"Penniless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of honesty, and for the first time for a long while, I ate my dinner with some zest. After I had finished, I took a twenty pound note, and laid it in my desk, the remainder of the five hundred pounds I put in my pocket, to try my last chance. In an hour I quitted the hell penniless. When I returned home I had composed myself a little after the dreadful excitement which I had been under. I felt a calm, and a degree of negative happiness. I knew my fate—there was no more suspense. I sat down to reflect upon what I should do. I was to commence the world again—to ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... they leave their employment to proceed to the nearest public-house and plunge into a course of drinking. After the endurance of a week's delirium, madness, and unconsciousness, they generally find themselves, when robbed of the greater portion of their hard-got earnings, thrust upon the world penniless, wretched, dispirited, and sick, to seek employment and re-enact the same scenes of solitary penance ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... Maria paid a visit to the town, to speed a fleet sent, with disastrous results, against Spain. The expedition was in a miserable plight to begin with. For some while before it was able to leave the country, a hungry penniless army had been thrown upon the citizens of Plymouth. An enormous debt had been created in equipping it, and the soldiers' allowances were hopelessly inadequate to provide them with a proper supply of food or clothes. 'A more ragged, ribald, and rebellious ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... its return," Cuthbert replied, "and I landed with my followers, well-nigh penniless, at Zara, and have since made my way across the Tyrol. I have, then, as you may well suppose, neither silver nor gold about my person; and assuredly neither Philip of France nor John of Austria would give a noble for my ransom; and it would ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... straightened the bed-clothes above him; another might have touched his hair or hand; another kissed his cheek. But not even because he was like her departed husband, like the man who five and fifty years before had courted a certain cold and proud, handsome and penniless Miss Augusta Gallup, would Mrs. de Tracy do these things. She had had her sensation, such as it was, her secret moment of emotion, and was satisfied. She left the room as she had come, the candle casting exaggerated shadows of herself upon the walls where Carnaby's bats ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... money. Five thousand pounds, in the English funds, had been settled on her, by the marriage articles of her parents; and twenty years of careful husbandry, during which every shilling had been scrupulously devoted to accumulation, had quite doubled the original amount. So far from being penniless, therefore, Maud's fortune was often alluded to by the captain, in a jocular way, as if purposely to remind her that she had the means of independence, and duties connected with it. It is true, Maud, herself, had no suspicion that she had ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... penalty with so little to reproach myself for,—than to put aside the adventure,—waive the wondrous probability of such best fortune, in a fear of the barest possibility of an adverse event, and so go to my grave, Walter the Penniless, with an eternal recollection that Miss Burdett Coutts once offered to wager sundry millions with me that she could throw double-sixes a dozen times running—which wager I wisely refused to accept because it ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... little through laziness, but nevertheless moved always by distress or misfortune in others. Maggie was not distressed—she was quite cheerful and entirely unsentimental—nevertheless she had been very ill, was almost penniless, had had some private trouble, was an orphan, had no friends save two old aunts, and was ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... his way a young girl, charming, penniless, and alone in the world. He married her. This was in 1855, and the following year brought to Dr. Reynaud a great sorrow and a great joy—the death of his old mother and the ...
— L'Abbe Constantin, Complete • Ludovic Halevy
... Pompeii, reclined a form fast asleep, the arm propped on the hard stone supporting the head, and the limbs uneasily strewn over the stairs. The dress of the slumberer was travel-stained, tattered, yet with the remains of a certain pretence; an air of faded, shabby, penniless gentility made poverty more painful, because it seemed to indicate unfitness to grapple with it. The face of this person was hollow and pale, but its expression, even in sleep, was fierce and hard. I drew near and nearer; I recognized the countenance, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with excitement and strong, animal emotion. Loerke was kept away from Gudrun, to whom he wanted to speak, as by a hedge of thorns, and he felt a sardonic ruthless hatred for this young love-companion, Leitner, who was his penniless dependent. He mocked the youth, with an acid ridicule, that made Leitner red in the face and ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... to spend the likes o' that!" And so he drank, and gambled, and wasted his time in hunting and horse-racing, until after a while he found the chests empty and the cupboards poverty-stricken, and the stockings lean and penniless. Then he mortgaged his farm-house and gambled away all the money he got for it, and then he bethought him that a few hundred pounds might be raised on his mill. But when he went to look at it, he found "the dam broken, and scarcely a thimbleful of water in the mill-race, ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... you are saying?' stammered the mother. 'You will learn no trade, and have only the five gold pieces left you by your father, and can you really expect that the sultan would give his daughter to a penniless bald-pate like you?' ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... for the penniless, halcyon days for the toady and the sycophant. There was still much of the old oriental munificence about the court, and sovereigns like Mazarin and Louis XIV. granted pensions for a copy of flattering verses, or gave away places as the reward of a judicious speech. Sinecures were legion, yet to ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... she had been as wife and widow after the theatrical career had been abandoned in disaster. Something in her nature would have yearned toward Dauntrey if he had had nothing to recommend him to her ambition; but she would have resisted her own inclination for a penniless man without a title. ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... his debts he will be penniless, and I don't know a worse punishment than to be a ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... more. Soon, she had sold out every one of our securities. Then she won, and went half mad with the joy and excitement, but the joy didn't last long. She lost all, again—literally, our all. We were penniless. There was nothing left to pay the hotel bill. I went out, and found a Mont de Piete, just beyond the limits of the Principality; they aren't allowed inside. I pawned all our jewellery, and as we had a great many valuable things, I got several thousand francs. I thought the money would last ...
— Rosemary - A Christmas story • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... children." But the stern rules of the service prevailed. The battalions bound for America were allowed but a limited number of soldiers' wives, and the surplus were of necessity left to their fate. Some had money; more were penniless, and nearly naked. Men and officers were then greatly in arrear, but nevertheless a subscription was got up, and its amount divided amongst the unfortunates, thus abandoned upon a foreign shore, and at many hundreds ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... I've been cruel to thee in saying that that penniless Dick o' thine sha'n't marry thee, ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... nothing more than a strange young woman in a car with a New York license. If her tiny gift could so please him, how poor he must be. "He probably lives on some barren farm," she thought, "or he's a penniless mechanic hoping for a good job in Seattle. How white ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... stirrings of rebellion were moving in him. It was not that he blamed her in the least. She was scarcely nineteen, the magnet for the eyes of all the unattached men in the district. Was it reasonable to suppose that she would give her love to a penniless puncher of twenty-eight, lank as a shad, with no recommendation but honesty? None the less, Jack began to doubt whether eternal patience was ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... facts:—It appeared that ever since she was a child, Miss Heston had been addicted to drinking fits, and that it was on account of this constitutional weakness, which was of course concealed from me, that she had been allowed to engage herself to a penniless subaltern. It appeared, too, that the habit was hereditary, for her mother had died from the effects of drink, and one of her aunts had become ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... the abundant hair that plays so prominent a part in Hogg's relentless portrait. Eliza, being nearly twice as old as Harriet, stood in the relation of a mother to her. Both of these young ladies, and the "Jew" their father, welcomed Shelley with distinguished kindness. Though he was penniless for the nonce, exiled from his home, and under the ban of his family's displeasure, he was still the heir to a large landed fortune and a baronetcy. It was not to be expected that the coffee-house people should look upon ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... the thought of her father, who had walked out of his house, left—yes—his family, without any intimation. Then, erratically, it turned to Vigne, to Vigne and young Sandby with his fresh cheeks and impending penniless years acquiring a comprehension of the bond market. She said, "I wonder if she really likes Bailey?" Arnaud's energy of dismay was laughable, "What criminal folly! They haven't ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... made a fearful resolve to leave Montreal, and never see his wife or children more. Accordingly one evening, instead of returning as usual from his store, he left for parts unknown, leaving his wife and children almost penniless behind. ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... Holmes and Miss Forrest were still walking and talking together. It was the morning after this mysterious consultation that the cold developed; and those kindly spirits who had promptly decided that the handsome but penniless New York girl was setting her cap to cut out Nellie Bayard with the Chicago millionaire were balked in their hopes of seeing further developments by the circumstance of her keeping her room and not again ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... multitude roared his name, proclaiming it divine. His nostrils spread to inhale this incense of adoration, his eyes flashed and slowly he waved his arms, as though in benediction of his worshippers. Perchance there rose before his mind a vision of the wondrous event whereby he, the scorned and penniless outcast, had been lifted to this giddy pinnacle of power. Perchance for a moment he believed that he was indeed divine, that nothing less than the blood and right of godhead could thus have exalted him. At least he ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... having no ready money to speak of, rely almost entirely in their business transactions upon each other's worthless paper. Pedro the penniless pays you with an I O U from the equally penniless Miguel. It is a sort of local currency by courtesy. Credit in these parts has passed into a superstition. I have seen a strong, violent man struggling for months ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hem of the black skirt. Decoud's eyes also remained fixed there, while in an undertone he added that Miss Avellanos was quite aware of his new and unexpected vocation, which in Costaguana was generally the speciality of half-educated negroes and wholly penniless lawyers. Then, confronting with a sort of urbane effrontery Mrs. Gould's gaze, now turned sympathetically upon himself, he breathed out ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... arrival and your long mysterious conversation with madam alarmed me. I thought exposure imminent. I feared to lose this home, which, lonely, dreary, hopeless as it is to me, is yet the only refuge I have left on earth. I am penniless and helpless; and but for this kind family I should be homeless and friendless. Think if I had been cast out upon the world what must ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... pocket on the wallet which contained the treasure that was to open up the brilliant scheme by which he hoped to support his mother and sister. He went out of the hotel without any definite idea of where he intended to go. It was ten o'clock by this time. He was not penniless now, as he had been before. He was rich enough to spend the night, or even a week or a month, at the Witherill House; but the idea of going there, or to any other public house, did ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... having come in for five days, we were to-day again penniless. In answer to prayer five shillings sixpence came in, and some trinkets were sent, the names of which the donor does not wish to be known. Thus we were helped through this day. Observe here how the Lord allowed five days to pass ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... from some of the hospitals with their wounds not yet fully healed, and their exertions in traveling had caused them to break out afresh. Here they were, in a miserable shanty, sick, bleeding, hungry, penniless, and with only their soiled clothing. Mrs. Bickerdyke at once took them in hand. Washing their wounds and staunching the blood, she tore off the lower portions of the night dresses for bandages, and as ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... a bucket was ice-bound. So cold was the studio that it froze inside as hard as it did out of doors, for, having been penniless for a whole week, Mahoudeau had gingerly eked out the little coal remaining to him, only lighting the stove for an hour or two of a morning. His studio was a kind of tragic cavern, compared with which the shop of former days evoked reminiscences of snug comfort, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... shall be so frightened to be alone in England with my child, and no one to take care of us. Yet I must come to you, I must bring my child, my little Alfred, to his father, the big, beautiful Alfred that I love so much. Oh, write and tell me where I shall come. I have some money. I am not a penniless creature. I have money for myself ...
— Wintry Peacock - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • D. H. Lawrence
... missionaries, or as sometimes happened he went alone, drop a tract here or there and speak a seasonable word. He spoke to me as a youth, as some of our saintly old pastors used to do to the children of the penniless where they stayed. He wrote me occasionally. A ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle
... purse was very low, and he had a good many more miles to go, and not feeling quite sure of his welcome he did not care to be penniless, so he went round the town with his advertising-board and very soon was painting doors in Bathurst. He found the natives stingier here than in Sydney, and they had a notion a traveler like him ought to work ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... themselves. If the sovereigns of Spain had trusted Columbus and his brothers fully and completely, had established trading-stations and imposed a moderate tribute, and had absolutely prohibited the overrunning of the country by penniless and worthless adventurers, they would have had a rich and prosperous colony. The discontent and rebellion of the natives were solely caused by ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... Donnington with a cordiality of liking which surprised herself. His selfless love for the girl touched her more than she had thought it possible for anything now to touch her worldly heart. And whereas she would naturally have considered a marriage between the penniless Donnington and brilliant, clever, popular Bubbles as being out of the question, she was beginning to feel that such a marriage might be, nay, almost certainly was, the only thing likely to ensure for Bubbles a reasonably happy and normal life. Blanche Farrow knew enough of human ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... incomprehensible philosophy, they seem cheerfully to resign themselves to their fate. They have plenty to eat; spirits to drink; clothing to keep them warm; a hammock to sleep in; tobacco to chew; a doctor to medicine them; a parson to pray for them; and, to a penniless castaway, must not all this seem as a luxurious ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... Dodd's, where a woman is left penniless and another woman needs her practical aid, the two meet half-way and the kitchen atmosphere is serene. Quite different is the case in ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... I found myself in New York; penniless, weary, and heartsick. I wandered one morning into a tiny park, mouldering in the shadow of the huge skyscrapers with which Manhattan is everywhere defaced. I sank upon a bench, pulled a soiled newspaper from my pocket, ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... which her brother had sent her as the only support of the closing days of her life. Auntie Sue believed that her money was safe in the bank. That belief was to her a daily comfort. Auntie Sue did not know that she was almost penniless;—that the man whom she had saved with such a wondrous salvation had robbed her, and left her so shamefully without means for the necessities of life. Auntie Sue did not know. But she would know,"—that inner voice went on. "The time would come when she would learn the truth. It was certain ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... last man in the world asked her. She told him of her first engagement and how it had resulted disastrously, how she had loaned the object of her affections large sums of money, until finally he ran away, leaving her penniless, and she had been compelled to work for a living. Von Barwig was very sympathetic that morning and it was this sympathy ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... briskly administered a narcotic as being the easiest and simplest way to handle a patient who seemed friendless and penniless. "The man is simply delirious with fever. He looks like a man emaciated from lack of food. What do you ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... of vengeance or criminal folly involved Daublaine in the same financial ruin as himself, and through this tragic occurrence the firm in which Barker was beginning to be securely established came to an end. Callinet, being absolutely penniless, was not prosecuted, but ended his days in the employ of Cavaille as ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... women that they carefully secure to themselves. In 1869, the "protectors of women" enacted a law which exempted a homestead from being sold for the payment of debts so long as the man who held it might live, while it allowed his widow and children to be turned out penniless and homeless. It was not until 1875 that this law was so amended that the exemption extended to the widow and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... was deeply wounded. He had been petted and admired by women during the ten years of his widowhood, favoured and a favourite everywhere. He had made up his mind deliberately to marry this penniless girl. Looked at from a worldling's point of view, it would seem, at the first glance, an utterly disadvantageous alliance: but Dr. Rylance had an eye that could sweep over horizons other than are revealed to the average gaze, and he told himself that ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... "If you don't love me, what is there in marriage for you? There are plenty of women who would be delighted to have you. Why should you want to marry a girl without any influence or position—a shop-girl, absolutely penniless?" ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... the mutual friend wrote, the life of Mrs. Stedman and her husband was thoroughly miserable. Stedman blamed her because she came to him penniless. The rich aunt, who had heartily disapproved of the artist, had spoken of him so frankly that Frances had quarrelled with her, and from her no longer would accept money. In his anger at this Stedman showed himself ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... weeks after our young people were absolutely penniless, and only one way lay open. They must go to the Labour Company. So soon as the rent was a week overdue their few remaining possessions were seized, and with scant courtesy they were shown the way out of the ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... remain behind for several weeks, and at an expense that so rapidly diminished their small store of money that when, at last, they set out on their long journey across the country, they were almost literally penniless. ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... respectable, and my education had been too good, to leave me now any very keen regrets on such a subject, in a state of society like ours; but there was truly a wide chasm between the heiress of Mrs. Bradfort and a penniless mate of a ship. Lucy understood me; and, slipping her arm through mine, she walked into the library, saying archly, as ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... If a man has brought up the child, whom he took to be his son, and then sets up a home, and after he has acquired children, decides to disinherit the foster child, that son shall not go his way [penniless]; the father that brought him up shall give him one-third of a son's share in his goods and he shall depart. He shall not give him ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... he said, "of the turned cheek and of the contriving of good for him that had despitefully used me! Be satisfied, O young and zealous servitor of Love and Christ. I am alone, unarmed and penniless, among a people whom I have never been at pains even to despise. Presently I shall be taken by this vermin, and afterward I shall be burned alive. Theodoret is quite resolved to make of me a candle which will light ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... leaves her penniless, she will, if possible, clothe her children with her pen, but if her literary wares are a drug on the market, she will turn bravely to other fields, and find her daily bread made sweet by thankfulness. She does not hesitate to hold out her hands to help a fellow-creature, either ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... perfection; solid, heavy taciturn man:—of whom there is nothing notable but this only, That last year his Wife brought him a little Daughter, Catharine the name of her. His Wife is a foolish restless dame, highborn and penniless; let her nurse well this little Catharine: little Catharine will become abundantly distinguished in a thirty years hence; Empress of all the Russias that little girl; the Fates have so appointed it, mocking the prophecies of men! ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... enthusiasts, led by a poor knight called Walter the Penniless, was cut to pieces by the natives of Bulgaria, a few only reaching Constantinople. A second multitude, forty thousand strong, was headed by Peter the Hermit. It was similar in character to the preceding. Whenever a town came in ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... well enough to go, however, I managed, by means of Copperhead influence and returned prisoners, to send a letter to my father and receive an answer. You can imagine what both contained; and so I found myself penniless, but not poor, an outcast, but not alone. Old Bent treated me like a prodigal son, and put money in my purse; his pretty daughters loved me for Margaret's sake, and gave me a patriotic salute all round ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... the nick of time, as H. came an hour or two after it arrived, and with many apologies told me he was quite penniless. The poor old fellow was quite overcome when I told him of how matters stood, and it was characteristic that as soon as he got his breath again, he wanted to know when he would begin teaching the children! I sent him to get an order on the Naples bank for discharge ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... the self-denial that would yield her with a smile. But such a crisis was far away, and there was no necessity for now contemplating it. Indeed, there was no certainty it would ever arrive; it was only a possibility. The child was not beautiful, although to him she was lovely, and, being also penniless, was therefore not likely to attract attention; while, if her being unfolded under the genial influences he was doing his best to make powerful upon her, if she grew aware that by them her life was enlarging and being tenfold enriched, it was possible she might not be ready to fall in love, and ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... in the police-boat. The lieutenant, in turn, who knew all the "rules and regulations" by heart, explained that the harbor police were not ferrymen, and that the police-boats had other functions to perform than that of transporting belated and penniless sailor-men to their ships. He also said he knew the sampan men to be natural-born robbers, but that so long as they robbed within the law he was powerless. It was their right to collect fares in advance, and who was he to command them to take a passenger and collect fare at the journey's ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... of doubt, affairs assumed a new feature. Charles received a letter from a friend, stating that the banking institution, in the stocks of which his mother's entire property was invested, had failed, and that she was penniless. ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... lies in the moral character of the three. Ribera was a great artist, and the others were noble men. Ribera passed a youth of struggle and hunger and toil among the artists of Rome,—a stranger and penniless in the magnificent city,—picking up crusts in the street and sketching on quiet curbstones, with no friend, and no name but that of Spagnoletto,—the little Spaniard. Suddenly rising to fame, he broke loose from his Roman associations and fled to Naples, where he ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... and penniless, if the gospel story were not true, how could it have had preachers? They at ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... now seemed to him—a wild longing. Knowing nothing of it, he had pictured it a paradise, a land of roses. He seemed to have no knowledge of why she had left it; but years later his father spoke of finding her in Boston in the days when he preached there, penniless, searching for work as a teacher of singing. How she became jettisoned in that—to her—cold and inhospitable port, Stefan did not know, nor how soon after their marriage the two moved to the still more alien peninsula ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... Bines, multimillionaire, with a lone pack-mule to bear his meagre outfit, picked up float-rock, tapped and scanned ledges, and chipped at boulders with the same ardour that had fired him in his penniless youth. ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... required to spend a million dollars in one year in order to inherit seven millions. He must be absolutely penniless at that time, and yet have spent the million in a way that will commend him as fit to inherit the larger sum. How he does it forms the basis for one of the most crisp and breezy romances of ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... been sending back some of the French refugees whom they drove before them in their retreat. There are groups of five hundred at a time who now and then are sent over the border either from Germany or Switzerland. They are penniless and not only have no money or food or clothes; they do not know whether their families are living or dead and in any case have no way to reach them. The French government is to try to arrange some plan by which homes may be secured for these unfortunate people ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... other views include yourself. Are you thinking of reserving the prize for your own special benefit? A penniless guardian—a rich ward; as a situation, it is perfect; full ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... a penniless tramp, who had wandered from Chicago on a predatory trip, to take any property he could lay his hands on. The chance that presented itself here was tempting to a man of ...
— A Cousin's Conspiracy - A Boy's Struggle for an Inheritance • Horatio Alger
... and a back. The back—flat and straight and broad—indicates one side of his character—the side that belongs with the square chin and the blue eyes that always look at you with such frank directness. It was this side of the man that brought him barefooted and penniless to Arizona in those days long gone when he was only a boy and Arizona a strong man's country. It was this side of him that brought him triumphantly through those hard years of the Indian troubles, and in those wild and lawless times made him respected and feared by the evildoers ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... full of idle men. My last hope, a promise of employment in a human-hair factory, failed, and, homeless and penniless, I joined the great army of tramps, wandering about the streets in the daytime with the one aim of somehow stilling the hunger that gnawed at my vitals, and fighting at night with vagrant curs or outcasts as miserable as myself for the protection ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... "Died penniless;—but e' war good on e' own plantation," rejoins another. "One ting be sartin 'bout nigger-he know how he die wen 'e time cum; Mas'r don know how ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... chapel. She may have continued kneeling there, motionless, for some quarter-hour more; in itself the act of suspense is an absorbing one. So much was I possessed by it that I forgot all beside it—that I was a lover, not of this shrouded unknown, that I was penniless and outcast, that I was hungry, ignorant, uncertain, unforgiven. I think that, in some indefinable way, the spirit of Aurelia may have been about me, pervading this cold church, linking me and that other; I think that Aurelia's soul ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... century, being old meant being poor. When President Roosevelt created Social Security, thousands wrote to thank him for eliminating what one woman called "the stark terror of penniless, helpless old age." Even today, without Social Security, half our nation's elderly would ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... president of the bank, had won the sympathy of every one by the modest way in which, with eye-glasses in hand, he had testified to the particulars of the loss which had left him penniless, and had ruined others whose little all was in his hands. And then, in reply to the formal question, he had testified, amid roars of laughter from the court-room, that it was not he who robbed the safe. At this, even the judge and Wood's lawyer ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... of Arthur's temperament, the novelty of being turned away into the street, like a penniless vagabond, at every house where he asked for a lodging, presented itself in the light of a new and highly amusing piece of experience. He went on, with his carpet-bag in his hand, applying for a bed at every place of entertainment for travellers that he could find in Doncaster, until ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... if I loved a penniless girl, you would desire me to sacrifice my feelings and my honor—to marry solely ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... left for dead at Dunkirk. On his return to England, he found Lucy Sacheverell—his "Lucretia," the lady of his love—married, his death having been reported. All went ill. He was again imprisoned, grew penniless, had to borrow, and fell into a consumption from despair for love and loyalty. "Having consumed all his estate," says Anthony Wood, "he grew very melancholy, which at length brought him into a consumption; became very ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... entrance of five old soldiers of noble birth, part of the body-guard they had left behind at Mittau, relying on the protection of Paul. The "mad Czar" had decreed their immediate expulsion, and, penniless and almost starving, they made their way to Louis XVIII. All the money the royal family possessed was bestowed on these faithful servants, who came to them in detachments for relief, and then the Duchess offered her diamonds to the Danish consul ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... commences. Don't forget your part, boy. We're sailoring men back from a cruise to Jamaica and pretty near penniless. Lost our jobs, and looking for others. Told there was a factory somewhere in this part of the world that had to do with shipping, and have walked down from London. Took six days, mind; don't forget that. And ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... wind up. I have been to Bath, to Cheltenham, to Harrogate, to Brighton, and everywhere else where people meet, and people are met with, who would not meet or be met with elsewhere. I have seen many nice girls; but the nice girls were, like myself, almost penniless; and I have seen many ill-favoured, who had money: the first I could only afford to look at— the latter I have had some dealings with. I have been refused by one or two, and I might have married ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... find them. Perhaps you can explain to me how Lind should care so little for the future of his daughter as to propose—with the possibility of our marrying—that she should be left penniless?" ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... he couldn't put a married man out in that way. And that same married man came in here penniless four years ago, has been working for dad all the time for wages; and he could retire to-morrow and live on the interest of ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... ever. Would this woman steal her pocketbook? How could she ever get away from the place if penniless? ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... "to keep this writing in memory of her? This is the last lesson I shall have the honor of giving her, and that which I have just received in these words may serve me for an abiding rule of life. I left Spain, a fugitive and penniless, but I have to-day received from my family a sum sufficient for my needs. You will allow me to send some ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... coming; hardly a remembered face, scarcely a future hope. The glitter of a passing troop of cavalry drew my mind for an instant to Edith Brennan, but I crushed the thought. Even were she free, what had I now to place at her proud feet,—I, a penniless, defeated, homeless man? No, that was all over, even as the cause for which I had fought; love and ambition must lie buried in the same grave. The clothes I wore, that tattered suit of faded gray, soiled by months of hard service in the open, was all I possessed ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... Mollie Farrell, the penniless daughter of an impoverished house—jumped up from her chair, and clasped her hands in dismay. In blissful contemplation of imagining chiffons and cotillions, the prosaic duties of reality had slipped from her mind, and recollection brought with ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... pathetic or he could never have done what he did—sell to the old gentleman, on the strength of the knowledge he had imparted to him, a house and lot upon terms so easy that he might drowse along for a little time and then wake to find himself both homeless and penniless. This was the promoter's method, and for so long a time had it proved successful that he had now grown mildly affluent and had set up a buggy in which to drive about and see his numerous ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... find it here. Remember that you are nearly thirty years old, and that you are nothing but an obscure Bohemian—a penniless correspondent of an ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... I would 'come down.' It is a system of blackmailing, like any other. An account is opened to some young rascal; and, when the amount is reasonably large, they take it to the family, saying, 'Money, or I make row.' Do you think it is to you, who are penniless, that they give credit? It's on my pocket that they were drawing,—on my pocket, because they believed me rich. They sold you at exorbitant prices every thing they wished; and they relied on me to pay for trousers at ninety francs, shirts at forty ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... tried to detach it. Years after her first fight, on the day of her mother's death, she had suffered a brief revival of youth; and then she had pulled in vain at the obstinate tendrils that held her to the spot in which she had grown. She was no longer penniless, she was no longer needed, but she was crushed. The power of revolt was the gift of youth. Middle-age could put forth only a feeble and ineffectual resistance—words without passion, acts without abandonment. At times she still felt ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... were few, and when John Wesley's income was thirty pounds a year he gave two pounds for charity. When it was sixty pounds a year he gave away thirty pounds; and here seems a good place to say that, although he made more than a hundred thousand pounds during his life from his books, he died penniless, just as he had wished ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... that, while the people of Sangamon have cast me off, my old friends of Menard, who have known me longest and best, stick to me. It would astonish, if not amuse, the older citizens to learn that I (a stranger, friendless, uneducated, penniless boy, working on a flatboat at ten dollars per month) have been put down here as the candidate of pride, wealth, and aristocratic family distinction. Yet so, chiefly, it was. There was, too, the strangest combination of church influence against me. Baker is a Campbellite; and therefore, as ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... I was of course unable to carry through the profitable series of abductions in the world of High Finance that I had contemplated. Hence my misfortunes, and now on this beautiful Sunday morning, penniless but for the coppers and the postage-stamp, with no breakfast in sight, and, fortunately enough, not even an appetite, I turned to my morning paper ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... the Southern States. Under the potent shield of State Rights, the game would be in their own hands. Does any sane man doubt for a moment that the men who followed Jefferson Davis through the late terrible Rebellion, often marching barefooted and hungry, naked and penniless, and who now only profess an enforced loyalty, would plunge this country into a foreign war to-day, if they could thereby gain their coveted independence, and their still more coveted mastery over the negroes? Plainly enough, the peace not less than the prosperity of this country is involved ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... occurred to me in that light," said I, laughing heartily, as much at the cool and quiet insolence of the waif's manner as at his suggestion. "But then, you see, there are difficulties in the way. Young ladies who dwell in fine mansions are not fond of marrying penniless doctors." ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... Irish Rebellion the fixed residence of herself and her husband had been in (Pall Mall?) London. Here her relatives from Ireland and elsewhere gathered round her; and here in 1644 her youngest brother, the future chemist, turning up brown and penniless, a foreign-looking lad of eighteen, after his six years of travel abroad, had been received with open arms. He had remained in her house about five months, and then had retired to his estate of Stalbridge in Dorsetshire, where he continued mainly till 1650, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... and went on enjoying herself, thinking that the day of judgment was very, very far away. But it swooped down on her sooner than she expected—the momentous hour when she must choose between the pearl necklace with Mulke and a penniless stranger from Yuchovitch who was reputed to be ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... a quiet business-like voice Marsworth put the case of the penniless one—his qualifications, his ambitions, and the particular post under the Army Medical Board on which he had set his hopes. If only somebody with influence would give him ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... it isn't that. I assure you I am not making excuses; you should have it directly if it were possible; but I am as penniless as a fellow can be, not so much as a ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... ample provocation, bombarded him in his castle at Rimini, and afterwards allowed him to escape, a Venetian commissioner brought him back, stained as he was with fratricide and every other abomination. Thirty years later the Malatesta were penniless exiles. In the year 1527, as in the time of Cesare Borgia, a sort of epidemic fell on the petty tyrants; few of them outlived this date, and none to t heir own good. At Mirandola, which was governed by insignificant princes of the house of Pico, lived in the year 1533 ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... passed on a Mississippi plantation. He had years ago heard more or less idle gossip about the hard, miserly nature of the old planter, Hamilton, and of his bitter opposition to his daughter's match with penniless young Carleton. There had been an elopement, or something. It came back to him like some hideous nightmare. His pure, spotless darling—his promised wife! Could there be sin or shame enveloping such a being? He must know. He wrote to Mrs. Carleton. ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... ancient and hallowed institution, and would not advise a friend against taking such a step, even at the present and ever-increasing high cost of living. I do not use such language. Since I first put on long trousers I have hunted high and low for a wife, and with a persistence equalling that of a young penniless widow, but without success. Just when it seems that within a few days I shall be the happy recipient of the congratulations of my friends who in their hearts feel certain I am about to fall victim to the wiles of a designing female person, cruel fate steps in and with peremptory ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... sleep, eat, nor amuse himself, he is brooding over his million, it makes him run about all over Europe; he worries himself, goes to the devil in every way that man has invented. Then comes a liquidation, such as I have seen myself, which very often leaves him penniless and without a reputation or a friend. The spendthrift, on the other hand, takes life as a serious game and sees his horses run. He loses his capital, perhaps, but he stands a chance of being nominated Receiver-General, of making a wealthy marriage, ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... penniless orphan daughter of a noble, but impoverished Scotch family. She had been left, by the death of her parents, dependent upon harsh and cruel relatives. She had been given in marriage, at the age of fifteen, to a wealthy old gentleman, whose years quadrupled hers. But he had used her very kindly, and ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... orders. My aunt is my rival, and I do not feel the least doubt as to his having offered to her half a dozen times. But then she has another lover, Captain Bellfield, and I see that she prefers him. He is a penniless scamp and looks as though he drank. He paints his whiskers too, which I don't like; and, being forty, tries to look like twenty-five. Otherwise he is agreeable enough, and I rather approve of my aunt's taste ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... I," said Jessica. "My allowance lasts about two days, and then I am penniless for the rest of ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... am I to do, if you want to leave the children penniless? That is what I cannot quietly submit to. You know that I am not grasping, and that I ...
— The Light Shines in Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... bent of Mrs. Poyser's mind with regard to Adam; and though she and her husband might have viewed the subject differently if Hetty had been a daughter of their own, it was clear that they would have welcomed the match with Adam for a penniless niece. For what could Hetty have been but a servant elsewhere, if her uncle had not taken her in and brought her up as a domestic help to her aunt, whose health since the birth of Totty had not been equal to more positive labour than the superintendence of servants and children? ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot |
