"Improvident" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of citizenship, except with the more advanced tribes, is at the serious risk, amounting almost to a certainty, of the immediate loss to the Indians of the whole of their scanty patrimony, through the improvident and wasteful alienation of the lands patented to them, the Indians being left thus without resource for the future, except in the bounty of the general government or in local charity. On this point a few facts will be more eloquent than ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... the disciples, Judas, who protests indignantly against such waste. This ointment would have brought at least seventy-five dollars, and how much such a sum would have done for the poor! Thoughtless, improvident woman! Strange the word didn't blister on his canting lips. John keenly sees that his fingers are clutching the treasure bag as he speaks the word, and that his thoughts are far from the poor. Jesus gently rebukes Judas. But Judas is hot tempered, and sullenly ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... pledge for its owner, and creating in the body of the nation a free, vigorous, and manly spirit. The advocates for the large estates tell us, that the masses are too ill-educated to be trusted with independence; that without authority over them, these small proprietors become wasteful, careless, improvident; that the free spirit becomes a democratic and dangerous spirit; and finally, that the resources of the land cannot properly be brought out by men without capital to cultivate it. Either theory is plausible. The advocates of both can support their arguments with ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... the habit of receiving his select confederacy of epicureans. For some time past the host had met with nothing but trouble. Every one in the house was aware of and felt for the minister's distress. No more magnificent or recklessly improvident reunions. Money had been the pretext assigned by Fouquet, and never was any pretext, as Gourville said, more fallacious, for there was not even a shadow of money to ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... their being able to pay us without allowing the mortgage to be foreclosed. That you may not think ill of me on that account, I may say that we thus had an opportunity of being of considerable service to many of these improvident gentlemen. Our trade throve, and I soon found that it would be convenient to establish a store at the principal place at which the steamer called. Arthur took charge of it, and the flourishing condition of the concern showed that we ...
— The Log House by the Lake - A Tale of Canada • William H. G. Kingston
... of the fifteenth, or beginning of the sixteenth century, the old house seems to have fallen into bad ways. The brethren were accused of having squandered its belongings, of having granted improvident leases, of having even sold the holy vessels ...
— St. John's College, Cambridge • Robert Forsyth Scott
... best where there is no security that you can reap what you have sown, except the honour of a man whose interest it is to appropriate the fruits of your labours, which he can legally do. Now, in every class and profession, there are failures,—persons that are good for nothing, indolent, improvident, and thriftless. If such a man has a long lease at a low rent, he may be overwhelmed in debt, and leave his land in very bad condition. Others may imitate their aristocratic superiors in their contempt for labour and their habits of expenditure, and so get into a state of hopeless poverty ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... dynamic young man. He handled lawyers, courts and executors as a sculptor handles his modeling clay. He formed, fashioned and forced them to his will. He had been a classmate of Bowen Tyler at college, and a fraternity brother, and before, that he had been an impoverished and improvident cow-puncher on one of the great Tyler ranches. Tyler, Sr., had picked him out of thousands of employees and made him; or rather Tyler had given him the opportunity, and then Billings had made himself. Tyler, Jr., as good a judge of men as his father, had taken him into his friendship, ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... deplored, among their respective friends, the disastrous Siamese twinship created by a haphazard improvident Liberal camp. Look at us! they said:—Beauchamp is a young demagogue; Cougham is chrysalis Tory. Such Liberals are the ruin of Liberalism; but of such must it be composed when there is no new cry to loosen floods. It was too ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... They are generally of medium stature, the face broad, the forehead low, the eyes black, the cheekbones prominent, the chin retreating, the mouth large, the lips thick, and the beard scanty. In common with most of the Asiatic races, they are apt to be indolent, improvident, greedy, intemperate, servile, cruel, vain, inquisitive, superstitious, and cowardly; but individual variations from the more repulsive types are happily not rare. In public they are scrupulously polite and decorous according ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... mutton broth, wine, brandy, milk to any extent, rice, &c.—Palmer manufactures all. The Pitcairners, most improvident people, are short of all necessary stores. I give what I can, but I must be stingy, as I tell them, for I never anticipated an attack of typhus here. They will, I trust, learn a lesson from it, and not provoke a recurrence of it by going ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... particularly contributed to the union; Brucker was unfortunate in a worldly sense. Delsarte, improvident for the future and scorning money, still had, during the best years of his professorship, a relatively comfortable home. He loved to have his friend take advantage of it. Large rooms, well warmed in winter, ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... long-expected supplies came, by which time our necessities had almost conquered my resolution not to take by force of the abundance I might see around, however well I might afterwards pay. It is but fair to state that the improvident villagers throughout Sikkim are extremely poor in vegetable food at this season, when the winter store is consumed, and the crops are still green. They are consequently obliged to purchase rice from the lower valleys, which, owing to the difficulties ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... companionless, awkward, clumsy, ridiculed. Both were as boys thrown into the almost exclusive society of women, and both retained to the last strongly feminine characteristics. Both were throughout life lacking in executive ability; both were financially improvident. Both were dependent for what they did accomplish upon friends, and both had the power of inspiring and retaining friendships that were heroic, Pestalozzi's Kruesi corresponding with Froebel's Middendorf. Both became teachers ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... friends: how peaceful, light-hearted, and obliging. They are charmed by their simplicity; they sleep among them without fear: but these notes soon change; and passing from censure to hatred, they speak of them as improvident, importunate, and instrusive; as rapacious and mischievous; then as treacherous and blood-thirsty—finally, as devils, and beasts of prey. Their appearance is offensive, their proximity obstructive: ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... had almost said, anything but that; making bad worse, the improvident more improvident, the liar more ready to lie, the idler more ready to idle. But the Charity which is Humanity, which is the spirit of pure pity, the Spirit of Christ and ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... past and in the present; and, proceeding from the historic fact that the countries which in the palmy days of the Roman Empire were the granary and the wine-cellar of the world have been given over by the improvident destructiveness of man to desolation and desert, he enters into a thorough study of the fact, that, no sooner does man recede from the barbaric state than he commences a career of destructiveness, cutting off, in a manner reckless and criminally wasteful, forests, ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... to the Negro some of the arts of civilized life; but it must be added, that, denying him the inalienable rights of manhood, denying him the right to the product of his labor, it left him no noble incentive to labor at these arts, and thus tended to render him improvident, careless, shiftless, in short, to demoralize his ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... cynically watching a landsman in a boat without proffering advice as to how the vessel should be navigated, who only holds out a cold and steady hand after the catastrophe has happened, or, if no catastrophe supervenes, is content to walk away in that silent wonder which the care of Providence for the improvident must ever evoke. ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... say—fourteen hundred pounds. And how came he not to have settled that matter before this person's death? Now indeed it would be too late to sell it, but a man of Colonel Brandon's sense!—I wonder he should be so improvident in a point of such common, such natural, concern!—Well, I am convinced that there is a vast deal of inconsistency in almost every human character. I suppose, however—on recollection—that the case may probably be this. Edward is only to hold the living till the ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... and vigorous bearing. They are perhaps the most courageous and intelligent of the peoples; pugnacious, but less quarrelsome than the Sea Dayak; more energetic and excitable than the Kayan; hospitable and somewhat improvident, sociable and of pleasant manners; less reserved and of more buoyant temperament than the Kayan; very loyal and obedient to their chiefs; more truthful and more to be depended upon under all circumstances than any of the other peoples, except ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... said Bitzer, dropping his voice and drawing nearer, 'he is as improvident as any of the people in this town. And you know what their improvidence is, ma'am. No one could wish to know it better than a ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... with large offerings of that sweet and suffocating incense, by which he delighted, now to gain his enemies, and now to gratify his friends. With Gay, also, Parnell was intimate; and the latter, himself independent by his fortune, is said to have bestowed on this needy and improvident genius the price of the ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... freaks." Sometimes she affected not to notice the impediments, sometimes frankly acknowledged their magnitude and climbed right over them, on to her work. Among the factory operatives she found the greatest need of ameliorating touches of every kind. Improvident, illiterate, in some cases, almost brutalized, she occasionally found herself puzzled as to the proper plan to pursue; but her womanly heart, like the hidden jewelled levers of a watch, guided the womanly ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... it." Mrs. Burnham's laugh was half a sigh. "Poor people make us dreadfully mad at times, and we call them shiftless and improvident and lazy, and some of them are. They are ignorant and untrained. But the woman who is doing the hardest, bravest work in the world to-day is the wife of the workingman, struggling to be respectable and make her children so on wages ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... the arts of peace, Alfred did not for an instant neglect the military defences of his kingdom, without which, indeed, he would have been like an improvident husbandman, who should carefully cultivate his land, but leave it unhedged and unprotected. One of his most efficient measures for this purpose, was the building of a new kind of galleys, which "were twice as long, twice as high, sailed more quickly, and were less unsteady ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... their misfortunes is, however, not so common as it was formerly. A bon mot may alleviate the loss of a battle, and a lampoon on the court solace under the burthen of a new impost; but the most thoughtless or improvident can find nothing very facetious in the prospect of absolute want—and those who have been used to laugh under a circumscription of their political liberty, feel very seriously the evil of a government which endows its members with unlimited ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... in commerce, trade, or science, have for their purpose the making of fortunes. Nor should this spirit be condemned, for fortune in the hands of the right men is a blessing to the world and particularly to those who are more improvident. ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... kegs from Washington, under the escort of soldiers, to the United States Agency, and was weighed out to each red heir despoiled of land by white conquest, in his due proportion, and immediately grasped from the improvident by merchants, for a little pork, a little whiskey, a little calico. But this was an old coin with a hole in it; a jewel worn suspended from neck or ear; the precious trinket of a girl. On one side was rudely scratched the ...
— The Cobbler In The Devil's Kitchen - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... beginning in 1893, the country by improvident bond issues and debt contraction, made rapid strides in the direction of bankruptcy. In 1893, the San Domingo Improvement Company, an American corporation, under contract with the government took ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... better than to take it from you," Aunt Maria said. "She is nothing but a little thief, and you are a very improvident child. To-morrow I'll take you to church in your ...
— Five Happy Weeks • Margaret E. Sangster
... brother let a veil be drawn. Suffice it to say that the banker told him that he had missed the one great chance of his life, and quoted Scripture about the ways of the improvident man to such an extent that Denison forgot himself, and said that the bank and its infernal ducks could go and be damned. Thereupon his sister-in-law (who was a clergyman's daughter, and revered the Bank as she did the Church) swooned, and his brother told him he was a heartless ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... his faults. I do not deny that he is improvident. I do not deny that he has kept me in the dark as to his resources and his liabilities both,' she went on, looking at the wall; 'but I ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... hankering after the woods and the freedom of the chase, they are a people easily instructed, quick to learn, (when they like to do so), and very submissive and grateful. But they are very, very improvident. So long as they have enough for to-day, let to- morrow look out for itself. Even upon great festivals such as Christmas, when my husband would give them a double allowance of rations, they would come before our house, ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... charcoal daily, a country where not only the houses but most of the things in common use are made of wood; and there seems to be no end to the trees that remain. It is little wonder that in many parts there has been and is improvident use of wood. Happily every year the regulation of timber areas and wise planting make progress. But for many square miles of hillside I saw there is ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... habits, who have done the mischief, changing arable land into pasture, which grows ever poorer, and finally desert. The fertility of these regions may be said to have been annihilated by the goats of a nomad race, whose faith has made it improvident and mentally sterile.[1] ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... power for the General Government upon each of these points certainly present matter of the deepest interest. The first is, however, of much the greatest importance, inasmuch as, in addition to the dangers of unequal and improvident expenditures of public moneys common to all, there is superadded to that the conflicting jurisdictions of the respective governments. Federal jurisdiction, at least to the extent I have stated, has been justly regarded by its advocates as necessarily appurtenant to ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... men whose sole occupation was transporting that which the agriculturist did not need to markets now closed by law. Wherever employment depended upon commerce, distress was immediate. The seamen, improvident by habit, first felt the blow. "I cannot conceive," said Representative [afterwards Justice] Story, "why gentlemen should wish to paralyze the strength of the nation by keeping back our naval force, and particularly now, when many ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... in front of her and did not reply. The wind of a keen clear winter morning had put colour into her cheeks. Overhead, the creamy- yellow smoke-clouds were thinning away one by one against a pale-blue sky, and the improvident sparrows broke off from water-spout committees and cab-rank cabals to clamour of the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... warlike Kafir race, numbering about 70,000, near of kin to the Zulus, but for many years hostile to them. Both the Boers and Cetewayo had formerly claimed supremacy over this region. The British government had never admitted the Boer claim, but when the head chief of the Swazis had, by a series of improvident concessions, granted away to adventurers, most of them Boers, nearly all the best land and minerals the country contained, it was found extremely difficult to continue the system of joint administration by the High Commissioner and the Transvaal government which had been provisionally established, ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... gardens and allotments of the villagers had already received their spring tillage; but the garden and the allotment of the Durbeyfields were behindhand. She found, to her dismay, that this was owing to their having eaten all the seed potatoes,—that last lapse of the improvident. At the earliest moment she obtained what others she could procure, and in a few days her father was well enough to see to the garden, under Tess's persuasive efforts: while she herself undertook the allotment-plot which they rented in a field a couple of hundred ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... fulfilled as well, and here nature has as yet been more remiss. Family life, as Western nations possess it, is still regulated in a very bungling, painful, and unstable manner. Hence, in the first rank of evils, prostitution, adultery, divorce, improvident and unhappy marriages; and in the second rank, a morality compacted of three inharmonious parts, with incompatible ideals, each in its way legitimate: I mean the ideals of passion, of convention, and of reason; add, besides, genius and ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... old man has himself faced the bad weather rather than prolong the acquaintance, paying the hackney-coachman for setting down the stranger at the end of his fare. At lottery times, he used to be troubled with begging visits from certain improvident hangers-on, who had risked their all in buying shares of an unlucky number. About the time the numbers were being drawn, there would be a ring at the gate-bell, perhaps at dinner time. His spectacles would be ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... of the Romans, art of masonry sufficient to raise a stone rampart for their own defence; yet the Monkish historians [x], who treat of those events, complain of the luxury of the Britons during this period, and ascribe to that vice, not to their cowardice or improvident counsels, all their subsequent calamities. [FN [x] Gildas. Bede, lib. 1. ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... "'How improvident are men inheriting a talent or two, or even ten talents! Instead of adding to their wealth by traffic, or by lending at high interest,' thought he, 'these men waste what they have, to no purpose. Had I a drachma, well, one drachma is too little, ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... international finance, the fact remains that from the purely material point of view it has done a great work in increasing the wealth of mankind. It is true that capital has often been wasted by being lent to corrupt or improvident borrowers for purposes which were either objectionable in themselves, or which ought to have been financed, if at all, out of current revenue. It is true, also, that crimes have been committed, as in the case of the ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... cold virtuoso, who let it slumber in its case for a generation, till, when his hoard was broken up, it came forth once more and rode the stormy symphonies of royal orchestras, beneath the rushing bow of their lord and leader. Into lonely prisons with improvident artists; into convents from which arose, day and night, the holy hymns with which its tones were blended; and back again to orgies in which it learned to howl and laugh as if a legion of devils were shut up in it; then again to the gentle dilettante who calmed it down with easy melodies until ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... the settlers were in sore straits for food, for they were improvident, and managed badly, Pocahontas, always generous and friendly, learning of their needs, came with her brother Nantaquaus and her Indians bringing corn, and kept them from starving, while their own ...
— The Story of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith • E. Boyd Smith
... the question, however. If the details be many, and if each be long, they would be more than the mind could carry without great effort; and instead of economy of attention, there is improvident waste. The mind will carry a long, carefully arranged period at intervals; but a succession of periods is sure to result in its absolute refusal to do so any longer. There is a limit to the length of a period that economizes ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... been rash and improvident births," admitted the publisher. "Hasty births, premature births, secret births, morganatic births, illegitimate births, and every variety of infelicitous intrusion upon your planet. The rash are born too early, the ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... my past, but do not seem to think much about it. I live in the present. I brood neither over past nor future. I am careless, improvident, uncautious, happy out of sheer well-being and overplus of physical energy. Fish, fruits, vegetables, and seaweed—a full stomach—and I am content. I am high in place with Raa Kook, than whom none is higher, not even Abba Taak, who is highest over the priest. No man dare ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... her in. That I love her will be sufficient for my father, and her beauty and sweetness will do the rest. She will live like a queen and have servants to wait on her. There are many rich people up North, and, though the winters are long, no one suffers except the improvident. And I think I have loved Mam'selle from a little child. Then, too," with an easy smile, "there is a suspicion that some Indian blood runs in Mam'selle's veins. On that ground ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Norway, Belgium, and France (countries differing in race, government, climate and situation), that peasant proprietors are superhumanly industrious; intelligent cultivators, and generally intelligent men; prudent, temperate, and independent, and that they exercise self-control in avoiding improvident marriages. This group of empirical generalisations as to the character of peasant proprietors he then deduces from the nature of the case: their industry, he says, is a natural consequence of the fact that, however much they produce, it is all their own; they cultivate intelligently, because ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... checks, second-hand dresses, and things like that. No, little girl; you and I are too proud—too proud of the cloth—for that. We will never give a handle to the people who are always waiting to have a fling at the improvident clergy—not if it ...
— Scally - The Story of a Perfect Gentleman • Ian Hay
... expense upon which Harry had not calculated. He began to think that he had been very improvident. The professor would readily have left him a hundred dollars more, and as it would have been repaid with his own money, he was sorry he had not availed ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... a position as his self-vaunted brother of London upon thirty shillings. It naturally results that the mechanics of Berlin, unlike those of the smaller towns of Germany, "are married and given in marriage," although the practice is regarded even there as indiscreet and improvident. It is doubtless a creditable feeling which demands of the workman that he shall have past out of his state of servitude, and have gained the position of an employer of labor, before he dare assume still higher responsibilities; but ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... the colony will be placed entirely in the hands of the contractor by the railway contract, which appears highly improvident. As there seems to be no penalty provided for failure to operate the railways, the contract is essentially the sale of a million and a quarter acres for ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... aware of the precipice, to the verge of which his improvident passion had drawn him, watched them out of the corner of his eye, uncertain how far their comprehension of the scene had gone. He trembled to think how nearly he had betrayed his secret; and took the more shame to himself, inasmuch as in cooler blood he saw the ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... as old Lord Ardmore was fond of fulminating, of "pillaging loyal Peter in order to pamper rebel Paul!" The opinion of very old, and intolerant, and indignant peers cannot always be taken seriously, but it is surely permissible to feel a regret for kindly, improvident Dick Talbot-Lowry, his youth and his income departing together, and the civic powers that he had once exercised, reft from him. Such power as he had had, he had exercised honourably and with reverent confidence in precedent, and when he had damned Parnell, and had asserted, in stentorian ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... insensible but profitable way: what is exhaled up in clouds, falls back again in showers: what the souldier receives in pay, he payes in Drink: their very enemies, though they hate the State, yet love their liquor, and pay excise: the most idle, slothful, and most improvident, that selleth his blood for drink, and his flesh for bread, serves at his own charge, for every pay day he payeth his sutler, and he ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... laws," though, indeed, they are no more than the methods and laws of the beasts. By such expedients we may hope to see, first, a certain fall in the birth-rate, a fall chiefly in the birth-rate of improvident, vicious, and feeble types, a continuation, in fact, of that fall that is already so conspicuous in illegitimate births in Great Britain; secondly, a certain, almost certainly more considerable fall in the death-rate of infants and young children, and that fall in the infantile ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... a more delicate and subtle fairy poem than the Nymphidia. The fourth and tenth Nymphals are also touched with the sadder, almost satiric vein; the former inveighing against the English imitation of foreigners and love of extravagance in dress; while the tenth complains of the improvident and wasteful felling of trees in the English forests. This last Nymphal, though designedly an epilogue, is probably rather a warning than a despairing lament, even though we conceive the old satyr to be Drayton himself. As a whole the Nymphals show Drayton at his happiest ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... and such like to be strictly required again, allowing only the tenth part to be retained; though it turned to very small account, most of those persons expending their daily income as fast as they received it, being rude, improvident livers; upon which he had further inquiry made as to those who had bought or received from them, and called upon these people to refund. The trouble was infinite, the exactions being prosecuted far, touching a great number of persons, bringing disrepute on Galba, and general ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Butler! Butler! You are my evil genius, wherefore must you Announce it in their presence? It was all In a fair way. They were half won! those madmen With their improvident over-readiness— A cruel game is Fortune playing with me. The zeal of friends it is that razes me, And ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... never was such a mentor as travel. The tender, the effeminate, the cowardly, were hardened by contention with unwonted cold or rain or sun, with hard seats, stony pillows, thieves, and highwaymen. Any simple, improvident, and foolish youth would be stirred up to vigilancy by a few experiences with "the subtelty of spies, the wonderful cunning of Inn-keepers and baudes and the great danger of his life."[56] In short, the perils and discomforts of travel made a mild prelude to the real life into which ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... the author draws the inference that "slavery is the necessary result" of the nature of the black and of the white man. "The negro is by nature indolent and improvident." "He is also ignorant." "He requires restraint and guidance"; "otherwise he would sink into helpless, hopeless vice, idleness, and misery." But in these words, and in others to the same purport, Mr. Fisher assumes that the nature of the black is incapable ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... the child of his second son, whose mother had died in giving her birth. It so happened that, about a month previous to the date on which our story has now entered, a paralytic affection had disabled Bernardi from the duties of his calling. He had been always a social, harmless, improvident, generous fellow—living on his gains from day to day, as if the day of sickness and old age never was to arrive. Though he received a small allowance for his past services, it ill sufficed for his wants,; neither ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... our ups and downs, admiral. I've known a pinch or two myself. We are an improvident lot, we writers, who wander round the globe; rich to-day, poor to-morrow. But on the other hand, it's something to set down on paper what a king says, the turn of a battle, to hobnob with famous men, explorers, novelists, painters, soldiers, scientists, to say nothing of the meat in the pie ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... Lee, in the debates upon the India Bill, speaking of the charter of the East India Company, 'expressed his surprise that there could be such political strife about what he called "a piece of parchment, with a bit of wax dangling to it." This most improvident expression uttered by a Crown lawyer formed the subject of comment and reproach in all the subsequent debates, in all publications of the times, and in everybody's conversation.' Twiss's Eldon, iii. 97. In the debate on Fox's India Bill on Dec. 3, 1783, Lee 'asked what was the consideration ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... much declined from that formidable power, which, in the time of Marcus Antoninus, had spread terror to the gates of Rome. But they still possessed arms and courage; their courage was animated by despair, and they obtained the usual reenforcement of the cavalry of their Sarmatian allies. So improvident was the assassin Marcellinus, that he chose the moment when the bravest veterans had been drawn away, to suppress the revolt of Firmus; and the whole province was exposed, with a very feeble defence, to the rage of the exasperated Barbarians. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... solitude, unbroken except by the passing Indian, certainly as much in a state of savage nature as the lower class of Mexicans were when Cortes first traversed these plains—with the same character, gentle and cowardly, false and cunning, as weak animals are apt to be by nature, and indolent and improvident as men are in a fine climate; ruins everywhere—here a viceroy's country palace serving as a tavern, where the mules stop to rest, and the drivers to drink pulque— there, a whole village crumbling to pieces; ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... savoir-faire in the affairs of life, or overwhelming circumstances, which have broken the spirit of the man and made him sit down discouraged and despairing. In either case, money is no remedy. If the man be improvident, it only helps the evil for a moment, and the want soon returns: what the man needs is instruction and care from those better versed in the art of living. And in the second case, to give money is no avail, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... for the protection of property—the tenants' property recognized by custom during a long course of years, although ignored by the law and exposed to confiscation by the reckless Whig legislation of 1850-2. The Land Act of 1881 was an arbitrary attempt to remedy the misfortunes of an improvident agricultural interest by legislative interference with contract. Contracts were readjusted and finally settled for fifteen years to come. Political economy was bidden to take itself off, but prices varied quite regardless of Mr. Gladstone's arrangements, ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... blackened faces and bodies, with children, tattered and unclean, but healthful, playing about them; within, women in loose gowns, with sleeves unrolled and with disordered hair, moved like phantoms through clouds of savory smoke. The commissary was brilliantly lighted. At a window close by improvident miners were drawing the wages of the day, while their wives waited in the store with baskets unfilled. In front of the commissary a crowd of negroes were talking, laughing, singing, and playing pranks like children. Here two, with grinning faces, were squared off, not to spar, but to knock at ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... course she is," said Lablache, "and when that happy event is accomplished I hope it will not be with any improvident—harum-scarum ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... good. He had the artistic temperament and some of its incidental weaknesses. He acknowledged himself "constitutionally improvident," and a debt-burdened life is not easy. His later years were pathetic. Those who knew and appreciated him remember him fondly. California failing to ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... tract there was left uninhabited but—frozen wastes and arid plains. What of the fruitful regions which lay in the vast interior? It was thither that the government should turn the thoughts of the homeless and the improvident. Leading to this temperate and fertile area was {16} an excellent northern highway—the waters of Hudson Bay ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... seem of prime importance to keep down the population of low-skilled workers to the point which leaves a merely nominal margin of superfluous labour. The Malthusian question has in its modern practical aspect narrowed down to this. The working classes by abstinence from early or improvident marriages, or by the exercise of moral restraints after marriage can, it is urged, check that tendency of the working population to outgrow the increase of the work for which they compete. There can be no doubt that the more intelligent classes of skilled labourers have already profited ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... which the Commons sought redress, whether from Tudor, Plantagenet or Stuart, were the improper use of prerogatives, the granting of oppressive monopolies, the waging of costly foreign wars, the misconduct of favorites and the like. The improvident expenditure of the royal patrimony, the granting the crown land or pensions to unworthy persons, is a frequent ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... people reach that stage in their development in which they begin to till the soil, they soon become careful of the little property they have, in marked distinction to the savage and nomadic tribes, who are always lavish and improvident. I have seen as many as ten store-houses of the kind described, and once even fourteen near one dwelling, but generally one or two only are ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... weather. The father absent on a winter's hunt, the mother could not leave her children to apply to the fort for assistance, even had she strength left to reach there. The frozen bodies would be found in the lodges. The improvident character of the Indian is well known. Their annuities are soon spent; supplies received from government are used in feasting; and no provision is made for winters that are always long and severe. Though they receive frequent assistance from the public at the fort, the wants of all cannot ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... if they had discovered anything. In that way the night passed. In the morning everybody was exhausted and, to make matters worse, many of the men ran short of provisions. Some of them had neglected to bring the amount ordered; others had been improvident and wasted their rations. So to the discomforts of cold and wet, were added the pangs of hunger. The little bag of coffee had proven a precious boon. Whenever the column would halt for a few minutes, and it was possible to ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... damned Epicurean rascal is this! My heart is ready to crack with impatience. Who says this is improvident jealousy? my wife hath sent to him; the hour is fixed; the match is made. Would any man have thought 260 this? See the hell of having a false woman! My bed shall be abused, my coffers ransacked, my reputation gnawn at; and I shall not only receive this villanous wrong, but stand under ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... Department of Health that two dollars had been paid into the Old Age Pension fund for the previous year, which was a salutary measure in preserving the purity of elections by eliminating the shiftless and improvident from participation ...
— Eurasia • Christopher Evans
... the official charity in 1821 the only officially supported charitable organization in New York City was the City Dispensary — municipal aid to others having been cut off in 1817 on the grounds that charity to the poor only made them lazy and improvident} ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... very closely, very coldly by the ranger, who had all the evening kept away from him, and whom he had mentally jotted down as a big, careless, improvident prospector, untaught ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... Thibetan borders of China have been converted into uninhabitable, sandy desert, where centuries ago were fertile and well-watered pastures supporting rich cities, in consequence of the reckless destruction of forest. In fact, whether it is due to man's improvident action or to natural climatic change, it appears that the formation of "desert" is due in the first place to the destruction of forest, the consequent formation of a barren, sandy area, and the ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... mile) and exceeding that of European Turkey and Russia. "Over the whole extent of the South Sea," says Robert Louis Stevenson, "from one tropic to another, we find traces of a bygone state of over-population, when the resources of even a tropical soil were taxed, and even the improvident Polynesian trembled for the future."[938] He calls the Gilbert atolls "warrens of men."[939] One of them, Drummond's Island, with, an area of about twenty square miles, contained a population of ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... readers may be surprised that a man in his station of life could practise usury or even extortion to any considerable extent, we feel it necessary to inform them that there exists among Irish farmers a class of men who stand, with respect to the surrounding poor and improvident, in a position precisely analogous to that which is occupied by a Jew or moneylender among those in the higher classes who borrow, and are extravagant upon a larger scale. If, for instance, a struggling small farmer have to do with a needy landlord or an unfeeling agent, who threatens ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... magazines; for flirting with the muse, while their wives are wanting shoes, or perpetrating puns, while their children cry for "buns"! Suppose that, pointing every line with wit, I should hold them up to contempt as careless, improvident lovers of pleasure, given to self-indulgence; taking their Helicon more than dashed with gin; seekers after notoriety, eccentric in their habits and unmanly in all their tastes! After this, should I very handsomely make an exception in favor of Mr. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... men of this class were scattered throughout the northwest territories. Some of them retained a little of the thrift and forethought of the civilized man, and became wealthy among their improvident neighbors; their wealth being chiefly displayed in large bands of horses, which covered the prairies in the vicinity of their abodes. Most of them, however, were prone to assimilate to the red man in their heedlessness of ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... Europe, their unit of value was the livre, nearly equivalent to the modern franc. They were not very industrious, nor very thrifty husbandmen. Their farming implements were rude, their methods of cultivation simple and primitive, and they themselves were often lazy and improvident. Near their town they had great orchards of gnarled apple-trees, planted by their forefathers when they came from France, and old pear-trees, of a kind unknown to the Americans; but their fields often lay untilled, while the owners lolled in the sunshine smoking their pipes. In ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... outcome, Philip?" said Mr. Strawn. "I know that things are not as they should be, but how can there be a more even distribution of wealth without lessening the efficiency of the strong, able and energetic men and without making mendicants of the indolent and improvident? If we had pure socialism, we could never get the highest endeavor out of anyone, for it would seem not worth while to do more than the average. The race would then go backward instead of lifting itself higher by the insistent ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... were some Southerners willing to concede—as did Mr. Hayne, in the Senate (1832)—that there were "other causes besides the Tariff" underlying that condition, and to admit that "Slaves are too improvident, too incapable of that minute, constant, delicate attention, and that persevering industry which are essential to manufacturing establishments," the existence of which would have made those States prosperous. But such admissions were unwilling ones, and the Cotton-lords held only with the ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... in structure and instincts to a particular mode of life, and consequently cannot fully and effectually occupy the ground into which it has been permitted to enter. To speak in metaphor, it enters merely as a caretaker or ignorant and improvident steward in the absence of the rightful owner. Again, some of our ornamental species, which are fast diminishing, are fitted from their peculiar structure and life habits to occupy places in nature which no other kinds, however plastic they may be, can even partially fill. The wryneck and ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... time for us to vanish, for he will next propose to buy the Hortensian villa from the improvident prodigal who holds it, and will make you settle down here in spite of yourself, and so make a respectable heathen out of you; for of course you have not the courage to whisper in his ear that you are a Christian: his oven is not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... soldiers in every company—in every squad room—who always spend their pay within a few days after receiving it from the paymaster. As soon as his money is gone, and he needs or wants more, the improvident soldier turns to some comrade who saves and lends his money. The loan is five dollars, but by all the traditions the borrower must ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... the squatter's son to such a conclusion? The condition of the family had for some time been unsatisfactory to Tom. Though brought up in this roving, improvident way, his better nature often revolted against it; not, however, so strongly and decisively as now. Still, desires, and even longings, for something better had flitted through his mind, only to make him moody and irritable. Doubtless these aspirations were due, in no ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... Marie St. Clare was not, nor her mother before her. Indolent and childish, unsystematic and improvident, it was not to be expected that servants trained under her care should not be so likewise; and she had very justly described to Miss Ophelia the state of confusion she would find in the family, though she had not ascribed it to ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... discharging of pistols, and you are filled with a vague thought that the whole city has been formed into a line of skirmishers. You are startled by a noise on the front pavement, which sounds like an energetic drummer beating the long roll on a barrel-head; and you have an indistinct idea that some improvident urchin (up since the dawn) has just ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... case. The system of the Army is to make a charge of 6s. 6d. for attending a confinement, which, if paid, is generally collected in instalments of 3d. or 6d. a week. Often, however, it is not paid, and the charge remains a mere formality. She added that many of these poor people are most improvident, and make no provision whatsoever for these events, even if they can afford to do so. The result is that the Army has to lend them baby ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... year from the time that Martha Haydon died, Maria Durrant was sitting by the western window of the kitchen, mending Mr. Haydon's second-best black coat, when she looked down the lane and saw old Polly Norris approaching the house. Polly was an improvident mother of improvident children, not always quite sound in either wits or behavior, but she had always been gently dealt with by the Haydons, and, as it happened, was also an old acquaintance of Maria Durrant's own. Maria gave a little ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... trusting to Providence for the means of marrying the others; nor in the higher, to find a young man, whose estates have, during a long minority, under the careful management of Government officers, been freed from very heavy debts, with which an improvident father had left them encumbered, the moment he attains his majority and enters upon the management, borrowing three times their annual rent, at an exorbitant interest, to marry a couple of sisters, at the same rate of outlay in ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... wild Indians could not be justly termed improvident, when their manner of life is taken into consideration. They let nothing go to waste, and labored incessantly during the summer and fall to lay up provision for the inclement season. Berries of all kinds were industriously ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... cap and wig, for the air was warm, and an improvident impulse made him cast the latter object overboard. The statoscope responded with a ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... nothing at all about him. It was one of those inexplicable things which can not be answered. Otherwise Hillard enjoyed himself vastly. He found these people full of hope, light-hearted, generous, intelligent, and generally improvident. ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... of disintegrated individuals lacking any spontaneous, central, rallying point, and who, failing natural leaders, simply push and jostle each other or stand still, each according to personal, blind, and haphazard impressions—a hasty, improvident, inconsistent, superficial opinion, caught on the wing, based on vague rumors, on four or five minutes of attention given each week, and chiefly to big words imperfectly understood, two or three sonorous, commonplace phrases, of which ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... beautiful girl filled his whole life. He was poor and could not marry, but he had many arguments with himself about the propriety of doing so even without an income. "I think," he finally writes, "that these early and improvident marriages are too apt to break down the spirit and energy of a young man, and make him a hard-working, half-starving, repining animal all his days." And again: "Young men in our country think it a great ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... their wants. The whole social organisation of Italy, with its frequent saints' days, during which no work is done, and its numerous holy fraternities living on alms, and its sanctification of mendicancy in the name of religion, has tended to pauperise the nation, and give it those unthrifty improvident habits which have destroyed independence and self-respect. Although, therefore, the Government has publicly forbidden begging throughout the country, it has in some measure tacitly connived at it, as a compromise between an inefficient poor-law ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... is a natural nobility in the Indian character. The Indian is debased by heathenism and his wild life, lazy, improvident, filthy, obscene and cruel; and yet he is well endowed by nature with brains and heart and conscience. He is clear-headed and generous; he is often affectionate in his family; he is capable of becoming industrious, conscientious, scholarly, and thoroughly consecrated. If his wild life has affected ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 06, June, 1884 • Various
... convulsive efforts, and the Revolution as yet knew not whether it should maintain the constitution it had gained, or employ it as a weapon to obtain a republic, Europe began to arouse itself; egotistical and improvident, she merely beheld in the first movement in France a comedy played at Paris on the stage of the States General and the constituent Assembly—between popular genius, represented by Mirabeau, and the vanquished genius of the aristocracy, personified ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... wished to be thought intimate. Lily was sure that within twenty-four hours the story of her visiting her dress-maker at the Benedick would be in active circulation among Mr. Rosedale's acquaintances. The worst of it was that she had always snubbed and ignored him. On his first appearance—when her improvident cousin, Jack Stepney, had obtained for him (in return for favours too easily guessed) a card to one of the vast impersonal Van Osburgh "crushes"—Rosedale, with that mixture of artistic sensibility and business astuteness which characterizes his race, had instantly gravitated toward ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... hat always hung in the closet without. He had gone with Wells, closing the door. She was, as she supposed, at last alone, and the reaction had come. All the weary months of work, work, work, all the patient slaving to provide for the improvident, all the brave, cheery, hopeful, uncomplaining days of honest toil and honest effort, only to end in such a scene of shame and mortification as this! What could Mr. Wells think of his secretary, chased to her desk ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... him—better, far better, than he could ever hope to lie. For she possessed that most priceless of all gifts: she believed her own lies. She looked people straight in the face and spoke from her heart; a falsehood, before it left her lips, had grown into a flaming truth. She was a florid, improvident liar. There was no classical parsimony about her misstatements. They were copious baroque, and encrusted with pleasing and unexpected tricks of ornamentation. That tropical redundancy for which her person was renowned reflected itself likewise in her temperament—in nothing more ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... Christmas. The elder which was so white and fragrant in May, is covered now with purple berries, and the ash is hung with scarlet beads, so bright, so many, and so beautiful, that the swallows are hovering round them all day impatient to begin, and improvident of the future. Nature even in its decay is beautiful, and what was it in spring? Remember the primroses out on every bank, and the anemones in the wood, and the blue flush of wild hyacinths in the coppice! Verily, we are ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... which good Mr. Larkin had procured for the improvident vicar, bore interest, I am almost ashamed to say, at thirty per cent. per annum, and ten per cent. more the first year. But you are to remember that the security was altogether speculative; and Mr. Larkin, of course, made the best terms ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... and thirst, from the freezing cold and the blasting, blistering, wilting heat, from the fevers of the new-broken lands, from the ravages of locust and grasshopper, and chinch-bug and drought, from isolation from human friendships, from want of gentle nursing—even De Quincey's improvident travellers did not endure more, nor the children of Israel, to whose thirst the smitten rock yielded water, to whose hunger the heavens ministered with manna and the earth with quail, whose pursuing enemies were drowned in the sea that closed ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... the tradition had been right), when yet only in his forty-eighth year, as early as 1543, four years before the death of Henry VIII. In spite of court patronage Holbein did not die a rich man, and there is an impression that he was recklessly improvident in his habits. ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... impossible to make the men take any care of it, or use it with the least frugality, though I expect that necessity will shortly teach them this art." We shall see, later on, that the men, who were really as improvident of food as the Indians, had ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... do constantly, on this great farm of ours; for do not suppose that it is anything else than that. Precisely the same laws of economy which apply to the cultivation of a farm or an estate, apply to the cultivation of a province or of an island. Whatever rebuke you would address to the improvident master of an ill-managed patrimony, precisely that rebuke we should address to ourselves, so far as we leave our population in idleness and our country in disorder. What would you say to the lord of an estate who complained to ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... unanimity of all the States. Does not the thirteenth article of the confederation expressly require, that no alteration shall be made without the unanimous consent of all the States? Can any thing in theory be more perniciously improvident and injudicious than this submission of the will of the majority to the most trifling minority? Have not experience and practice actually manifested this theoretical inconvenience to be extremely impolitic? Let me mention one fact, which I conceive must ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... features, her plump and pretty hands, were all pleasant to look upon. She had rather a hard way with her, though, at times. The servants were always giving warning. And, personally, he was much fonder of his younger daughter, whom Mary considered foolish and improvident. But he was well aware that Mary ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of it! It gets on my nerves, my brother's extravagance does. I often quarrel with him because he's so improvident. ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... conspire to make the labourer a pauper even if he would aspire to independence, until, through early and improvident marriages, the lax treatment of bastardy, &c., paupers became a glut in the market so to speak, and, finding the doles less satisfactory in consequence, discontent, riot, and incendiarism, manifested themselves in many places; hence the inuendo of the Rev. Mr. ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... I should explain," he gave an improvident laugh, "that Mr. Beardsley's role at the moment is—ah—a little beyond the ordinary! That is, I—" He paused miserably, and then was saved for the moment as all eyes turned ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... which, submitted to a woman's culture, has yielded a harvest of unknown flowers. Let us permit Madame Sand to produce these perilous marvels till the approach of winter; she will sing no more when the North wind has come. Meanwhile, less improvident than the grasshopper, let her make provision of glory for the time when there will be a famine of pleasure. The mother of Musarion was wont to repeat to her child: "Thou wilt not always be sixteen; will Choereas always remember his oath, ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... saw, nor heard a syllable from, the subject of this narrative. The winter of 1827-28, was one of extraordinary severity in New-York. The month of January, in particular, was unusually tempestuous and severe. Those of the common poor, who had been the most improvident and reckless when they should have husbanded their earnings, were brought upon the public bounty considerably earlier than usual, and backs "hanging in ragged misery" were already more ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... unless they are abused, allow themselves to be treated with great familiarity. The hiving of bees by those who understand their nature, could almost always be conducted without the risk of any annoyance, if it were not the case that some improvident or unfortunate ones occasionally come forth without the soothing supply; and not being stored with honey, are filled with the gall of the bitterest hate against all mankind and animal kind in general, and any one who dares to meddle with them in particular. Such radicals are always ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... daughter of a bankrupt Vicksburg storekeeper. This young woman, who had doubtless found ample opportunity for the practice of domestic economy in the paternal home, soon proved herself to be a most excellent housekeeper on her own account. She was a jewel indeed to her improvident husband, who, finding that she made shift by one means or another to keep the family larder supplied, whether he kept her purse supplied or not, dismissed a great care from his mind at once and for ever, and thenceforth to the end of his days never exerted ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... something for all of the soldiers, but this is hardly a good objection, as no other constructive suggestion seems to have been made by any one that would do anything for any of the soldiers, except the cash bonus, which I believe is altogether impossible, improvident, and not in the interest either of the country or ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... "I'm so improvident that I'm afraid I'd marry you on nothing. I haven't a copper of my own, remember. You will have a penniless bride. Oh, I wish more than ever that Uncle Bernard had left me something, so that I might help you! It does seem hard, doesn't it, that Victor Druce ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... some person of good credit. Savings, and small presents for gratuitous opinions, often afterwards discovered to be very fallacious ones, enabled him to purchase annuities of easy landowners, with their treble amount secured on their estates. The improvident owners, or the careless heirs, were soon entangled in the usurer's nets; and, after the receipt of a few years, the annuity, by some latent quibble, or some irregularity in the payments, usually ended in Audley's obtaining the treble forfeiture. He could at ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... at it. They can afford to lay a smaller number, and to make each individual egg much larger and richer in proportion than their rivals. This plan, of course, enables the young to begin life far better provided with muscles and fins than the tiny little fry which come out of the eggs of the improvident species. For example, the cod-fish lays nine million odd eggs; but anybody who has ever eaten fried cod's-roe must needs have noticed that each individual ovum was so very small as to be almost indistinguishable to the naked eye. ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... upon what he really believed would be his last journey, he naturally encountered very different experiences, being neither so ignorant, so helpless, nor so improvident as his ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... money, but the wines, equipages, and furniture which the money purchased; and, these having been destroyed without return, society collectively is poorer by the amount. In proportion as any class is improvident or luxurious, the industry of the country takes the direction of producing luxuries for their use; while not only the employment for productive laborers is diminished, but the subsistence and instruments which are the means of such employment do actually ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... though he were two separate persons, one of whom was cool and calculating, while the other was improvident and scape-grace. How Lady Dawn would despise him, were he to reveal to her the stupid commotion of his mind! His excuse for blundering his way into her privacy had been sufficiently fantastic: that her late husband was employing his living brain to communicate with her from ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... belligerents had not been far too afraid of one another to face the situation sensibly. Germany, having failed to provide for the war she began, failed again to surrender before she was dangerously exhausted. Her opponents, equally improvident, went as much too close to bankruptcy as Germany to starvation. It was a bluff at which both were bluffed. And, with the usual irony of war, it remains doubtful whether Germany and Russia, the defeated, will not be the gainers; for the victors are already busy fastening on themselves ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... hand, she in a decent black dress, and both wearing very tight white kid gloves that refused to hide entirely the whole of the rough red hands, and they looked so ridiculously young, and the whole thing was so wildly improvident, that no words of exhortation would come to my lips as I gazed at them in silence, between laughter and tears. I ought to have told them they were sinners; I ought to have told them they were reckless; I ought to have told ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... and was killed on the spot. He left a widow and one child—a boy seven years of age, of placid, endearing disposition, but weak intellect—almost in a state of destitution. He had been a coarse-tempered, improvident man; and like too many of his class, in those days at least, dissipated the whole of his large earnings in present sensuous indulgence, utterly careless or unmindful of the future. Esther Woodford, who, at the time of her husband's death, scarcely numbered five-and-twenty years, ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... studio; where Messieurs Gustave; Jules, and Adrien gave their unparalleled soirees dansantes; where I first met my ex-flame Josephine—exists no longer. It has been improved off the face of the earth, and with it such a gay bizarre, improvident world of youth and folly as shall never again be met together on ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... wagons, provisions, arms and ammunition must be first of all provided. These were essentials, and woe to the hapless immigrant who neglected these provisions. To be stranded a thousand miles from the "settlements" was a fate none but the most improvident and ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... into a damp corner. Indeed it was not impossible that their tent itself might be seized, for many a noble or his attendants might think that beggarly artisans had no right to comforts which he had been too improvident to afford, especially if the alderman himself ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... improvident youths like you, who come to lament their wasted lives. If I could receive him this once as he expects to be received, we cannot doubt that it would mean an income of two thousand francs to me. Prosperity dangles before us—shall I fail to clutch it? Mon Dieu, what a catastrophe, his coming to ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... the surintendant was in the habit of receiving his select society of epicureans. For some time past the host had met with some terrible trials. Every one in the house was aware of and felt the minister's distress. No more magnificent or recklessly improvident reunions. Money had been the pretext assigned by Fouquet, and never was any pretext, as Gourville said, more fallacious, for there was not the ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... An improvident man, who had quarrelled with his wife concerning household expenses, took her and the children out on the lawn, intending to make an example of her. Putting himself in an attitude of aggression, and turning ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... thousands flocked from Germany to the fresh and fertile acres on the banks of the Volga and the Samara. The emigration became so great that several of the petty German princes issued prohibitions. In the rush of adventurers, of the indolent, the improvident and the vicious, great suffering ensued. Desert wilds were, however, peopled, and the children of the emigrants succeeded to homes of comparative comfort. Settlers crowded to these lands even from France, Poland ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... favourite pastimes was gardening. This, perhaps, accounts for his location of the scene in his comedy "The Cherry Garden," where a business-like man, who had once been a serf, just like the dramatist's own father, has prospered sufficiently to buy the orchard from the improvident and highly educated owners; and for all the details about fruit-gardening given in the powerful story "The Black Monk." This story infallibly reminds one of Gogol. A man has repeatedly a vision of a black monk, who visits ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... Spencer, "the fate of each creature is determined by its individual qualities; whereas in civilised societies a man may obtain the highest position and the most beautiful wife because he is rich and well-born, although he may be ugly, idle or improvident; and then it is he who will perpetuate the species. The wealthy man, ill constituted, incapable, sickly, enjoys his riches and establishes his stock under the protection of the laws." Haycraft in England and Jentsch in Germany have strongly emphasised these "anomalies," which nevertheless ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... likeness is essential to the very existence of respectability; and, by carrying out this proposition, that in order to make the least amount of extravagance produce the utmost admiration and envy, it is desirable to be improvident as publicly as possible; the means for such expenditure being gleaned from retrenchments in the home department. Thus, by a system of domestic alchemy, the education of the children is resolved into a vehicle; a couple of maids ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various
... checked. There would be a sudden alarm given; after which, mere luck would decide the event. For it is a remarkable fact, and one that illustrates the singular inconsistency of this villain, who, being often so superfluously subtle, was in other directions so reckless and improvident, that at this very moment, standing amongst corpses that had deluged the little parlor with blood, Williams must have been in considerable doubt whether he had any sure means of egress. There were windows, he knew, to the back; but upon what ground they opened, ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... charming, and displayed without affectation. He connected them with the image of his lost wife. There is no more natural, truly affecting passage than his display of fretfulness when he got some inkling that his second daughter was about to make a rather improvident marriage with young Snodgrass. The first had followed her inclinations in wedding Trundle—a not very good match—but he did not lose her as the pair lived beside him. He thought Emily, however, a pretty girl who ought to do better, and he had his eye on "a young gentleman ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald |
