"Prodigal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... misfortunes or misconduct of my ancestors; but enough was still attached to the old mansion, to give my uncle the title of a man of large property. This he employed (as I was given to understand by some inquiries which I made on the road) in maintaining the prodigal hospitality of a northern squire of the period, which he deemed essential to his ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Carolina had been busy exculpating herself from possible blame due to her failure to have prepared for the prodigal the sort of food she knew ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... must have its victims. You can't expect the fatted calf to share the enthusiasm of the angels over the prodigal's return. Another darling weakness of the Academy is that none of its luminaries must 'arrive' in a hurry. You can see them coming for years, like a Balkan trouble or a street improvement, and by the time they have painted a thousand or so square yards ...
— Reginald • Saki
... no warmth from that promised sunshine which the new monarch was to scatter in prodigal gaiety, has been distinctly told by the poet himself; his muse, in "The ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... drew nigh the city where he had spent his student years. On foot, weary, and dusty, and worn, he entered it like a returning prodigal. Few Scotchmen would think he had made good use of his learning! But he had made the use of it God required, and some Scotchmen, with and without other learning, have learned to think that a good use, and in itself ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... serene frugal household of Roper Ellwell where the wife had fitted boys "in the classical tongues" for Camberton, the family had come to this uncertain state, feverish, like the fickle fluctuations of the stock market; now prodigal and easy, again in a panicky distress with dire fear of unknown depths of poverty and humiliation. Whatever happened—reckless, with a philosophy that did ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... itself? And so it fell out that, as he read, Ruth's heart was smitten, and she sank down, and down, till she was kneeling on the floor of the pew, and speaking to God in the spirit, if not in the words, of the Prodigal Son: "Father! I have sinned against Heaven and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be called Thy child!" Miss Benson was thankful (although she loved Ruth the better for this self-abandonment) that the minister's seat was far in the shade of the gallery. ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Nature, so prodigal to you, Madame la Marquise, has not yet deflowered, nor recalled in the least degree, those graces and attractions which were lavished on you. Retire ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... envelop him, not trusting to his eyes. An old, rosy-cheeked woman in a sunbonnet came up behind the old man, shrieked out "Master David!" and only waited with twitching fingers for her own onslaught till the father had first embraced his prodigal son. This was done at least three times, accompanied with tears, blessings, prayers, the uplifting of poor filmy eyes to a cloudless Heaven—"Diolch i Dduw!"—ejaculations as to the wonder of it—"Rhyfeddol yw yn eiholl ffyrdd"—God's Providence—His ways ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... gone they began to understand that the town had looked upon Pop as a giant of industry, a prodigal of vicarious extravagance. They began to feel more keenly still how good a man he was. While they were flourishing like orchids in the sun and air, he had grubbed in the earth, sinking roots everywhere in search of moisture and of ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... of all these enterprises, the Government borrowed immense sums from foreign capitalists and issued vast quantities of paper money, with little regard for its ultimate redemption. Argentina spent huge sums in prodigal fashion on all sorts of public improvements in an effort to attract still more capital and immigration, and thus entered upon a ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... spacious, well-lighted room. At the opposite end was a long table set transversely, around three sides of which were seated a number of military dignitaries. That they were of considerable eminence was evident from their prodigal array of decorations. They glanced at me as I entered, but instantly resumed their low conversation and perusal of documents and other material connected with my case. It did not require a second thought to realise the ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... of surprise which appeared upon the tailor's face, Paul could see that Mascarin was not prodigal of ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... lesson of forgiveness, inculcated by the story of the Prodigal Son, is among the earliest and most familiar in the memories of a nation of Bible readers like our own. Every one of us, perhaps unconsciously, carries in mind a simple, straight-forward conception ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... susceptibility (as a man) and is prepared. She bides her time when like the prodigal, he will surely return, perhaps mentally and morally purified and a wiser, if a ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... and devotion, had but a brief reign, and was doomed to lead a dreary life of thirty-six years in penitence and neglect in a Carmelite convent. Madame de Montespan retained her ascendency longer for she had talents as well as physical beauty; she was the most prodigal and imperious of all the women that ever triumphed over the weakness of man. She reigned when Louis was in all the pride of manhood and at the summit of his greatness and fame,—accompanying him in his military ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... the sun pours forth, with the most prodigal liberality, its torrents of light and of heat. The earth can only grasp the merest fraction, less than the 2,000,000,000th part of the whole. Our fellow planets and the moon also intercept a trifle; but how small is the portion of the mighty flood which they can utilise! The sip that a flying ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... sir, my client's place supply, Profuse of robe, and prodigal of tie— Do you, with all those blushing powers of face, And wonted bashful hesitating grace, Rise in the court, and flourish on the ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... him? It seemed the crowning mockery; his blood surged faster; he forgot his purpose, when a figure coming out of a public house, through one of the doors near which he had halted, caught his attention. Dandy Joe, a prodigal with unexpected riches, wiped his lips as he sauntered past John Steele and continued ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... heroes and heroines of the Romantic Ballad is done on the spur of the moment, on the impulse of hot blood. Whether it be sin or sacrifice, the prompting is not that of convention, but of Nature herself. Love and hate, though they may burn and glow like a volcano, are not prodigal of words. It is one of the marks by which we may distinguish the characters in the ballads from those in later and more cultivated fields of literature that, as a rule, they say less rather than more than they mean. They speak daggers; but they are ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... that the German painters at the beginning of the sixteenth century succeed in representing with perfect mastery these scenes of country life, as, for instance, Albrecht Durer, in his engraving of the prodigal son. But it is one thing if a painter, brought up in a school of realism, introduces such scenes, and quite another thing if a poet, accustomed to an ideal or mythological framework, is driven by inward impulse into realism. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... glanced at a caption running half-way across the top of the front page; then, fretfully he crumpled up the printed sheet in his hand and let it fall upon the floor. He had no desire to read the account of his one failure. Why should the editor dwell at such length and with so prodigal a display of black head-line type upon this one bungled job when every other job of all the jobs that had gone before, had been successful in every detail? Let's see, now, how many men had he hanged with precision and with speed and with never an accident to mar the proceedings? ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... Aubigny, in the province of Berri in France, to which he added the title and dignity of Duchess and Peeress of France, with the revenues of the territory of Aubigny. And two years later King Charles, prodigal of the honours he conferred upon her, ennobled the son she had borne him in 1672. The titles of the Duke of Richmond and Lennox having lately reverted to the crown by the death of Frances Stuart's husband, who was ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... to their feet, astonished at this prodigal waste of a delicacy fit for kings. Chook stood for a moment, glowering with rage, and then ran at his enemy; but Pinkey ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... population, irrespective of age or worldly position, dressed in silks or in flannel shirts, as the case might be, still gathered almost weekly in truly democratic comradeship—the egg-shells were no longer filled with gold-dust, as sometimes happened in the prodigal Spanish days; yet time was still regarded as a thing of so little value that no one thought of abandoning the pleasures of the dance until broad daylight. Along the narrow, crooked streets of the little town, with its precarious ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... Philadelphia, according to his Custom, sent her Steward to relieve all the poor Prisoners about Town; among the rest he visited those in the common Side of the King's Bench, where he heard 'em call Sir William Wilding to partake of his Lady's Charity. The poor Prodigal was then feeding on the Relief of the Basket, not being yet able to get his Bread at his new Trade: To him the Steward gave a Crown, whereas the other had but Half a Crown apiece. Then he enquir'd of some of the unhappy Gentlemen, Sir William's Fellow-Collegians, of ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... knew, as all masters of the spiritual life have learned, there is more power in the eloquence of forgiving love than in the terrors of retribution; hence, with tears and burning sentiments of sympathy for the erring children of men, he led his hearers as it were by the hand to the Father of the prodigal—to that Jesus who forgave and loved ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... Lament," his first orchestral composition, suggested by Murillo's picture; the lyric opera, "Antonio;" a first symphony, of which the adagio was performed in Berlin, the other movements being produced in Boston and Chicago; a second symphony, "The Prodigal Son;" a romantic opera, "Zenobia," produced in Chicago; a lyric opera, "Lucille," which ran for three weeks in Chicago; a symphonic suite based on the "Tempest;" a canon for a string quartette; ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... dead men—healthy dead men, don't you know? But—give you my word—a cadaverous spectacle like that poor chap, bones stickin' out of his hide, and breathin' as if he was stuffed with dry shavin's, or husks like the Prodigal Son, gives me ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... deliberate effort to shut out the thought of debts and duels, deceit and evil luck? In that music Mozart disputes the palm with Moliere. The terrific finale, with its glow, its power, its despair and laughter, its grisly spectres and elfish women, centres about the prodigal's last effort made in the after-supper heat of wine, the frantic struggle which ends the drama. Victurnien was living through this infernal poem, and alone. He saw visions of himself—a friendless, solitary ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... Sunday evening when we first entered it. The lights were burning, the blinds were drawn, and there were 23 people in the place. In a pew on the left-hand side a little old man was holding forth as to the "prodigal son." It was the first time he had ever talked in the chapel, and he has never said a word since. He had a peculiarly free and easy style. Sometimes he leaned over the pew door, and beat time with one foot whilst talking; at other periods he ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... was at the flood. It was pay-day and the boss was in high good humor. Either occurrence was always good for a number of rounds of free drinks. But when Mascola was happy on pay-day, the liberality of the "Red Paint" was indeed prodigal. ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... odd volumes picked up cheap at fairs; an old musket (occasionally Ben's companion, sometimes Tom's) is hooked to the rafters near a double rope of onions; divers gaudy little prints, tempting spoil of pedlars, in honour of George Barnwell, the Prodigal Son, the Sailor's Return, and the Death of Nelson, decorate the walls, and an illuminated Christmas carol is pasted over the mantel-piece: which, among other chattels and possessions, conspicuously bears its own burden of Albert and Victoria—two ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... house-keeping; courtiers, who come there for society and news; adventurers, who have no home; Templars, who dine there daily; and men about town, who dine at whatever place is nearest to their hunger. Lords, citizens, concealed Papists, spies, prodigal 'prentices, precisians, aldermen, foreigners, officers, and country gentlemen, all are here. Some have come on foot, some on horseback, and some in those new caroches ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... men with newly invented methods. They have been out after the things they wanted—golden fleeces, holy grails, lady loves, treasure, crowns and fame. The true adventurer goes forth aimless and uncalculating to meet and greet unknown fate. A fine example was the Prodigal ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... so many others I may speak my Opinion of him, I think, that, having been a Prodigal in his Youth, and afterward changed to a zealous Religiousness, he meant honestly in the main, and was pious and conscionable in the main course of his Life, till Prosperity and Success corrupted him: that, at his first entrance into the Wars, being but a Captain of Horse, he had a special ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... with me upon the threshold of the world, just so, with blown- back hair and shining eyes. Blessed one, blessed prodigal! She poured out her heart like water-for a dog to lap. He was dog-headed, full in the eye, a rich feeder. She decked him with the fair garlands of her thoughts, she made him glisten with her holy oils. She crowned him with starry beams from her eyes, she sweetened him with the ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... resources have been wasted in a prodigal way. Forests have been recklessly cut, fires been invited and the soil itself has been sacrificed. Natural gas and oil have been burned with no regard for the future. Coal and other minerals have ...
— Social Justice Without Socialism • John Bates Clark
... the means by which he bought land, now worth hundreds of millions of dollars? For once, we get a gleam of the truth, but a gleam only, in the "popular writer's" account when he says: "John Jacob Astor's record is constantly crossed by embarrassed families, prodigal sons, mortgages and foreclosure sales. Many of the victims of his foresight were those highest in church and state. He thus acquired for $75,000 one-half of Governor George Clinton's splendid Greenwich country place [in the old Greenwich village on the west side of Manhattan ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... most of them were young men who had once been in better circumstances, but who now were reduced to get their living by calling papers about the streets. A few fine characters might have been picked out amongst those prodigal sons, as they stood warming their backs, or grouped together in this ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... Nottingham To study as they did stand, Saying, "Surely he is some prodigal That has sold ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... "Hercules in Repose," for which he was esteemed by contemporaries or is prized by posterity. He is admirable where he is inimitable—that is to say, in the delightful decoration of which he was so prodigal. It is not in his compositions essaying what is usually meant by sculptural effect, but in his vases, clocks, pendants, volutes, little reliefs of nymphs riding dolphins over favoring breakers and amid hospitable foam, his toilettes of Venus, his facade ornamentations, his ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... of Joseph would be equally great if his name had been Fu Chow, and Pharaoh had been the Emperor Wu Wong Wang. Hamlet would be immortal if his name were L. Percy Smith and his uncle a pork packer in Omaha. The prodigal son has no name, the swine he fed knew no country. Particular names, local places, and passing forms and institutions are not the essence of literature. For those who formerly read Brann in The Iconoclast he was a Texas journalist in the free silver ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... strength, and all above is grace. . . . . . We cannot envy you, because we love. . . . . . Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought, But Genius must be born, and never can be taught. This is your portion, this your native store; Heav'n, that but once was prodigal before. To Shakespeare gave as much; she could ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... come. It was a piece of childish folly on the boy's part no doubt, this going away; due to his impetuous nature and his immature years; but, he had made his bed, now let him lie in it till he should come to a realization of what he had done, and, like the prodigal son of old, should come back of his own accord, and ask to be forgiven. Yet the days went by, and the weeks grew long, and no prodigal returned. There was no abatement of determination on the grandfather's part, but the idea grew slowly in his mind that ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... old—"portrait painter in ordinary to His Majesty." In other respects, too, were honours equally balanced between them; they were both made Royal Academicians, but in this, youth had the start of age—Lawrence obtained that distinction first. Nature, too, had been kind—some have said prodigal—to both; they were men of fine address, and polished by early intercourse with the world and by their trade of portrait painting could practise all the delicate courtesies of drawing-room and boudoir; but in that most fascinating ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... bank-notes with him was a contingency; that he would carry about with him two thousand napoleons was an absurdity. And Durkin knew the money had not been deposited—to ascertain that had been part of his day's work. The Prince, of course, was a prodigal and free-handed gentleman—how much of his winnings had already leaked through his careless fingers it was impossible to surmise. Durkin even resented the thought of that extravagance—as though it were a personal and obvious injustice to himself. If it was all the fruit ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... lovely day—warm enough to dine with the windows open. The faintest air seemed to waft sunlight from corner to corner of the room; numberless birds sang on the near boughs and hedges; the flowers on the table were like a careless gift of gold-hearted prodigal summer. Richard transferred himself in spirit to a certain square on the borders of Hoxton and Islington, within scent of the Regent's Canal. The house there was now inhabited by Emma and her sisters; they also would be at dinner. Suppose ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... not more worshipfully. "They glided down the stream," he writes, "by islands choked with trees and matted with entangling grape- vines, by forests, groves and prairies, the parks and pleasure-grounds of a prodigal nature; by thickets and marshes and broad bare sand-bars; under the shadowing trees between whose tops looked down from afar the bold brow of some woody bluff. At night, the bivouac, the canoes inverted on the bank, the ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... the word, Mr. Gibney grasped the whistle cord and a strange, sad, sneezing, wheezy moan resembling the expiring protest of a lusty pig and gradually increasing into a long-drawn but respectable whistle rewarded his efforts. For once, he could afford to be prodigal with the steam, and while it lasted there could be no mistaking the fact that here was a steamer ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... for this handsome scamp who had put this outrage upon them all. It was bad enough to be a thief, but to this he had added deception, falsehood, and gross ingratitude. Nor did the girl's contempt spare herself. Neither warning nor advice—and Lady Jim had been prodigal of both—had availed to open her eyes about the Westerner. She had been as foolish over him as a schoolgirl in the matter of a matinee idol. That she would have to lash herself for her folly through many sleepless hours of the night ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... that within a few hours, perhaps minutes, he and Verka would be corpses; and for that reason, although he had in his pocket only eleven kopecks, all in all, he gave orders sweepingly, like a habitual, downright prodigal; he ordered sturgeon stew, double snipes, and fruits; and, in addition to all this, coffee, liqueurs and two bottles of frosted champagne. And he was in reality convinced that he would shoot himself; but thought of it somehow affectedly, as though admiring, a trifle from the side, his ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... to greet one. It was almost with a feeling of awe that I sometimes climbed those stairs and entered into his presence. Perhaps it would be for a lesson on the New Testament—for when I was reading for a Theological Tripos he was generous, even prodigal, of help. The lesson over—and there are many who know what a goodly thing a lesson from him on the New Testament was—he would open a volume of Tennyson—"In Memoriam" most likely—read a few stanzas, and begin to ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... take life in her hand—however precious a thing, what use is it if you hoard it?—and see what she could make of it, what usury its free loan to fate and fortune would earn. She might lose it; youth made light of the risk. She might crawl back in sad plight; the Prodigal Son did not think of that when he set out. She found herself wishing she had nothing, that she might be free to start on the ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... of pink and blue wild flowers. Birds were flying from tree to tree, calling and singing, and there fell pleasantly upon Pearl's ears the ripple and splash of the mountain brook. The joy in her heart at Harry's recovery mingled pleasantly with nature's joy in her prodigal, flowering summer. ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... The Kaiser, prodigal of verbal boons, Congratulates his brave Bayreuth Dragoons Upon their prowess, which, he tells them, yields Joy "to old Fritz up in Elysian fields." Perhaps; but what if he is down below? In any case what we should like to know Is how his modern namesake, Private Fritz, ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... old time of "Kentucky" was sung with animation, after which came the sermon, of which the marquis understood but few words, though he understood the pantomime by which the venerable minister represented the return of the prodigal and the welcome he received. When he saw the tears in the eyes of the hearers, and heard the half-repressed "Bless the Lord!" of an old brother or sister, and saw them glance joyfully at one another's faces as the sermon went on, he was ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... because in the nature of things his responsibilities for the vagrancies of his kinsman were inevitably less intimate. As he was not willing to enter the Church, his uncle now thought that Goldsmith should go to London and study law at the Temple. He gave the prodigal fifty pounds, and bade him God-speed. Goldsmith made his way as far as Dublin. There, passing a merry and philanthropic time with new and old familiars, he gambled away, and gave away, and lost his money, and all too soon had none for further ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... d'Eglemont, who had journeyed all the way from Brittany to see him for two or three days, had received him with that touch of painful affection which the kindly and the prosperous so often bestow on those whom they feel to be at once beloved and prodigal. ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... sunk to the level of an ordinary libertine and drunkard; of a faithful brother who, compelled by the necessity of rescuing the honor of business and home, had shouldered the care of everything and as a reward was being persecuted unto death by the degraded prodigal. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... sorry to say that Cuckoo did not meet his father with an affectionate embrace, but at first positively refused to go with him; and when compelled to accompany him as a prodigal son and wanderer, he dug his knuckles into his eyes and began to cry. Poor little Cuckoo knew that the days of beef and good cooking had passed away. He expressed his determination to run away from his father and to return to us; but as his home was on the west ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... he had come out there was no question in the mind of the captain. The latter had left Mr. Thomas, the prodigal father, prostrate and blasphemous in the road the previous evening. His next view of him was when, transformed and sanctified, he had been summoned to the platform by Mr. Atkins. No doubt he had returned to the barber shop and, in his rage and under Mr. Simpson's ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... out, at Drury Lane. Who gave her that name? Is it her "Pettitt nom," or was it her Godfather, Sir DRURIOLANUS LE GRAND, or was it the joint effort of GRAND et PETTITT, so as to satisfy all comers Great and Small? The Prodigal Son has already served as the title of an Opera directly founded on the Scriptural parable of the Prodigal, and has recently been used as the title of the now famous ballet d'action. There was also a Pere Prodigue—which the English ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 3, 1892 • Various
... over the Plover Slough to see Mrs. Paine. She noticed the quantity of machinery which stood in the yard, some under cover of the big shingled shed, and some of it sitting out in the snow, gray and weather-beaten. The yard was littered, untidy, prodigal, wasteful—every sort of machine had evidently been bought and used for a while, then discarded. But within doors there was a bareness that struck Pearl's heart with pity. The entrance at the front of the house was banked high with snow, and evidently ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... passion. Moliere, on the other hand, without attaining this object, puts a complicated machine in motion. Here we have a lover of the daughter, who, disguised as a servant, flatters the avarice of the old man; a prodigal son, who courts the bride of his father; intriguing servants; an usurer; and after all a discovery at the end. The love intrigue is spun out in a very clumsy and every-day sort of manner; and it has the effect of making us at different times lose sight altogether of Harpagon. Several scenes of a ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... defiles of Tesino, or on the glaciers of Mount Pragal, he was the first to throw himself into it, and his name had frequently been mentioned as worthy of distinction. Souvarow was too brave himself to be prodigal of honours where they were not merited. Foedor was returning, as he had promised, worthy of his noble protector's friendship, and who knows, perhaps worthy of Vaninka's love. Field-Marshal Souvarow had made a friend of him, and none could know to what this friendship ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... acquaintance with Egypt and its literature, and the opportunities of discovery afforded him by his position for several years as director of the Bulaq Museum, give him an unique claim to speak with authority on the history of the valley of the Nile. In the present work he has been prodigal of his abundant stores of learning and knowledge, and it may therefore be regarded as the most complete account of ancient Egypt that has ever yet ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... in performing the duties of their office. The gentleness and gaiety of the king were reflected in the life of his subjects: all the scenes which they have left us consist entirely of processions, cavalcades, banquets, and entertainments. Khuniatonu was prodigal in the gifts of gold and the eulogies which he bestowed on Mariri, the chief priest: the people dance around him while he is receiving from the king the just recompense of his activity. When Huia, who came back from Syria in the XIIth year of the king's reign, brought ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... and shall perhaps find it so one day. But that, at any rate, Friedrich's life is spared; Katte's execution shall suffice in that kind. Repentance, prostrate submission and amendment,—these may do yet more for the prodigal, if he will in heart return. These points, some time before the 8th of November, we find to ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... of the prodigal son teaches us the same lesson. We read of this in the same chapter, St. Luke xv: 11-32. This son had been disobedient and ungrateful. He had taken the money his father gave him and had gone away and spent it in living very wickedly. ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton
... Christianity with its marvellous parable of the Prodigal Son to teach us indulgence and pardon. Jesus was full of love for souls wounded by the passions of men; he loved to bind up their wounds and to find in those very wounds the balm which should heal them. Thus he said to the ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... more, and they the majority of Trumet's intelligent people, who understood and appreciated. Dr. Parker, a man with a reputation for dangerously liberal views concerning religious matters and an infrequent attendant at church, was enthusiastic and prodigal of praise. ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... reigned without contest, by a triumphal acclamation of 3,572,329 suffrages against 2569 "Noes." The country was eager to salute its new master, with a curiosity mixed with confidence in the unexpected resources of his genius. The courtiers alone around him who had found no place in the prodigal distribution of honors, muttered their murmurs. They served him nevertheless; and Talleyrand remained minister of foreign affairs, even when all the important posts of the ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... believed in the Tennessee land—Jane Clemens's favorite cousin, James Lampton, the courtliest, gentlest, most prodigal optimist of all that guileless race. To James Lampton the land always had "millions in it"—everything had. He made stupendous fortunes daily, in new ways. The bare mention of the Tennessee land sent him off into ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Christ that even you are welcome when you come; the gate stands open; the Redeemer from within is calling chief sinners in, He has pledged himself to cast no comer out because of his worthlessness. Nor does the freeness of his grace prove that the prodigal's sins are small; it proves only that the forgiving love of Christ ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... China graciously consented to allow the prodigal to return and "killed the fatted calf" by conferring high honors and titles upon the Hutukhtu. Moreover, he appointed the Living Buddha's good friend (?) "Little Hsu" to ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... of passion and ruin a life, or a spasm of dishonesty and rob a bank, but he cannot understand how one can be convicted of sin, and, in a spasm of repentance, be born again. That would be a miracle, and miracles are inconsistent with evolution. It shocks the higher critic to have the prodigal son come back so suddenly after going away ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... fortunes has so greatly affected, for good or for ill, his poetic reputation. Those who detested his character and condemned his way of living found it difficult to praise his verses; they detected the serpent under every stone. For those who were fascinated by the picture of a reckless prodigal, always in love and in debt, with fierce passions and a haughty contempt for the world, who defied public opinion and was suspected of unutterable things—such a personality added enormous zest to his poetry. But now that Byron's whole career has been once more laid out before his countrymen, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... Prodigal as had been Father Feeny and his battalion, there was more grafting needed before the Avenue Girl could take her scarred body and soul out into the world again. The Probationer offered, but was ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... we could eat a sandwich in the park, but the matter of a bed, the business of sleeping in a maelstrom like New York was something more than serious—it was dangerous. Frank, naturally of a more prodigal nature, was all for going to the Broadway Hotel. "It's only for one night," said he. He always was rather ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... I was very prodigal of my ill-gotten goods, thus to load a stranger with my bounty, and give a gift like a prince to one that had been able to merit nothing of me, or indeed know me; but my condition ought to be considered in this case; though ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... together forming the great mass of 200 billion feet of lumber. Where forest areas are cut off, the [Page 10] sun and air at once start to life seeds which lie dormant in the shade and a new crop at once starts and the old ground is in a few years reforested in nature's prodigal way, a thousand seeds sprouting and growing where only one giant can ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell
... she was rather enjoying herself. It was all so extremely like the sort of plays over which she had been accustomed to shed tears. The Prodigal's Return! And on Christmas Eve! It only required a little snow to be falling and a crying infant at ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... an opportunity for strong acting. He could see that. He stayed late with Baird and his staff one night and a scene of the prodigal's return to the door of the little home was shot in a blinding snow-storm. Baird warmly congratulated the mechanics who contrived the storm, and was enthusiastic over the acting of the hero. Through the wintry blast he staggered, half falling, to reach the door ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... woman to whom that son was devoted. Persecuted by his father, he died abroad, and his widow returned to England. Not having a relation, and scarcely an acquaintance, in the world, she made an appeal to her husband's father, the wealthiest noble in England, and a man who was often prodigal, and occasionally generous, who respected law, and despised opinion. Lord Monmouth decided that, provided she gave up her child, and permanently resided in one of the remotest counties, he would make her ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... we certainly cannot believe that its editor had better information than those of the First Folio, who were the poet's personal friends, and who did not include these plays. The spurious dramas printed in the Third Folio were: The London Prodigal, The History of the Life and Death of Thomas Lord Cromwell, The History of Sir John Oldcastle, The Puritan Widow, Yorkshire Tragedy, and The ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... another in strict sequence or that they are one and all absolutely indispensable for justification. It is certain, however, that the process invariably begins with faith and ends with contrition accompanied by a firm purpose of amendment. In exceptional cases (e.g. the Prodigal Son, Mary Magdalen) perfect charity seems immediately to follow faith, and may then be said virtually to include the intermediate stages of fear, hope, and contrition. Yet this is not the usual way. Ordinarily faith elicits fear, which ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... the love of a mother to her prodigal son that makes her pray for him. True love to souls will become in us the spirit of intercession. It is possible to do a great deal of faithful, earnest work for our fellowmen without true love to them. Just as a lawyer or ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray
... by all means, the more of them the better, but use them temperately, sparingly. Do not think that a passage to be admirable must be studded with ostentatious terms. Consider the Gettysburg Address or the Parable of the Prodigal Son. These convey their thought and feeling perfectly, yet both are simple—exquisitely simple. They strike us indeed as being inevitable—as if their phrasing could not have been other than it is. They have, they are, finality. What could glittering phraseology add to them? ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... thought that she was grown a great girl now. She called her father, and all the household, and after a while the old doctor came home, and the fatted calf was killed, and all made merry over the return of this altogether unrepentant prodigal son. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the famous Villa of Lucullus, who had accumulated an enormous fortune when general of the Roman army in Asia, and spent it on his retirement from active life in the most sumptuous entertainments and the most prodigal luxuries. Here he gave his celebrated feast to Cicero and Pompey. From Lucullus, the magnificent grounds passed into the possession of Valerius Asiaticus; and while his property they became the scene of a tragedy which reminds one of the story of ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... its crimes, I beseech him to consider his ways. Why should he live a curse to the earth—a destroyer of his kind—a blot upon creation—a dishonour to his Maker? Heaven and earth are equally ready to receive the returning prodigal. The only danger—the only disgrace is to continue where you are. In behalf of our Maker, in behalf of humanity, in behalf of all that is noble and virtuous, I beseech you to TURN, why ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... of an automobile door and the sound of foot steps coming up the concrete walk. The Prim butler was already waiting at the doorway with the doors swung wide to receive the prodigal daughter of the house of Prim. A slender figure with bowed head ascended the steps, guided and assisted by the detective. She did not look up at the expectant butler waiting for the greeting he was sure Abigail would have for him; but passed ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to him with the penitential aspect of the prodigal son; and, faith, he would have not made a bad representation of the fatted calf about to be killed on my return,—so corpulent looked he, and so dejected! 'Graceless reprobate!' he began, 'your poor father is dead!' I was exceedingly shocked; but—never fear, Paul, I am not about to ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hundred invitations were sent out. And the aid of the three great ministers of fashion—Vourienne, Devizac, and Dureezie—were called in, and each was furnished with a carte-blanche as to expenses. And as to squander the money of the prodigal heiress was to illustrate their own arts, they availed themselves of the ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... they also pursued him when he walked in his garden or withdrew to the privacy of his chamber, and if they failed to catch him there, would try to win him with a mendicant ode or elegy, filled, as usual, with the whole population of Olympus. For Leo, prodigal of his money, and disliking to be surrounded by any but cheerful faces, displayed a generosity in his gifts which was fabulously exaggerated in the hard times that followed. His reorganization of the Sapienza has been already spoken of. In order not to underrate Leo's influence on hu- ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... abundance tractable) and made it (as I was credibly inform'd) arrive to seven or eight foot height in one year; (which does not agree with the epithet, lenta cupressus); but with us, we may not be too prodigal; since, being once well taken, they thrive best in our sandy, light and warmest grounds, whence Cardan says, juxta aquas arescit; meaning in low and moorish places, stiff and cold earth, &c. where ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... lily in its beauty shaming a king's array, a lily, toiling not, but upward growing, furnished him a text from which to preach the providence of God; and a wandering beggar boy far away from home and kindred, stained with sin and dark with sorrow, gave occasion for the wondrous story of the Prodigal Son and a father's changeless and ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... my sublime calling. About a month ago I was seated in an upper apartment in a fit of rapture. There was a pen in my hand, and paper before me on the table, and likewise a jug of good ale, for I always find that the awen is most prodigal of her favours when a jug of good ale is before me. All of a sudden my wife came running up, and told me that Sir Richard was below, and wanted to speak to me. 'Tell him to walk up,' said I. 'Are you mad?' said my wife. 'Don't you know who Sir Richard is?' 'I do,' said I, 'a baronet is a baronet, ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... is in a great measure dependent on the character of its time; and who would promise the approbation of the present time to such earnest beginnings, when Art, on the one hand, scarcely obtains equal consideration with other instruments of prodigal luxury, and, on the other, artists and amateurs, with entire want of ability to grasp Nature, praise ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... be paid for his pictures about two centuries after his death. The "Flemish Kermes" was bought for the Brussels Museum in 1867 for twenty-five thousand dollars, and at the San Donato sale, in 1880, the "Prodigal Son" sold for sixteen thousand two hundred dollars, and the "Five Senses" for fifteen thousand dollars. It is difficult to distinguish the etchings of the son from those of the father, David Teniers the elder, though it is well known ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... find all out of course; as a garden neglected, all overgrown,—as a house not inhabited all dropping through,—in a word, wholly ruinous, through intolerable negligence! It was the first turn of the prodigal to return to himself, "he came to himself," Luke xv. 17. Truly, sin is not only an aversion from God, but it is an estrangement from ourselves, from our souls, from our own happiness. It is a madness that takes ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... interests, the hatreds, the friendships, of the man she loves; she acquires in a day the experience of a man of business; she studies the code, she comprehends the mechanism of credit, and could manage a banker's office; naturally heedless and prodigal, she will make no mistakes and waste not a single louis. She becomes, in turn, mother, adviser, doctor, giving to all her transformations a grace of happiness which reveals, in its every detail, her infinite love. She combines the special qualities ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... that promised the widest opportunity for his talent, he discovered the Immanuel Church in the city. Here philanthropy burned with such zealous enthusiasm that the harvest was not sufficient for the laborers. Phineas saw his chance and grasped it. He became a Prodigal Son. ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... Heavenly Father deals with His erring children. He shuts Himself out from them. He allows evil to overtake them, but not the less does He love them. He thus afflicts them that they may more fully feel their dependence on Him, and return like the prodigal ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... I assure you I am not angry. I am merely a little sorry for human nature. I could have sworn Woods was honest. But rogues all, rogues all, Kathleen! Money rules us in the end; and now the parable is fulfilled, and Love the prodigal returns to make merry over the calf of gold. Confess," Mr. Kennaston queried, with a smile, "is it not strange an all-wise Creator should have been at pains to fashion this brave world about us for little men and women such as we to lie and pilfer ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... them with his name. In the year 1503 he published a little Madonna, in which he surpassed both Martin and his own self; and afterwards many other sheets with horses, two in each sheet, taken from nature and very beautiful. In another he depicted the Prodigal Son, in the guise of a peasant, kneeling with his hands clasped and gazing up to Heaven, while some swine are eating from a trough; and in this work are some most beautiful huts after the manner of German cottages. He engraved a little S. Sebastian, bound, with the arms upraised; and a Madonna seated ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... gulp the air, I saw around me ever new and stranger growths—orchids, giant creepers, the noni enata, a small bush with crimson pears upon it, the toa, or ironwood, which gave deadly clubs in war-time, but now spread its boughs peacefully amidst the prodigal ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... next to Paris, the most brilliant city of Europe in the early part of last century. But under Russian influence it became a provincial town in spirit, if not in size. It once had the character of prodigal splendor; within late years it became a forlorn, neglected city, not the least effort being made by the Russian authorities to modernize its appearance and improvement. From a sanitary point of view it became one ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... population; yet there is no evidence of it in the New Testament; the great herd of swine, 2,000 in number, mentioned in the narrative of the possessed, was feeding in the territory of Gadara, which belonged to the Decapolis; and the prodigal son became a swineherd with the native of a far country into which he had wandered; in neither of these cases is there reason for thinking that the possessors of these ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... When the prodigal got to his feet, the door stood open and his wife was waiting to receive him. At sight of her, dressed as she had been when he left her, a sudden flame of guilt and shame burned through him; but it served only to clear his brain and strengthen his will-power, which ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... desperate battle; there was Sir Martin Frobisher, one of the earliest explorers of the Arctic seas in search of that North-West Passage which is still the darling object of England's boldest mariners. There was the high-admiral of England, Lord Howard of Effingham, prodigal of all things in his country's cause, and who had recently had the noble daring to refuse to dismantle part of the fleet, though the Queen had sent him orders to do so, in consequence of an exaggerated report that the enemy ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... until the sputtering glow of half a dozen of them filled the room. It was a wretched wastefulness, but it was also a moment in which he felt himself fighting to get hold of himself properly. And he felt also the desire to be prodigal about something. When he had lighted his sixth candle, and then faced Celie, she was standing near the table looking at him so quietly and so calmly and with such a wonderful faith in her eyes that he thanked God devoutly he had kissed her only once—just that ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... commencement of his lecture. Having ascended his desk, he gives a hearty rub to his hands, and plunges at once into his subject. He reads very closely, which, indeed, must be expected, considering the nature of the topics which he undertakes to discuss. He is not prodigal of gesture with his arms or body; but there is something in his eye and countenance which indicates great earnestness of purpose, and the most intense interest in his subject. You can almost fancy, in some of his more enthusiastic and energetic moments, ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... Panel Font at Hildesheim, 12th Century Portrait Statuette of Peter Vischer A Copper "Curfew" Sanctuary Knocker, Durham Cathedral Anglo-Saxon Crucifix of Lead Detail, Bayeux Tapestry Flemish Tapestry, "The Prodigal Son" Tapestry, Representing Paris in the 15th Century Embroidery on Canvas, 16th Century, South Kensington Museum Detail of the Syon Cope Dalmatic of Charlemagne Embroidery, 15th Century, Cologne Carved Capital from Ravenna Pulpit of Nicola Pisano, Pisa Tomb of the Son of St. Louis, St. Denis Carvings ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... would. Their huge conceit of intelligence would breed perhaps some viler swindle than my facetious rappings. That's the line our doubting bishops take, and why shouldn't I? For example, these people might give it to Public Charities, minister to the fattened secretary, the prodigal younger son. After all, at worst, I am a sort of latter-day Robin Hood; I take from the rich according to their incomes. I don't give to the poor certainly, I don't get enough. But—there are other good works. Many a poor weakling have I comforted ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... any absolutely dead matter anywhere, as being implicitly a denial of the indwelling spirit.—A free spirit, certainly, as of old! Through all his pantheistic flights, from horizon to horizon, it was still the thought of liberty that presented itself, to the infinite relish of this "prodigal son" of Dominic. God the Spirit had made all things indifferently, with a largeness, a beneficence, impiously belied by any theory of restrictions, distinctions, of absolute limitation. Touch! see! listen! eat freely ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... that are before, being a notable lover of poverty, one that kept lowliness and loved sobriety. He was the very beauty of purity, a pattern of simplicity, a strong upholder of discipline, an enemy of sin, a light of virtue, an ensample of devotion, strong in faith, long suffering in hope, prodigal in charity, and one that did convert many from the vanity of the world. A few things concerning him are written in the beginning of ...
— The Chronicle of the Canons Regular of Mount St. Agnes • Thomas a Kempis
... come inexcusable waste. We have squandered a great part of what we might have used, and have not stopped to conserve the exceeding bounty of nature, without which our genius for enterprise would have been worthless and impotent, scorning to be careful, shamefully prodigal as well as admirably efficient. We have been proud of our industrial achievements, but we have not hitherto stopped thoughtfully enough to count the human cost, the cost of lives snuffed out, of energies overtaxed ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... a third sort of sinner, spoken of in Christ's next parable in this chapter, from which my text is taken, of whom it is not said that God the Father sends out to seek and to save him. That is the prodigal son, who left his father's house, and strayed away of his own wantonness and free will. Christ does not go out after him. He has gone away of his own will; and of his own will he must come back: and he has to pay a heavy price for his folly—to taste hunger, shame, misery, all but despair. For ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... a thousand and odd times—is one of the few languages which is unaccompanied with gesticulation. Your veritable Englishman, in his discourse, is as chary as your genuine Frenchman is prodigal, of action. The one speaks like an oracle, the other ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various
... the flying art notions of the hour was to revive the old subjects which contained the eternal essentials of life and present them in "palpitatingly modern" form. I eloquently developed my thesis. We were sick to death, for instance, of the quasi-scriptural Prodigal Son, sitting half-naked in a desert beside a swine trough. Was it not more "palpitating" to set the prodigal in ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... the declarations and examples which we have herein drawn from the Scriptures of the Old Testament. If, on the other hand, he is inclined to mercy, he has the example of Jesus Christ, who represented the prodigal son as received and forgiven when he returned and repented, who dismissed the woman taken in adultery, when by the law she deserved to be stoned, and who said that he would have ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... or west. A hundred pounds, only a hundred pounds; a bagatelle, a thing that to many men was as small an affair as a stray sixpence; and here was this man, as good, so to speak, as any—well educated, full of gifts and accomplishments, well born, well connected, not a prodigal nor open sinner, losing himself in the very blackness of darkness, feeling that a kind of moral extinction was the only prospect before him, for want of this little sum. It seemed incredible even to himself, as he sat and brooded over it. Somehow, surely, there must be a way of deliverance. ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... upon it. A kind of Jack's beanstalk, and every morning starred with turquoise blue trumpet mouths of ravishing beauty, which were dead at noon. The poor thing was constrained to be a hierodule, gave no seed. Nature is the prodigal's foster-mother. ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... detected the intellectual defiance which had politically isolated Silas Ruthyn and opposed him to the landed oligarchy of his county, whose retaliation had been a hideous slander. There, too, and on his brows and lip, I traced the patience of a cold disdain. I could now see him as he was—the prodigal, the hero, and the martyr. I stood gazing on him with a girlish interest and admiration. There was indignation, there was pity, there was hope. Some day it might come to pass that I, girl as I was, might contribute by word or deed towards the vindication of ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... the money in internal improvements. You can not have forgotten the severe and doubtful struggle through which we passed when the executive department of the Government by its veto endeavored to arrest this prodigal scheme of injustice and to bring back the legislation of Congress to the boundaries prescribed by the Constitution. The good sense and practical judgment of the people when the subject was brought before them sustained the course of the Executive, and this plan of unconstitutional expenditures ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... thing which ought to cause astonishment it is this, that the deplorable absurdities which our manners heap up around the nuptial couch give birth to so few hatreds! But that the life of the wise man is a calm current, and that of the prodigal a cataract; that the child, whose thoughtless hands have stripped the leaves from every rose upon his pathway, finds nothing but thorns on his return, that the man who in his wild youth has squandered a million, will never enjoy, during his life, the income of forty thousand ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... the trio reviewing the past and exchanging news of the present. My services, it was clear, would no longer be required by the prodigal. He and his mates ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... Thought-books for Ministers the most suggestive and philosophical we have seen for many a year. If we have any objection to make, it is on the score of too prodigal an expenditure of mental ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 236, May 6, 1854 • Various
... I hear that you have betrayed the first symptom of age, that your back is bent a twentieth of an inch from the perpendicular, I shall hasten to believe you are shearing your prodigal overgrowths, and are calling in your troops to the citadel, and I may come in the first steamer to drop in of evenings and ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... immediate wounds. He looked from Brammel to Brammel's father for indemnification. And the old man was in truth a rare temptation. Fond, pitiable father of a false and bloodless child! doting, when others would have hated, loving his prodigal with a more anxious fondness as his ingratitude grew baser—as the claims upon a parent's heart dwindled more and more away. The grey-haired man was a girl in tenderness and sensibility. He remembered the mother of the wayward child, and the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... the hope, and vain the loss, And vain the famine and the strife; In vain the faith that bore the cross, The valour prodigal of life. ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... masked by the melancholy trees. But those initiated knew well that behind the solemn barrier there smiled a kind of earthly paradise—pleasances where even the flowerful soil of Sicily seemed extravagantly prolific of color, extravagantly prodigal of odors; thickets wherein the great god Pan might have delighted to lurk; fair colonnades thick-carpeted with the petals of roses and framed to greet all cool, benevolent breezes; temples to exquisite divinities; fountains lapsing, murmurous as ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... as important as character. Neither is of much utility alone. A boiler pressed full of steam would be useless without an engine to use and apply its forces, and the engine would be as useless without the boiler. Why, then, is Girlhood so prodigal of its health and strength? Why does it imprison itself in close, hot rooms? Why live on a diet that no brute could bear? Why confine every limb and muscle of its body? Why engirdle its waist in warmth and cordage, and expose its feet ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... Gore we see at once the width of the gulf which separates the traditionalist from the philosopher. To Dr. Gore the creeds and the miracles are essential to Christianity. No Virgin Birth, no Sermon on the Mount! No Resurrection of the Body, no Parable of the Prodigal Son! No Descent into Hell, no revelation that the Kingdom of Heaven is within! Need we wonder that Dr. Gore cries out despairingly for more discipline? He summons reason, it is true, but to defend and explain creeds without which ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... profusion. Except in the case of the precocious boy of the street, the cold vices of cynicism, misanthropy, and avarice—the reptilians of society—are found almost exclusively among adults. The younger brother is the prodigal. Experience has not taught him how to value property and ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... which he had relied turned at once against it. The elections for the new Parliament which met in 1768 were more corrupt than any that had as yet been witnessed; and even the stoutest opponents of reform shrank aghast from the open bribery of constituencies and the prodigal barter of seats. How bitter the indignation of the country had grown was seen in its fresh backing of Wilkes. Wilkes had remained in France since his outlawry; but he seized on the opening afforded by the elections to return and offer himself as a member for the new Parliament. To the ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... rank themselves among his dependents and followers. His table was resorted to by all the luxurious feasters, and his house was open to all comers and goers at Athens. His large wealth combined with his free and prodigal nature to subdue all hearts to his love; men of all minds and dispositions tendered their services to Lord Timon, from the glass-faced flatterer whose face reflects as in a mirror the present humor of his patron, to the rough and unbending cynic who, affecting a contempt of men's persons and ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... by his false friends; and was now in a deplorable condition indeed. Remorse sometimes brings repentance; at least it did in this case. Our hero remembered the good teachings of his early youth; and, like the prodigal son, was willing to return to the home of his fathers. True, he was in a bramble-bush; but, similia similibus curantur (which, interpreted, signifies, "You tickle me ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... Thus it was only now, when I found myself involved in the rout, that I began to appreciate how sharp had been the battle. We were a company of the rejected; the drunken, the incompetent, the weak, the prodigal, all who had been unable to prevail against circumstances in the one land, were now fleeing pitifully to another; and though one or two might still succeed, all had already failed. We were a shipful ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wherein so much had befallen me and repair to Beaugency, there to grow old in misanthropical seclusion. I had done with Courts, I had done with love and with women; I had done, it seemed to me, with life itself. Prodigal had it been in gifts that I had not sought of it. It had spread my table with the richest offerings, but they had been little to my palate, and I had nauseated quickly. And now, when here in this remote corner of France it ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... sun is shining, there is no brightness; unless the water is cool, there is no refreshment. The source of all our joy in the landscape, of the luxuriance of fertile nature, is the sun and not the air. Nature would be more prodigal in Mexico than in Greenland, even if the air in Mexico were as full of soot and smoke as the air of Pittsburg{h}, or loaded with the acid from a chemical factory. So it is with language. Language is merely a medium for thoughts, emotions, the intelligence of a finely wrought brain, and a good ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... thoughtfully at the fire until his eyes ached. Then he looked at the highly-coloured scripture pieces on the walls, in little black frames like common shaving-glasses, and saw how the Wise Men (with a strong family likeness among them) worshipped in a pink manger; and how the Prodigal Son came home in red rags to a purple father, and already feasted his imagination on a sea-green calf. Then he glanced through the window at the falling rain, coming down aslant upon the sign-post over against the house, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... five eighths of blue ribbon by the aid of certain brass nails on the counter. He gave good measure, not prodigal, for he was loyal to his employer, but putting a very moderate strain on the ribbon, and letting the thumb-nail slide with a contempt of infinitesimals which betokened a large soul ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the Sparrow still from time to time indulges in spherical building, this is not progress on his part, as is sometimes contended; it is, on the contrary, a retrogression, a return to the ancient customs, so prodigal of labour. He is behaving like the Osmia who, in default of a reed, makes shift with a Snail-shell, which is more difficult to utilize but easier to find. The cylinder and the hole in the wall stand for progress; the spiral of the Snail-shell ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... Rio Grande. The Mormons hated the Americans; Diaz could trust them. The Mormons went to Mexico; there they are to-day in many a rich community, as freely polygamous as in the most wide-flung hour of Brigham Young. Diaz smiles as he reviews those prodigal crops of corn and cattle and children which they raise. They make his empire richer in men and money - commodities of which Mexico has sorely ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... in the lake-palace must be true, and I abandoned hope. Temple thought she tried me too cruelly. Under these circumstances I became less and less resolutely disposed to renew the forlorn conflict with my father concerning his prodigal way of living. 'Let it last as long as I have a penny to support him!' I exclaimed. He said that Dettermain and Newson were now urging on his case with the utmost despatch in order to keep pace with him, but that the case ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to their house, and very dreadful that his sins should be considered to be of so deep a dye as to require so severe a sentence; and then papa, much balancing the matter, gave final orders that the prodigal cousin should ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... to get back to the home which he had so wickedly left. Whenever he thought of this home, of the Uncle Daniel who had in charity cared for him—a motherless, fatherless boy—and of returning to it, with not even as much right as the Prodigal Son, of whom he had heard Uncle Daniel tell, his heart sank within him and he doubted whether he would be allowed to remain even if he should be so fortunate as ever to reach ...
— Toby Tyler • James Otis
... system was limited while those houses endured: because though some of the great abbots were not less rapacious than the lay lords, and more criminal, the heads in general could not be led, like the nobles, into a prodigal expenditure, the burthen of which fell always upon the tenants; and rents in kind were to them more convenient than in money, their whole economy being founded upon that system, and adapted ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... there are necessary periods of waiting; not idle waiting, mind you. The "prodigal son" couldn't stand it, you remember. "Dad, give me what is coming to me, and let me get away from the humdrum life of the farm. I want to see life!" and he picked his fruit green and ate it. That poor fellow ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... always been something of a free lance in the troop and been regarded as a troop institution. But there had always been his official place among the Ravens waiting for him whenever it suited his wanton fancy to return like a prodigal to the fold. Now, in the pleasant springtime with the troop divided for the summer rivalries, he ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the fairest regions of the world is the Malay Archipelago of the East Indies. Here nature is prodigal with her gifts to man, and the cocoa-palm, cinnamon and other trees flourish, and rice, cotton, the sugar cane and tobacco yield their increase under cultivation. But beneath these scenes of loveliness, there are terrific energies, for this region is a focus of intense ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... decent thing to do as far as she was concerned, and also to hide his hurt and disappointment, which were deep. The rumour of lion was genuine and the excitement, extending far down the Nile, intense. In fact, with the aid of the Oriental's prodigal imagination the one royal beast of feminine persuasion which was reported as having been seen prowling around Deir el-Bahari had been multiplied to two pairs ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... these sad ages of heroism and crime, of war and massacre, of preaching and praying, of blustering and trimming; after all this prodigal waste of blood and tears, and labour and treasure, and genius and sacrifice, we have nothing better to show for Christianity than ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... course, the article excited lively interest. O'Neil felt a warm thrill of satisfaction as he read it on the morning after his scene with Eliza and Dan. But it deepened his feeling of obligation almost painfully; for, like all who are thoughtlessly prodigal of their own favors, he was deeply sensible of any kindness done himself. Eliza's dignified exposition of Alaskan affairs, and particularly the agreeable things she had written about him, were sure to be of great practical assistance, he knew, and he longed to make some real ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... if he were really and truly at Vaux; if he, D'Artagnan, were really the captain of the musketeers, and M. Fouquet the owner of the chateau in which Louis XIV. was at that moment partaking of his hospitality. These reflections were not those of a drunken man, although everything was in prodigal profusion at Vaux, and the surintendant's wines had met with a distinguished reception at the fete. The Gascon, however, was a man of calm self-possession; and no sooner did he touch his bright steel blade, than he knew how to adopt morally the cold, keen ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Mr. Warton rose to move, as an amendment, that the report should lie upon the table. (A laugh, and loud cries of "Hear, hear.") He had, he said, done all he could in the Committee, to prevail upon the members that the purchase of the autograph was a most wasteful and prodigal expenditure. ("Hear, hear," and "No, no.") The precedent was a most mischievous one. If the Court sanctioned such a proceeding as that which the report had described, by and by the autographs of archbishops and bishops, and other individuals who had, in times long past, ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... appreciation of the past. The past, like the country through which we walk, becomes indistinct as we advance. My position is like that of a person wounded in a dream; he feels the wound, though he cannot recollect when he received it. Come, then, thou regenerate man, thou extravagant prodigal, thou awakened sleeper, thou all-powerful visionary, thou invincible millionaire,—once again review thy past life of starvation and wretchedness, revisit the scenes where fate and misfortune conducted, and where despair received thee. ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere |
