"Penurious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fell asleep where they sat, their little fat hands holding tight to some goody. Boys old enough to wonder about the contrariness of things mortal looked sadly at the still inviting tables and marveled that a thoughtful and farseeing Providence should have made a boy's stomach in so careless and penurious a fashion. ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... Athenian notions of what constitutes a gentleman, many citizens are people of utterly penurious, niggardly habits. Frequently enough the fellow who can discuss all Socrates's theories with you is quarreling with his neighbor over the loan of salt or a lamp wick or some meal for sacrifice.[*] If one of the customary "club-dinners"[] is held at his ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... profession which I may really claim to have invented, and which offers a wide field for idle women. It is healthy, moreover, and in its pursuit its followers can be of immense service to their overtaxed sisters. The vocation is called "Pram-Pushing for Penurious Parents," and it consists simply of taking charge of Tommy, or Bobby, or Baby for his morning or afternoon promenade, and thereby setting his mother free to take ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... you desire to win the love and admiration of young ladies, first, be intelligent; read books and papers; remember what you read, so you can talk about it. Second, be generous and do not show a stingy and penurious disposition when in the company of ladies. Third, be sensible, original, and have opinions of your own and do not agree with everything that someone else says, or agree with everything that a lady may say. Ladies ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... of its secret and having declared deadly war to papism, it cooperates even to the present day, helping out England in her exploits over the whole world with its capital and concessions, in which respect the Sanhedrin was never penurious. ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... of beauty, and indifferently inclined to either good or evil. He whose eyelids bend down when he speaks to another or when he looks upon him, and who has a kind of skulking look, is by nature a penurious wretch, close in all his actions, of a very few words, but full of malice in his heart. He whose eyebrows are thick, and have but little hair upon them, is but weak in his intellectuals, and too credulous, ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... consent to discontinue his efforts to obtain adequate satisfaction for the insults heaped upon him. He will accept the atonement of two hundred thousand francs for the injury done him, assured that this penalty would be the severest punishment that could be inflicted upon a cowardly and penurious American ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... whose like was found too often in the small Pennsylvania villages. The only child of a close-fisted, saving farmer, he found himself on his father's death more than sufficiently well-off to go to college and later to study law. He was careful and penurious, but failing of success in Philadelphia returned to Westways when about thirty years old, bought a piece of land in the town, built a house, married a pretty, commonplace young woman, and began to look for business. There was little to be had. The Squire drew his ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... as he was sapless. Believing that his penurious code was just, and his frugality the first virtue of his life, he was not ashamed of his table, and the outcast scraps upon it. But he looked at his young wife with a sharp drawing down of his spiked brows as he lingered there a moment, his cracked brown hands on the edge of the table, ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... never in a condition to be so easily coaxed as now. Maude Glendower had a place in his heart, which no other woman bad ever held, and that very afternoon the village merchant was astonished at the penurious doctor's inquiring the prices of the finest broadcloth in his store. It seemed a great deal of money to pay, but Maude Remington at his elbow and Maude Glendower in his mind conquered at last, and the new suit was bought, including vest, hat, boots, and all. There is something in ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... was ill-regulated and penurious. She was born in 1789, the second daughter of Edmund Power, of Knockbrit, near Clonmel, in the county of Tipperary. Her father came of a good family, as did also her mother, who spoke unduly often of her ancestors, the Desmonds. Marguerite was not comely in her early girlhood, though her sister ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... or where they were not prevented by law. Back of the exodus, universal as it is, there is an urge of elemental force. A common accounting for it, the nearest at hand, is that parents of working class children are penurious; or that they are too ignorant to understand the deteriorating effect of factory life on children; or that they are too hard pressed in their physical needs to consider the best interest of the children. This reason given ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... sympathizing auditor to whom she could relieve her feelings. The preparations for the evening meal were therefore accompanied by a dreary monotone of lamentation. She bewailed her lost youth, her brief courtship, the struggles of her early married life, her premature widowhood, her penurious and helpless existence, the disruption of all her present ties, the hopelessness of the future. She rehearsed the unending plaint of those long evenings, set to the music of the restless wind around her bleak dwelling, with something of its stridulous reiteration. The young man listened, and ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... cataclysm of Waterloo. That event terminated Decaen's military course. For a while he was imprisoned, but his life was not taken, as was that of the gallant Ney; and in a few months he was liberated at the instance of the Duchesse d'Angouleme. Thenceforth he lived a colourless, quiet, penurious life in the vicinity of his native Caen, regretting not at all, one fancies, the ruin of the useful career of the enterprising English navigator. His poverty was honourable, for he had handled large funds during the Consulate and Empire; and there is probably as much sincerity as pathos ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... made it the duty of the nation to aid liberally its enterprising and patriotic promoters in the prosecution of their gigantic task. In those stirring times few people were inclined to question the motives of those who advocated what appeared to be patriotic measures, or to be penurious in the expenditure of public funds when the public weal seemed to ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... assure me that I have ever been mistaken in failing to place you among my friends or admirers. Again I pray you to let me say that I have never known you penurious in admiration towards any one who had the slightest claim to it, and that at no period of my life, not even during the limited one when we were in sharp political conflict, have I either felt any enmity towards you, or believed that you felt ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... found John Worlington Dodds a ruined gamester of the Stock Exchange. Upon the 17th he was a very opulent man. And yet he had effected the change without leaving the penurious little Irish townlet of Dunsloe, which could have been bought outright for a quarter of the sum which he had earned during the single day that he was within its walls. There is a romance of finance yet to be ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... painting cap, and straggling bunches of quite white hair behind his ears. A little, meagre man, not more than five feet high, in a shabby, patched dressing-gown, almost as old as himself, leading a quiet, cold, penurious life. He never married. He had never even been in love. He had never had the time, or he had never had the passion necessary for such pursuits, or he was too deeply devoted to his profession. He was always, brush in hand, ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... fringes the horizon, the hymn of the Fakir rings forth, praising the open-handed Ali and imploring the charity of the early-riser who knows full well that a copper bestowed unseen during the morning watch is worth far more than silver bestowed in the sight of men. On a sudden while the penurious widows and broken respectables are yet prosecuting their rounds of begging, the great cry "Allaho Akbar" breaks from the mosques and the Faithful troop forth from their homes to prayer—prayer which is better than sleep. More commonplace sounds now fill the air, the ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... was soon over, and the bride and groom left, Martin giving his old classmate, to whom the world had been penurious, a hand-shake that, when examined by the breathless family a few moments later, was found to yield at least a new parlour carpet, an easy-chair for the Rector's bent back, and a new clerical suit ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... a share has a person in the work of controlling his own destiny. Had only the necessarily penurious and now almost degraded Kai Lung been born a brief span before the great writer Lo Kuan Chang, his name would have been received with every mark of esteem from one end of the Empire to the other, while ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... people that the only trade seems to be carried on, and this is limited to amber and serpentine. They are very dirty, and excessively penurious, but industrious. Owing to their habits and extreme penury, there is no outlet for our manufactures in this direction; so that I fully agree with Hannay's statement, that 500 rupees worth of British goods would be unabsorbed for some years. Rosa is common, also a Rumex; a Sisymbroid ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... the fiftieth parallel of latitude, and less than seven degrees farther north the mean annual temperature everywhere east of the mountains sinks below the freezing point.[25-1] Agriculture is impossible, and the only chance for life lies in the uncertain fortunes of the chase and the penurious gifts of an arctic flora. The denizens of these wilds are abject, slovenly, hopelessly savage, "at the bottom of the scale of humanity in North America," says Dr. Richardson, and their relatives who have wandered to the more genial climes of the south are as savage ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... I were always great friends. He had the reputation of being close-fisted and penurious; but that this was not so I knew from many circumstances, though it is quite true he would not allow himself to be defrauded ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... Mrs. Mott's rigid economy, such as sewing together the smallest rags to be woven into carpets, and writing letters on infinitesimal bits of paper; but it must not be inferred from this peculiarity that she was penurious, as she was generous in her charities, and in the support of every good cause. Considering her means and the self-denial she practiced in her personal expenses, her gifts were lavish. Alfred Love, President of the Peace Society, who frequently received ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... never loved, I meant more than the love of a man for some particular woman. I meant love in every sense. I do not know what it is to have an affection for any human being. My parents died before I can remember. My only living relative was a penurious old uncle who brought me up for shame's sake and kicked me out on the world as soon as he could. I don't make friends easily. I have a few acquaintances whom I like, but there is not a soul on earth for whom I care, or ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... brother, I shall forget it I presume. I am human, and shall soon die, or live on till time hardens my nature, or sordid pursuits plough from my heart all its sympathies, and old age finds me gloating over the gains of laborious care and penurious meanness. ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... Government positions were not large, compared with those of the sciences; but as their social and political dues were paid out of the public treasury, the salaries might be considered as net profit. This custom had originated many centuries in the past. In those early days, when a penurious character became an incumbent of public office, the social obligations belonging to it were often but niggardly requited. Sometimes business embarrassments and real necessity demanded economy; so, at last, the Government assumed all the expenses contingent upon every office, from the highest ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... instance of this, Hecaton calls the case of Arcesilaus silly, and not to the purpose. Arcesilaus, he says, refused to receive a large sum of money which was offered to him by a son, lest the son should offend his penurious father. What did he do deserving of praise, in not receiving stolen goods, in choosing not to receive them, instead of returning them? What proof of self-restraint is there in refusing to receive another man's property. If you want an instance of magnanimity, ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... (c. 1680-1740), a crotchety, penurious, but kind-hearted freethinker. His Cyclopaedia, or an Universal Dictionary was translated into French and is said to have ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... horse), Gore (fair-coloured), Dongardiya (a lamp on a hill), Pinjara (a cotton-cleaner), Gadria (a shepherd), Khaparia (a tyler), Khawasi (a barber), Chiknya (a sycophant), Kinkar (a slave), Dukhi (penurious), Suplya toplya (a basket and fan maker), Kasai (a butcher), Gohattya (a cow-killer), and Kalebhut (black devil). Among the territorial sections may be mentioned Sonpuria, from Sonpur, and Patharia, from the hill country. The name Badnagrya is also really territorial, being derived from ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... and his aunt, with whom he passed his days, had grown to be only vague, meaningless shapes to him. Their broadest pleasantries failed to raise a smile, and the coarse realities of a narrow, penurious existence had no power to disturb his happy serenity. All day long, in the back-shop where the penetrating smell of paste mingled with the fumes of the cabbage-soup, he lived a life of his own, a life of incomparable ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... friends and followers of the noble house; and the fire-utensils which still remain, and which seem destined for the consumption of entire forests, intimate that the household gods which presided here dealt in no stinted or penurious economy. There was scarcely need of flue or chimney, for the smoke curling up among the interlacing rafters of the roof, might long gather in its ample cavity without threatening those below with serious inconvenience. It is curious ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... Timandra, for his wits Are drown'd and lost in his calamities. I have but little gold of late, brave Timon, The want whereof doth daily make revolt In my penurious band: I have heard, and griev'd How cursed Athens, mindless of thy worth, Forgetting thy great deeds, when neighbour states, But for thy sword and fortune, ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... whether individually or in groups, tend to develop certain hard, dry, arid qualities of mind and heart, or they become emotional and unbalanced. Losing a sense of large significances, they become overcareful, saving, sometimes penurious, while in matters of feeling they lavish sentiment and sympathy on ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... trying position for a boy to fill, and at that time I was not popular with the other boys, who resented my exemption from part of my legitimate work. I was also taxed with being penurious in my habits—mean, as the boys had it. I did not spend my extra dimes, but they knew not the reason. Every penny that I could save I knew was needed at home. My parents were wise and nothing was withheld from me. I knew every week ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... black sheep of an otherwise respectable family, went off and spent his portion in riotous living, afterward bought a tract of ground above Harlem, turned hermit, raised geese and ducks and pigs, married and had three daughters and they in turn married, glad, I suppose, to get away from the penurious living. So it went on. He had to give up the pigs and geese, did a little gardening and two years ago died without a will. Oddly enough he had kept a family record which has been of great service to us. The old shanty ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... one another; and then they hammered wedges of iron between them, until, regardless of the cries of the sufferers, they had bruised to pieces and forever crippled those poor, honest, innocent, laborious hands, which had never been raised to their mouths but with a penurious and scanty proportion of the fruits of their own soil; but those fruits (denied to the wants of their own children) have for more than fifteen years past furnished the investment for our trade with China, and been sent annually out, and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of that metal with his own substance, became closer and closer, and age intensified it. His sister herself excited his suspicions, though she was perhaps more miserly, more rapacious than her brother whom she actually surpassed in penurious inventions. Their daily existence had something mysterious and problematical about it. The old woman rarely took bread from the baker; she appeared so seldom in the market, that the least credulous of the townspeople ended by attributing to these strange beings the knowledge of some secret for ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... that, not only did he keep a tight grip upon his purse when honour was to be done to another, but in his personal expenditure, even upon things meet and proper, contrary to the general custom of the Genoese, whose wont is to array themselves nobly, he was extremely penurious, as also in his outlay upon his table. Wherefore, not without just cause, folk had dropped his surname de' Grimaldi, and called him instead Messer Ermino Avarizia. While thus by thrift his wealth waxed ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... to ambition is the love of power; the spur to avarice is either the fear of poverty or a strong desire of self-indulgence. The amassers of fortunes seem divided into two opposite classes—lean, penurious-looking mortals, or jolly fellows who are determined to get possession of, because they want to enjoy, the good things of the wo others, in the fulness of their persons and the robustness of their constitutions, seem to ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... beggared states. Forego your boast. You must conclude, That's most esteemed that's most pursued. Think too, in what a woful plight That wretch must live whose pocket's light. Are not his hours by want depress'd? Penurious care corrodes his breast. 110 Without respect, or love, or friends, His solitary day descends.' 'You might,' says Cupid, 'doubt my parts, My knowledge too in human hearts, Should I the power of gold dispute, Which great examples might confute. I know, when nothing ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... relict of the infamous Guy. In the "Spectator," No. 383, Mr. Addison introduces a voyage from the Temple Stairs to Vauxhall, in which he is accompanied by his friend, Sir Roger de Coverley. In the "Connoisseur," No. 68, we find a very humourous description of the behaviour of an old penurious citizen, who had treated his family here with a handsome supper. The magnificence of these gardens calls to recollection the magic representations in the "Arabian ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... minute." "Why madam," answered he, "they don't know when to abuse him, and when to praise him; I will allow no man to speak ill of David that he does not deserve; and as to Sir John, why really I believe him to be an honest man at the bottom; but to be sure he is penurious, and he is mean, and it must be owned he has a degree of brutality, and a tendency to savageness, that cannot easily be defended.... He said that Sir John and he once belonged to the same club, but that as he eat no ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... Condition a little, and lived a whole Summer in the Shape of a Bee; but being tired with the painful and penurious Life I had undergone in my two last Transmigrations, I fell into the other Extream, and turned Drone. As I one day headed a Party to plunder an Hive, we were received so warmly by the Swarm which defended it, that we were most of us left dead upon ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... dared to choose their own lovers. To put down this profligacy was the first care of Arthur; and in enforcing a severe attention to etiquette and outward respectability, he perhaps erred on the side of virtue. Honest, brave, and high-minded, he was also penurious and cold, and the ostentatious good humour of the colonists dashed itself in vain against his polite indifference. In opposition to this official society created by Governor Arthur was that of ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... support, what would be the event of his suit to Melissa, and stipulated marriage? Was it not probable that her father would now cancel the contract? Could she consent to be his wife in his present penurious situation?—And indeed, could he himself consent to make her his wife, to ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... and female knit and united together. In very deed it was the fashion of old in the city of Rome at marriage festivals to light five wax tapers; nor was it permitted to kindle any more at the magnific nuptials of the most potent and wealthy, nor yet any fewer at the penurious weddings of the poorest and most abject of the world. Moreover, in times past, the heathen or paynims implored the assistance of five deities, or of one helpful, at least, in five several good offices to those that were to be married. Of this sort were the nuptial Jove, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... penurious, following the example of the righteous Job, of whom the sages relate that he declined to receive the change due him ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... vague way, we had unreasonably expected millions at a twist of the wrist; and the words, "twelve cents," had a rankly penurious sound to us. However, the miner patiently explained that a twelve-cent pan was a very good one; and indubitably ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... circulated chiefly in places where English was generally spoken, my ignorance of Welsh was of but little importance, especially as the foreman of the printing-office was a Cambrian, who could correct any errors I might make in Taffy's orthography, which, prodigal as it is of consonants and penurious of vowels, and, as it regards pronunciation, embarrassing to the last degree, might drive Elihu Burritt back to his smithy in an agony ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... being thrifty, but the way some of those people saved up their hunger for our dinner was too penurious ...
— Skiddoo! • Hugh McHugh
... Also in their penurious, laborious character; the individual only satisfies his necessary appetites, and confines his expenditure to them; his other desires he subdues, under the idea that they ...
— The Republic • Plato
... estates, there was generally a little private oiling the hands of committee men. He talked of his stock of wines, liberal table, rich hangings, and the universal plenty of good things which he enjoyed; and strongly urged Lord Sedley, now he was able, to remove from the penurious dwelling which could just serve his turn, while his wounds were healing, and reestablish his health, by residing with his humble servant, Zedekiah Morgan, at Saint's-Rest, till he thought fit to return to his ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... Charles that it was useless to expect the Empire unless he would spend at least as much as the French.[251] "It would be lamentable," he said, "if we should now lose all through some pitiful omission or penurious neglect;" and Francis was "going about covertly and laying many baits,"[252] to attain (p. 099) the imperial crown. To Henry himself Maximilian had more than once offered the prize, and Pace had declared that the offer was only another design for extracting ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... of the building of the three churches erected since 1837, and a history of the changes that have taken place; though the writer is aware that there is no incident to tempt the reader—no siege of the one castle, no battle more important than the combat in the hayfield between Mr. Coram and the penurious steward, and, till the last generation, no striking character. But the record of a thousand peaceful years is truly a cause of thankfulness, shared as it is by many thousand villages, and we believe that a little investigation would bring to light, in countless ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... edition of Walton till Moses Browne (by Johnson's desire) published him, with 'improvements,' in 1750. Then came Hawkins's edition in 1760. Johnson said of Hawkins, 'Why, ma'am, I believe him to be an honest man at the bottom; but, to be sure, he is penurious, and he is mean, and it must be owned he has a degree of brutality, and a tendency to savageness, that cannot ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang
... preceding observations we do not in the least advocate the formation of miserly, penurious habits; for we hate the scrub, the screw, the miser. All that we contend for is, that man should provide for the future,—that they should provide during good times for the bad times which almost invariably follow them,—that they should lay by a store of savings as a breakwater ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... ornaments that it is a shame to see them. Many of the churches are so indecent that when I visited them, from pure shame I was obliged to command that they be torn down; they were not fit to be entered by horses. There are two principal causes for this: the first is that the encomenderos are penurious and allow little for the proper ornamentation of the church; and the second, that some or the majority of the encomiendas are so small that they do not suffice to support their encomenderos, who thus cannot attend to matters of divine worship. Consequently, the natives come to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... world now, it will with thee go hard: The fattest hogs we grease the more with lard. To him that has, there shall be added more; Who is penurious, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... offence, but it is a cordial that makes the heart sick. Still thy skill in compounding it I not deny. I turn to what gave me less mingled pleasure. I find markd with pencil these pages in thy pretty book, and fear I have been penurious. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... with a reputation already considerable and fast increasing, and with a balance at the banker's in the same beautiful conditions, I yet remained in that poor studio of mine, and in those unfashionable apartments. It was not that I am penurious, although I have changed my old harum-scarum habits with ...
— The Romance Of Giovanni Calvotti - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... brother should have concealed from us the possession of this money,—why, with such copious means of indulgence and leisure, he should still pursue his irksome trade, and live in so penurious a manner,—has been a topic of endless and unsatisfactory conjecture between us. It was not difficult to suppose that this money was held in trust for another; but in that case it was unavoidable that some document or memorandum, or at least ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... to visit Van Diemen's land, the ties of birth-place would be so strong as to induce me to seize the first opportunity of returning. I am not, your honour, very fond of the French—they are an idle, frivolous, penurious, poor nation. Only think, Sir, the other day I saw a gentleman of the most noble air secrete something at a cafe, which could not clearly discern; as he wrapped it carefully in paper, before he placed it in his pocket, I judged that it ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hand stood a prie-dieu. Between these isolated articles of furniture, and behind an unpainted table sat, in a high-backed chair, a wizen and shabbily-clad old man. This was Theodoret, most pious and penurious of monarchs. In attendance upon him were Fra Battista, prior of the Grey Monks, and Melicent's near kinsman, once the Bishop, now the Cardinal, de Montors, who, as was widely known, was the actual monarch of this realm. The latter ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... made in safety, a thriving settlement begun, and young Otto Relstaub, the son of a hard-hearted, penurious German, was sent back over the trail, according to promise, to guide Jack Carleton, who was impatiently awaiting him. The next morning after his arrival the two started westward, all their earthly effects packed ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... one" the first time he went in for snuff. But "Tut!" quoth she; "a mim cat's never gude at the mice," and she lifted him out by the scruff of his neck, crying, "Run, mousie, or I'll catch ye!" On that day her popularity in Barbie was assured for ever. But she was as keen on the penny as a penurious weaver, for all her heartiness and laughing ways. She combined the commercial merits of the East and West. She could coax you to the buying like a Cumnock quean, and fleece you in the selling like the cadgers o' Kincardine. When Wilson was abroad on his affairs he had no need to be afraid ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... board. Our navy certainly was not then under so good regulations as at present. The medical department might perhaps be almost as good then as it now is, or rather as it was when I was in the service; the disgracefully penurious compensation allowed our naval surgeons rendering their station contemptible and degrading in the estimation of medical men of any pride or ability. Besides this, the sick at sea can never receive assistance from female attendance; for although some may deem ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... I'd stay right here and tell my penurious friends to whistle for their profits. It seems I'm cursed with a fatal beauty. You may have noticed it? No? Well, perhaps it's a magnificent business ability that I have. Anyhow, the president of my company has a notion that I'd ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... grasping soul was sick to handle and secure them. Abraham Allcraft, hunks as he was, was reputed wealthy. For years he had retained a high position as the opulent banker of the mercantile city of ——. His business was extensive—his habits mean, penurious; his credit was unlimited, as his character was unimpeachable. There are some men who cannot gain the world's favour, do what they will to purchase it. There are others, on the other hand, who, having no fair claim at all to it, are warmed and nourished ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... figure and a grace of movement which was particularly hers obtained her at last a situation as a mannequin in the show-rooms of a modiste. She took a room on the top floor of a house in the Rue St. Honore and settled down to a hard and penurious life. ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... related of a khalif who was wont to cheat poets of their expected reward when they recited their compositions to him, until he was at length outwitted by the famous Arabian poet Al-Asma'i: It is said that a khalif, who was very penurious, contrived by a trick to send from his presence without any reward those poets who came and recited their compositions to him. He had himself the faculty of retaining in his memory a poem after hearing it only once; he had a mamluk (white slave) who could ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... 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; for he steadily refused, upon principle, to relieve all common beggars. But, on the other hand, he was liberal ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... with groves and marshes there lived in a cabin, near Brighton, Massachusetts, an ill-fed rascal named Tom Walker. There was but one in the commonwealth who was more penurious, and that was his wife. They squabbled over the spending of a penny and each grudged food to the other. One day as Tom walked through the pine wood near his place, by habit watching the ground—for ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... Methods of assisting the Society to your own. It is certain, a Vote of Parliament has often set up useful Manufactures here, and this will be but a general one, for the setting up all. Nor is there any Cause to doubt of this publick Bounty, for tho' private Men are penurious, Nations are generous, and the publick Money is so easily raised, is paid by so many, and hurts so few, that even a Parliament of Misers might be Charitable. Every body is well disposed to bestow bounteously out of his Neighbour's Purse, to good Purposes, tho' he may be close enough or cautious ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... help comparing the irregular yet extensive and commodious pile of building before her to the "Manses" in her own country, where a set of penurious heritors, professing all the while the devotion of their lives and fortunes to the Presbyterian establishment, strain their inventions to discover what may be nipped, and clipped, and pared from a building which forms but a poor ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Drink the clear stream, and nothing wear but frieze, The All-giver would be unthanked, would be unpraised, Not half his riches known and yet despised; And we should serve him as a grudging master, As a penurious niggard of his wealth, And live like Nature's bastards, not her sons, Who would be quite surcharged with her own weight, And strangled with her waste fertility: The earth cumbered, and the winged air darked with plumes, The herds would over-multitude their lords; The sea o'erfraught ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... base that I never heard of any man who would confess that he had ever been guilty of it. Philip was my best friend, and I was always loath to think unkindly of him, but at this time I really think he began to be rather penurious—not avaricious, certainly not. But he was not a hermit of the holiest kind. He began to save money and acquire stock. He had not been long on the hill before he owned a horse, two dogs, a cat, a ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... he came home pretty fruitful, and next morning his head ached so he said he would buy me a dog if I would go down town and get a bottle of pollynurious water for him. You know that dye house on Grand avenue, where they have got the four white spitz dogs. When I went after the penurious water, I noticed they had been coloring their dogs with the dye stuff, and I put up a job with the dye man's little boy to help me play it on Pa. They had one dog dyed pink, another blue, another red, and another ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... with gay apparel as their staple in trade, they wore the most filthy rags themselves. It is said that they had no bed, and, to save the expense of one, always slept on a bundle of packing-cloths under the counter. In their housekeeping they were penurious in the extreme. A joint of meat did not grace their board for twenty years. Yet when the first of the brothers died, the other, much to his surprise, found large sums of money which had ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... dishonored man!" said Arthur MacNair. "In the valleys of my State, in the quiet farming districts all through the Union, among the hard-working, the penurious, and the plain—such as you and your class despise—there are armies of men who would rise and march upon this capital if they appreciated the whole of the scene in which you have figured to-day! You would steal the ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... a drop. I don't reckon I ever will, either. I don't take to the idea of back-trackin' to this farm an' gettin' old in overalls, like you say. I'm sort of penurious an' I aim to keep what little sense I got. A feller as dull as I ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... Antonio's principles. In our day of world-wide speculation and immense wealth it is just possible for a man to be a millionaire and generous; but in the sixteenth century, when wealth was made by penurious saving, by slow daily adding of coin to coin, merchants like this Antonio ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... countrymen; and Warwick was forced to expel the natives in order to secure the lives of his own troops.[266] But no vigilance of the besieged could insure the safety of a detached position on the borders of so powerful a state as France. Elizabeth was too weak, or too penurious, to afford the recruits that were loudly called for. And now a new and frightful auxiliary to the French made its appearance. A contagious disease set in among the English troops, crowded into a narrow compass ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... was the incumbent of other lucrative posts. Offices were created by Governor Dongan apparently for his sole benefit. His passion was to get together an estate which would equal the largest. Extremely penurious, he loaned money at frightfully usurious rates and hounded his victims without a vestige of sympathy.[21] As a trader and government contractor he made enormous profits; such was his cohesive collusion with high officials that competitors found it impossible ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... discarded her nephew Hugh. She had never been tenderly affectionate to Hugh, or she would hardly have asked him to live in London on a hundred a year. She had never really been kind to him since he was a boy, for although she had paid for him, she had been almost penurious in her manner of doing so, and had repeatedly given him to understand, that in the event of her death not a shilling would be left to him. Indeed, as to that matter of bequeathing her money, it was understood that it was her purpose ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... source of the wealth of capitalistic society, but the greatest part of the wealth produced goes to non-producers, the producers getting only a part, in the form of wages—hence the paradox of wealthy non-producers and penurious producers. ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... letter from my father's lawyer informing me of the death of my only surviving parent, at the same time informing me that he had left all his property to be divided equally between my brother and myself. His wealth was large, for his habits had been penurious, and I found myself the possessor of at least $10,000 a year. This of course entirely altered my prospects in life and it was natural that I should immediately throw up my engagement as governess and return home ...
— The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival - The Belle of the Delaware • Kate Percival
... official act of Colonel Hamilton. The penurious provision made for those who filled the high executive departments in the American government, excluded from a long continuance in office all those whose fortunes were moderate, and whose professional talents placed a decent independence within their reach. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... portrait transmitted by two poets who hated him thoroughly, each for the amply sufficient reason that he failed to confer the favors that were much desired. Swift calls Halifax "a would-be Maecenas"; and Pope refers to him as "penurious, mean and chicken-hearted," satirizing him in the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... Cambridge until 1695, for he did not gain his M.A. until that year. Despite the apparent success of his publisher's enterprises (A Most Complete Compendium was in its eighth edition by 1713, and The Gazetteer's or Newsman's Interpreter reached a twelfth in 1724), little of the profit reached the penurious Echard. In 1717 Archbishop Wake wrote to Addison that "His circumstances are so much worse than I thought, that if we cannot get somewhat pretty considerable for Him, I doubt He will sink under the weight of his ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... that Jezebel!" came the ringing denunciation. "The tricky, shameless, penurious, graspin' unprincipled little she-devil! She's after you, my boy, after you hard. An', you poor miserable blind worm of a fool, you ain't got the sense to see it! Everybody knows it; the whole country's talkin' about it; how Temple's baitin' his ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... for State's Prison, is in a fair way of being soon considered as a very undesirable place of residence. If owners of Apiaries, gardens and orchards, could be induced to pursue a more liberal policy, and not be so meanly penurious as they often are, I am persuaded that they would find it conduce very highly to their interests. The honey and fruit expended with a cheerful, hearty liberality, would be more than repaid to them in the good will secured, ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... unobstructed sweep of the ocean: but the evil genius of building prevailed, and the palace is fixed in a gloomy bottom, from which it can be overlooked by every body, and from which nothing can be seen. Frederick, though sometimes superb in his expenses, was habitually penurious. He seems to have thought that war was the only thing on which it was worth his while to spend money. The salaries of his gentlemen and attendants were all on the narrowest scale. Lord Malmesbury observes that even the Prince of Dessau's marriage, at which he was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... earth, came to the blackthorns, and then to the dogs, the biggest of which had eat the loins and greatest share of the hind parts of the little one." Mr. Hanbury states the deaths of these two sisters in the course of a few months after. The sums they accumulated by their penurious way of living, were immense. They bequeathed legacies by will to almost every body that were no kin to them except their assiduous attorney, Valentine Price, to whom they left nothing. "But what is strange and wonderful, though their charities in their ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... little more or less flour will make, and out of what quantity comes perfection! To feminine vision, more precious than "apples of gold in pictures of silver" are loaves of bread in dishes of tin. If one were ever penurious, might it not be of these handsome loaves of hers? The little housewife will be very gentle to the persecuted man of Scripture who was so reluctant to get up at midnight and give away his bread. She ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... commanded by Leicester, never saw the flash of Farnese's guns. For the superiority of Spain was not by sea, nor the greatness of England on land. But England thenceforth was safe, and had Scotland in tow. Elizabeth occupied a position for which her timorous and penurious policy, during so many years, had not prepared the world. She proposed terms to Philip. She would interfere no more in the Low Countries, if he would grant toleration. Farnese entered into the scheme, but Philip refused. The lesson of ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... Silent, penurious, shrewd to the margin of dishonesty; unrelenting as the rock-fronted fastnesses of her native hills; good-humored at times and even possessed of swift moods of tenderness that disarmed and appealed—such she was. She stood straight as a spruce despite ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... current rates for cutting metal, but Nickie was not penurious and grasping. He threw off his tattered coat, and, draped in fragments of a shirt, in a pair of trousers, half of which fluttered in the breeze, and boots that looked like a collection of ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... "Steeple-top," was a penurious, grasping, hardly social man of neighborhood origin, but of a family generally unsuccessful and undistinguished, which had been said to be dying out for so many years that it seemed to be always a remnant, ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... been too glad, I see, Too lifted for the scant degree Of life's penurious round; My little circuit would have shamed This new circumference, have blamed The homelier ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... unnaturally instituted, was with the imperial treasury at Vienna. Next, a word may be given to the room in which the proud, stern, and unrelenting Nicholas died, where all is kept intact as he left it. I have seldom been more impressed than with this small, simple, and almost penurious apartment, so striking in contrast with the splendour of the rest of the palace. Silence, solitude, and solemnity all the more attach to the spot from the statement to which credence is given that the great emperor, on learning of the reverses in the Crimea, here committed suicide. ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... the money. But those who had confidently expected to see her squander it were disappointed: on the contrary, it was presently whispered that she was exceeding penurious. That admirable woman Mrs. Stiver of Red Dog, who accompanied her to San Francisco to assist her in making purchases, was loud in her indignation. "She cares more for two bits than I do for five dollars. She wouldn't buy anything at the 'City of Paris' because ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... until they have scraped up sufficient to turn to advantage in their own country; and as I have served in all the great houses in Madrid, I am acquainted with the greatest part of them. I have nothing to say against the Asturians, save that they are close and penurious whilst at service; but they are not thieves, neither at home nor abroad, and though we must have our wits about us in their country, I have heard we may travel from one end of it to the other without the slightest fear of being either robbed or ill treated, which is not the ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... him—only three!—but Elsner in an earnest letter dissuaded his pupil from making any experiments that might hurt his originality of style. Chopin actually attended the class of Kalkbrenner but soon quit, for he had nothing to learn of the pompous, penurious pianist. The Hiller story of how Mendelssohn, Chopin, Liszt and Heller teased this grouty old gentleman on the Boulevard des Italiens is capital reading, if not absolutely true. Yet Chopin admired Kalkbrenner's finished technique despite his platitudinous manner. Heine said—or rather ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... of conduct in ministry is, and inconsistent with all just policy, it is still true to itself, and faithful to its own perverted order. Those who are bountiful to crimes, will be rigid to merit, and penurious to service. Their penury is even held out as a blind and cover to their prodigality. The economy of injustice is, to furnish resources for the fund of corruption. Then they pay off their protection to great crimes ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... not have stated in exact figures the sum, because, though she had known to a dime before the robbery, at, and after that time, she had recklessly tossed aside the little that remained. This wasted portion belonged with the whole amount, and being as truthful as she was penurious, she hesitated. Her color came and went, as she looked anxiously into John's face, realizing that he had laid a trap for her and ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... tattered volume of 'Monte Cristo,' which he had lately bought with an odd lot at a sale—but nothing that suggested to his fancy anything like the peasant farm in the Mont Ventoux, within sight of Arles, where Louise Suveret's penurious childhood had ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... regulation the Eiren, (9) or head of the flock, must see that his messmates gathered to the club meal, (10) with such moderate food as to avoid that heaviness (11) which is engendered by repletion, and yet not to remain altogether unacquainted with the pains of penurious living. His belief was that by such training in boyhood they would be better able when occasion demanded to continue toiling on an empty stomach. They would be all the fitter, if the word of command were given, to remain on the stretch for a long time without extra dieting. ...
— The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians • Xenophon
... died, and his fortune, as a younger brother, being literally next to nothing, and the family estate (for his brother was not unwilling to assist him) being terribly involved, it was believed that he struggled for some years with very embarrassed and penurious circumstances. During this interval of his life, however, he was absent from London, and by his brother supposed to have returned to the Continent; at length, it seems, he profited by a renewal of his friendship with the young nobleman who had accompanied him abroad, reappeared ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... father, not to say her grandfather, hoping, doubtless, that he would soon die; for, if ever a woman wished to be a widow, she is that woman. But the old fellow is tough and won't die. Moreover, he is deaf, and crabbed, and penurious, and half the time bed-ridden. The wife is a model of virtue, notwithstanding her weakness. She nurses the old gentleman as if he were a child. And, to crown all, he hates society, and will not hear of his wife's receiving or ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... although little known in Italy, had several houses in England up to the reign of Henry VIII. Like so many other Orders at that time, its members moved first to France and then to Italy, where it has survived in penurious dignity ever since. ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson
... out whether Mr. Makely approved of his wife's philosophy or not; I do not believe he thought much about it. The money probably came easily with him, and he let it go easily, as an American likes to do. There is nothing penurious or sordid about this curious people, so fierce in the pursuit of riches. When these are once gained, they seem to have no value to the man who has won them, and he has generally no object in life but to see his ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... hour's uneasiness. To be sure, he is despotic, but he is neither irritable nor unamiable. Besides, he has a great desire for social position (it aids in carrying out his plans), in which his wife is of real service. Hiram, although close and careful in all matters, is not what would be called penurious. In other words, he makes liberal provision for his household, while he rules it with rigor; besides, in petty things he ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... of Buffalmacco's ingenuity to rid himself of annoyance. Soon after he left Tafi, he took apartments adjoining those occupied by a man who was a penurious old simpleton, and compelled his wife to rise long before daylight to commence work at her spinning wheel. The old woman was often at her wheel, when Buonamico retired to bed from his revels. The buzz of the instrument put all sleep out of the question; so the painter resolved to put a ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... wife. Admirable creature, she bore every test he could apply. She was gentle, companionable, intelligent in converse, yet never forward in giving an opinion; too studious, rather, to efface herself; in household management economical without being penurious; a notable cook and needlewoman; in person by no means uncomely, and in mind as well as person so scrupulously neat that her unobtrusive presence, her noiseless circumspect flittings from room to room, exhaled an atmosphere of daintiness in ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to follow her, and they went into her father's room, where, to his surprise, he found some coffee ready for him—at that time a rarity, and one which Philip did not expect to find in the house of the penurious Mynheer Poots; but it was a luxury which, from his former life, the old man could not ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... follies for the great nobles of the last century. Under the Restoration the nobility cannot forget that it has been beaten and robbed, and so, with two or three exceptions, it has become thrifty, prudent, and stay-at-home, in short, bourgeois and penurious. Since then, 1830 has crowned the work of 1793. In France, henceforth, there will be great names, but no great houses, unless there should be political changes which we can hardly foresee. Everything takes the stamp ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... is unkind, and the ground penurious, so that the most fruitful years will produce only enough to maintain themselves; where life unimproved, and unadorned, fades into something little more than naked existence, and every one is busy for himself, ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... charms. Many of her delightful "way down south" phrases and mannerisms were blighted by the cold, unromantic atmosphere of a seminary conducted by two ladies from Boston who were too old to marry, too penurious to love and too prim to think that other women might care to do both. There were times, however,—if she were excited or enthusiastic,—when pretty Beverly so far forgot her training as to break forth with a very attractive "yo' all," "suah 'nough," or "go ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... that the soul of another is of a certain nature and possesses certain qualities, that he is generous and honest, or penurious and knavish, that she is virtuous and amiable, or vicious and ill-tempered, from the countenance alone, from little more than a glimpse of it, without the means of knowing. We venture our fortune on the signature of a man on the other side of the world, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... eligible provision that could have been devised. It will readily be understood that the fluctuations in the value of money and in the state of society rendered a fixed rate of compensation in the Constitution inadmissible. What might be extravagant to-day, might in half a century become penurious and inadequate. It was therefore necessary to leave it to the discretion of the legislature to vary its provisions in conformity to the variations in circumstances, yet under such restrictions as to put it out of the power of that body to change ...
— The Federalist Papers
... for rivalry, liberality for jealousy, and tending far more powerfully than any other means to realize the spirit of religion, by healing those inveterate disorders which, traced to their real origin, will be found rooted in an ignorant assumption as to the penurious severity of Providence, and the consequent greed of selfish men to confine what seemed as if extorted from it to themselves, or to steal from each other rather than quietly to ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... in the houses of King as Christmas drew nigh. The air was simply charged with secrets. Everybody was very penurious for weeks beforehand and hoards were counted scrutinizingly every day. Mysterious pieces of handiwork were smuggled in and out of sight, and whispered consultations were held, about which nobody thought of being jealous, as might have ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... always in very good condition, it had seen a good deal of travel, which, in time, gave it the name of the shunpike. But since Captain Asher had lived at the toll-gate it was remarked that the shunpike was not used as much as in former times. There were penurious people who had once preferred to go a long way round and save money whose economical dispositions now gave way before the combined attractions of a better road, and a chat ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... girl, brought from the alms-house, now did the drudgery of the family. Abner Dimock had grown penurious, and not one cent of money was given for comfort in that house, scarce for need. The girl was stupid and rude, but she worked for her board,—recommendation enough in Mr. Dimock's eyes; and so hard work was added to the other burdens loaded ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... discovered the loss of ten cents from her bureau drawer in which she kept her savings, had been kept awake by mental trouble. Some of my readers may think so small a loss scarcely worth keeping awake for, but Mrs. Joe Tucker was a strictly economical and saving woman—some even called her penurious—and the loss of ten ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... parsimony of the man. It might, however, have been obtained in the way of trade, for Maxwell had hinted that he did business under the sign of the "three golden balls." He was apparently in the neighborhood of five-and-forty, and looked like the debauchee in the face, while his dress indicated the penurious man of business. ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... serious difficulties; for the next year he was compelled to apply to either to relieve him from his necessities, or permit him to look for some employment more profitable than the ducal service. The answer of this prince, who was now rich, but had always been penurious, and who never laid out a farthing, if he could help it, except in defence of his capital, was an appointment of Ariosto to the government of a district in a state of anarchy, called Garfagnana, which had nominally returned ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... unventilated; narrow, cramped; close-mouthed, secretive, reticent, reserved, uncommunicative, taciturn; dense, solid, compact, imporous; near, adjacent, adjoining; intimate, confidential; parsimonious, stingy, penurious niggardly, miserly, illiberal, close-fisted; exact, literal, faithful; intent, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Thomas Smith's government, that being the only bridge (any way soe to be called) that was ever in the country. At this time in all these labours, the miserye throughout the wholl Collony, in the scarcitye of foode was equall; which penurious and harde kinde of liveinge, enforced and emboldened some to petition to Sir Thomas Gates (then Governor) to grant them that favor that they might employ themselves in husbandry, that therby they and all others by plantinge of corne, might be better ...
— Colonial Records of Virginia • Various
... however sad he may have been at heart, he always bore a bold and cheerful countenance, and took fortune's worst as it were the showers of spring. But now his mother sits alone by the side of Fontainebleau woods, where he gathered mushrooms in his hardy and penurious youth. ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... considered, that he was professionally required to deal with a class of persons not famed for prudence in pecuniary concerns, and to whom the methodical disbursements of most private gentlemen would probably have appeared penurious. ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt |
