike doe beside our lodge, And yet the jealous niggard grudge To pay the forester his fee? I'll have my share howe'er it be, Despite of Moray, Mar, or thee.' Bertram his forward step withstood; And, burning in his vengeful mood, Old Allan, though unfit for strife, ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... longer, so I got up and walked along under the great trees until I came down to the river. Perhaps the world can show more beauteous sights than the river which runs between Truro and Falmouth, but I have my doubts. Nature here is at the height of her loveliness and spreads her riches with no niggard hand. For the clear water coils its way through a rich countryside, where green woods and rich meadows slope down to the river's bank. Here the flowers come early in the springtime, and scent the air through the summer; and here, ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... I lead Rob thee of thy daily need Of a whiter soul, or steal What thy lordly prayers reveal? Who could be enriched of thee By such hoard of poverty As thy niggard hand pretends To dole me— thy worst of friends? Therefore shouldst thou pause to bless One indeed who blesses thee: Robbing thee, I dispossess But myself—. Pray ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... That spectacle would provoke my brother Robert. All her little failings would, I know, be a source of irritation to him. If they vex me it is a most pleasurable vexation. I delight to find her at fault; and were I always resident with her, I am aware she would be no niggard in thus ministering to my enjoyment. She would just give me something to do, to rectify—a theme for my tutor lectures. I never lecture Henry, never feel disposed to do so. If he does wrong—and that is very seldom, dear, excellent lad!—a word suffices. Often I do no more ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... museum, this the fane To Phoebus sacred, and the Aonian maids: But, oh! it stabs his heart, that niggard fate To him in such small measure should dispense Her better gifts: to him! whose generous soul Could relish, with as fine an elegance, The golden joys of grandeur, and of wealth; He who could tyrannise ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... and dullness required less compassion than they received; no man can judge of the happiness of another. As the Moon plays upon the waves, and seems to our eyes to favour with a peculiar beam one long track amidst the waters, leaving the rest in comparative obscurity; yet all the while, she is no niggard in her lustre—for though the rays that meet not our eyes seem to us as though they were not, yet she with an equal and unfavouring loveliness, mirrors herself on every wave: even so, perhaps, Happiness falls with the same brightness and power over the whole expanse of Life, though ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wonderfully Amaz'd reading these Words. 'Dumb, (cried he out) naturally Dumb? O ye niggard Powers, why was such a wond'rous Piece of Art left imperfect?' He had many other wild Reasonings upon the lamentable Subject, but falling from these to more calm Reflections, he examined her Note again, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... tears how eloquent! I would not change this motionless, mute, joy For the sweet strains of angels: I look down With pity on the rest of human kind, However great may be their fame of happiness, And think their niggard fate has given them nothing, Not giving thee; or, granting some small blessing, Denies them my capacity ...
— Percy - A Tragedy • Hannah More
... Jotuns' kindred! I will you both, ye daring pair, under the kettles place. My husband is oftentimes niggard towards guests, to ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... and Patriot newspapers instead of Councils, his concerts for prayer instead of anathemas on heresy and schism, his spoutings at public meetings for exorcisms, his fourths of October for festivals of the Martyrs, his glorious memories for commemorations of the dead, his niggard vestry allowances for gold and silver vessels, his gas and stoves for wax and oil, his denunciations of self-righteousness for fasting and celibacy, and his exercise of private judgment for submission to authority—would he have a chance of finding himself ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... anything worth remembering they will not forget it. You may rely on that. They know what each gives—whether freely or with a niggard hand—and each shall be paid back in his own coin. They give freely enough themselves. It is always so with the aristocrats; but they expect an equal generosity in others, ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... a region far removed even from such a niggard commerce of life as there was then in the Scottish Highlands. It is sixty miles from the warming salt-wash of the sea, and has winds nearly as cold as those that blow from the Arctic. This is because ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... the rocks, Shattered in earth's primeval shocks, And niggard Nature ever mocks The labourer's toil, I roam through clans of savage men, Untamed by arts, untaught by pen; Or cower within some squalid ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... a thirty years' peace? or was there even a DAY'S universal peace? except perhaps in China, where they have found out the miserable happiness of a stationary and unwarlike mediocrity. And is all this because nature is niggard or savage? or mankind ungrateful? Let philosophers decide. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... a good and affectionate son, but as I took my way into the great world from which I had been so long secluded I could not help remembering that all my misfortunes had flowed like a stream from the niggard economy of my parents in the matter of school luncheons; and I knew of no reason to think they ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... another, either solace ensues, or the dumps become less grievous. Wherefore, in some measure to compensate the injustice of Fortune, which to those whose strength is least, as we see it to be in the delicate frames of ladies, has been most niggard of support, I, for the succour and diversion of such of them as love (for others may find sufficient solace in the needle and the spindle and the reel), do intend to recount one hundred Novels or Fables or Parables or Stories, as we may please to call them, which were ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... of a self-isolated people, begirt with the active life and thought of our eager times, yet sharing neither. Here is an empire that is content to live in the past: having rich resources it neglects to develop them; a productive soil but niggard crops. Amidst a veritable Lebanon of forestry it has shanties for homes; with coal deposits that are the envy of the world, its shivering women in stoveless hovels attempt to defend themselves about their domestic toil with coarse homespun shawls and slat-bonnets. In an ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... he felt was hardly sufficient against the multitude of enemies, and he asked himself whom he could choose among the rest. [67] He remembered how his Persians led the sorriest of lives at home owing to their poverty, working long and hard on the niggard soil, and he felt sure they were the men who would most value the life at his court. [68] Accordingly he selected ten thousand lancers from among them, to keep guard round the palace, night and day, whenever he was at home, ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... his genius to pure ideal form, this almost mathematical conception of beauty, may be ascribed, I think, to the same psychological qualities which determined the dreary conditions of his home-life. He was no niggard either of money or of ideas; nay, even profligate of both. But melancholy made him miserly in all that concerned personal enjoyment; and he ought to have been born under that leaden planet Saturn rather than Mercury ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... Lycinus. All this is not quite like you, who never used to be over-ready with your commendation; you seem to have gone now to the opposite extreme of prodigality, and developed from a niggard into a spendthrift of praise. Do not be ashamed to make alterations in what you have already published, either. They say Phidias did as much after finishing his Olympian Zeus. He stood behind the doors when he had opened them for the first time ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... early recollection to record. It must, I think, have been in the year 1815 that my father and mother took me with them on either one or two more journeys. The objective points were Cambridge and London respectively. My father had built, under the very niggard and discouraging laws which repressed rather than encouraged the erection of new churches at that period, the church of St. Thomas at Seaforth, and he wanted a clergyman for it.[4] Guided in these matters very much by the deeply religious temper of my mother, ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... me extremely useful. I bet for him, I make appointments for him to have his hair trimmed, I retain stalls for him, and occasionally I admit him to the house at an unlawful hour. In fact, he is a confounded nuisance. He is impertinent, grossly ignorant, and a niggard. Moreover, Toby, he hath an eye whose like I have seen before—once. Then it was set in the head of a remount which, after it had broken a shoeing-smith's leg, was cast for vice ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... turned the services of this individual to far greater account had the quantity of books at my disposal been greater; but they were now diminishing rapidly, and as I had no hopes of a fresh supply, I was almost tempted to be niggard of the few which remained. This agent was a Greek bricklayer, by name Johannes Chrysostom, who had been introduced to me by Dionysius. He was a native of the Morea, but had been upwards of thirty-five years in Spain, so that he had almost entirely lost his ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... sorceress is no niggard in accommodating her followers," said the mariner, observing the manner in which the Queen's officer was employed. "Here, you see, the Skimmer keeps room enough for an admiral, in his cabins; and the fellows are berthed aft, far beyond the fore-mast;—wilt step ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... a niggard man, One of the great Macdonald clan; When others are in quest of gain This man the needy will sustain. Your mother, if an honest dame, Has not retained her wedlock fame; No part is Mac from top to toe, You're either Rose or else Munro. When to the house you turned your face, Let ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... wisdom and a meaning which may speak Of spiritual secrets to the ear Of spirit; so, in whatsoe'er the heart Hath fashioned for a solace to itself, To make its inspirations suit its creed, And from the niggard hands of falsehood wring Its needful food of truth, there ever is A sympathy with Nature, which reveals, Not less than her own works, pure gleams of light 30 And earnest parables of inward lore. Hear now this fairy legend of old Greece, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... they breathe. Either Milton's or the living bard's are defective in this respect. There is no Sonnet of Milton's on the Restoration of Charles II. There is no Sonnet of Mr. Wordsworth's corresponding to that of 'the poet blind and bold' 'On the late Massacre in Piedmont.' It would be no niggard praise to Mr. Wordsworth to grant that he was either half the man or half the poet that Milton was. He has not his high and various imagination, nor his deep and fixed principle. Milton did not worship the rising sun, nor turn his back on ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... rewards the worthless—kings of knaves exalters be; Wealth attends the selfish niggard, and the cloud rains ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... served by nature. And yet I have a soul Above this humble fate. I could command, Love to do good, give largely to true merit, All that a king should do: But though these are not My province, I have scene enough within, To exercise my virtue. All that a heart, so fixed as mine, can move, Is, that my niggard fortune ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... offered no comment. In fact, he treated the affair so lightly that Mr. Harley felt relieved; that latter speculator had been somewhat disturbed in his mind concerning Storri's opinion of what, to give it a best description, evinced niggard distrust of Storri, and cast in negative fashion a slur upon ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... it's mean to sneer at everything the man does. We abused him yesterday as a niggard; let us have the grace to-day to say we were mistaken." He was afflicted with the over-scrupulosity of a refined, but strictly limited mind, and his conscience smote him. "I, at any rate, was quite mistaken," he went on; "I quite misinterpreted his hesitation when I mentioned ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... life. Let the proudest squire that sits at thy table rise and encounter with me in any honorable point of activity whatsoever, and if he and thou prove me not a man, send me away comfortless. If thou refuse this, as a niggard of thy cates, I will have amongst you with my sword; for rather will I die valiantly, than perish with so ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... lavish be the roses strewn! Ye flutes, ye lyres, exulting breathe! The festal Hour disdains to own The mournful note, the niggard wreath. ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... your own lips and punish your own self; it's only fair;" old lady Chia remarked. Then facing Mrs. Hsueeh, "I'm not a niggard, fond of winning money," she went on to say, "but it was ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... one time of being parsimonious, and some were inclined to treat him coldly on that account; but in time it was found that out of his small pay he maintained his widowed mother and a lame sister in their New England home, and that while niggard in regard to his own personal wants, the dear ones at the old home were generously provided for. So, although at first the West Point graduates were disposed to treat with contempt the Green Mountain boy who had entered ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... of "Natura non facit saltum." We meet with this admission in the writings of almost every experienced naturalist; or, as Milne Edwards has well expressed it, "Nature is prodigal in variety, but niggard in innovation." Why, on the theory of Creation, should there be so much variety and so little real novelty? Why should all the parts and organs of many independent beings, each supposed to have been separately created for ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... lonely night on through the dusk they went, On through the empty house of Dis, the land of nought at all. E'en as beneath the doubtful moon, when niggard light doth fall 270 Upon some way amid the woods, when God hath hidden heaven, And black night from the things of earth the colours dear ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... rude state of knowledge in which reliance for subsistence must be principally upon the spontaneous offerings of nature, very largely depend upon climate, soil, and physical conformation. Where much animal food and warm clothing are required; where the earth seems poor and niggard; where the exuberant life of tropical forests mocks barbarous man's puny efforts to control; where mountains, deserts, or arms of the sea separate and isolate men; association, and the power of improvement which it evolves, can at first go but a ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... the Strike Axe outfit issues forth an' throws the broncos loose. That's to show that the Saucy Willow is a onusual excellent young squaw an' pop'lar with her folks, an' they don't aim to shake her social standin' by acceptin' sech niggard terms. ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... way? And so, my friends, it is my prayer That God will have you in his care.' His well-fed saintship said no more, But in their faces shut the door. What think you, reader, is the service For which I use this niggard rat? To paint a monk? No, but a dervise. A monk, I think, however fat, Must be more bountiful ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... English poetry with the only two writers who can be compared to him, if bulk and majesty of work be taken into consideration, and not merely occasional bursts of poetry. Of his own poetical powers I trust that I shall not be considered a niggard admirer, because, both in the character of its subject (if we are to consider subjects at all) and in its employment of rhyme, that greatest mechanical aid of the poet, The Faerie Queene seems to me greater, or because Milton's own earlier work ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... for me, (He said) and when he gave, he gave unkindly; Informed himself with too precautious strictness Concerning the receiver, not content To leant the want, unless he knew its cause, And measuring out by that his niggard bounty. Thou wilt not thus bestow. So harshly kind Shall Saladin not seem in thee. Thou art not Like the choked pipe, whence sullied and by spurts Flow the pure waters it absorbs in silence. Al-Hafi thinks and feels like me." So nicely The fowler ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... guide or to thwart him; and he rose or fell according to the might of his arm and the length of his sword. Hate sought no flimsy pretexts, but came forth boldly; love entered the lists neither with caution nor with mental reservation; and favor, though inconsiderate as ever, was not niggard with her largess. Truly the mariner had not to draw on his imagination; the age of which he was a picturesque particle was a brave and gallant one: an Odyssey indeed, composed of Richelieus, sons and grandsons of the great Henri, Buckinghams, Stuarts, Cromwells, ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... cities who refuse To their own child the honours due, And look ungently on the Muse; But ever shall those cities rue The dry, unyielding, niggard breast, Offering no nourishment, no rest, To that young head which soon shall rise Disdainfully, in might and glory, ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... noblest of weaknesses, betrayed for the laughter of a chambermaid. By an actual Bottom the Weaver our pity might be reached for the sake of his single self-reliance, his fancy and resource condemned to burlesque and ignominy by the niggard doom of circumstance. But is not life one thing and is not art another? Is it not the privilege of literature to make selection and to treat things singly, without the after-thoughts of life, without the troublous completeness of the many-sided world? Is not Shakespeare, ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... by coming so far to do him a service. But I think, from what I have seen of him last night, that he is not such a niggard and misanthrope as I was led to believe. He exhibited considerable emotion, despite the monosyllabic greeting, when he shook my hand. If he were a man to feel annoyance at any person coming after ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... 'tis niggard praise I fling To bards who soar where I ne'er stretched a wing, That man I hold true master of his art Who with fictitious woes can wring my heart, Can rouse me, soothe me, pierce me with the thrill Of vain ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... understand, Have thou enough, what thar* thee reck or care *needs, behoves How merrily that other folkes fare? For certes, olde dotard, by your leave, Ye shall have [pleasure] right enough at eve. He is too great a niggard that will werne* *forbid A man to light a candle at his lantern; He shall have never the less light, pardie. Have thou enough, thee thar* not plaine** thee *need **complain Thou say'st also, if that we make us gay With clothing and with precious array, That it is ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... the happiness of another. As the moon plays upon the waves, and seems to our eyes to favour with a peculiar beam one long track amidst the waters, leaving the rest in comparative obscurity; yet all the while she is no niggard in her lustre—for the rays that meet not our eyes seem to us as though they were not, yet she, with an equal and unfavouring loveliness, mirrors herself on every wave: even so, perhaps, Happiness falls with the same brightness and power over the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... his heart touched, but his resolution firm; 'go on. I will share weal or woe with my soldiers. I am not such a niggard of life, that I grudge to risk it in such company, and in such ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... soon to this ephemeral happiness. It was only one of those bright coins snatched from the niggard hand of Time which must always be paid back with usurious charges. We paid with ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... in Numidia. Tourists might have complained of the absence of water from the scene; but the native peasant would have explained to them that the eye alone had reason to be discontented, and that the thick foliage and the uneven surface did but conceal what mother earth with no niggard bounty supplied. The Bagradas, issuing from the spurs of the Atlas, made up in depth what it wanted in breadth of bed, and ploughed the rich and yielding mould with its rapid stream, till, after passing Sicca in its way, it fell into the sea near Carthage. It was but the largest ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... said to him, "Count, give me a stoup of wine and they are yours." That pleased him: he bade the serving-woman carry the fish away, and told me to follow him. He took me into a vaulted stone chamber, and poured with a niggard hand a glass of mezzo-vino. I looked at him: he was lean, gray, unlovely. I could have crushed him to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... N. parsimony, parcity^; parsimoniousness^, stinginess &c adj.; stint; illiberality, tenacity. avarice, greed &c 817.1. miser, niggard, churl, screw, skinflint, crib, codger, muckworm^, scrimp, lickpenny^, hunks, curmudgeon, Harpagon, harpy, extortioner, Jew, usurer; Hessian [U.S.]; pinch fist, pinch penny. V. be parsimonious &c adj.; grudge, begrudge, stint, pinch, gripe, screw, dole out, hold back, withhold, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... our ERGO BIBAMUS! Whate'er to his treasures the niggard may add, Yet regard for the joyous will ever be had, For gladness lends over its charms to ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... ever since Englishmen have controlled her fortunes, be mingled with considerations of mournfulness and peril! It is not merely—and, alas! that such a calamity should have to be treated as of secondary magnitude—it is not merely that the niggard state charity of England is now at once to cease and be entirely withdrawn, but we have to contemplate a still more fearful and far wider-spreading misery at the end of autumn and in the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... does he make advances?—He thinks that women should woo him; Yet, if a girl should do so, would be but alarmed and disgusted. She that should love him must look for small love in return,—like the ivy On the stone wall, must expect but rigid and niggard support, and Even to get that must go searching all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... intense. For my own part, I have sacrificed to a rigid punctilio of honour the dearest ideas of my heart. I beheld your unrivalled charms, and deeply felt their power. Yet, while a possibility of Melvil's reformation remained, and while I was restrained by my niggard fortune from making a tender worthy of your acceptance, I combated with my inclinations, and bore without repining the pangs of hopeless love. But, now that my honour is disengaged, and my fortune rendered independent, by the last will of a worthy nobleman, whose friendship I was ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... "Times have been that you have been terror-struck, through not having with such overwhelming odds to deal." Then Thord offered Hoskuld money for his help, and said he would not look at the matter with a niggard's eye. Hoskuld said, "This is clear, that you will not by peaceful consent allow any man to have the enjoyment of your wealth." Answers Thord, "No, not quite that though; for I fain would that you should take over all my goods. That being ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... finger with delusive wile Turns the grim key of many a rusty smile, For Satire, emptying his corrosive flood On hissing Folly's gas-exhaling brood, The pun, the fun, the moral, and the joke, The hit, the thrust, the pugilistic poke,— Small space for these, so pressed by niggard Time, Like that false matron, known to nursery rhyme,— Insidious Morey,—scarce her tale begun, Ere listening infants weep ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... affairs were settled up there remained but a few pounds a year for her, but these she was able to put by, for Miss Clayton was no niggard towards those that served her, and Selina received sufficient ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... his conquering arm Has freed the saints from dread of harm, Has smitten Janasthan and made Asylum safe in Dandak's shade. Enslaved and dull, of blinded sight, Intoxicate with vain delight, Thou closest still thy heedless eyes To dangers in thy realm that rise. A king besotted, mean, unkind, Of niggard hand and slavish mind. Will find no faithful followers heed Their master in his hour of need. The friend on whom he most relies, In danger, from a monarch flies, Imperious in his high estate, Conceited, proud, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... in when the public anxiety became so great at the continued silence of Khartoum, and acquiesced in the despatch of an expedition to relieve General Gordon. Having once made the concession, it must be allowed that they showed no niggard spirit in sanctioning the expedition and the proposals of the military authorities. The sum of ten millions was devoted to the work of rescuing Gordon by the very persons who had rejected his demands for the hundredth ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... always at it, but one so seldom catches them in the act. Here in the valley there is no cessation of waters even in the season when the niggard frost gives them scant leave to run. They make the most of their midday hour, and tinkle all night thinly under the ice. An ear laid to the snow catches a muffled hint of their eternal busyness fifteen or twenty feet under the canon drifts, and long before ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... "Niggard in nothing, Near and far strewed he Beauty and blessing, Bought with his gold; Gave he most gladly Guerdon unstinted, Sadness he ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... dramatic force, as good an Irishman as that rude person I told you about at the outset and I want to see everyone, concluded he, all creeds and classes pro rata having a comfortable tidysized income, in no niggard fashion either, something in the neighbourhood of 300 pounds per annum. That's the vital issue at stake and it's feasible and would be provocative of friendlier intercourse between man and man. At least ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... with three times three; Three once told the Grace approves; She with her two bright sisters, gay and free, Shrinks, as maiden should, from strife: But I'm for madness. What has dull'd the fire Of the Berecyntian fife? Why hangs the flute in silence with the lyre? Out on niggard-handed boys! Rain showers of roses; let old Lycus hear, Envious churl, our senseless noise, And she, our neighbour, his ill-sorted fere. You with your bright clustering hair, Your beauty, Telephus, like evening's sky, Rhoda ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... and more perfect a thing is, the later and slower it is in arriving at maturity. A man reaches the maturity of his reasoning powers and mental faculties hardly before the age of twenty-eight; a woman at eighteen. And then, too, in the case of woman, it is only reason of a sort—very niggard in its dimensions. That is why women remain children their whole life long; never seeing anything but what is quite close to them, cleaving to the present moment, taking appearance for reality, and preferring trifles to matters of the first importance. For it is by virtue ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... certain definite duties of masses for the dead, certain charitable trusts, and other functions. Thirdly, when the Mass ceased to be said it was secularized completely. Service was held in the church, but the Hospital became a perfectly secular charity, supporting a few almspeople with niggard hand, and a Master in great splendour. Fourthly, it was again treated as a semi-ecclesiastical foundation, for reasons which do not appear. At the same time, while its charities were enlarged, no duties were assigned to the Brothers, who seem to have been considered ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... a palace built, whereon to gaze, And sighing, shivering there around to stray; To give a penny would the niggard craze, And worse than bane ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... excellence is really wonderful: architecture, painting, gardening, all are alike subject to his genius. Be it remembered, that English gardening is the purposed perfectioning of niggard Nature, and that without it England is but a hedge-and-ditch, double-post-and-rail, Hounslow-heath and Clapham-common sort of a country, since the principal forests have been felled. It is, in general, far from a picturesque country. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... unhesitating utterance of the implacable "No!" Indeed, in business, the perfection of grit is this power of saying "No," and saying it with such wrathful emphasis that the whole race of vampires and harpies are scared from you counting-room, and your reputation as unenterprising, unbearable niggard is fully established among all borrowers of money never meant to be repaid, and all projectors of schemes intended for the benefit of the projectors alone. At the expense of a little temporary obloquy, a man can thus conquer the right to mind his own business; and having ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... Decimation tried To furnish forth the needful tide; And Civil War as vainly shed Her niggard offering ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... piece, through his gloomy forebodings he biassed the actors against the play before they had even seen it, but no sooner had the rehearsals begun in earnest than they warmed to their assigned parts, and in due time admired and revelled in the comedy. Colman, niggard, would risk nothing in the production of the piece, neither in new costumes nor theatrical fittings. He actually held forth disparagingly in his own box-office to those who sent to purchase ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... the man, who with unrivalled speed Can pass his fellows, and with pleasure view The struggling pack; how in the rapid course Alternate they preside, and jostling push To guide the dubious scent; how giddy youth Oft babbling errs, by wiser age reproved; How, niggard of his strength, the wise old hound Hangs in the rear, till some important point 240 Rouse all his diligence, or till the chase Sinking he finds; then to the head he springs, With thirst of glory fired, and wins the prize. Huntsman, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... Scorned not such legends to prolong: They gleam through Spenser's elfin dream, And mix in Milton's heavenly theme; And Dryden, in immortal strain, Had raised the Table Round again, But that a ribald king and court Bade him toil on, to make them sport; Demanded for their niggard pay, Fit for their souls, a looser lay, Licentious satire, song, and play; The world defrauded of the high design, Profaned the God-given strength, and marred ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... way by which he could save anything out of the wreck. And she bravely responded. She could and did lend him enough of her mind to make it worth his while. A friend should not come home to her from perils of land and sea, and find her ungrateful—a niggard of sympathy ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... like old Isaac, we all loved. He had the reputation at one time of being parsimonious, and some were inclined to treat him coldly on that account; but in time it was found that out of his small pay he maintained his widowed mother and a lame sister in their New England home, and that while niggard in regard to his own personal wants, the dear ones at the old home were generously provided for. So, although at first the West Point graduates were disposed to treat with contempt the Green Mountain boy who had entered the army as a volunteer in the war of 1812, and had been ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... quitted earth, I hope not for ever, the faithful few fled to these mountains with the sacred images, and we have cherished them. I told you we had beautiful and consoling thoughts, and more than thoughts. All else is lost, our wealth, our arts, our luxury, our invention, all have vanished. The niggard earth scarcely yields us a subsistence; we dress like Kurds, feed hardly as well; but if we were to quit these mountains, and wander like them on the plains with our ample flocks, we should lose our sacred images, all the ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... Paradiastole, which therfore nothing improperly we call the Curry-fauell, as when we make the best of a bad thing, or turne a signification to the more plausible sence: as, to call an vnthrift, a liberall Gentleman: the foolish-hardy, valiant or couragious: the niggard, thriftie: a great riot, or outrage, an youthfull pranke, and such like termes: moderating and abating the force of the matter by craft, and for a pleasing purpose, as appeareth by these verses of ours, teaching in ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... came soon to this ephemeral happiness. It was only one of those bright coins snatched from the niggard hand of Time which must always be paid back with usurious charges. ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... cleave and hew; Havoc fell of the foe he made, Saracen corse upon corse was laid, The field all flowed with the bright blood shed; Roland, to corselet and arm, was red— Red his steed to the neck and flank. Nor is Olivier niggard of blows as frank; Nor to one of the peers be blame this day, For the Franks are fiery to smite and slay. "Well fought," said Turpin, "our barons true!" And he ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... Prey— The lone survivor of that Yesterday— The one of Many whom the withering Gale Hath left unpunished to record their Tale. But who shall hear it? on that barren Sand None comes to stretch the hospitable hand. That shore reveals no print of human foot, Nor e'en the pawing of the wilder Brute; And niggard vegetation will not smile, All sunless on ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... at the words. "It is in truth great honor to the house of Loring," said she, "yet our roof is now humble and, as you have seen, our fare is plain. The King knows not that we are so poor. I fear lest we seem churlish and niggard in his eyes." ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... these, How vain for me the niggard Muse to tease: For thee, she will thy every dwelling grace, And make "a sun-shine in a shady place:" For thou wast once a flowret blooming wild, Close to the source, bright, pure, and undefil'd, Whence gush the streams of song: in happy hour Came chaste Diana from her ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... dead, certain charitable trusts, and other functions. Thirdly, when the Mass ceased to be said it was secularized completely. Service was held in the church, but the Hospital became a perfectly secular charity, supporting a few almspeople with niggard hand, and a Master in great splendour. Fourthly, it was again treated as a semi-ecclesiastical foundation, for reasons which do not appear. At the same time, while its charities were enlarged, no duties were assigned to the Brothers, who ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... I wish it, old man," said Halbert, "if I am to be the butt that every fool may aim a shaft of scorn against?—What avails it, old man, that you yourself move, sleep, and wake, eat thy niggard meal, and repose on thy hard pallet?—Why art thou so well pleased that the morning should call thee up to daily toil, and the evening again lay thee down a wearied-out wretch? Were it not better sleep and wake no more, than to undergo this dull exchange of labour ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... utterance of the implacable "No!" Indeed, in business, the perfection of grit is this power of saying "No," and saying it with such wrathful emphasis that the whole race of vampires and harpies are scared from you counting-room, and your reputation as unenterprising, unbearable niggard is fully established among all borrowers of money never meant to be repaid, and all projectors of schemes intended for the benefit of the projectors alone. At the expense of a little temporary obloquy, a man can thus conquer the right ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... of night is crept upon our talk, And nature must obey necessity; Which we will niggard with a little rest. There ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... of many a rusty smile, For Satire, emptying his corrosive flood On hissing Folly's gas-exhaling brood, The pun, the fun, the moral, and the joke, The hit, the thrust, the pugilistic poke,— Small space for these, so pressed by niggard Time, Like that false matron, known to nursery rhyme,— Insidious Morey,—scarce her tale begun, Ere listening infants weep the ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... lover of his pipe declared ironically in the same year that he had found three bad qualities in tobacco, for it made a man a thief (which meant danger), a good fellow (which meant cost), and a niggard ("the name of which is hateful"). "It makes him a theefe," he continued "for he will steale it from his father; a good fellow, for he will give the smoake to a beggar; a niggard, for he will not part with his box to an Emperor!" A character in one of Chapman's plays, 1606, calls tobacco "the ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... quiet in the lower town, especially in the locality of the university. Old Stuler's was filled with smoke, students and tumult. Ill feeling ran high. There were many damaged heads, for the cuirassiers had not been niggard with ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... him as being passing strange that she had begun to love him when the last sand of his life was well nigh run out; that wondrous are the ways of the revolving heavens which bestow wealth upon the niggard that cannot use it, wisdom upon the bad man who will misuse it, a beautiful wife upon the fool who cannot protect her, and fertilizing showers upon the stony hills. And thinking over these things, the gallant and ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... might have complained of the absence of water from the scene; but the native peasant would have explained to them that the eye alone had reason to be discontented, and that the thick foliage and the uneven surface did but conceal what mother earth with no niggard bounty supplied. The Bagradas, issuing from the spurs of the Atlas, made up in depth what it wanted in breadth of bed, and ploughed the rich and yielding mould with its rapid stream, till, after passing Sicca in its way, it fell into the sea near Carthage. ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... of the Yankee character, which has wanted neither open maligners, nor even more dangerous enemies in the persons of those unskilful painters who have given to it that hardness, angularity, and want of proper perspective, which, in truth, belonged, not to their subject, but to their own niggard and unskilful pencil. ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... biassed the actors against the play before they had even seen it, but no sooner had the rehearsals begun in earnest than they warmed to their assigned parts, and in due time admired and revelled in the comedy. Colman, niggard, would risk nothing in the production of the piece, neither in new costumes nor theatrical fittings. He actually held forth disparagingly in his own box-office to those who sent to purchase tickets for ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... ceremonial and exquisite musical service of the cathedral. Enter, then, with us one that has seemed, in some degree, to revive the glory of the olden time, when men, as they received, gave lavishly for the service of the altar; nor meted out their offerings with the niggard hand that is moved by the heart of this generation; unmoved, unwarmed, but boastful of its light—the light of a moonbeam playing on an iceberg! There is the long sweep of the nave, with the open chancel (not separated from the former by the richly carved ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... attached to his functions; to others are alloted offices, by virtue of which certain imposts are levied; to this man the land; to another the waters of rivers and canals; to a third the fruit-bearing trees. But money is distributed with a niggard hand, and only once a year. Every officer of revenue is permitted to pocket, and "charge to salary," a part of all that he collects in taxes, fines, extortions, bribes, gifts, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... by my fate far away from each friend; Ye loved ones, then: ERGO BIBAMUS! With wallet light-laden from hence I must wend, So double our ERGO BIBAMUS! Whate'er to his treasure the niggard may add, Yet regard for the joyous will ever be had, For gladness lends ever its charms to the glad, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... those few coins? I spent them all next day On a new chapel on the Eisenthal; There were no choristers but nightingales— No teachers there save bees: how long is this? Have you turned niggard? ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... very high sums for letters which compromise people of wealth or position. He receives these wares not only from treacherous valets or maids, but frequently from genteel ruffians who have gained the confidence and affection of trusting women. He deals with no niggard hand. I happen to know that he paid seven hundred pounds to a footman for a note two lines in length, and that the ruin of a noble family was the result. Everything which is in the market goes to Milverton, and there are hundreds in this great city who ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... enchanted by the 'luring charms Of phantoms gay, our reason all seduc'd, With pleasure roams thro' endless desarts wild, Enjoys the objects which herself has form'd. And this illusion for some time repairs The want of real joys, which niggard Nature Never has granted ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... reigned around?—Warwick feasting his retainers with beef and ale, was a niggard to the noble Mehevi!—All along the piazza of the Ti were arranged elaborately carved canoe-shaped vessels, some twenty feet in length, tied with newly made poee-poee, and sheltered from the sun by the broad leaves of the banana. At intervals were ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... purchase, by coming so far to do him a service. But I think, from what I have seen of him last night, that he is not such a niggard and misanthrope as I was led to believe. He exhibited considerable emotion, despite the monosyllabic greeting, when he shook my hand. If he were a man to feel annoyance at any person coming after him, he would not have received me as he did, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... Does the leaf of the forest twinkle futurity? the lonely lichen brighten or pale its lustre with change? Does not the gift of prophecy dwell with the family of the violets and the lilies? The prescient harebells, do they not let drop their closing blossoms when the heavens are niggard of their dews, or uphold them like cups thirsty for wine, when the blessing, yet unfelt by duller animal life, is beginning to drop balmily down from the rainy cloud embosomed in the blue of a midsummer's ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... think 'tis niggard praise I fling To bards who soar where I ne'er stretched a wing, That man I hold true master of his art Who with fictitious woes can wring my heart, Can rouse me, soothe me, pierce me with the thrill Of vain alarm, and, as by magic ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... these we ate on Saturday night; the broth we had on Sunday." So in another Scottish play, "The Gentle Shepherd" of Allan Ramsay, it was long the custom on stages north of the Tweed to present a real haggis, although niggard managers were often tempted to substitute for the genuine dish a far less savoury if more wholesome mess of oatmeal. But a play more famous still for the reality of its victuals, and better known to modern times, was Prince Hoare's musical farce, "No Song no Supper." A steaming-hot boiled ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... Addison was once more in office, and held his old position of Irish Secretary. In the following year he defended the Whig Government and Whig principles in the Freeholder, a paper published twice weekly. In it he gives no niggard praise to the Government of George I., and to the King himself, for his 'civil virtues,' and for his martial achievements. Addison's praise disagrees, it need scarcely be said, with the more minute and veracious description of the King given by Thackeray, but ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... worthless—kings of knaves exalters be; Wealth attends the selfish niggard, and the cloud ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... stately plant from its fertile, maternal soil, and there will still cling lovingly to it much that can seem superfluous only to a niggard. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... rooms that Dick had fitted up for her in fashion more modern than the somber dignity of the rest of the house. Here was another new sensation—a household without bickerings. The elder Mrs. Percival, having accepted the situation, was no niggard in her spirit of courtesy, but very gracious as was her wont, and Lena was astonished to find that she and her new mother-in-law ran their respective lines without collisions. The half-invalid older woman ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... fair Phyles' towers Survey Boeotia;—Caledonia's ours. 130 And well I know within that bastard land [10] Hath Wisdom's goddess never held command; A barren soil, where Nature's germs, confined To stern sterility, can stint the mind; Whose thistle well betrays the niggard earth, Emblem of all to whom the Land gives birth; Each genial influence nurtured to resist; A land of meanness, sophistry, and mist. [xv] Each breeze from foggy mount and marshy plain Dilutes with drivel every drizzly brain, ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... any well-defined doctrine that moral turpitude was judged and punished in the next-world. No contrast is discoverable between a place of torments and a realm of joy; at the worst but a negative castigation awaited the liar, the coward, or the niggard. The typical belief of the tribes of the United States was well expressed in the reply of Esau Hajo, great medal chief and speaker for the Creek nation in the National Council, to the question, Do the red people believe in a future state ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... of the old sailor from whom he had gleaned the information he sought, he was enabled to purchase a fine vessel and equip her for sea within the space of a few days. He lavished his gold with no niggard hand, and gold is a wondrous talisman to remove obstacles and facilitate designs. In a word, on the sixth morning after his arrival at Leghorn, Fernand Wagner embarked on board his ship, which was manned with a gallant crew, and carried ten pieces of ordnance. A favoring breeze ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... position of Milton in English poetry with the only two writers who can be compared to him, if bulk and majesty of work be taken into consideration, and not merely occasional bursts of poetry. Of his own poetical powers I trust that I shall not be considered a niggard admirer, because, both in the character of its subject (if we are to consider subjects at all) and in its employment of rhyme, that greatest mechanical aid of the poet, The Faerie Queene seems to me greater, or because Milton's own earlier work seems to ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... castles. The white sails of our boats will fleck every lake and sea and river with their rich burdens of trade, pouring a fabulous and a willing wealth into the coffers of the king. Gold and silver mines will yield their precious stores, while from these niggard natives we will wrest with mighty arm the tribute they so contemptuously deny the weakling curs who snap and snarl at my heels. Grey tower and fortress will guard every inlet, and watch this sheltered coast. In every vale the low chant of holy nuns will breathe their benediction ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... nature than ours can pass. Unless, therefore, we find our way into some circle of gentle scholars or lovers of the beautiful quite simple in their tastes, a thing possible but not often granted by a niggard fortune, we are perforce thrown back upon our own company, and move towards the grave alone. For this we accuse none; nothing is more at fault than our own constitution. But to us society is a school of dames, who are not to be blamed if amid the crowd that clamours for ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... set of Antony and Cleopatra for the Gobelins. The same idea extended to the furniture coverings which ran to this design as well as to the Fables. Thus originated a set familiar to those of us nowadays who covet and who buy the rare old bits that the niggard hand of the past accords to the seeker ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... draw from Mammon's harpy keeping. Go, lure the tomtit from the twig, Go, coax the tiger from his quarry, The toper from his thirsty swig, The swindler from his schemings sorry: "Persuade" the Sweater to be just, The 'cute Monopolist to be kindly; Tempt hunger to resign his crust, The niggard churl to lavish blindly: Make—by soft words—the ruthless wrecker Subscribe for life-boats, ropes and rockets; Then plump the National Exchequer By willing doles ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 30, 1891 • Various
... many a mountain nigh Rising in lofty ranks, and loftier still, Might well itself be deemed of dignity, The Convent's white walls glisten fair on high: Here dwells the caloyer, nor rude is he,[21.B.] Nor niggard of his cheer;[150] the passer by Is welcome still; nor heedless will he flee From hence, if he delight kind Nature's sheen ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... GREEKING. 1. A Greek should be like a mole, visible only at night. 2. He should be a niggard of his speech, and a profligate with his liquor, giving freely, but taking cautiously. 3. He must always deprecate play in public, and pretend an entire ignorance of his game. 4. He must be subtle as the fox, and vary as the well-trained hawk; never showing chase too ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... to see a niggard man, One of the great Macdonald clan; When others are in quest of gain This man the needy will sustain. Your mother, if an honest dame, Has not retained her wedlock fame; No part is Mac from top to toe, ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... gazed upon his gold, His sweat, his blood, the wage of weary days; But now how sweet, how doubly sweet to hold All gay and gleamy to the campfire blaze. The evening sky was sinister and cold; The willows shivered, wanly lay the snow; The uncommiserating land, so old, So worn, so grey, so niggard in its woe, Peered through its ragged shroud. The lone man sighed, Poured back the gaudy dust into its poke, Gazed at the seething river listless-eyed, Loaded his corn-cob pipe as if to smoke; Then crushed with weariness and hardship crept ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... Spanish cruisers, a thousand real or fabulous dangers environed them. Their provisions were already running near exhaustion; and they were feeding on raw seal-flesh, on snails and mussels, and on whatever the barren rocks and niggard seas would supply, to save them from absolutely perishing, but they held their resolve to maintain their honour unsullied, to be true to each other and to the republic, and to circumnavigate the globe to seek the proud ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... demandable of the obliged, and may be, with some reason at least, from expectation, paid to the rich and liberal from the necessitous; but that men should be allured by the glittering of wealth only to feed the insolent pride of those who will not in return feed their hunger—that the sordid niggard should find any sacrifices on the altar of his vanity—seems to arise from a blinder idolatry, and a more bigoted and senseless superstition, than any which the sharp eyes of priests have discovered in the ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... have rambled strangely from my story: but what of that? if I have been so lucky as to find the road to happiness, why should I be such a niggard as to omit so good an opportunity of pointing out the way to others. The very basis of true peace of mind is a benevolent wish to see all the world as happy as one's Self; and from my soul do I pity the selfish churl, who, ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... The Government of India have applied themselves with great energy, with fresh activity, and they believe they have got the secret of this fell disaster. They have laid down a large policy of medical, sanitary, and financial aid. I am a hardened niggard of public money. I watch the expenditure of Indian revenue as the ferocious dragon of the old mythology watched the golden apples. I do not forget that I come from a constituency which, so far as I have known it, if it is most generous, is also most prudent. Nevertheless, though I have ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... good, give largely to true merit, All that a king should do: But though these are not My province, I have scene enough within, To exercise my virtue. All that a heart, so fixed as mine, can move, Is, that my niggard fortune ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... to make any fence for your Orchard, if you be a niggard of your fruit. For as liberality will saue it best from noysome neighbours, liberality I say is the best fence, so Iustice must restraine rioters. Thus when your ground is tempered, squared, and fenced, it is time to ...
— A New Orchard And Garden • William Lawson
... their flight, and notes that winter is at hand. This is the last Duke of Urbino, Francesco Maria II., he whose young wife deserted him, who made for himself alone a hermit-pedant's round of petty cares and niggard avarice and mean-brained superstition. He drew a second consort from the convent, and raised up seed unto his line by forethought, but beheld his princeling fade untimely in the bloom of boyhood. Nothing ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... education, the average cost per scholar for 5 years, including books, stationery, fuel, and all other expenses, is 7 dollars 2 cents per annum. This system of education is followed in nearly all the States; and while it reflects the highest credit on America, it contrasts strangely with the niggard plan pursued in England, where so important a thing as the education of the people depends almost entirely on ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... breathe. Either Milton's or the living bard's are defective in this respect. There is no Sonnet of Milton's on the Restoration of Charles II. There is no Sonnet of Mr. Wordsworth's corresponding to that of 'the poet blind and bold' 'On the late Massacre in Piedmont.' It would be no niggard praise to Mr. Wordsworth to grant that he was either half the man or half the poet that Milton was. He has not his high and various imagination, nor his deep and fixed principle. Milton did not worship the rising sun, nor turn his back on a losing ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... the canoe. Islanders are always troublesome, from a sense of security in their fastnesses. Made stirrups of thick brass wire four-fold; they promise to do well. Sent Kabinga a cloth, and a message, but he is evidently a niggard, like Matipa: we must take him as we find him, there is no use in growling. Seven of our men returned, having got a canoe from one of Matipa's men. Kabinga, it seems, was pleased with the cloth, and says that he will ask for maize ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... then beat your own lips and punish your own self; it's only fair;" old lady Chia remarked. Then facing Mrs. Hseh, "I'm not a niggard, fond of winning money," she went on to say, "but ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... with speed. Forbear your mirth and rude alarm, For none shall do them shame or harm." "Hear ye his boast?" cried John of Brent, 140 Ever to strife and jangling bent; "Shall he strike doe beside our lodge, And yet the jealous niggard grudge To pay the forester his fee? I'll have my share, howe'er it be, 145 Despite of Moray, Mar, or thee." Bertram his forward step withstood; And, burning in his vengeful mood, Old Allan, though unfit for strife; ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... I should have something more to say unto you! I should have something more to give unto you! Why do I not give it? Am I then a niggard?— ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Oh, he was no niggard of his crowns, our Emperor! I had a bed-fellow of mine, a brave soldier, who was afterwards promoted to be king. This flattered us; for, if it was not one, it was the other. And so, at this game, your father became count; but, count or not, he ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... until I came down to the river. Perhaps the world can show more beauteous sights than the river which runs between Truro and Falmouth, but I have my doubts. Nature here is at the height of her loveliness and spreads her riches with no niggard hand. For the clear water coils its way through a rich countryside, where green woods and rich meadows slope down to the river's bank. Here the flowers come early in the springtime, and scent the air through ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... I introduce my friends? We are nigh broken, and not too proud to accept a little charity from a Devon man. Thy heart used not to beat in a niggard's bosom." ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... 1842.—My inward life has been more rich and deep, and of more calm and musical flow than ever before. It seems to me that Heaven, whose course has ever been to cross-bias me, as Herbert said, is no niggard in its compensations. I have indeed been forced to take up old burdens, from which I thought I had learned what they could teach; the pen has been snatched from my hand just as I most longed to use it; I have been forced to dissipate, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... changed,—hath felt the touch of sorrow, No love hath she, no understanding friend; O grief! when Heaven is forced of earth to borrow What the poor niggard earth has not to lend; But when the stalk is snapt, the rose must bend. The tallest flower that skyward rears its head Grows from the common ground, and there must shed Its delicate petals. Cruel fate, too surely, That they should find so base a bridal bed, Who lived ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... useful. I bet for him, I make appointments for him to have his hair trimmed, I retain stalls for him, and occasionally I admit him to the house at an unlawful hour. In fact, he is a confounded nuisance. He is impertinent, grossly ignorant, and a niggard. Moreover, Toby, he hath an eye whose like I have seen before—once. Then it was set in the head of a remount which, after it had broken a shoeing-smith's leg, was cast for ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... natural thing that they should live divinely and not as animals and humanly, they being not gods, but men and animals? It is a law of fate and Nature that everything should adapt itself to the condition of its own being, wherefore then, while you follow after the niggard nectar of the gods, do you lose that which is present and is your own, and trouble yourself about the vain hopes of others? Ought not Nature to refuse to give you the other good, if that which she at present offers to you, you ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... groweth less. Wherefore, to the end that the unright of Fortune may by me in part be amended, which, where there is the less strength to endure, as we see it in delicate ladies, hath there been the more niggard of support, I purpose, for the succour and solace of ladies in love (unto others[1] the needle and the spindle and the reel suffice) to recount an hundred stories or fables or parables or histories or whatever ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... him how he shall shift another day. He prays hotly against fasting, and so he may sup well on Friday nights, he cares not though his master be a puritan. He practices to make the words in his declaration spread as a sewer doth the dishes of a niggard's table; a clerk of a swooping dash is as commendable as a Flanders horse of a large tail. Though you be never so much delayed you must not call his master knave, that makes him go beyond himself, and write ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... ruled aright. But all that monster's history, how it fell, Fain would I tell thee who hast ears to hear, Save only whence it came: for none of all The Argive host could read that riddle right. Some god, we dimly guessed, our niggard vows Resenting, had upon Phoroneus' realm Let loose this very scourge of humankind. On peopled Pisa plunging like a flood The brute ran riot: notably it cost Its neighbours of Bembina woes untold. And here Eurystheus ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... principally upon the spontaneous offerings of nature, very largely depend upon climate, soil, and physical conformation. Where much animal food and warm clothing are required; where the earth seems poor and niggard; where the exuberant life of tropical forests mocks barbarous man's puny efforts to control; where mountains, deserts, or arms of the sea separate and isolate men; association, and the power of improvement which it evolves, can at first go but a little way. But on the ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... the Mayne glideth 90 Where my Love abideth. Sleep's no softer; it proceeds On through lawns, on through meads, On and on, whate'er befall, Meandering and musical, 95 Though the niggard pasturage Bears not on its shaven ledge Aught but weeds and waving grasses To view the river as it passes, Save here and there a scanty patch 100 Of primroses too faint to catch A weary bee. And scarce it pushes Its gentle way through strangling rushes Where the glossy kingfisher ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... Ye niggard Gods! you make our Lives too long: You fill 'em with Diseases, Wants, and Woes, And only dash 'em with a little Love; Sprinkled by Fits, and with a sparing Hand. Count all our Joys, from Childhood ev'n to Age, They wou'd but make a Day ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... though not in the line, was no niggard in the matter of shot, and though he had no real business to come within range until called by signal, still he thought it his duty to be as near to our ships engaged as possible, in order to afford them assistance when required. I was stationed at the foremost guns on the main ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of misery, both temporal and spiritual, surrounds us, and which might be effectually relieved, were all Christians, many of whom are laggard in effort and niggard in bounty, to manifest a tithe of the self-denial which Mr. Ellerthorpe practiced. 'What maintains one vice, would support two children.' Robert Hall says:—It is the practice of self-denial in a thousand little instances which forms the truest test of character.' Mr. Fletcher, Vicar ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... least for my own profit, for I am well convinced already, but simply to win your cordiality and your approval—never did an unexceptional wooer receive such niggard encouragement!—I wish there were some sort of test for her quality. I would be proud to stand by it, and you would be convinced. I can't find words to describe my objection to your state ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... rank and condition: some, dressed in all the brilliancy of the mode; others, whose garments bespoke direst poverty. There were women, too, whose costume emulated the classic drapery of the ancients, and who displayed, in their looped togas, no niggard share of their forms; while others, in shabby mourning, sat in obscure corners, not noticing the scene before them, nor noticed themselves. A strange equipage, with two horses extravagantly bedizened with rosettes and bouquets, stood at the door; and as I looked, a pale, haggard-looking ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... man sits down in a comfortable chair. To others, not a few, all this hustle was an act in a domestic tragedy. Sometimes it was a comedy, as in the case of one man who had built up a "nice little butchering business," snatching his profits from the niggard hand of competition; and now he must go forth to kill men, leaving his rival master in the field of domestic butchery. But the comedies were few, or else I did not come across them, for it was the serious ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... crowns yon tufted hill, Which, were it not for many a mountain nigh Rising in lofty ranks, and loftier still, Might well itself be deem'd of dignity; The convent's white walls glisten fair on high: Here dwells the caloyer, nor rude is he, Nor niggard of his cheer; the passer-by Is welcome still; nor heedless will he flee From hence, if he delight kind Nature's ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... mean to sneer at everything the man does. We abused him yesterday as a niggard; let us have the grace to-day to say we were mistaken." He was afflicted with the over-scrupulosity of a refined, but strictly limited mind, and his conscience smote him. "I, at any rate, was quite mistaken," he went on; "I quite ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... All this is not quite like you, who never used to be over-ready with your commendation; you seem to have gone now to the opposite extreme of prodigality, and developed from a niggard into a spendthrift of praise. Do not be ashamed to make alterations in what you have already published, either. They say Phidias did as much after finishing his Olympian Zeus. He stood behind the doors when he had opened them for the ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... scalp of the hair, And the ivory[128] tare from its sockets' repose. Thy skinny, thy cold, thy visageless mould, Its disgust is untold, and its surface is dim; What a signal of wrack is the wrinkle's dull track, And the bend of the back, and the limp of the limb! Thou leper of fear—thou niggard of cheer— Where glory is dear, shall thy welcome be found? Thou contempt of the brave—oh, rather the grave, Than to pine as the slave that thy fetters have bound. Like the dusk of the day is thy colour ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... lady, Of such a perfect virtue, grace and sweetnes, That Nature was to all our sex beside A niggard, only bountiful to her; One whose harmonious bewtie may intitule All hearts its captive: yet she doats on you With such a masculine fancy that to love her Is duty ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... mountain streams is like the origin of tears, patent to the understanding but mysterious to the sense. They are always at it, but one so seldom catches them in the act. Here in the valley there is no cessation of waters even in the season when the niggard frost gives them scant leave to run. They make the most of their midday hour, and tinkle all night thinly under the ice. An ear laid to the snow catches a muffled hint of their eternal busyness fifteen or twenty feet under the canon drifts, and long before any appreciable spring thaw, ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... more comfort brought the gloomy night, In her thick shades was burning heat uprolled, Her sable mantle was embroidered bright With blazing stars and gliding fires for gold, Nor to refresh, sad earth, thy thirsty sprite, The niggard moon let fall her May dews cold, And dried up the vital moisture was, In trees, in plants, in ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... rich Nature graces grant to thee, Since thou art such a niggard of thy grace? O how can graces in thy body be? Where neither they nor pity find a place! . . . Grant me some grace! For thou with grace art wealthy And kindly may'st afford some ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... lacking joy and force, Or difference reaching to divorce, Now can the finish'd lover see Marvel of me most far from me, Whom without pride he may admire, Without Narcissus' doom desire, Serve without selfishness, and love 'Even as himself,' in sense above Niggard 'as much,' yea, as she is The only part ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... analysis of the nation and its people. Twain's rebuttal (Mr. Froude's Progress) would have been 'a propos' for Harte in Cambridge. D.W.]—and he had always his temperament against him, as well as the reluctant if not the niggard nature of his muse. He would no doubt have been only too glad to do more than he did for the money, but actually if not literally he could not do more. When it came to literature, all the gay improvidence of life forsook ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the hospitality of Israel Wurm. In the course of the evening, an old Scotch gardener gave it as his opinion that the "miser was fey." (When a man suddenly changes his character, as when a spendthrift becomes saving, or a niggard generous, the Scotch say that he is fey, and consider the change a ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... that, on the whole, Mr. Fairford was a man much liked and respected on all sides, though his friends would not have been sorry if he had given a dinner more frequently, as his little cellar contained some choice old wine, of which, on such rare occasions he was no niggard. ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... boatmen, yelling to each other as their wont is, had an uncommon tendency to diffuse themselves in echo. Over all, the heavens had put on their summer blue, in promise of that delicious weather which in the lagoons lasts half the year, and which makes every other climate seem niggard of sunshine and azure skies. I know we have beautiful days at home—days of which the sumptuous splendor used to take my memory with unspeakable longing and regret even in Italy;—but we do not have, week after ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... used great caution in exchanging words and glances, but familiarity with danger breeds contempt for it. So they utilized every opportunity that niggard chance offered, and blinded by their great longing soon began to make opportunities for speech with each other, thereby bringing trouble to Dorothy and deadly peril to John. Of that I ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... roses strewn! Ye flutes, ye lyres, exulting breathe! The festal Hour disdains to own The mournful note, the niggard wreath. ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... For my own part, I have sacrificed to a rigid punctilio of honour the dearest ideas of my heart. I beheld your unrivalled charms, and deeply felt their power. Yet, while a possibility of Melvil's reformation remained, and while I was restrained by my niggard fortune from making a tender worthy of your acceptance, I combated with my inclinations, and bore without repining the pangs of hopeless love. But, now that my honour is disengaged, and my fortune rendered independent, ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... Kensington Workhouse, walking home one night in company with Luke Smith; and how, too, he had commented to him on that fearful sign of the times, and had somewhat unfairly drawn a contrast between the niggard cruelty of 'popular Protestantism,' and the fancied 'liberality of the middle age.' What wonder if his pupil had taken him ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... not show much, and are soon forgotten by those who benefit from them. Had she laughed more, danced more, taken more kindly to the fools and their follies, she might have been acid of tongue and niggard of sympathy; the world would have thought ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... above the vale, And clouds of ravens o'er the turrets sail. A hardy race who never shrunk from war, The Scott, to rival realms a mighty bar, Here fixed his mountain home;—a wide domain, And rich the soil, had purple heath been grain; But what the niggard ground of wealth denied, From fields more ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... Sigurd took the Heart, and wood on the waste he found, The wood that grew and died, as it crept on the niggard ground, And grew and died again, and lay like whitened bones; And the ernes cried over his head, as he builded his hearth of stones, And kindled the fire for cooking, and sat and sang o'er the roast The song of his fathers of old, and the Wolflings' gathering host: So there ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... (At door.) Is it a niggard you are grown to be, McDonough, and you with riches in your hand? Is it against a new wedding you are keeping your pocket stiff, or to buy a house and an estate, that it fails you to call in hired women to make a right keening, and a few decent ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... dusky band I lead Rob thee of thy daily need Of a whiter soul, or steal What thy lordly prayers reveal? Who could be enriched of thee By such hoard of poverty As thy niggard hand pretends To dole me— thy worst of friends? Therefore shouldst thou pause to bless One indeed who blesses thee: Robbing thee, I dispossess But ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... the lonely night on through the dusk they went, On through the empty house of Dis, the land of nought at all. E'en as beneath the doubtful moon, when niggard light doth fall 270 Upon some way amid the woods, when God hath hidden heaven, And black night from the things of earth the ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... And so, my friends, it is my prayer That God will have you in his care.' His well-fed saintship said no more, But in their faces shut the door. What think you, reader, is the service For which I use this niggard rat? To paint a monk? No, but a dervise. A monk, I think, however fat, Must ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... die— Were dead to him already; bent as he was To make disproof of scorn, and strong in hopes, And prodigal of all brain-labor he, Charier of sleep, and wine and exercise, Except when for a breathing-while at eve, Some niggard fraction of an hour, he ran Beside the river-bank: and then indeed Harder the times were, and the hands of power Were bloodier, and the according hearts of men Seem'd harder too; but the soft river-breeze, Which fann'd the gardens of that rival rose Yet fragrant ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... splendor from evil; burn down every ghoul. Let us stand straight that we may walk and live. Find out our worship among the gods. Save us, O Agni, from the sorcerer, save us from mischief, from the niggard. Save us from him who does us harm or tries to kill us, O youngest god with bright splendor! As with a club smite the niggards in all directions, and him who deceives us, O god with fiery jaws. The mortal ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... accumulated so much material, as did this one whose chief naturalist was Francois Peron. When it is added that two of the greatest figures in British scientific history, Darwin and Huxley, were among the workers in this fruitful field, it will be admitted that the acknowledgment is not made in any niggard spirit. But we are now concerned with Peron as historian of what related to Terre Naploeon and the surrounding circumstances. Here his statements have been shown to be unreliable. It is probable that he wrote ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... gear. So I sallied forth a-morn trusting in Allah to provide, and went round about the city. I offered the gugglet to one, that he might drink; but he cried, 'I have eaten naught whereon to drink; for a niggard invited me this day and set two gugglets before me; so I said to him, 'O son of the sordid, hast thou given me aught to eat that thou offerest me drink after it?' Wherefore wend thy ways, O water-carrier, till I have eaten somewhat: then come and give me to drink.' Thereupon I accosted ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... not find fault hastily; however brave you may be, do not raise factions against you. Do not be going to drinking-houses, or finding fault with old men; do not meddle with low people; this is right conduct I am telling you. Do not refuse to share your meat; do not have a niggard for your friend; do not force yourself on a great man or give him occasion to speak against you. Hold fast to your arms till the hard fight is well ended. Do not give up your opportunity, but with ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... parsimony, parcity|; parsimoniousness[obs3], stinginess &c. adj.; stint; illiberality, tenacity. avarice, greed &c. 817a. miser, niggard, churl, screw, skinflint, crib, codger, muckworm[obs3], scrimp, lickpenny[obs3], hunks, curmudgeon, Harpagon, harpy, extortioner, Jew, usurer; Hessian [U.S.]; pinch fist, pinch penny. V. be parsimonious &c. adj.; grudge, begrudge, stint, pinch, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... then, even in the half light. Just a trifle foreign, the face; somewhat dark, but not too dark; the lips full, the eyes luminous, the forehead beautifully arched, chin and cheek beautifully rounded, nose clean-cut and straight, thin but not pinched. There was nothing niggard about her. She was magnificent—a magnificent woman. I saw that she had splendid jewels at her throat, in her ears—a necklace of diamonds, long hoops of diamonds and emeralds used as ear-rings; a sparkling clasp which caught at her white throat the wrap which she had thrown about her ball ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... thirty years' peace? or was there even a DAY'S universal peace? except perhaps in China, where they have found out the miserable happiness of a stationary and unwarlike mediocrity. And is all this because nature is niggard or savage? or mankind ungrateful? Let philosophers ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... brief enough, but there was plenty of husk to the grain. The old expatriate was querulous, long-winded, not niggard with his ink when he cursed the English and damned the Prussians; and he obtained much gratification in jabbing his quill-bodkin into what he termed the sniveling nobility of the old regime. Dog of dogs! was he not ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... you the truth, Captain, on first going up I fell into extravagant company. I thought my friends were rich men, and I was never a niggard. There was Monty, the patron of the Fancy"—the scissors in Kate's hand clicked and stopped—and Ross blurted out, "In fact, I've not been called, and I've never studied ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... Alexander II. did not hold out any hope of reform. Driven to straits, he busied himself with throwing a sop to public opinion by various small relaxations in administrative matters. They were small enough; and they were given with a niggard hand. ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... Did niggard fate no peers afford, He took, of course, to peers' relations; And, rather than not sport a lord, Put up with even the ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... Through that vast vigil, while his eyes Watch'd till the slow reluctant skies Should kindle, and the vision dread, Of all his livelong years be read! In youth, his faith-led spirit doom'd Still to be baffled and betray'd, His manhood's vigorous noon consumed Ere Power bestow'd its niggard aid; That morn of summer, dawning grey,{B} When, from Huelva's humble bay, He full of hope, before the gale Turn'd on the hopeless World his sail, And steer'd for seas untrack'd, unknown, And westward still sail'd on—sail'd on— Sail'd on till Ocean ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... in the other days when we twain stepped into one bed together; and then may we have the name of man and wife, nor shall the door swing to at the heel of him as I go behind him. Nor shall that be a niggard company if there follow him those five bond-women and eight bondmen, whom my father gave me, and those burn there withal who were slain ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... services of this individual to far greater account had the quantity of books at my disposal been greater; but they were now diminishing rapidly, and as I had no hopes of a fresh supply, I was almost tempted to be niggard of the few which remained. This agent was a Greek bricklayer, by name Johannes Chrysostom, who had been introduced to me by Dionysius. He was a native of the Morea, but had been upwards of thirty-five years in Spain, so that he had almost entirely lost his native language. Nevertheless, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... could save anything out of the wreck. And she bravely responded. She could and did lend him enough of her mind to make it worth his while. A friend should not come home to her from perils of land and sea, and find her ungrateful—a niggard of sympathy and praise. ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... him to be "all nohow," as he sat down in some bare hall upon a schoolfellow's book-box (wondering whether he should ever see his own), to while away with a story-book the listless interval before bed-time, under the niggard light of a smoking lamp, or a candle flickering in the draught. What exactly he felt or thought, however, we do not pretend to know. We only know that there was not one of them but felt proud to be out campaigning with his school, and would have counted "ten years of peaceful life" ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... observation give us the power to wield the wand at will? We cannot but believe it. Our vast and fertile downs were never destined to be idle and unproductive for months and months, dependent only on the niggard clouds o'erhead. ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... landmarks, and things round him to be "all nohow," as he sat down in some bare hall upon a schoolfellow's book-box (wondering whether he should ever see his own), to while away with a story-book the listless interval before bed-time, under the niggard light of a smoking lamp, or a candle flickering in the draught. What exactly he felt or thought, however, we do not pretend to know. We only know that there was not one of them but felt proud to be out campaigning with his school, and would have counted "ten years of peaceful life" not more than ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... Userti, or Saptah. Perhaps the divine neck has not been oiled of late, or too much oiled, or too little oiled, or prayers—or strings—may have gone wrong. Or Pharaoh may have been niggard in his gifts to that college of the great god of his House. Who am I that I should know the ways of gods? That in the temple where I served at Thebes fifty years ago did not pretend to bow or to trouble himself as to which ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... unrivalled speed Can pass his fellows, and with pleasure view The struggling pack; how in the rapid course Alternate they preside, and jostling push To guide the dubious scent; how giddy youth Oft babbling errs, by wiser age reproved; How, niggard of his strength, the wise old hound Hangs in the rear, till some important point 240 Rouse all his diligence, or till the chase Sinking he finds; then to the head he springs, With thirst of glory fired, and wins the prize. Huntsman, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... an American to behold, yet Captain Riga was in fact a Russian by birth, though this was a fact that he strove to conceal. And though extravagant in his personal expenses, and even indulging in luxurious habits, costly as Oriental dissipation, yet Captain Riga was a niggard to others; as, indeed, was evinced in the magnificent stipend of three dollars, with which he requited my own valuable services. Therefore, as it was agreed between Harry and me, that he should offer to ship as a "boy," at the same rate of compensation with ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... around?—Warwick feasting his retainers with beef and ale, was a niggard to the noble Mehevi!—All along the piazza of the Ti were arranged elaborately carved canoe-shaped vessels, some twenty feet in length, tied with newly made poee-poee, and sheltered from the sun by the broad leaves of the banana. At intervals were heaps of green bread-fruit, ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... Parsimony.— N. parsimony, parcity|; parsimoniousness[obs3], stinginess &c. adj.; stint; illiberality, tenacity. avarice, greed &c. 817a. miser, niggard, churl, screw, skinflint, crib, codger, muckworm[obs3], scrimp, lickpenny[obs3], hunks, curmudgeon, Harpagon, harpy, extortioner, Jew, usurer; Hessian [U.S.]; pinch fist, pinch penny. V. be parsimonious &c. adj.; grudge, begrudge, stint, pinch, gripe, screw, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... discourse, attire, He practis'd that which wise men still admire, Commend, and recommend. What's that? you'll say. 'Tis this: he ever choos'd the middle way 'Twixt both th' extremes. Amost in ev'ry thing He did the like, 'tis worth our noticing: Sparing, yet not a niggard; liberal, And yet not lavish or a prodigal, As knowing when to spend and when to spare; And that's a lesson which not many are Acquainted with. He bashful was, yet daring When he saw cause, and yet therein not ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... nurture. Among the cultured a cold convention often reigns, behind which only a more persistent nature than ours can pass. Unless, therefore, we find our way into some circle of gentle scholars or lovers of the beautiful quite simple in their tastes, a thing possible but not often granted by a niggard fortune, we are perforce thrown back upon our own company, and move towards the grave alone. For this we accuse none; nothing is more at fault than our own constitution. But to us society is a school of dames, who are not to ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... the reputation at one time of being parsimonious, and some were inclined to treat him coldly on that account; but in time it was found that out of his small pay he maintained his widowed mother and a lame sister in their New England home, and that while niggard in regard to his own personal wants, the dear ones at the old home were generously provided for. So, although at first the West Point graduates were disposed to treat with contempt the Green Mountain boy who had entered the army as a volunteer ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... I came down to the river. Perhaps the world can show more beauteous sights than the river which runs between Truro and Falmouth, but I have my doubts. Nature here is at the height of her loveliness and spreads her riches with no niggard hand. For the clear water coils its way through a rich countryside, where green woods and rich meadows slope down to the river's bank. Here the flowers come early in the springtime, and scent the air through the summer; ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... nature a good and affectionate son, but as I took my way into the great world from which I had been so long secluded I could not help remembering that all my misfortunes had flowed like a stream from the niggard economy of my parents in the matter of school luncheons; and I knew of no reason ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... but half her stores: In distant wilds, by human eyes unseen, She rears her flowers, and spreads her velvet green: Pure gurgling rills the lonely desert trace, And waste their music on the savage race. Is nature then a niggard of her bliss? Repine we guiltless in a world like this? But our lewd tastes her lawful charms refuse, And painted art's depraved allurements choose. Such Fulvia's passion for the town; fresh air ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... aridity, this ascetic devotion of his genius to pure ideal form, this almost mathematical conception of beauty, may be ascribed, I think, to the same psychological qualities which determined the dreary conditions of his home-life. He was no niggard either of money or of ideas; nay, even profligate of both. But melancholy made him miserly in all that concerned personal enjoyment; and he ought to have been born under that leaden planet Saturn rather than Mercury ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... slow and clumsy spinning of this tale that I could crowd the narrative of all that I had seen and heard into a niggard three-score words or less. But this I did, writing them upon the margin of the captain's map, and noting in an added line the pricking out of the powder convoy's route. And while my pen was looping on the flourish to my ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... egotist satisfy us when we remember the life-long devotion that existed between him and Dorothy, and the fact that Coleridge loved him, and that Lamb and Scott were his friends. He may have been a niggard of warm-heartedness to the outside world, but it is clear from his biography that he possessed the genius of a good heart as well ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... intellectual being.— When does he make advances?—He thinks that women should woo him; Yet, if a girl should do so, would be but alarmed and disgusted. She that should love him must look for small love in return,—like the ivy On the stone wall, must expect but rigid and niggard support, and Even to get that must go searching all round ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... can find us a flagon of wine, too, and of the best, I know that," said Burdale. "Come, man, rummage out your stores, you used not to be niggard ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... the withering Gale Hath left unpunished to record their Tale. But who shall hear it? on that barren Sand None comes to stretch the hospitable hand. That shore reveals no print of human foot, Nor e'en the pawing of the wilder Brute; And niggard vegetation will not smile, All sunless on that ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... themselves with great energy, with fresh activity, and they believe they have got the secret of this fell disaster. They have laid down a large policy of medical, sanitary, and financial aid. I am a hardened niggard of public money. I watch the expenditure of Indian revenue as the ferocious dragon of the old mythology watched the golden apples. I do not forget that I come from a constituency which, so far as I have known it, if it is most generous, ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... Irishman in using this word has some confused notion that it comes from negro; whereas it really means niggard. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... the death of the Queen, Addison was once more in office, and held his old position of Irish Secretary. In the following year he defended the Whig Government and Whig principles in the Freeholder, a paper published twice weekly. In it he gives no niggard praise to the Government of George I., and to the King himself, for his 'civil virtues,' and for his martial achievements. Addison's praise disagrees, it need scarcely be said, with the more minute and veracious description of the King given by Thackeray, but a party politician in those days ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... are given anything worth remembering they will not forget it. You may rely on that. They know what each gives—whether freely or with a niggard hand—and each shall be paid back in his own coin. They give freely enough themselves. It is always so with the aristocrats; but they expect an equal generosity in others, which is ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... Englishmen have controlled her fortunes, be mingled with considerations of mournfulness and peril! It is not merely—and, alas! that such a calamity should have to be treated as of secondary magnitude—it is not merely that the niggard state charity of England is now at once to cease and be entirely withdrawn, but we have to contemplate a still more fearful and far wider-spreading misery at the end of autumn and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Mayne glideth 90 Where my Love abideth. Sleep's no softer; it proceeds On through lawns, on through meads, On and on, whate'er befall, Meandering and musical, 95 Though the niggard pasturage Bears not on its shaven ledge Aught but weeds and waving grasses To view the river as it passes, Save here and there a scanty patch 100 Of primroses too faint to catch A weary bee. And scarce it pushes Its gentle way through strangling rushes Where the glossy kingfisher ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... luxurious rooms that Dick had fitted up for her in fashion more modern than the somber dignity of the rest of the house. Here was another new sensation—a household without bickerings. The elder Mrs. Percival, having accepted the situation, was no niggard in her spirit of courtesy, but very gracious as was her wont, and Lena was astonished to find that she and her new mother-in-law ran their respective lines without collisions. The half-invalid older woman breakfasted in her own room and occupied herself with quiet readings ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... on the back, and his salutation commonly some blunt curse.] He thinks nothing to be vices, but pride and ill husbandry, from which he will gravely dissuade the youth, and has some thrifty hob-nail proverbs to clout his discourse. He is a niggard all the week, except only market-day, where, if his corn sell well, he thinks he may be drunk with a good conscience. His feet never stink so unbecomingly as when he trots after a lawyer in Westminster-hall, and even cleaves the ground with hard scraping in beseeching his ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... metred inches Nobly enlarged to full, fair, Saxon mould, And vested in the blazonments of rule, Shewed not so kingly to the obeisant sight As was his soul. Who than ye better knew His bravery; his lofty heroism; His purity, and great unselfish heart? Nature in him betrayed no niggard touch Of corporate or ethereal. Yet I yield That men of lesser mould in outward form Have been as great in deeds of rich renown. But then, I take it, greatness lies not in The flesh, but in the spirit. He is great Who from the quick occasion ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... alloted offices, by virtue of which certain imposts are levied; to this man the land; to another the waters of rivers and canals; to a third the fruit-bearing trees. But money is distributed with a niggard hand, and only once a year. Every officer of revenue is permitted to pocket, and "charge to salary," a part of all that he collects in taxes, fines, extortions, bribes, gifts, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... spectacle would provoke my brother Robert. All her little failings would, I know, be a source of irritation to him. If they vex me it is a most pleasurable vexation. I delight to find her at fault; and were I always resident with her, I am aware she would be no niggard in thus ministering to my enjoyment. She would just give me something to do, to rectify—a theme for my tutor lectures. I never lecture Henry, never feel disposed to do so. If he does wrong—and that is very seldom, dear, excellent lad!—a word suffices. ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... protect us by thy splendor from evil; burn down every ghoul. Let us stand straight that we may walk and live. Find out our worship among the gods. Save us, O Agni, from the sorcerer, save us from mischief, from the niggard. Save us from him who does us harm or tries to kill us, O youngest god with bright splendor! As with a club smite the niggards in all directions, and him who deceives us, O god with fiery jaws. The mortal ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... should know whom to choose, being a cosmopolitan as you are; the Hall should be occupied; you are a good and faithful steward, giving to the poor with no niggard hand, and out of your present small income; yes, you should decidedly marry and you should as decidedly have an ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... never complain," was the reply; "I was only thinking of the niggard economy of Nature in building a great big beast like you and not giving him ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... the boatmen, yelling to each other as their wont is, had an uncommon tendency to diffuse themselves in echo. Over all, the heavens had put on their summer blue, in promise of that delicious weather which in the lagoons lasts half the year, and which makes every other climate seem niggard of sunshine and azure skies. I know we have beautiful days at home—days of which the sumptuous splendor used to take my memory with unspeakable longing and regret even in Italy;—but we do not have, week after week, month after ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... wealth and be not liberal with it, May my hand wither and my foot eke paralysed remain! Show me the niggard who hath won glory by avarice! Show me the liberal man his own munificence ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... thinks that women should woo him; Yet, if a girl should do so, would be but alarmed and disgusted. She that should love him must look for small love in return,—like the ivy On the stone wall, must expect but a rigid and niggard support, and E'en to get that must go searching all ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough
... the worthless—kings of knaves exalters be; Wealth attends the selfish niggard, and the cloud rains ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... already; bent as he was To make disproof of scorn, and strong in hopes, And prodigal of all brain-labor he, Charier of sleep, and wine and exercise, Except when for a breathing-while at eve, Some niggard fraction of an hour, he ran Beside the river-bank: and then indeed Harder the times were, and the hands of power Were bloodier, and the according hearts of men Seem'd harder too; but the soft river-breeze, Which fann'd the gardens of that rival rose Yet fragrant in a heart ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... a consistent character in fiction is merely a strained form of art. In life the most arrant coward will sometimes fight; the bravest man at times lacks nerve; the generous man may sometimes show the spirit of the niggard. But your character in fiction is different. He must be always brave, or always generous, or always niggardly. He must be consistent, and consistency is ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... the words. "It is in truth great honor to the house of Loring," said she, "yet our roof is now humble and, as you have seen, our fare is plain. The King knows not that we are so poor. I fear lest we seem churlish and niggard in his eyes." ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... is the bard's museum, this the fane To Phoebus sacred, and the Aonian maids: But, oh! it stabs his heart, that niggard fate To him in such small measure should dispense Her better gifts: to him! whose generous soul Could relish, with as fine an elegance, The golden joys of grandeur, and of wealth; He who could tyrannise o'er menial slaves, Or ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... ever a seventy or a thirty years' peace? or was there even a DAY'S universal peace? except perhaps in China, where they have found out the miserable happiness of a stationary and unwarlike mediocrity. And is all this because nature is niggard or savage? or mankind ungrateful? Let ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... It was from Egypt and Chaldaea that the knowledge and the arts of antiquity—astronomy, medicine, geometry, physical and natural sciences—spread to the ancestors of the classic races; and though Chaldaea yields up to us unwillingly, with niggard hand, the monuments of her most ancient kings, the temples and tombs of Egypt still exist to prove what signal advances the earliest civilised races made in the arts of the sculptor and the architect. But on turning to Assyria, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... see a niggard man, One of the great Macdonald clan; When others are in quest of gain This man the needy will sustain. Your mother, if an honest dame, Has not retained her wedlock fame; No part is Mac from top to toe, You're either Rose or else Munro. When to the house you turned your face, ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... of Charities was a rudimentary affair in those days, just as Queed had said. Its appropriation was impossibly meager, even with the niggard's increase just wrung from the legislature. The whole Department fitted cozily into a single room in the Capitol; it was small as a South American army, this Department, consisting, indeed, of but the two generals. But ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... certain charitable trusts, and other functions. Thirdly, when the Mass ceased to be said it was secularized completely. Service was held in the church, but the Hospital became a perfectly secular charity, supporting a few almspeople with niggard hand, and a Master in great splendour. Fourthly, it was again treated as a semi-ecclesiastical foundation, for reasons which do not appear. At the same time, while its charities were enlarged, no duties were assigned ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... rumble and clutter but to make his family cheat him the more; of his barn, his kitchen, cellar, nay, and his very purse too, others had the greatest use and share, whilst he keeps his keys in his pocket much more carefully than his eyes. Whilst he hugs himself with the pitiful frugality of a niggard table, everything goes to rack and ruin in every corner of his house, in play, drink, all sorts of profusion, making sport in their junkets with his vain anger and fruitless parsimony. Every one is a sentinel against him, and if, by accident, any wretched fellow ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... divinely and not as animals and humanly, they being not gods, but men and animals? It is a law of fate and Nature that everything should adapt itself to the condition of its own being, wherefore then, while you follow after the niggard nectar of the gods, do you lose that which is present and is your own, and trouble yourself about the vain hopes of others? Ought not Nature to refuse to give you the other good, if that which she at present offers to you, ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... ill-educated a love of refinement; so unarmed a credulity, noblest of weaknesses, betrayed for the laughter of a chambermaid. By an actual Bottom the Weaver our pity might be reached for the sake of his single self-reliance, his fancy and resource condemned to burlesque and ignominy by the niggard doom of circumstance. But is not life one thing and is not art another? Is it not the privilege of literature to make selection and to treat things singly, without the after-thoughts of life, without the troublous completeness of the many-sided world? Is not Shakespeare, ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... hireling? Never! The bought and sold Are ever the prey of the traitor's gold, Wherever the fight may be. Or ever a man will sell his sword, The highest bidder may buy the gaud With a coward's niggard fee. Who buys and sells to the market goes, And sells his friends as he sells his foes, So he gain in the main by his country's woes,— But the gain is not to the free;— For the soldier bought with a price has nought But his fee to 'fend when the fight is fought, ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... his words had made, but every attempt was rejected with disdain. The King's ministers in Holland had orders to do all they could to thwart the projects of the Prince of Orange, to excite people against him, to protect openly those opposed to him, and to be in no way niggard of money in order to secure the election of magistrates unfavourable to him. The Prince never ceased, until the breaking-out of this war, to use every effort to appease the anger of the King. At last, growing tired, and hoping soon to make his ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... with his lawful race: But when that fate, which all must undergo, From earth removed him to the shades below, The large domain his greedy sons divide, And each was portion'd as the lots decide. Little, alas! was left my wretched share, Except a house, a covert from the air: But what by niggard fortune was denied, A willing widow's copious wealth supplied. My valour was my plea, a gallant mind, That, true to honour, never lagg'd behind (The sex is ever to a soldier kind). Now wasting years my former strength confound, And added woes have bow'd me to the ground; Yet by the stubble you may ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... I'm, he resumed with dramatic force, as good an Irishman as that rude person I told you about at the outset and I want to see everyone, concluded he, all creeds and classes pro rata having a comfortable tidysized income, in no niggard fashion either, something in the neighbourhood of 300 pounds per annum. That's the vital issue at stake and it's feasible and would be provocative of friendlier intercourse between man and man. At least that's my idea for what it's worth. I call that patriotism. Ubi patria, as we learned ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... proudest squire that sits at thy table rise and encounter with me in any honorable point of activity whatsoever, and if he and thou prove me not a man, send me away comfortless. If thou refuse this, as a niggard of thy cates, I will have amongst you with my sword; for rather will I die valiantly, than perish with ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... character of their scenery, can be such near neighbours, that these luxuriant valleys, nestling among the roots of these gigantic hills, are only separated by a narrow expanse of sea from those shores over which nature has strewed, with so niggard a hand, a soil capable of bearing the productions characteristic of the ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... my anger pure—let no worst wrong Rouse in me the old niggard selfishness. Give me thine indignation—which is love Turned on the evil that would part love's throng; Thy anger scathes because it needs must bless, Gathering into union calm and strong All things on ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... or more, but worked his niggard hillside all the day, and seldom came to town. His aged wife was kind; the flowers of her life she gave away, but none could glance upon the garden. She seemed to know when neighbors were ill; hers was the dignity of being indispensable. Many the mother of that region who, standing beneath some ...
— The Angel of Lonesome Hill • Frederick Landis
... these Words. 'Dumb, (cried he out) naturally Dumb? O ye niggard Powers, why was such a wond'rous Piece of Art left imperfect?' He had many other wild Reasonings upon the lamentable Subject, but falling from these to more calm Reflections, he examined her Note again, and finding by the last Words that she loved him, he might ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... Of likeness lacking joy and force, Or difference reaching to divorce, Now can the finish'd lover see Marvel of me most far from me, Whom without pride he may admire, Without Narcissus' doom desire, Serve without selfishness, and love 'Even as himself,' in sense above Niggard 'as much,' yea, as she is The only part ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... that monster, whom you call God, beautiful—the giant who for ever regenerates himself that he may devour himself again? God is the All, you say, who suffices to himself. Eternal he is and shall be, because all that goes forth from him is absorbed by him again, and the great niggard bestows no grain of sand, no ray of light, no breath of wind, without reclaiming it for his household, which is ruled by no design, no reason, no goodness, but by a tyrannical necessity, whose slave he himself ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... earthly pain? And your tongue does not refuse to utter this, and your heart does not shrink with shame while you do it? Look at these arms; what are they worth that I should not sacrifice them to God? See these feeble limbs! Are they so precious that I, like a disgusting niggard, should spare them? No, no, God is my highest good—not this feeble, decaying body! For God I sacrifice it. I should recant? Never! Faith is not enveloped in this or that garb; it must be naked and open. So may mine be. And if I then am chosen ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... water-skin and gear. So I sallied forth a-morn trusting in Allah to provide, and went round about the city. I offered the gugglet to one, that he might drink; but he cried, 'I have eaten naught whereon to drink; for a niggard invited me this day and set two gugglets before me; so I said to him, 'O son of the sordid, hast thou given me aught to eat that thou offerest me drink after it?' Wherefore wend thy ways, O water-carrier, till I have eaten somewhat: ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... and his salutation commonly some blunt curse.] He thinks nothing to be vices, but pride and ill husbandry, from which he will gravely dissuade the youth, and has some thrifty hob-nail proverbs to clout his discourse. He is a niggard all the week, except only market-day, where, if his corn sell well, he thinks he may be drunk with a good conscience. His feet never stink so unbecomingly as when he trots after a lawyer in Westminster-hall, and even cleaves ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... citizen is buried beneath the ruins of his own penates, when engaged in paying his vows to the gods; another falls from his chariot and dashes out his ardent spirit; the glutton chokes at dinner; the niggard starves from abstinence. Give the dice a fair throw and you will find shipwreck everywhere! Ah, but one overwhelmed by the waves obtains no burial! As though it matters in what manner the body, once it is dead, is consumed: by fire, by flood, by time! Do what ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... identical with what he ought to have, and that any law not based on a recognition of this fact was an iniquitous law, but loyal to his friends, his class, his party, and his country; ready to spend and work for his own rights' sake, but no niggard of time or money in larger causes; sincere in his convictions, dauntless in affirming and upholding them, hardly conceiving that honest men could differ from them; strong in his self-confidence, believing ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... called by my fate far away from each friend; Ye loved ones, then: ERGO BIBAMUS! With wallet light-laden from hence I must wend, So double our ERGO BIBAMUS! Whate'er to his treasure the niggard may add, Yet regard for the joyous will ever be had, For gladness lends ever its charms to the glad, So, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... ruins, was the sole shelter which the proud lord of Alberoni afforded to the only surviving branches of his family, when returning to their native city they found their patrimonial estates confiscated, and themselves dependent upon the niggard bounty of a cold and selfish relative. Slowly recovering from a severe wound which he had received in the wars of Lombardy, and disgusted with the ingratitude of the prince he served, the ill-starred Francesco was at first rejoiced ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... scandal that shall die— Were dead to him already; bent as he was To make disproof of scorn, and strong in hopes, And prodigal of all brain-labor he, Charier of sleep, and wine and exercise, Except when for a breathing-while at eve, Some niggard fraction of an hour, he ran Beside the river-bank: and then indeed Harder the times were, and the hands of power Were bloodier, and the according hearts of men Seem'd harder too; but the soft river-breeze, Which fann'd the ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... are well known. From the peculiar circumstances attending their performance they call for a share of particular attention, which would otherwise be superfluous. Where there is something new, and much to be admired, it would be inexcusable to be niggard of our labour, even were the labour painful, which in this instance it is not. The performance of Master Payne pleased us so much that we have often since derived great enjoyment from the recollection of it; and to retrace upon ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... necessary to appeal openly," said Yuen Yan when they had returned. "I will make out a deed of final intention conferring all I possess upon Yuen Yan as a mark of esteem for his conscientious services, and this you can produce if necessary in order to crush the niggard baker in the wine-press of your necessitous destitution." Thereupon Yan drew up such a document as he had described, signing it with Chou-hu's name and sealing it with his ring, while Tsae-che also added her sign and ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... us a drawn sword, as in the other days when we twain stepped into one bed together; and then may we have the name of man and wife, nor shall the door swing to at the heel of him as I go behind him. Nor shall that be a niggard company if there follow him those five bond-women and eight bondmen, whom my father gave me, and those burn there withal ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... Fetch a pine torch, Bianca. The old staircase Is full of pitfalls, and the churlish moon Grows, like a miser, niggard of her beams, And hides her face behind a muslin mask As harlots do when they go forth to snare Some wretched soul in sin. Now, I will get Your cloak and sword. Nay, pardon, my good Lord, It is but meet that I should wait on you Who have so honoured ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde
... who count the niggard cost In time and coin and gear Of succoring the under-dog, How often have ye seen a hog, Establishing his glutton boast, Survive a famine year? Fast ye have kept, feast ye have made; Vain were the ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... struck him as being passing strange that she had begun to love him when the last sand of his life was well nigh run out; that wondrous are the ways of the revolving heavens which bestow wealth upon the niggard that cannot use it, wisdom upon the bad man who will misuse it, a beautiful wife upon the fool who cannot protect her, and fertilizing showers upon the stony hills. And thinking over these things, the gallant and beautiful ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... I have rambled strangely from my story: but what of that? if I have been so lucky as to find the road to happiness, why should I be such a niggard as to omit so good an opportunity of pointing out the way to others. The very basis of true peace of mind is a benevolent wish to see all the world as happy as one's Self; and from my soul do I pity the selfish churl, who, remembering the little bickerings of anger, envy, and fifty other ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... made with the head and feet; these we ate on Saturday night; the broth we had on Sunday." So in another Scottish play, "The Gentle Shepherd" of Allan Ramsay, it was long the custom on stages north of the Tweed to present a real haggis, although niggard managers were often tempted to substitute for the genuine dish a far less savoury if more wholesome mess of oatmeal. But a play more famous still for the reality of its victuals, and better known to modern times, was Prince Hoare's musical ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... I have a soul Above this humble fate. I could command, Love to do good, give largely to true merit, All that a king should do: But though these are not My province, I have scene enough within, To exercise my virtue. All that a heart, so fixed as mine, can move, Is, that my niggard fortune starves my ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... one whose chief naturalist was Francois Peron. When it is added that two of the greatest figures in British scientific history, Darwin and Huxley, were among the workers in this fruitful field, it will be admitted that the acknowledgment is not made in any niggard spirit. But we are now concerned with Peron as historian of what related to Terre Naploeon and the surrounding circumstances. Here his statements have been shown to be unreliable. It is probable that he wrote largely from memory; almost certainly from insufficient ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... good of him; and if thou grudge him the banquet do thou bid him and I will entertain him of my monies." Quoth he, "Dost thou know me to be niggardly, that thou sayest this Say?; and quoth she, "Thou art no niggard, but thou lackest tact. Invite him this very night and come not without him. An he refuse, conjure him by the divorce oath and be persistent with him "On my head and eyes," answered he and moulded the ring till he had finished it, after which he passed the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... to sneer at everything the man does. We abused him yesterday as a niggard; let us have the grace to-day to say we were mistaken." He was afflicted with the over-scrupulosity of a refined, but strictly limited mind, and his conscience smote him. "I, at any rate, was quite mistaken," he went on; "I quite misinterpreted his hesitation ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... But these are serious, simple qualities which do not show much, and are soon forgotten by those who benefit from them. Had she laughed more, danced more, taken more kindly to the fools and their follies, she might have been acid of tongue and niggard of sympathy; the world would have ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... the builded house, bold king the lord was, High were the walls, Hygd very young, Wise and well-thriven, though few of winters Under the burg-locks had she abided, The daughter of Haereth; naught was she dastard; Nowise niggard of gifts to the folk of the Geats, 1930 Of wealth of the treasures. But wrath Thrytho bore, The folk-queen the fierce, wrought the crime-deed full fearful. No one there durst it, the bold one, to dare, Of the comrades beloved, ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous
... keeping. Go, lure the tomtit from the twig, Go, coax the tiger from his quarry, The toper from his thirsty swig, The swindler from his schemings sorry: "Persuade" the Sweater to be just, The 'cute Monopolist to be kindly; Tempt hunger to resign his crust, The niggard churl to lavish blindly: Make—by soft words—the ruthless wrecker Subscribe for life-boats, ropes and rockets; Then plump the National Exchequer By ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 30, 1891 • Various
... fitted up for her in fashion more modern than the somber dignity of the rest of the house. Here was another new sensation—a household without bickerings. The elder Mrs. Percival, having accepted the situation, was no niggard in her spirit of courtesy, but very gracious as was her wont, and Lena was astonished to find that she and her new mother-in-law ran their respective lines without collisions. The half-invalid older ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... have applied themselves with great energy, with fresh activity, and they believe they have got the secret of this fell disaster. They have laid down a large policy of medical, sanitary, and financial aid. I am a hardened niggard of public money. I watch the expenditure of Indian revenue as the ferocious dragon of the old mythology watched the golden apples. I do not forget that I come from a constituency which, so far as ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... their wont is, had an uncommon tendency to diffuse themselves in echo. Over all, the heavens had put on their summer blue, in promise of that delicious weather which in the lagoons lasts half the year, and which makes every other climate seem niggard of sunshine and azure skies. I know we have beautiful days at home—days of which the sumptuous splendor used to take my memory with unspeakable longing and regret even in Italy;—but we do not have, week after week, month after ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... that he stepped high, nor can I find it in my heart to begrudge him his day. Cunningly had he clutched a few golden moments from the hoard that Fate, the niggard, guards from us so jealously. To myself I acclaimed him as one to ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... recollection to record. It must, I think, have been in the year 1815 that my father and mother took me with them on either one or two more journeys. The objective points were Cambridge and London respectively. My father had built, under the very niggard and discouraging laws which repressed rather than encouraged the erection of new churches at that period, the church of St. Thomas at Seaforth, and he wanted a clergyman for it.[4] Guided in these matters very much by the deeply religious temper of my mother, ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... religion, all we know; That should enlighten here below, Is veiled in darkness, and perplext With anxious doubts, with endless scruples vext And some restraint imply'd from each perverted text; Whilst touch not, taste not what is freely given, Is but thy niggard voice disgracing bounteous Heaven. From speech restrain'd, by the deceits abus'd, To desarts banish'd; or in cells reclus'd, Mistaken vot'ries, to the powers divine, Whilst they a purer sacrifice design, Do but the spleen obey, and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... matters how I dwell, or die? Away with such a niggard life! The Lord hath robbed me of my wife; ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... become such a niggard? You should have economized when you gave the sasandars[41] something like ten rubles ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... speed. Forbear your mirth and rude alarm, For none shall do them shame or harm." "Hear ye his boast?" cried John of Brent, 140 Ever to strife and jangling bent; "Shall he strike doe beside our lodge, And yet the jealous niggard grudge To pay the forester his fee? I'll have my share, howe'er it be, 145 Despite of Moray, Mar, or thee." Bertram his forward step withstood; And, burning in his vengeful mood, Old Allan, though unfit for strife; Laid hand upon his dagger-knife; ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... which compromise people of wealth and position. He receives these wares not only from treacherous valets or maids, but frequently from genteel ruffians, who have gained the confidence and affection of trusting women. He deals with no niggard hand. I happen to know that he paid seven hundred pounds to a footman for a note two lines in length, and that the ruin of a noble family was the result. Everything which is in the market goes to Milverton, and there are hundreds in ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... extraordinary a proceeding as the stoppage of the supplies. To not a few well-meaning but old-fashioned people the mere act of refusing to vote the supplies was in itself a species of treason. To more practical people this act presented itself in a different aspect. It seemed to them indicative of a niggard and ruinous parsimony. They gazed with ill-concealed envy at the marvellous prosperity of the neighbouring State of New York. Any one crossing the Canadian frontier in that direction at once became aware that he had passed from a land of comparative stagnation to a land ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... mankind enjoy but half her stores: In distant wilds, by human eyes unseen, She rears her flowers, and spreads her velvet green: Pure, gurgling rills the lonely desert trace, And waste their music on the savage race. Is Nature then a niggard of her bliss? Repine we guiltless in a world like this? But our lewd tastes her lawful charms refuse, And painted art's depraved allurements choose. Such Fulvia's passion for the town; fresh air (An odd effect!) gives vapours to the fair; Green fields, and shady groves, and crystal springs, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... these things. He was content to go straight ahead without looking down those side paths into which so many immature thinkers stray. He had fought at Sedan, had thrown his life with no niggard hand into the balance. When wounded he had cunningly escaped the attentions of the official field hospitals. He might easily have sent in his name to Prussian head-quarters as that of a wounded officer begging to be released on parole. But ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... of the cathedral. Enter, then, with us one that has seemed, in some degree, to revive the glory of the olden time, when men, as they received, gave lavishly for the service of the altar; nor meted out their offerings with the niggard hand that is moved by the heart of this generation; unmoved, unwarmed, but boastful of its light—the light of a moonbeam playing on an iceberg! There is the long sweep of the nave, with the open chancel (not separated from the former ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... your excellency?" exclaimed Brunelli, contemptuously. "The Spanish ambassador knows nothing of the art of cookery, or he would not possibly be satisfied with his cook! He is a niggard, a poor fellow, of whom all Rome is speaking to-day, and laughing at him and his master, while they are ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... bribes, which custom has attached to his functions; to others are alloted offices, by virtue of which certain imposts are levied; to this man the land; to another the waters of rivers and canals; to a third the fruit-bearing trees. But money is distributed with a niggard hand, and only once a year. Every officer of revenue is permitted to pocket, and "charge to salary," a part of all that he collects in taxes, fines, extortions, bribes, gifts, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... mayst appease: Go then, dear youth! nor tempt the faithless seas. Find out some happier maid, whose equal charms 530 With fortune's fairer joys may bless thy arms: Where, smiling o'er thee with indulgent ray, Prosperity shall hail each new-born day: Too well thou know'st good Albert's niggard fate Ill fitted to sustain thy father's hate. Go then, I charge thee by thy generous love, That fatal to my father thus may prove; On me alone let dark affliction fall, Whose heart for thee will gladly suffer all. Then haste thee hence, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... and we held each other tightly for a moment. I saw come into her eyes that look which comes but once into the eyes of a maid, that look of ineffable self-surrender, of passionate abandonment. Life is niggard of such moments, yet can our lives be summed ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... subsistence must be principally upon the spontaneous offerings of nature, very largely depend upon climate, soil, and physical conformation. Where much animal food and warm clothing are required; where the earth seems poor and niggard; where the exuberant life of tropical forests mocks barbarous man's puny efforts to control; where mountains, deserts, or arms of the sea separate and isolate men; association, and the power of improvement which it evolves, can at first go but a little way. But on the rich plains of warm climates, ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... was any well-defined doctrine that moral turpitude was judged and punished in the next-world. No contrast is discoverable between a place of torments and a realm of joy; at the worst but a negative castigation awaited the liar, the coward, or the niggard. The typical belief of the tribes of the United States was well expressed in the reply of Esau Hajo, great medal chief and speaker for the Creek nation in the National Council, to the question, Do the red people believe in a future state of rewards and punishments? "We ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... hand. By this proverb thou shalt well understand, Have thou enough, what thar* thee reck or care *needs, behoves How merrily that other folkes fare? For certes, olde dotard, by your leave, Ye shall have [pleasure] right enough at eve. He is too great a niggard that will werne* *forbid A man to light a candle at his lantern; He shall have never the less light, pardie. Have thou enough, thee thar* not plaine** thee *need **complain Thou say'st also, if that we make us gay With clothing and with precious array, That it is ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... had only to ask and have. After my wife's death, I had only the boy. Do you know what he has in this house? Why, rooms fit for a prince, two servants and four horses. I allow him monthly, fifteen hundred francs, and he goes about calling me a niggard, and has already squandered every bit of his poor mother's fortune." He stopped, and turned pale, for at that moment the door opened, and young Gaston, or rather Peter, slouched ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... it, old man," said Halbert, "if I am to be the butt that every fool may aim a shaft of scorn against?—What avails it, old man, that you yourself move, sleep, and wake, eat thy niggard meal, and repose on thy hard pallet?—Why art thou so well pleased that the morning should call thee up to daily toil, and the evening again lay thee down a wearied-out wretch? Were it not better sleep and wake no more, than to undergo this dull exchange of labour for insensibility ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... boss Or fawn round folks with bankrolls; Be just as friendly to the guys Whose homespun round their shank rolls. The best investment in the world Is goodwill, twenty carat; It costs you nothing, brings returns; So get yours out and air it. A niggard of good nature cheats Himself and wrongs his fellows. You'd serve mankind? Then be less close ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... on all sides, though his friends would not have been sorry if he had given a dinner more frequently, as his little cellar contained some choice old wine, of which, on such rare occasions he was no niggard. ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... advice of the old sailor from whom he had gleaned the information he sought, he was enabled to purchase a fine vessel and equip her for sea within the space of a few days. He lavished his gold with no niggard hand, and gold is a wondrous talisman to remove obstacles and facilitate designs. In a word, on the sixth morning after his arrival at Leghorn, Fernand Wagner embarked on board his ship, which was manned with a gallant crew, and carried ten pieces of ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... judge of the happiness of another. As the moon plays upon the waves, and seems to our eyes to favour with a peculiar beam one long track amidst the waters, leaving the rest in comparative obscurity; yet all the while she is no niggard in her lustre—for the rays that meet not our eyes seem to us as though they were not, yet she, with an equal and unfavouring loveliness, mirrors herself on every wave: even so, perhaps, Happiness falls with the same brightness and power over the whole expanse of life, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... Grantly read, "do not mind him. He was ever quick of speech and rash. Be no niggard with your love. Love cannot hurt you. To deny love is to sin. Obey your heart and you can do no wrong. Obey worldly considerations, obey pride, obey those that prompt you against your heart's prompting, ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... conceivable effect, was likely to prove an occasion to him of such annoyances, on account of his faith, as we have described in these pages. "The character," however, he succeeded in procuring, and written in no niggard terms. If it offended in any thing, it was in being too favorable to the bearer. It was by means of this paper, with the respectable name of Rev. Dr. H—— at its foot, that Cunningham succeeded in ingratiating himself into ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... that crowns yon tufted hill, Which, were it not for many a mountain nigh Rising in lofty ranks, and loftier still, Might well itself be deem'd of dignity; The convent's white walls glisten fair on high: Here dwells the caloyer, nor rude is he, Nor niggard of his cheer; the passer-by Is welcome still; nor heedless will he flee From hence, if he delight kind Nature's sheen ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... paid the purchase, by coming so far to do him a service. But I think, from what I have seen of him last night, that he is not such a niggard and misanthrope as I was led to believe. He exhibited considerable emotion, despite the monosyllabic greeting, when he shook my hand. If he were a man to feel annoyance at any person coming after ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... safe in Dandak's shade. Enslaved and dull, of blinded sight, Intoxicate with vain delight, Thou closest still thy heedless eyes To dangers in thy realm that rise. A king besotted, mean, unkind, Of niggard hand and slavish mind. Will find no faithful followers heed Their master in his hour of need. The friend on whom he most relies, In danger, from a monarch flies, Imperious in his high estate, Conceited, proud, and passionate; Who ne'er to state affairs attends With wholesome ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... three dollars a head for every German saved. The obligation was in this instance incommensurably deep, those with whom they were at war had saved the German blue-jackets at the venture of their lives; Knappe was, besides, far from ungenerous; and I can only explain the niggard figure by supposing it was paid from his own pocket. In one case, at least, it was refused. "I have saved three Germans," said the rescuer; "I will make you ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... chiefs of British song Scorned not such legends to prolong: They gleam through Spenser's elfin dream, And mix in Milton's heavenly theme; And Dryden, in immortal strain, Had raised the Table Round again, But that a ribald king and court Bade him toil on, to make them sport; Demanded for their niggard pay, Fit for their souls, a looser lay, Licentious satire, song, and play; The world defrauded of the high design, Profaned the God-given strength, and marred the ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... have any of these disagreeable sensations, let me prescribe for you patience; and a bit of my cheese. I know that you are no niggard of your good things among your friends, and some of them are in much need of a slice. There, in my eye is our friend Smellie; a man positively of the first abilities and greatest strength of mind, as well as one of the best hearts and keenest wits ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... is another of the great triumphs of science in our time. The transmission of speech is an old story; the transmission of images by means of sensitive mirrors connected by wires is a thing but of yesterday. A valuable invention indeed, and Mr. Smith this morning was not niggard of blessings for the inventor, when by its aid he was able distinctly to see his wife notwithstanding the distance that separated him from her. Mrs. Smith, weary after the ball or the visit to the theater ...
— In the Year 2889 • Jules Verne and Michel Verne
... misery, both temporal and spiritual, surrounds us, and which might be effectually relieved, were all Christians, many of whom are laggard in effort and niggard in bounty, to manifest a tithe of the self-denial which Mr. Ellerthorpe practiced. 'What maintains one vice, would support two children.' Robert Hall says:—It is the practice of self-denial in a thousand little instances which forms the truest test of character.' Mr. Fletcher, ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... thing is, the later and slower it is in arriving at maturity. A man reaches the maturity of his reasoning powers and mental faculties hardly before the age of twenty-eight; a woman at eighteen. And then, too, in the case of woman, it is only reason of a sort—very niggard in its dimensions. That is why women remain children their whole life long; never seeing anything but what is quite close to them, cleaving to the present moment, taking appearance for reality, and preferring trifles to matters of ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... parchment face of him; Or one of those swashbuckler Devon lads That haunt the inn there, with red Spanish gold, Rank scurvy knaves, ripe fruit for gallows-tree; Or else the sexton's son"—here Wyndham laughed, Though not a man of mirth—indeed, a man Of niggard humor; but that sexton's son— Lean as the shadow cast by a church spire, Eyes deep in the sockets, noseless, high cheek-boned, Like nothing in the circle of this earth But a death's-head that from a mural slab Within the chancel leers through sermon-time, Making ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... crowns yon tufted hill, Which, were it not for many a mountain nigh Rising in lofty ranks, and loftier still, Might well itself be deemed of dignity, The Convent's white walls glisten fair on high: Here dwells the caloyer, nor rude is he,[21.B.] Nor niggard of his cheer;[150] the passer by Is welcome still; nor heedless will he flee From hence, if he delight ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... 5 years, including books, stationery, fuel, and all other expenses, is 7 dollars 2 cents per annum. This system of education is followed in nearly all the States; and while it reflects the highest credit on America, it contrasts strangely with the niggard plan pursued in England, where so important a thing as the education of the people depends almost entirely on precarious subscriptions ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... in a valley greene, Spred with Flora summer queene: Where shee heaping all hir graces, Niggard seem'd in other places: Spring it was, and here did spring All that nature forth ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... prejudicial as blushing. He is still citing for himself, that a candle should not be hid under a bushel; and for his part he will be sure not to hide his, though his candle be but a snuff or rush-candle. Those few good parts he has, he is no niggard in displaying, and is like some needy flaunting goldsmith, nothing in the inner room, but all on the cupboard. If he be a scholar, he has commonly stepped into the pulpit before a degree, yet into that too before he deserved it. He never defers St. Mary's beyond his regency, and his next ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... parcity|; parsimoniousness[obs3], stinginess &c. adj.; stint; illiberality, tenacity. avarice, greed &c. 817a. miser, niggard, churl, screw, skinflint, crib, codger, muckworm[obs3], scrimp, lickpenny[obs3], hunks, curmudgeon, Harpagon, harpy, extortioner, Jew, usurer; Hessian [U.S.]; pinch fist, pinch penny. V. be parsimonious &c. adj.; grudge, begrudge, stint, pinch, gripe, screw, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... parsimonious, and some were inclined to treat him coldly on that account; but in time it was found that out of his small pay he maintained his widowed mother and a lame sister in their New England home, and that while niggard in regard to his own personal wants, the dear ones at the old home were generously provided for. So, although at first the West Point graduates were disposed to treat with contempt the Green Mountain boy who had entered the army as a volunteer in the war ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... his own house, and remorse tore him fiercely as he recalled how he had persistently discouraged all the poor girl's ambitious efforts to make her way as an artist, not on account of the expense—for Mr. Hardy was not a niggard in that respect—but because he had a false idea concerning the profession. He looked at the girl now as she limped across the floor to her mother, her pale, intellectual face brightened by her love, and her eyes shining with tears at her father's unusual praise. "O God," was the inner ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... converse, speech, discourse, attire, He practis'd that which wise men still admire, Commend, and recommend. What's that? you'll say. 'Tis this: he ever choos'd the middle way 'Twixt both th' extremes. Amost in ev'ry thing He did the like, 'tis worth our noticing: Sparing, yet not a niggard; liberal, And yet not lavish or a prodigal, As knowing when to spend and when to spare; And that's a lesson which not many are Acquainted with. He bashful was, yet daring When he saw cause, and yet therein not sparing; Familiar, yet not common, for he knew To condescend, and keep ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... he knew, but offered no comment. In fact, he treated the affair so lightly that Mr. Harley felt relieved; that latter speculator had been somewhat disturbed in his mind concerning Storri's opinion of what, to give it a best description, evinced niggard distrust of Storri, and cast in negative fashion a slur ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... have sacrificed to a rigid punctilio of honour the dearest ideas of my heart. I beheld your unrivalled charms, and deeply felt their power. Yet, while a possibility of Melvil's reformation remained, and while I was restrained by my niggard fortune from making a tender worthy of your acceptance, I combated with my inclinations, and bore without repining the pangs of hopeless love. But, now that my honour is disengaged, and my fortune rendered independent, by the last will of a worthy nobleman, whose friendship I was favoured with ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... we call the Curry-fauell, as when we make the best of a bad thing, or turne a signification to the more plausible sence: as, to call an vnthrift, a liberall Gentleman: the foolish-hardy, valiant or couragious: the niggard, thriftie: a great riot, or outrage, an youthfull pranke, and such like termes: moderating and abating the force of the matter by craft, and for a pleasing purpose, as appeareth by these verses of ours, teaching in what cases it may commendably be ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... insufficient aid to the poor is niggardliness.—The niggard is thinking all the time of himself, and how he hates to part with what belongs to him. He gives as little as he can; and that little hurts him terribly. This vice cannot be overcome directly. It is ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... his pipe declared ironically in the same year that he had found three bad qualities in tobacco, for it made a man a thief (which meant danger), a good fellow (which meant cost), and a niggard ("the name of which is hateful"). "It makes him a theefe," he continued "for he will steale it from his father; a good fellow, for he will give the smoake to a beggar; a niggard, for he will not part with his box to an Emperor!" A character in one of Chapman's plays, 1606, calls tobacco ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... But since my niggard stars that gift refuse, Concealment is the only boon I claim; Obscure be still the unsuccessful Muse, Who cannot raise, but would not ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... smile! Such blessings nature pours, O'erstock'd mankind enjoy but half her stores: In distant wilds, by human eyes unseen, She rears her flowers, and spreads her velvet green: Pure gurgling rills the lonely desert trace, And waste their music on the savage race. Is nature then a niggard of her bliss? Repine we guiltless in a world like this? But our lewd tastes her lawful charms refuse, And painted art's depraved allurements choose. Such Fulvia's passion for the town; fresh air (An odd effect!) gives vapours to the fair; Green fields, and shady groves, and crystal ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... myself alone:"— O man, forget not thou,—earth's honored priest, Its tongue, its soul, its life, its pulse, its heart,— In earth's great chorus to sustain thy part! Chiefest of guests at Love's ungrudging feast, Play not the niggard; spurn thy native clod, And self disown; Live to thy neighbor; live unto thy God; Not to ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... in natural history of "Natura non facit saltum." We meet with this admission in the writings of almost every experienced naturalist; or, as Milne Edwards has well expressed it, "Nature is prodigal in variety, but niggard in innovation." Why, on the theory of Creation, should there be so much variety and so little real novelty? Why should all the parts and organs of many independent beings, each supposed to have been separately created for its own proper place in nature, be so commonly linked ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... and every business." His readily-proffered arbitration settles the differences of the humbler classes at the "love-days," a favourite popular practice noted already in the "Vision" of Langland; nor is he a niggard of the mercies which he ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... good and affectionate son, but as I took my way into the great world from which I had been so long secluded I could not help remembering that all my misfortunes had flowed like a stream from the niggard economy of my parents in the matter of school luncheons; and I knew of no reason to think ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... in appearance that it was hard to believe he had seen famous fields and once bidden fair to be a great Captain, was nursing a dog on his lap, the while he listened with a weary air to the whispers of the beautiful woman who sat next him. Apparently he had a niggard ear even for her witcheries, and little appetite save for the wine flask. Lassitude lived in his eyes, his long thin fingers trembled. Bazan watched him drain his goblet of wine, almost as soon as he sat down, and watched him, too, ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... Hath left unpunished to record their Tale. But who shall hear it? on that barren Sand None comes to stretch the hospitable hand. That shore reveals no print of human foot, Nor e'en the pawing of the wilder Brute; And niggard vegetation will not smile, All sunless ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... thing they saw about our servants, as their knives, gloves, purses, and points. But when we excused ourselves from their importunity, alleging that we had a long journey before us, and must not give away those things which were necessary for ourselves, they reviled me as a niggard; and though they took nothing by force, they were exceedingly impudent, and importunate in begging, to have every thing they saw. If a man gives them any thing, it may be considered as thrown away, for they have no gratitude; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... along the naked plain; There exert they joyless reign. Triumph o'er the wither'd flow'r, The leafless shrub, the ruin'd bower; But our cottage come not near, Other Springs inhabit here, Other sunshine decks our board Than they niggard skies afford. Gloomy Winter, hence away, Love and fancy scorn they sway; Love, and joy, and friendly mirth Shall bless this roof, these walls, this hearth, The rigor of the year control, And thaw the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various
... do not find fault hastily; however brave you may be, do not raise factions against you. Do not be going to drinking-houses, or finding fault with old men; do not meddle with low people; this is right conduct I am telling you. Do not refuse to share your meat; do not have a niggard for your friend; do not force yourself on a great man or give him occasion to speak against you. Hold fast to your arms till the hard fight is well ended. Do not give up your opportunity, but with that follow ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... Claudie, you miserable niggard! You always think yourself unwanted. But you will see to-night. Every reserved seat and every box is taken, every single one! Think of that—and all because of what you have done. Are we going to ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... usually frozen rivers in or near the Arctic circle. Even Mormon energy, industry, frugality and subservience to sacerdotal despotism, barely suffice to wrench a rude, coarse living from those narrow belts and patches of less niggard soil which skirt those infrequent lakes and scanty streams of the Great Basin which are susceptible of irrigation; mines alone (and they must be rich ones) can ever render populous the extensive ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... reason imposed this just and necessary severity, his heart had taught him another lesson in respect to private distresses of his men; he visited them in their sickness, relieved their miseries, and was a niggard of nothing but human blood. But I ought to correct myself in that expression, for he was rashly lavish of his own, and to that we owe ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... or Userti, or Saptah. Perhaps the divine neck has not been oiled of late, or too much oiled, or too little oiled, or prayers—or strings—may have gone wrong. Or Pharaoh may have been niggard in his gifts to that college of the great god of his House. Who am I that I should know the ways of gods? That in the temple where I served at Thebes fifty years ago did not pretend to bow or to trouble himself as to which ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... having stopped to allow of the passengers getting refreshment, all entered the hotel except old Neild. Observing the absence of the pinched, poverty-stricken-looking old gentleman, some good-natured passenger sent him out a bumper of brandy and water, which the old niggard eagerly accepted. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
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