"Purse-proud" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her marriage to Levison, he hated to think of it. He could not endure his future stepfather; between them there existed a bottomless chasm of dislike and distrust. Levison considered Shafto a conceited young cub, "but a clever cub"; and Shafto looked on Levison as a purse-proud tradesman, ever bragging of his "finds," his sales, ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... heard a pin drop. Each of the sisters was tremulous to know what was coming next. Could he possibly be meditating purse-proud opposition? The Ripley blue blood simmered at the thought, and Miss Rebecca, nervous in her turn, tapped the ground ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... letter there all right," reiterated Mr. Hennage, "an' if I was called on to give a guess who sent it I'd bet a stack o' blue chips I could hit the bull's eye first shot. A dry, purse-proud aristocrat, with gray chin whiskers an' a pair o' bespectacled blue lamps that'd charm a Gila monster, they're that shiny, lined up at the Silver Dollar bar the other day an' bought a drink for himself. Yes, he drank alone—which ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... and would not be embarrassed in the least, if they met the Governor, or even the President of the United States, face to face. Some of these great folks are really well-bred, some of them are only purse-proud and assuming,—but they form a class, and are named as above ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Folly with her shadow playing, Purse-proud, elbowing Insolence, Bloated empiric, puffed Pretence, Noise that through a trumpet speaks, Laughter in loud peals that breaks, Intrusion with a fopling's face, Ignorant of time and place, Sparks of fire Dissension blowing, Ductile, court-bred Flattery, bowing, Restraint's stiff neck, Grimace's leer, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... maundered till their benefactor was glad to make his escape to Streatham, or to the Mitre Tavern. And yet he, who was generally the haughtiest and most irritable of mankind, who was but too prompt to resent anything which looked like a slight on the part of a purse-proud bookseller, or of a noble and powerful patron, bore patiently from mendicants, who, but for his bounty, must have gone to the workhouse, insults more provoking than those for which he had knocked down Osborne and bidden defiance to Chesterfield. Year after year Mrs Desmoulins, Polly, and Levett, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... some laboring man on the wayside would exclaim, "a purse-proud bodagh upon our hands. Why, thin, does he forget that we remimber when he kept the shebeen-house, an' sould his smuggled to-baccy in gits (* the smallest possible quantities) out of his pocket, for fraid o' the gauger! Sowl, he'd show a blue nose, ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... essay on the Greek language stop here. It savagely sneered at "K. B.'s" vanity at having been educated in an English university, and made the most cutting remarks on his criticisms in general. Such flowers of rhetoric as "literary scavenger," "purse-proud fop," "half-educated boy," &c., were thrown around as thickly as though the Flower Girl of the Fejee Islands herself had crossed the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... Let the haughty, purse-proud American—in whose warm life current one may trace the unmistakable strains of bichloride of gold and trichinae—pause for one moment to gaze at the coarse features and bloodshot eyes of his ancestors, who sat up at nights drenching their souls in a style of nepenthe that ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... fare, I don't know, I am sure. So I have just brought her to you to know if her mother's old friend thinks it is a right thing for Kathleen Elmsdale's daughter to put herself under the feet of a parcel of ignorant, purse-proud snobs?" ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... he, he! That purse-proud ex-linendraper, Mr. Yardley, with the yellow liveries, and the wife in red velvet? How CAN you, my dear Mr. Snob, be so satirical? The impertinence of those people ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... command to the guard to follow and overtake the youth had been more the command of the ruler than of the man. Despite himself, there had been something about the dainty peacock he could not help but like; and the bold dash for the window, the disarming of the purse-proud Buckingham, who for many reasons displeased him, and the leap to the sward below, with the accompanying farewell, had especially delighted both his manhood and his sense ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... our slaves; We are liege to marble and steel; We go our ways through our purse-proud days, Lifting our voices in loud self-praise— Forgetting ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... neighbor has found out yours, your prestige is gone. There is little credit to be got from charity; for if you conceal your good deeds it is certain that nobody will suspect you of doing them, and if you do them before the world every one will say that you are vainglorious and purse-proud, and altogether a dangerous hypocrite. On the other hand, there is undeniably much social interest attached to a man who is supposed to be bad, but who has never been caught in his wickedness; and if a thorough-going ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... She detailed how Avice had induced her mother to let her take lessons in French of young Leverre, rendering their meetings easy. Marcia had never thought of hindering their intimacy, for in her recent years of affliction she had acquired a new interest in the name she had refused to take in her purse-proud young womanhood; and it was not until she knew how determined Mrs. Pierston was to make her daughter Jocelyn's wife that she had objected to her son's acquaintance with Avice. But it was too late to hinder what had ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... usually won so that he was not a little pleased with himself in almost every way. Had he not carried out his promise of two years before and thrashed the mayor's son, who was a year older than himself, and thereby taught a lesson to that stuck-up, purse-proud youngster? Could he not ride with any man? Yes, and one might add, match tongues with any woman. For his native glibness was doubly helped by the vast, unprintable vocabularies of his chosen world, as well as by choice phrases from heroic verse ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... bird-catchers are comin' along, thinkin' 'cause they can't see anything they'll never BE seen! He knows folks would never tell tales to Deacon Baxter, whatever the girls done; they hate him too bad. Lawyer Wilson lives so far away, he can't keep any watch o' Mark, an' Mis' Wilson's so cityfied an' purse-proud nobody ever goes to her with any news, bad or good; so them that's the most concerned is as blind as bats. Mark's consid'able stiddier'n he used to be, but you needn't tell me he has any notion of bringin' one ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... prospects by marrying. But socially he has become a little aristocratic, seeking an exclusive association with his wealthy neighbors. And this does not look very well in one who, when he was poor, was particularly bitter on "a purse-proud aristocracy." I suppose Hubert felt this. Certainly I did, and therefore I enjoyed the conversation that he repeated to me ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... produced it; and the second, which is far inferior to the last, is likewise able to buy the first. The heads of old families are more tolerant to the great men of genius than they are to the accumulators of riches; and a wide distinction is made by them between the purse-proud millionaire and the poor man of genius, whose refined tastes and feelings are more in unison with ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... Let Great Britain declare war, and I fervently hope that the British people, at least the Irish, will seize the occasion to rise and assert their independence.... I again repeat, that I abhor that government; I abhor that purse-proud and pampered aristocracy, with its bloated pension-list, which for centuries past has wrung its being from the toil, the sweat, and the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... all you have to say to me?" she went on at length after another pause. "You, Lord Essendine—my husband's relative and friend, one of the richest and proudest men in this purse-proud land—how chivalrous, how brave of you, to bring me here to load me with vile aspersions, to rob me of my character; my child, my little friendless orphan boy, of the inheritance which is his by ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... variety, and were benefited by it. That as to the practice being favourable to wantonness and vice, while he admitted that idleness was productive of these effects, he could not see how one occupation encouraged them more than another. That the tailor, for example, whom he had been speaking of, though purse-proud, overbearing, and rapacious, was not more immoral or depraved than his neighbours, and had probably less of the libertine than most of them. He admitted that evil thoughts would enter the mind in any situation, and could not reasonably be expected to be kept out of ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... thousand emigrants. The easy-going, purse-proud cabin passengers do not know it; they do not visit them or give much thought to them: but there are the men and women whose children will one day sway the empire that will wear the crown ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... engagement. She used every entreaty, expostulated, temporized—all was of no avail; indeed, her entreaties seemed but to heighten her father's anger; and at last, with a fearful oath, he declared, if she did not break the engagement with the purse-proud, hypocritical rascal, she should leave his house instantly. She looked on the terrified children, the youngest only five years old, and who clung weeping to her knees, as her father threatened to turn her out of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... bear himself there; and rather nervous, for it would have grieved me that he should look down on people of whom I was getting very fond. It was his theory that all successful business people were pompous and purse-proud and vulgar. ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... found a different situation. There the people were not 'slavish tools of a narrow official clique or a few purse-proud merchants,' but 'hardy farmers and humble mechanics composing a very independent, not very manageable, and sometimes a rather turbulent democracy.' The trouble was that a small party had secured a monopoly of power and resisted the lawful efforts of moderate reformers to establish a truly ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... fortune,—cast him off with a mere pittance,—and put this stranger in the place which is rightfully his, and wish that you had been given such a son as he! You are in my power, and you know it only too well; and I will make you and your high-born, purse-proud family rue this ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... had the self-interest and assurance of the ordinary American girl of twelve. That Church Street experience had chastened her. But if her education was to continue at the present rate, she was likely to become selfish, egotistical, and purse-proud in a few years. As yet it had not made her unpleasant, merely given her a little needed confidence in her ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... faint and far, is flaming London, fevered Paris, That I fancy I have gained another star; Far away the din and hurry, far away the sin and worry, Far away—God knows they cannot be too far. Gilded galley-slaves of Mammon—how my purse-proud brothers taunt me! I might have been as well-to-do as they Had I clutched like them my chances, learned their wisdom, crushed my fancies, Starved my soul and gone to ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... and her hat a marvel of millinery; indeed, she presented a striking contrast to the professor's daughter in her plain, neat black coat and frock, and small toque, with its trimming of white narcissi, and I cannot say that I was favourably impressed by the unknown, she was far too cold and purse-proud looking to please me. ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... much!" he exclaimed gleefully. "I can make him the husband of the most-run-after girl in New York—if I want to. And at the same time I can puncture the most arrogant, the most cold-blooded, selfish, purse-proud, inflated nincompoop that ever sat at the head of a director's table. O-ho! Now you're staring, Leila. I can do it; I can make good. What are you worrying about? Why, I've got a hundred ways to square that cheque, and each separate way is ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... Helen, an unpleasant story. It threw a light on the characters of her uncle and cousins which did not enhance her admiration of them, to say the least. She had found them unkind, purse-proud heretofore; but to her generous soul their treatment of the little old woman, who must be but a small charge upon the estate, seemed far more blameworthy than ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... courtesy and beneficence of their courts—Louis the Saint and Frederic II, Edward III and King Charles—above all the simple rank and high honour of the "gentleman," the representative of a long line of honourable tradition, no casual and purse-proud upstart, but of proud race and unquestioned status, proud because it stood for certain high ideals of honour and chivalry and loyalty, of courtesy and breeding and compassion. All these old things of long ago still rouse in us answering humours, and there are a few of us who can hardly see ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... years he has known what it is to 'kick against the pricks' of legitimate Church authority. Legitimate Church authority is a fine thing! Half the Churchmen in the world don't use it, and a goodly portion of the other half misuse it. But when you've got a bumptious, purse-proud, self-satisfied old county snob like Sir Morton Pippitt to deal with, the pressure of the iron hand should be distinctly exercised under ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... rich, and for no other virtue, sit in the highest pew in the church; which being denied her, she engaged her husband into a contention for it, and at last into a law-suit with a dogged neighbour who was as rich as he, and had a wife as peevish and purse-proud as the other: and this law-suit begot higher oppositions, and actionable words, and more vexations and lawsuits; for you must remember that both were rich, and must therefore have their wills. Well! this wilful, purse-proud law-suit lasted during the life of the ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... her place. Hearing of this, Genevra came one day, and to my secret delight offered herself as half companion, half waiting-maid to Hatty. Anything was preferable to the life she led, she said, pleading so hard that Hatty, after an interview with the old aunt—a purse-proud, vulgar woman, who seemed glad to be rid of her charge—consented to receive her, and Genevra became one of our family, an equal rather than a menial, whom Hatty treated with as much consideration as if she had been a sister. I wish I could tell you how beautiful Genevra Lambert ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... possible," thought the painter, "that Rose has suffered her affections to repose on that conceited, purse-proud, elderly Englishman? O, woman! woman! how readily you barter the wealth of your heart ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... of things on public matters, or now and then about themselves; and in so many moods as you have tempers, to warn them, scold, compassionate, correct, console, or abuse them? to tell them not to be over-confident or bumptious, or purse-proud—' ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... that, English calico was in great demand, and so were beads; but money was of no value whatever. Gold is quite unknown; it is thought to be brass; trade is carried on by barter alone. The people know nothing of money. A purse-proud person would here feel the ground move from beneath his feet. Occasionally a large piece of copper, in the shape of a St. Andrew's cross, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... In Cecilia, for example, Mr. Delvile never opens his lips without some allusion to his own birth and station; or Mr. Briggs, without some allusion to the hoarding of money; or Mr. Hobson, without betraying the self-indulgence and self-importance of a purse-proud upstart; or Mr. Simkins, without uttering some sneaking remark for the purpose of currying favour with his customers; or Mr. Meadows, without expressing apathy and weariness of life; or Mr. Albany, without declaiming about the ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Eminent Men, 195,' repeated the Snarler, in the same tone, 'I much fear if we can boast a quarter of that number, eh! Mr. Margin?' "I fear not, Sir," replied Margin; "but such as we have are very much at your service." 'Better be in the service of the nation than in mine, by far,' said the little purse-proud gentleman, shrugging his shoulders very significantly. "Shall I send it for you, Sir?" said Margin, without noticing the last remark. 'By no means, by no means; the volume is not so large, it won't encumber ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan |
