"Parsimonious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... twenty years as the happy hunting-ground of spiders. Although Bideabout had taken some pains to put his house in order before his marriage, repairs had been executed only on what was necessary, and in a parsimonious spirit. The spare room had been passed over, as not likely to be needed. To that as to every other portion of the house, Mehetabel had turned her attention, and it was now in as good condition to receive a guest as the bedrooms in the ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... cares as these never seem to afflict the English costermonger. So strongly did Mr. Mayhew find these characteristics marked among the Irish, that he is at times inclined to accuse them of carrying them too far, even to the display of a sordid and parsimonious spirit. According to him, they apply to the various "unions," or to the parish, even when they have money, or sometimes go with wretched food, dwelling, or clothing, in order to have a small fund laid by, in case ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... that she should be forgiven, and no vengeance taken upon her, if she should confess her part of the history. This discussion lasted long, and the substance of what was then opened to Tamar and her paternal friends was this:—Mr. Salmon was, it seems, a Polish Jew, extremely rich, and evidently very parsimonious; he had had mercantile concerns in London, and had there married, when nearly fifty years of age, a beautiful young Jewess, whose mother he had greatly benefitted, when in the most deplorable circumstances. With this lady he had gone abroad, and it was ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... Crockett's celebrated rifle, which had come to such a deplorable and dangerous end; and, for some time after, the entire community of "Penguin Castle," with the exception of the penguins themselves, feasted upon bunnies ad libitum, until they could say, as did the servants of that parsimonious nobleman who fed them without ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... I should have made my wire a bit more explicit," observed the captain turning to Larry. "My wife says I am too parsimonious with my words in telegrams—a British trait possibly." He spoke deliberately and his keen eyes studied his companion's face as he made the casual remark which set Larry's brain reeling. "See here, Holiday, I'm a blunt brute. I don't know how to break things gently to people. But I am here ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... old, antiquated forerunner, precursor sew, embroider unload, exonerate grave, sepulcher readable, legible tell, narrate kiss, osculate nose, proboscis striking, percussion green, verdant stroke, concussion grass, verdure bowman, archer drive, propel greed, avarice book, volume stingy, parsimonious warrior, belligerent bath, ablution owner, proprietor wrong, incorrect bow, obeisance top, summit kneel, genuflection food, nutrition work, occupation seize, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... regard for the sacredness of statehood to bestow upon this public land such protection and such improvements as might encourage migration to it, and thus hasten the time of full rights for its people, the Republicans might yet have pursued a parsimonious policy, if increasing migration to the United States had not impelled them to action to provide homes for the multitude. No such influx from the Old World had been seen as followed the close of the Napoleonic wars. It was small compared with the full tide ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... "You have been parsimonious with the tints. It reminds me of some of Lenbach's work which I saw at Florence; it is ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... still deemed luxuries in the more ancient quarters of Paris. As for baths, they are for the rich,—even the more modern structures are parsimonious of baths. You realize all this when in a close omnibus, or smell some well-dressed Parisienne ten feet away. When one of the dwellers of Rue St. Jacques takes a bath a battered old tub is brought around on a wagon and unloaded in the court with a noise ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... colonel should be introduced to the reader. He was a man of nearly sixty years of age, forty-five of which, with the exception of occasional furlough, had been passed in the country. Having held several lucrative situations for many years, and, although not parsimonious, being very prudent in money concerns, he had amassed a very large fortune. More than once he had returned to England on leave, and with the full intention of remaining there, if he could be comfortable; but a few months in his native country only made him more anxious ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... The Ruins of Time, and still more the Tears of the Muses, are full of lamentations over returning barbarism and ignorance, and the slight account made by those in power of the gifts and the arts of the writer, the poet, and the dramatist. Under what was popularly thought the crabbed and parsimonious administration of Burghley, and with the churlishness of the Puritans, whom he was supposed to foster, it seemed as if the poetry of the time was passing away in chill discouragement. The effect is described in lines which, as we now naturally ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... of course, be taken too seriously; for, as we have seen, many women, such as Mrs. Washington, Abigail Adams, and Eliza Pinckney, were almost parsimonious in dress during the great strife. Doubtless there were many, however, particularly in the cities, who could not or would not restrain their love of finery, especially when so many handsome and gaily ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... an ideal of a noble character; and his highest aim is to render himself what he considers such, that is, a being who shows his superiority to all things earthy by his contempt for gold. Merely in order that he may not be suspected of being parsimonious, or giving unwillingly, or ever talking about money, he tosses it about him right and left by handfuls; with all his large income is for ever poor and distressed, and becomes the fool of everybody not ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... facts concerning him, for he must have been a great man and humorist. The story is told of Hogarth that on being commissioned to paint a scriptural picture of the Red Sea for a too parsimonious patron who had beaten him down and down, he rebuked him for his meanness by producing a canvas entirely covered with red paint. "But what is this?" the patron asked. "The Red Sea—surely." "Where ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... impoverished brain The sudden element that changes things, 130 That sets the undreamed-of rapture at his hand And puts the cheap old joy in the scorned dust? Is he not such an one as moves to mirth— Warily parsimonious, when no need, Wasteful as drunkenness at undue times? All prudent counsel as to what befits The golden mean, is lost on such an one: The man's fantastic will is the man's law. So here—we call the treasure knowledge, say, Increased ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... adventuress of fashion and a plausible speculator. On the other hand, one of this book's rather numerous grisettes, Ninie, is of the more if not most gracious of that questionable but not unappetising sisterhood. Dubois, the funny man, and Jolivet, the parsimonious reveller, who generally manages to make his friends pay the bill, are not bad common form of farce. One of the best of Paul's own special scenes, the pancake party, with a bevy of grisettes, is perhaps ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... encumbered when he inherited it, and he had paid off one mortgage by raising another. He might perhaps have used other means, letting his sporting rights and using economy, but this would have jarred. The only Osborn who bothered about money was his wife, and Alice was parsimonious enough for both. Money was certainly what his agent called tight; but as long as he could give his friends some shooting and a good dinner and live as an Osborn ought to live, he was satisfied. Still, Gerald must have his chance at Woolwich and this needed ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... way of any comprehensive legislation on the subject is found or apprehended in the repugnance of those classes to any liberal scheme: any scheme that, aiming simply at the general good, should boldly set aside invidious restrictions and a jealous, parsimonious limitation; a scheme that should not work in subjection to the mean self-interest of this party or that, but for the one grand purpose of raising millions ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... of wages, had a share in what was taken: this induced them to fish with fewer hands, so that each had a greater dividend in the profit; it made them more vigilant in seeking game, bolder in pursuing it, and parsimonious in all their expenses. London was their only market. When, therefore, by the late revolution, they became aliens in Great Britain, they became subject to the alien duty of eighteen pounds five shillings the ton of oil, which being more than equal to the price of the common whale-oil, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... mountain districts of Italy, such as Friuli, the age of puberty for both sexes is quite as much later than in the heart of the towns, where, in order to gratify their vanity, people are often extremely parsimonious in the matter of food, and where most people, in the words of the proverb, have a velvet coat and an empty belly. It is astonishing to find in these mountainous regions big lads as strong as a man with shrill voices ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... went by, in which King was parsimonious of effort and Sandel prodigal. The latter's attempt to force a fast pace made King uncomfortable, for a fair percentage of the multitudinous blows showered upon him went home. Yet King persisted in his dogged slowness, ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... Post-Marriage Courtship, Elementary and Advanced Studies in Conjugal Harmony, Easy Lessons in the Gentle Craft of Eating Her Experimental Bread, Practical Analysis of the Club-Habit, with special course for wives in the Abstract Science of Honeyfugling Parsimonious Husbands. Diploma qualifies for highest positions. Our Gold Medalists are ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... existing railway system. The breakdown may have been due in the first place to the rapid deterioration of rolling-stock and permanent way that could not be made good during the war, and has not been made good yet, but the real causes must be traced much farther back to the parsimonious and short-sighted railway policy of the Government of India for years past. Apart from the economic consequences, it is particularly unfortunate, even from the political point of view, that such a revelation of inefficiency should have occurred in a field which has been ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... new thrift. I think it true that the wages are spent more prudently than of old. The sight of a drunken man begins to be unusual; he who does not belong to a "club" is looked upon as an improvident fool; but to imagine the people thus parsimonious for the pleasure of it is to imagine a vain thing. Their occasional outbursts of extravagance and generosity go to show that their innermost taste has not found a suitable outlet in wage-earning economy. That miserly "thrift" which is preached to them as the whole duty of "the ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... thoroughness, I must assume that it enjoys the advantages of comfortable rooms, adequate apparatus and competent teachers. And this assumption ought to be supported by the facts. There is no good reason why any town in Massachusetts should be negligent or parsimonious in these particulars. True economy requires liberal appropriations. With these appropriations, the best teachers, even from private schools and academies, can be secured, and all the aids and encouragements to liberal culture can be provided. Is it possible that any of the ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... first, to leave the Nibelungen Hoard alone; but time tames all things except the love of gold. I went there; it was rich, but not inexhaustible. You have all had proof that I am neither poor nor parsimonious; but neither am I extravagant. I have all that I want—a cottage at Newport, a neat house in the Rue de la Paix, stocks, and real estate. The opal-mine started me; I have kept myself going very ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... gained for her the reputation of being miserly. She still thought that he might regain a scanty portion of sense—enough to require some simple pleasures and excitement, which would cost money. And money should not be wanting. Peggy rather assisted her in the formation of her parsimonious habits than otherwise; economy was the order of the district, and a certain degree of respectable avarice the characteristic of her age. Only Willie was never stinted nor hindered of anything that the two women thought could give him pleasure, for ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... type; but until his final illness took firm hold on him Mr. Morris was never tired of designing new initials, border-pieces, and decorative titles with a profusion which the old printers, who were parsimonious in these matters, would have thought extravagantly lavish. Including those completed by his executors after his death, he printed in all fifty-three books in sixty-five volumes, and this annual output of nine or ten volumes of all sizes, save the duodecimo, which he refused to recognise, gave his ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... to an absurdity, by demonstrating that if Mary was innocent she was a fool. In his defence of Elizabeth Froude stops short of many admirers. He was disgusted by her feminine weakness for masculine flattery; he dwells with almost tedious minuteness upon her smallest intrigues; he exposes her parsimonious ingratitude to her dauntless and unrivalled seamen. Yet for all that he brings out the vital difference between her and Mary Tudor, between the Protestant and Catholic systems of government. Elizabeth boasted, and boasted ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... humanity? The age is like wine that tastes of the earth; your work must be the filter. The age is like an epileptic body convulsed with agonies; your work must be the healing hand that one lays on the diseased brow. When will you finally give, O parsimonious mortal? when ripen, tree? when ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... thing either do not know her or they belie her. Wherever in the civilized world there has been disaster by fire or flood, or from earthquake or pestilence, she has been among the foremost in the field of givers and has remained there when others have departed. It is a shame to speak of her as parsimonious or as failing in any benevolent duty. Those who charge her with being dilatory should remember that haste is not always speed. It took more than a quarter of a century to erect Bunker Hill Monument; the ladies of Boston completed it. ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... hatchets, to revenge the daring of an open foe, who thus boldly defies your base and selfish views; for, basking at his ease in the sunshine of public patronage, he feels that his heart is rendered invulnerable to your poisoned shafts. Read, and you shall find I have not been parsimonious of the means to grant you food and pleasure: errors there are, no doubt, and plenty of them, grammatical and typographical, all of which I might have corrected by an errata at the end of my volume; but I disdain the wish to rob you of your office, and have therefore ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... own. He saw the sudden scarlet that mantled her face, and knew—knew she loved him. And his heart went out to her, for he was attached to the russet thing, an attachment heretofore unnamed, but now—now suddenly christened with that parsimonious appellation—pity; the object of which is never satisfied. But he had naught else to give, for Katherine had ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... of the mountain outlines. There is drawing wherever the eye falls. Each section of the vast expanse is a picture of tossed crests and complicated undulations. And over the whole sea of stationary billows, light is shed like an ethereal raiment, with spare colour—blue and grey, and parsimonious green—in the near foreground. The detail is somewhat dry and monotonous; for these so finely moulded hills are made up of washed earth, the immemorial wrecks of earlier mountain ranges. Brown villages, not unlike those of Midland England, low houses built ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... the southern wood. they use the silk grass in manufacturing their fishing nets and bags, the bear grass and cedar bark are employed in forming a variety of articles. they are poor, dirty, proud, haughty, inhospitable, parsimonious and faithless in every rispect, nothing but our numbers I beleive prevents their attempting to murder us ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... erection of buildings for the shelter of his command, and I continued the work of constructing the post as laid out by him. In those days the Government did not provide very liberally for sheltering its soldiers; and officers and men were frequently forced to eke out parsimonious appropriations by toilsome work or go without shelter in most inhospitable regions. Of course this post was no exception to the general rule, and as all hands were occupied in its construction, and I the only officer present, I was kept busily employed in supervising matters, both ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... the fall there projected from the water a rock which had, by parsimonious saving during a long course of years, hoarded a little soil, out of which a small tuft of bushes struggled to support a decent vegetable existence. The high waters had nearly submerged it, but a few slender twigs were seen above ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... top of that expense, to run the risk of having children to rear. He had no close kindred excepting a distant cousin or two in Chickaloosa. He kept no servant, and for this there was a double cause. First, his parsimonious instincts; second, the fact that for love or money no negro would minister to him, and in this community negroes were the only household servants to be had. Among the darkies there was current a belief that at dead of night he dug up the bodies of those he had hanged ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... from parsimonious, was careful. He had an excellent business head, and, thanks to his sagacious share in the management, the business remained solvent. He knew Davenport's capacity—that nowhere could he have found another such a brilliant genius in conjuring—nor, ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... things about him. There is a correspondence with that strange, selfish spendthrift Haydon, which shows the endless trouble Keats would take to raise money for a friend when he was in worse straits himself. Haydon treated him with insolent frankness, and hinted that Keats was parsimonious and ungenerous; even so, Keats never lost his temper, but described with perfect simplicity the extraordinary difficulties he was himself involved in, with as much patience and good-humour as though he had been himself the borrower; and the delicious letters that he wrote, all through ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... generally parsimonious of our employer's time, but somehow we do hate to squander that thirty-three minutes, which is the exact chronicide involved in despoiling our skull of a ten weeks' garner. If we were to have our hair cut at the end ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... after the commercial use of steam-vessels, before the naval department possessed even a tug-boat. Hence the mischievous economy manifested by the purchase of worthless merchant steamers; hence the subsequent parsimonious project of building small steam-vessels fitted with engines immersed beyond their bearing, and deficient in every requisite for purposes of war. I am not one of those, my lord, who deem it advantageous to act on the belief ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... with soft fires in unextinguish'd urns, Cauldron'd in rock, innocuous Lava burns; On the bright lake YOUR gelid hands distil 160 In pearly mowers the parsimonious rill; And, as aloft the curling vapours rise Through the cleft roof, ambitious for the skies, In vaulted hills condense the tepid steams, And pour to HEALTH the medicated streams. 165 —So in green vales ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... eighty-seventh year. His character was thus drawn, in 1749, by the Rev. W. Clarke:—"Our Bishop is a better sort of man than most of the mitred order. He is, indeed, awkward, absent, etc.; but then, he has no ambition, no desire to please, and is privately munificent when the world thinks him parsimonious. He has given more to the Church than all the bishops put together for almost ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... [107] The parsimonious yet liberal London merchant, whose miserly habits gave Arbuthnot the materials of the story. See Professor Brown's Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, vol i. p. 244, and Martin Scriblerns, cap. xii., Pope, vol. iv. p. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... arrogance vanity and luxury of the women, who strictly adhering to the rules of modern education seem to employ their whole stock of invention in contriving new arts of profusion, faster than the most parsimonious husband can afford; and to compass this work the more effectually, their universal maxim is to despise and detest everything of the growth and manufacture of their own country, and most to value whatever comes from the very remotest parts ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... of the Wardrobe had been brought to Yuste, although Charles was plain in his attire and had somewhat disdained the personal vanity of his great rivals. He was parsimonious in such matters and hated to see good clothes spoilt, as he showed when he removed a new velvet cap in a sudden storm and sent to his palace for an old one! He observed {73} fast-days, though he did not ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... his reckoning, have assured me, that though the youngest and poorest, he always obtained, without exacting it, a sort of deference or even submission from the rest of the company. Though never parsimonious, he was at that period of his life extremely attentive to the details of expense, the price of provisions, and of other necessary articles, and, in short, to every branch of domestic economy. The knowledge ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... glory it is out of evil still to bring forth good, there sprang out of these sad doings in the mind of Paul an intensity of humility, a willingness to serve even the least of the brethren of those whom he had abused, and a zeal to redeem lost time by the parsimonious use of what was left, which became permanent spurs to ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... freeman is managed by the freeman himself. The disorders which generally prevail in the economy of the rich, naturally introduce themselves into the management of the former; the strict frugality and parsimonious attention of the poor as naturally establish themselves in that of the latter. Under such different management, the same purpose must require very different degrees of expense to execute it. It appears, accordingly, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... parsimonious. Louise washed the caterer's dishes—he made a reduction in his price. Thus she learned that a late breakfast took the place of luncheon. She began to feel what this meant. The beds had been made; but there was work enough. She helped Mme. Remy ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... great and perilous enterprises, amidst which he rivalled his brother in activity and resourcefulness. Accordingly, his Viceroyalty of India moved Bonaparte to envy, patriotic Britons to rapturous applause, and the parsimonious Directors of the Company to carping criticisms. Those who deny to Pitt the gift of choosing able and inspiring men, forget that he made Wellesley Governor-General of India, and supported him in his quarrels with the India House. As Earl of Mornington, Wellesley had helped the Irish Administration ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... to be conceived but by those who witnessed it. This critical period drew forth many examples of great and confiding liberality, as well as some of a very opposite character. Men of great wealth and parsimonious habits came and placed their whole fortunes at the disposal of their bankers in order to support their credit. For many days the evil continued to augment so rapidly, and the demands upon the Bank were so great and ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... a poet of a quite different stamp. He is as heedless, gay, and prodigal of his poetical wealth, as the other is careful, reserved, and parsimonious. The genius of both is national. Mr. Moore's Muse is another Ariel, as light, as tricksy, as indefatigable, and as humane a spirit. His fancy is for ever on the wing, flutters in the gale, glitters in the sun. Every thing lives, moves, and sparkles ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... was habitually parsimonious, but in no respects mean; his first thought was to save his fellow-traveller any part of the expense of the entertainment, which he supposed must be in his situation more or less inconvenient. He therefore took an opportunity ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... in my poor old eyes. What was the intelligence that made him change his mind? That is the grand question." Captain Paget dined alone at a West-End restaurant that evening. He dined well, for he had in hand certain moneys advanced by his patron, and he was not disposed to be parsimonious. He sat for some time in meditative mood over his pint bottle of Chambertin, and the subject of ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... mountains were clothed with gardens and orchards that teemed with fruits of various latitudes. The Spaniards could not sufficiently admire the industry with which the natives had availed themselves of the bounty of Nature, or had supplied the deficiency where she had dealt with a more parsimonious hand. ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... in the road. My horse for once outstripped his mare," replied Mr. Mullen, who felt a crawling sensation in the back of his neck whenever Sarah was present, as if he were called upon to face in her single person an entire parsimonious vestry. "I had the pleasure of driving your granddaughter home, and now I must be going back to bring mother. It was a delightful occasion, Mrs. Revercomb, and you are to be congratulated on the charming addition to your family." He hadn't meant to use the word "charming"—he ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... and the hospitals, while to Pope Urban and Edward III. he left splendid legacies. His funeral, as his life, was simple and economical. For his magnificent presents, his gorgeous works on the structure of his church, were made possible by his own simple, almost parsimonious manner of living. He was buried in the chapel of St. Radegunde, but the tomb was destroyed in Elizabeth's time, and his ashes ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw
... all the while she kept right on renovating the Little Girl's personal appearance, smoothing a wrinkled stocking, tucking up obstreperous white ruffles, tugging down parsimonious purple hems, loosening a pinchy hook, tightening a wobbly button. Very slowly, very complacently the Little Girl drowsed off to sleep with her weazened little iron-cased legs stretched stiffly out before her. "Poor little legs! Poor little legs! Poor little legs!" ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... distributed his beef and ale to such as chose rather to live upon the folly of others, than their own labour, with such thoughtless liberality, that he left a third part of his estate mortgaged. His successor, a man of spirit, scorned to impair his dignity by parsimonious retrenchments, or to admit, by a sale of his lands, any participation of the rights of his manour; he therefore made another mortgage to pay the interest of the former, and pleased himself with the reflection, that his son would have the hereditary estate ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... salubrious climate; the coast is studded with granite rocks, and indented by small bays, which add greatly to the beauty of the scenery. The chief town is St. Helier's,—its principal trade is with Newfoundland: ship-building is carried on extensively. The natives are kind, but thrifty and parsimonious." ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... say that my father, who was very economical by nature, was extraordinarily cautious and, I may say, even parsimonious in charitable matters. It is of course easy to understand, if one considers the unlimited confidence which he enjoyed among the subscribers and the great moral responsibility which he could not but feel toward them. So that before undertaking ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... desultory mode of progression I was still abundantly informed and profoundly interested. Mr. FOORD is out to give facts, however tedious, and I agree with him that it is the business of an historian to be accurate before he is entertaining. Yet I could have wished that he had been less parsimonious with his human appeals, for whenever he unbends he can be at once interesting and informing. The struggles of BARCLAY DE TOLLY against jealousy and intrigues are vividly told, and nothing could be more graceful than the tribute ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various
... supplies what is most needed in the other. Some natures require sedatives and others tonics; and it will often be found in a happy marriage that the union of two dissimilar natures stimulates the idle and inert, moderates the impetuous, gives generosity to the parsimonious and order to the extravagant, imparts the spirit of caution or the spirit of enterprise which is most needed, and corrects, by contact with a healthy and cheerful nature, the morbid and ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... "hoary-headed abbot in the monastery of Sans Souci" closed his weary eyes, each one, with his virtues and vices, was the natural complement of his predecessor—Elector Frederick William, the greatest statesman produced by the school of the Thirty Years' War, the splendor-loving King Frederick I., the parsimonious despot Frederick William I., and finally, in the eighteenth century, he in whom were united the talents and great qualities of almost all his ancestors—the flower of ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... Yorkist cause. Humphrey was expected to keep up the castle out of his own resources, and he was without private means. It was true that with the accession of the House of Tudor, danger from the Welsh was less imminent: but Henry VII. was a parsimonious monarch, careful mainly to recover for the exchequer the sums of which it had been depleted in the Wars of ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... which desires nothing better than to give up its oxygen to the blood, through the coats of the capillaries. Accordingly you will often see fishes—carps, for example—come to the surface of the water to inhale the air like a mammal or a reptile. This is a valuable resource, which supplements the parsimonious allowance of air given out to them by the water. There are even certain fishes whose gills, more firmly closed than those of others, have, in addition, a number of cells, which retain for a considerable time a sufficient ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... the midst of stillness a pin falling to the ground will be heard. Cuyp has this quality in a high degree, only on another scale—a uniformity of unbroken tone, and in masses of half-tint only, like a few sparkles of light touches, dealt out with the most parsimonious pencil, producing a glitter like so many diamonds. This it is that prevents a work from being heavy, for by their fewness they require not the aid of black grounds to give them consequence, and by their being touched upon colours of ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... last months allowed him to fluctuate between conflicting conjectures. All were based on the indisputable fact that Mr. Spence was "bothered"—had for some time past been "bothered." And it was one of Millner's discoveries that an extremely parsimonious use of the emotions underlay Mr. Spence's expansive manner and fraternal phraseology, and that he did not throw away his feelings any more than (for all his philanthropy) he threw away his money. ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... habits, she began forthwith to save, and, perhaps, to be a little parsimonious, in favour of her boy. There were no entertainments, of course, at Fairoaks, during the year of her weeds. Nor, indeed, did the Doctor's silver dish-covers, of which he was so proud, and which were flourished all over with the arms of the Pendennises, and surmounted with their crest, come out ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is stamping his own character on the minds of his own people. Take one instance, from others far more splendid, in the contrast presented by FRANKLIN and Sir WILLIAM JONES. The parsimonious habits, the money-getting precepts, the wary cunning, the little scruple about means, the fixed intent upon the end, of Dr. FRANKLIN, imprinted themselves on his Americans. Loftier feelings could not elevate a man of genius who became ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... hostler, and reminded Mackenzie, that he had promised him half a guinea. Archibald had no money in his pocket; but he assured the hostler, that he would remember him the next day. The next day, however, Archibald, who was expert in parsimonious expedients, considered that he had better delay giving the hostler his half-guinea, till it had been earned ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... therefore, that Joe was compelled to work hard, while the promised clothing was of the cheapest and shabbiest description. He was compelled to go to school in patched shoes and a ragged suit, which hurt his pride as he compared himself with Oscar, who was carefully and even handsomely dressed. Parsimonious as his father was, he was anxious that his only boy ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... protect the frontiers and to sustain the arm of the western generals. The mean and niggardly support accorded the commander-in-chief, was largely instrumental in bringing about the lamentable result. The jealous and parsimonious states of the east, had regarded only their own selfish ends, to the utter exclusion ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... was genial and jovial, both lavish and parsimonious,—this latter characteristic being the curious survival of the trait of the ancestors to which he owed his millions. He was growing even heavier, and decidedly red in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... at the abundance of money his companion seemed to have. When they met in New York Jack was very hard up, and had only succeeded in obtaining twenty five-cents from his parsimonious aunt. ...
— Mark Mason's Victory • Horatio Alger
... my privileges, my long forgotten name, even to the small pittance of inheritance, which, in your vast accessions of property, you did not even scruple to grasp at, and which has certainly mightily recovered itself under your careful and parsimonious hand. But, nevertheless, though I claim all that is my own, I claim neither the title nor the estates of Byerdale. Wilton, my boy, stand forward, and let any one who ever saw or knew your gallant and noble father, and ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... with parsimonious phrase and copious sense, has thus compressed the result of an historical dissertation: he derives our ancient Christmas sports at once from the true, though remote, source. "Christmas succeeds the Saturnalia; the same time, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... farming-class a body of energetic, thrifty, intelligent, and aspiring people. Scotland and New England alike owe some of their best as well as their least attractive traits to bitter climate and a parsimonious soil; and the rural population of either is pushed into emigration by the scanty harvests at home. It is not a little singular that the Yankee and the canny Scot should each stand as a butt for the wit of his neighbors, while each has a shrewdness ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... days in seeking scattered fruits from a parsimonious soil? why exhaust ourselves in pursuing prey which eludes us in the woods or waters? why not collect under our hands the animals that nourish us? why not apply our cares in multiplying and preserving them? We will feed on their increase, be clothed in their skins, and live ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... bills, and her liability was to cease within a year. She was likewise to be collaterally secured by pledges from certain cities in the Netherlands. This amount was certainly not colossal, while the conditions were sufficiently parsimonious. At the same time a beginning was made, and the principle of subsidy was established. The Queen, furthermore, agreed to send five thousand infantry and one thousand cavalry to the provinces, under the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... abandoned himself completely to rum-and-water, and the odious society of the Horrocks family. Pitt's success rendered the Rector's family furious, and Mrs. Bute regretted more (though she confessed less) than ever her monstrous fault in so insulting Miss Briggs, and in being so haughty and parsimonious to Bowls and Firkin, that she had not a single person left in Miss Crawley's household to give her information of what took place there. "It was all Bute's collar-bone," she persisted in saying; "if that had not broke, I never would have left her. I am a ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to, which have marked the track of wealth across the British islands by deposits of mineral coal, as clearly as if it had been traced in sunbeams, have bequeathed no such sources of sub-terrene affluence to Kent. Nor has nature been more than parsimonious (to say the least) with respect to the superficial qualities of its soil. We have only, however, to cast our eyes on a topographical chart of Kent, to see how beneficently these disadvantages are balanced by ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... a man of gentle disposition and simple habits. His plainness of dress and freedom from ostentation gave the impression that he was parsimonious, and Handel says of him that "he liked nothing better than seeing pictures without paying for it, and saving money," He was also noted for his objection to riding ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... virtue he found in her; for he would not be burdensome, but would pay the hire for his entertainment, and spend his own money. To which she replied, that he guessed right as to the humanity of her parents; but complained that he should think them so parsimonious as to take money, for that he should have all on free cost. But she said she would first inform her brother Laban, and, if he gave her leave, she would ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... sir, I disgust you with this very dull narration, but believe me punished in the misery that occasions it. You will conclude that during this time I must have been at more expense than I could afford. Indeed the most parsimonious could not have avoided it. The printer deceived me, and my little business has had every delay. The people with whom I live perceive my situation, and find me to be indigent and without friends. About ten days since ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... with you. Do you thank me for it? No, it's been my old fault of giving everything, when it would have been wiser to keep something back, or at least to pretend to. I might have taken a lesson from you, in parsimonious reserve. For there's a part of you, you couldn't give away—not if you lived with a person for ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... the queen's tortuous and parsimonious policy had led to Calais falling into the hands of Spain. She had called upon the Londoners to furnish 1,000 soldiers to assist in raising the siege, but it is a question whether they ever got beyond Dover.(1731) ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... gratitude for the exertions of those about him, and his sense of the trouble they underwent, in a very affecting way. With regard to his man-servant in particular, he was very anxious that he should be rewarded by liberal presents; and he pressed me earnestly on no account to be parsimonious. Indeed Kant was nothing less than princely in his use of money; and there was no occasion on which he was known to express the passion of scorn very powerfully, but when he was commenting on mean and penurious acts or habits. Those who knew him only in the streets, fancied that he was not liberal; ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... year of her absence from home. She had become accustomed to the habits and manners of those around her; and though some of the girls called her a little Methodist, and sneered at her plain economical dress, even declaring she was parsimonious, because they knew that she rigidly limited her expenses to a very small portion of her earnings, there were others among her associates who fully appreciated the generous self-sacrificing spirit which animated her, and loved her for the gentleness and purity, which all noticed, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... of his father's death, was in his twentieth year, having been born in B.C. 356. His early education was entrusted to Leonidas, a kinsman of his mother, a man of severe and parsimonious character, who trained him with Spartan simplicity and hardihood; whilst Lysimachus, a sort of under-governor, early inspired the young prince with ambitious notions, by teaching him to love and emulate the heroes of the Iliad. According to the traditions of his family, the blood of Achilles actually ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... Nero, the Augustan family came to an end. Galba began the series of military emperors. A Roman of the old type, simple, severe, and parsimonious, he pleased nobody. The praetorians killed him, and elevated Otho, a profligate noble, to the throne; but he was obliged to contend with a rival aspirant, Vitellius, commander of the German legions, who defeated him, and became emperor A.D. 69. Vitellius ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... war in which, individually and in units he wrote his name in imperishable characters, and high on the scroll on which are inscribed the story of those, who, in their lives wrought for RIGHT and, passing, died for MEN! For a flag; beneath and within its folds his welcome has been measured and parsimonious;—a country; the construing and application of its laws and remedies as applied to him, has inflicted intolerable INJUSTICE: Has persecuted more often than blessed. And so and thus, its perusal finished, its pages closed and laid aside, you are shaken and ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... the duchy of Lancaster. From 1880 to 1882 he was secretary for war, a post he accepted somewhat unwillingly; and in that position he had to bear the responsibility for the reforms which were introduced into the war office under the parsimonious conditions which were then part of the Liberal creed. During his term of office the Egyptian War occurred, in which Childers acted with creditable energy; and also the Boer War, in which he and his colleagues showed ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... not the capacity for loving. For the first time it seemed to him he had begun to understand that she was incapable of love—in other words, of giving herself wholly to anybody. A strange mystery it was that one who could give her body so unreservedly should be so parsimonious about her soul. To give her body and retain herself was her gift, above all other women, thereby remaining always new, always unexpected, and always desirable. In the few visits to Paris which had been allowed to him by her, and by Madame Savelli, she had repaid him for the long abstinences ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... strong, the nimble have none.—I ought to tell you what I do, or I ought to have to tell you what I have done. But what can I? the same concession to the levity of the times, the noise of America comes again. I have even run on wrong topics for my parsimonious Muse, and waste my time from my true studies. England I see as a roaring volcano of Fate, which threatens to roast or smother the poor literary Plinys that come too near for mere purpose ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... unchangeable friend of the painter. The apprehensions which the latter entertained of poverty were frequently without cause, and Coutts has been known on such occasions to assume a serious look, and talk of scarcity of cash and of sufficient securities. Away flew Fuseli, muttering oaths and cursing all parsimonious men, and having found a friend, returned with him breathless, saying, "There! I stop your mouth with a security." The cheque for the sum required was given, the security refused, and the painter pulled ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... fashion, by subscribing freely to carry on the religious primary schools, and refusing to let their children attend the lay schools, which are kept up by the Government out of the taxes paid by themselves. This, with a thrifty and rather parsimonious population, like that which increases and multiplies so steadily in Artois, is ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... and man of the world, had thought it weakness to shirk the expression of them. The timber was being neglected, there was no thinning and no planting. The old-fashioned farmhouses were being let fall into disrepair, and then replaced by parsimonious eaveless buildings; the very grazing in the park was let, and fallow-deer and red-deer were jostled by sheep and common mongrel cows. The question of the cows had galled him till he was driven to remonstrate strongly with his grandfather. There had never ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... manufacture they can afford the commodity cheap, and at a rate not to be undersold in foreign markets. The Dutch, whose labour and manufactures are dear by reason of home excises, can notwithstanding sell cheap abroad, because this disadvantage they labour under is balanced by the parsimonious temper of their people; but in England, where this frugality is hardly to be introduced, if the duties upon our home consumption are so large as to raise considerably the price of labour and manufacture, all our commodities for exportation must by degrees so advance in the prime value, ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty
... was his frivolity that pleased the great masses, because this frivolity corresponded to the slow but progressive decay of the old Roman virtues in them. They expected from Nero a less hard, less severe, less parsimonious government—in a word, a government less Roman than the rule of his predecessors, a government which, instead of force, glory, and wisdom, meant pleasure ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... hard-fisted, prosaic spirit; but that she might participate in that feeling of his own which had in it so much that was grand, so much that was delightful, so much that was picturesque. He would never ask her to be parsimonious,—never even to be economical. He would take a glory in seeing her well dressed and well attended, with her own carriage and her own jewels. But she must learn that the enjoyment of these things must be built upon a conviction that the most important pursuit in the world was the acquiring ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... been born. The only one who was self-respecting among the lot was old 'Eliza Countess' as they designated her. It struck Bridget that Eliza Countess and Colin McKeith had points of character in common—it was true they both came from Glasgow. She thought of the parsimonious rectitude—which had of course included linen sheets and fine porcelain and shining silver—of old Lady Gaverick's establishment, of its stuffy conventionality—though that had been soothing sometimes after a ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... Court. To the Oeil-de-Boeuf it remains inconceivable how, in a France of such resources, the Horn of Plenty should run dry: did it not use to flow? Nevertheless Necker, with his revenue of parsimony, has 'suppressed above six hundred places,' before the Courtiers could oust him; parsimonious finance-pedant as he was. Again, a military pedant, Saint-Germain, with his Prussian manoeuvres; with his Prussian notions, as if merit and not coat-of-arms should be the rule of promotion, has disaffected ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... force of conception, and steadiness of purpose; qualities which every legislator is desirous of being thought to possess. On the other hand, the study of local advantages and impediments demands labour and inquiry, and is rewarded after all only with the cold and parsimonious praise due to humble industry. It is no less true, however, that measures which go straight and direct to a great general object, without noticing intervening impediments, must often resemble the fierce progress of the thunderbolt or the cannon-ball, those dreadful ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... wholesome that the parsimonious public should know what has been doing, and still is doing, in this connexion, I mention here that everything set forth in these pages concerning the Court of Chancery is substantially true, and within the truth. The case of Gridley is in no essential ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... were sent to the fifteen hundred pupils, to the members of Convention, to the consuls and agents of the Republic in foreign countries, to all governors of districts. There was in this something certainly of profusion compared with the parsimonious and mean habits of our time. Nobody, however, would concur in this reproach, however slight it may appear, if I were permitted to point out in this very apartment an illustrious Academician, whose mathematical genius was awakened by the lectures ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... of Mr. John Hayes and his wife were vastly different. He had the repute of a sober, sedate, honest, quiet, peaceable man, and a very good husband, the only objection his friends would admit of against him was that he was of too parsimonious and frugal temper, and that he was rather too indulgent of his wife, who repaid his kindness with ill usage, and frequently very opprobious language. As to his wife, she was on all hands allowed to be a very turbulent, vexatious person, always setting people together by the ears, and never ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... must not be confounded with the virtuous and parsimonious Caliph of the same name the tenth of the series (reign A.D. 692-705) who before ruling studied theology at Al-Medinah and won the sobriquet of "Mosque-pigeon." After his accession he closed the Koran saying, "Here you and I part," and busied himself wholly with ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... embroidery with which I am acquainted is the dalmatic of Charlemagne in the Vatican, richly embroidered in fine gold thread; and the mantle of the Emperor Henry II. in the Museum at Munich, worked by his Empress Kunigunda, who appears to have been somewhat parsimonious in her use of ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... money—it was in tens of thousands—to an institution of long standing and high character in the city of which he was a quiet resident. The source of such a gift could not long be kept secret. It, was our economical, not to say parsimonious Capitalist who had done this noble act, and the poor man had to skulk through back streets and keep out of sight, as if he were a show character in a travelling caravan, to avoid the acknowledgments of his liberality, which met him on ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... sensorial spirit; and the stimuli from external bodies have no effect on the exhausted sensorial power, and a delirium like a dream is the consequence. At length the internal stimuli cease to excite sufficient irritation, and the secretions are either not produced at all, or too parsimonious in quantity. Amongst these the secretion of the brain, or production of the sensorial power, becomes deficient, till at last all sensorial power ceases, except what is just necessary to perform the vital motions, and a stupor succeeds; which is thus owing to the same cause ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... one thing which greatly troubled him. He knew his father was very proud, and considered the honour of an alliance with his family so great that but few presents would be required to be made. On the other hand, the old Brûlé was exceedingly parsimonious, and, no doubt, would take this opportunity to enrich himself by demanding a great price ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... are in the country. He had as housekeeper a woman so skinny that it made you feel cold to look at her, and her disposition was on a par with her appearance. Of course, it suited the national thrift, particularly congenial to Bogue, to feed us meanly, but we did not relish her parsimonious economies. ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... up of two fine elements, the poetic and the prosaic, but these were not compounded. There was a dreamy, idealistic Rory, born of a legend-loving race; and there was a painfully parsimonious Rory, trained down to the standard of a model wealth-producer. The first was of imagination all compact, living in an atmosphere of charms, fairies, poetic justice, and angelic guidance: the second was primed with homely maxims respecting ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... savory unfamiliar to her and has turned out a dish which her family has declared "tasted like medicine" is, naturally enough, discouraged from wandering after that particular strange god again. The truth is that she has overdone the seasoning. She doesn't want to be parsimonious, which is just what the French cook is with his flavors, only he, more scientifically, calls it using good judgment. If he uses garlic in a salad, it doesn't necessarily follow that the entire household must take on the atmosphere of ...
— Twenty-four Little French Dinners and How to Cook and Serve Them • Cora Moore |
