"Miser" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... more precious; whereas, if you begin to act before you know what ought to be done, you act at random. Liable to deceive yourself, you will have to retrace your steps, and will be farther from your object than if you had been less in haste to reach it. Do not then act like a miser, who, in order to lose nothing, loses a great deal. At the earlier age sacrifice time which you will recover with interest later on. The wise physician does not give directions at first sight of his patient, but studies the ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... intelligently. For a third time Glaucon struggled across the raging flood. The passage seemed endless, and every receding breaker dragging down to the graves of Oceanus. The Athenian knew his power was failing, and doled it out as a miser, counting his strokes, taking deep gulps of air between each wave. Then, even while consciousness and strength seemed passing together, again beneath his feet were the shifting sands, again the voices ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... solida an ratione stetisset, Et Petri hausissent aequora vasta ratim, Inviolata fides aeterno permanet aevo. Percutit injustos ira molesta Dei; Quem neque praemeditans latuit Nero, funera cujus Distulit adversa in tempora longa vice. Occidit ergo miser, Divumque hominumque favore, Traduxitque illuc sors malesuada virum. Nil gravius pugnare Deo, pugnare feroci Fortunae. ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... temper of his mind was the temper of mind of the prose-writer. His worldly wisdom, his active philosophy, the very mainspring of his plots, are found, characteristically, in his valets and his servant-maids. He satirises the miser, the hypocrite, the bas-bleu, but he chuckles over Frosine and Gros-Rene; he loves them for their freedom of speech and their elastic minds, ready in words or deeds. They are his chorus, if the chorus might be imagined as ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... way home we met a woman who gave us a history of the house. An old miser lived there long ago. One night he was robbed and murdered, and his ghost still haunts the place. No one ventures in its vicinity, and she said most likely we were the first people who had gone there since the tragedy. She told us of a nearer way to reach it. You take the road to Windy ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... both been motionless ten seconds. "I don't mean that! Love is not all kisses. There is more. There are tears, but there is more too. There is pain, there is doubting, there is jealousy, and more than that! There is avarice also, for a woman who loves is a miser, counting her treasure when others sleep. And she would kill any one who robbed her, and that is murder. Yet there is more, there are all the mortal sins in love, and even then there is worse. For there is this. She will not count her own soul for him she loves, no, not if the saints ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... for twenty-one months, and not carried away a spar." Nelson himself, though reckless to desperation when an adequate object was at stake, in the moments of repose husbanded his means, and looked to the efficiency of his instruments, with the diligence of a miser. With his own hand he noted the weather indications, including the barometer, at least three times every twenty-four hours, and ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... ballad is founded on a real character—a miser—who by various means acquired a considerable property, and was the first person who ever left "tocher," that is fortune, to daughter in Man. His name was Mollie Charane, which words interpreted are "Praise the Lord." He ...
— Mollie Charane - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise
... date onward Tom toiled at the goldfields as if he had been a galley-slave, and scraped together every speck and nugget of gold he could find, and hoarded it up as if he had been a very miser, and, strange to say, Betty did ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... when rais'd to the Summit of Power, In the Midst of their Joy fear that Fortune may lower; The Miser, who Thousands has heap'd in his Chest, In the Midst of Riches is never at rest. And the Heroe, whose Bosom his Glory still warms, In the Midst of his Conquests fears the Change of his Arms. But the Lover, whose Fondness his ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... annoyed, however, by what she said this evening, though he was also secretly surprised and delighted. The contradiction is a common one. The miser is half mad with joy on discovering that he has much more than he supposed, and bitterly resents, at the same time, any notice which may be taken of the fact ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... ne'er rang woodman's stroke, Was clothed with elm and spreading oak, Through whose black boughs the moon's mild ray As hardly strove to win a way, As pity to a miser's heart.] ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... head and breast with the scarlet clay of his native Wabash, his dark shining eyes bent now upon his rifle which he held extended over Roland's body, now turned upon Roland himself, whom he seemed to watch over with a miser's, or a wild-cat's, affection, and now wandering away up the stony path along the hill-side, as if in expectation of the coming of an object dearer even than rifle or captive to ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... me from it, my dear; he is the most intolerable coxcomb in the world. No, I assure you, I love my husband! You may laugh as you choose; it is true. I know it may seem ridiculous, but consider, he has made my fortune, he is no miser, and he is everything to me, for it has been my unhappy lot to be left an orphan. Now even if I did not love him, I ought to try to preserve his esteem. Have I a family who will some day ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... being known by the names of Goldsched, Slowman, as well as by other noms de guerre; and he was altogether of a different cast from King, being avaricious, distrustful, and difficult to deal with. He counted upon his gains with all the grasping feverishness of the miser; and owing to his great caution he had an immense command of money, which the confidence of his brethren placed in his hands. To the jewellers, the coachmakers, and the tailors, who were obliged to give exorbitant accommodation ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... enough to depict our hero with many new domestic virtues which had developed on the firm ground of the Berlin life, and among which Frau Volkstett had perceived (as a most remarkable phenomenon and a proof that extremes sometimes meet) the disposition of a veritable little miser—and it made him altogether ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... witty: Without more ado, he vamps up my spark, And now we'll suppose him an eminent clerk! Suppose him an adept in all the degrees Of scribbling cum dasho, and hooking of fees; Suppose him a miser, attorney, per bill, Suppose him a courtier—suppose what you will— Yet, would you believe, though I swore by the Bible, That he took up two news-boys for ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... self-denial they managed to clothe all the little bodies, and feed all the great mouths, and yet put by a small hoard to meet the future; and, as it grew and grew, they felt a pleasure the miser hoarding for ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... myself. Sin is living to myself rather than to God. And there you touch the bottom. All those different kinds of sin, however unlike they may be to one another—the lust of the sensualist, the craft of the cheat, the lie of the deceitful, the passion of the unregulated man, the avarice of the miser—all of them have this one common root, a diseased and bloated regard to self. The definition of sin is,—living to myself and making myself my own centre. The definition of faith is,—making Christ my centre and living for Him. Therefore, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... love with a more solid diet. He makes us now a miser's feast, and we forbear to take our fill. The silent night, and all these downy hours, were made for lovers: Gently they tread, and softly measure time, that no rude noise may fright the tender maid, from giving all ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... 'That miser ruined by an open-handed man like my father!' said she. 'It is like your people's misrepresentations ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... various looks, words, and actions, the favourable with the unfavourable, are recalled, and by a mental process classified and marshalled against each other, and compared and balanced with as much exactitude as the pros and contras of a miser's bank-book; and in this process we have a new alternation of hopes ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... she could invent would at all solve the problem—no key of interpretation would fit these intricate movements. Here she stood, a prisoner perhaps, with the other treasures in the vault; and assuredly the miser, whosoever he might be, had shown great taste and judgment too in the selection. But the crisis was at hand. The door opened, and she heard a footstep behind her. A form stood before her whom she immediately ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... poor, yet I am rich In the touch of her golden hair, My heart is filled like a miser's hands With the red-gold of her hair. The sky I ride beneath all day Is the blue of her dear eyes; The only heaven I desire Is the blue ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... was Mrs Garlick's. A miser, she was not the ordinary miser, being exceptional in the fact that her temperament was joyous. She had reached the thirtieth year of her widowhood and the sixtieth of her age, with cheerfulness unimpaired. The people of Bursley, when they met her sometimes ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... be readily conceded that the miser is a worldly man. He loves gold for its own sake; he hoards up riches, not with the view of enjoying them, but in order to satisfy an inordinate greed of possession; his chief object in life is to die worth his hundreds, his thousands, or his millions. Though ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... other; but in church, on Sunday, everybody, or nearly everybody, seems to have donned a mask, a transparent mask, a smug mask, the mask of the known hypocrite. The man who is a brute to his wife goes meekly to his seat; the miser, who has six days pinched his tenants or evicted them, passes the collection plate, his face benevolent; the woman whose tongue is that of the liar and the gossip, who has done her best to smirch the reputation of her nearest neighbor, lifts her eyes heavenward ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... went on in the crowded mart, and pleasure was pursued in the luxurious halls of the noble. Here, flower-crowned guests reclined at the banquet, listening to sweet music, while yonder the squalid miser counted his gold, and there a fair young mother smiled upon her children. Just the same passions crowded into human hearts that day, just the same delusions were followed, the same pleasures felt, arid the same griefs deplored on that bright day in Imperial Rome, as now agitate, or delight, or ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... for. And to this he set himself with a moral fervour and a scientific tenacity. There was in Ibsen none of the abundance of great natures, none of the ease of strength. He nursed his force, as a miser hoards his gold; and does he not give you at times an uneasy feeling that he is making the most of himself, as the miser makes the most of his gold by ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... reality. No moonshine bank stock! no swindling railroads! Here is his bank, and there is no defaulter here. All is true, solid, and satisfactory; he seems anchored to this life by it. So Pope, with fine tact, makes the old miser, making his will on his death bed, after parting with every thing, die, clinging to the possession of his land. He disposes with many a groan of this and that house, and this and that stock and security; but at last the manor is proposed ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... might have continued till he came to the end of the world; for, though several words stood at the end of the serjeant's lips, there they were likely to remain for ever. He was, indeed, in the condition of a miser, whom a charitable impulse hath impelled to draw a few pence to the edge of his pocket, where they are altogether as secure as if they were in the bottom; for, as the one hath not the heart to part with a farthing, so neither had the other the ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... I hadn't begun that way I'd never have come to anything. A poor lad doesn't know enough to stop at the right time when once he begins; when he's thrown away one penny it pulls a dozen along after it. But you mustn't think I'm a miserable miser. Many a man has gone away empty-handed from the big farm-houses and has got what he needed from me. I didn't forget who has blessed my work and will soon demand an account from me.' At this I looked the little ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... he watched the old witch, and saw she often visited the house of an old miser who lived near by with his beautiful niece. Now all the people in the village touched their hats most respectfully to this old miser, for they knew he had dealings with the witch, and they were as much afraid of him as ...
— Welsh Fairy-Tales And Other Stories • Edited by P. H. Emerson
... the danger was only in appearance. "Your large creditors are men of property, and such men let their funds lie unless compelled to move them. The small mortgagee, the petty miser, who has, perhaps, no investment to watch but one small loan, about which he is as anxious and as noisy as a hen with one chicken, he is the clamorous creditor, the harsh little egoist, who for fear of risking a crown piece would bring the Garden of Eden to the hammer. ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... 've been winding myself up into a hard knot, the last six months, and the more I try to disentangle myself, the worse the thing gets. My allowance is n't half enough; nobody but a miser could live on it. I 've been unlucky, too. I bought a dog, and some one poisoned him before I could sell him; then I lamed a horse from the livery-stable, and had to pay damages; and so it went. The fellows all kept lending me money, rather than ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... the berries as carefully as a miser guards his gold, and whenever they were about to leave fairyland they had to promise in the presence of the king and queen that they would not give a single berry to mortal man, nor allow one to fall upon the earth; for if a single berry fell ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... Baudraye's second journey to Paris, Dinah discovered in him the Artic coldness of a provincial miser whenever money was in question. The first time she asked for supplies she played the sweetest of the comedies of which Eve invented the secret; but the little man put it plainly to his wife that he gave her ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... quite different character: he was always sullen and morose, and treated every one in a disrespectful manner, without any regard to rank or quality. Instead of making himself beloved and admired for his riches, he was so perfect a miser, that he denied himself the necessaries of life. In short, nobody could endure him; and if ever any thing was said to him, it was something of ill. But what increased the hatred of the people against him the more, was his implacable aversion to Khacan; always interpreting ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... to be made acquainted with her situation. He knew that she was ill; very ill, as he had reason to think; but, as he not only allowed her, but even volunteered to order her all the advice and relief that money could command (my ancestor was not a miser in the vulgar meaning of the word), he thought that he had done all that man could do, in a case of life and death—interests over which he professed to have no control. He saw Dr. Etherington, the rector, come and go daily, for a month, without uneasiness or apprehension, for he thought ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... home and implores her to return with him to the bedside of his dying wife. The sudden announcement that his wife—whom he had thought in a good state of health—is dying, is surely enough to startle even a miser out of his niggardliness, much less a hero; and yet what do we find Vasher doing? The heroine, in frantic excitement, has to pass through his smoking room, and on the table she sees—what? "A half-smoked cigar." He was in the middle of it when a servant came to tell him of his wife's dying request; ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... unfatherly lips. The more her baby was rejected, the more he was hers! He belonged to her, and her only, for she only loved him! She could say with France in King Lear, "Be it lawful I take up what's cast away!" To her the despised one was the essence of all riches. The joy of a miser is less than the joy of a mother, as gold is less than a live soul, as greed is less than love. No vision of jewels ever gave such a longing as this woman longed with after the child of her ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... to believe in the permanence of accidental states. The generosity of a miser, the good nature of an egotist, the gentleness of a passionate temperament, the tenderness of a barren nature, the piety of a dull heart, the humility of an excitable self-love, interest me as phenomena—nay, even touch me if I am the object of them, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... been said on this head because there was less to say. But surely no sane individual ever wished that property should accumulate merely for the sake of accumulation, that society should have the temper of a miser, and toil merely to increase its hoards. Still less has any one manifested a disposition to confine the enjoyment of wealth to any one class, treating the labourer and the artisan as mere tools and instruments ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... of the means of subsistence. The South American Indians are ready to render an amount of service for a little brandy, which it would be in vain to ask them to perform for ten times its value in gold. (Ausland, Jan. 15, 1870.) The miser estimates the possibility of being able to procure for himself, for one dollar, a hundred different articles worth a dollar each, to ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... had got the "pearl fever" very badly and flatly refused to leave. Already we had made an enormous haul, and in addition to the stock in my charge Jensen had rows of pickle bottles full of pearls in his cabin, which he would sit and gloat over for hours like a miser with his gold. He kept on saying that there must be more of these black pearls to be obtained; the three we had found could not possibly be isolated specimens and so on. Accordingly, we kept our divers at work day after day as usual. Of course, I did not know much about ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... threw up his hands with a wild laugh that echoed among the pillars. "It is the will of the devil, who has been my curse and shall be thine! Ay, ay, look not at me! It is true. Thinkest thou that I have brought thee up in solitude without cause? Thinkest thou that I have hidden thee like a miser his treasure, in the dark, unseen places, for a whim? Son, I have suffered as I pray thou mayst not have to suffer, and I have within my heart a serpent of hatred whose sting I would thou couldst feel." He paused, biting his lip as though the pain he described was actual ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... secretary who has served him faithfully for many years may find himself treated almost as a stranger in a moment of need. I fear it must be said that in financial matters Mr. Balfour is as close-fisted as any miser, although I believe that this meanness has its rise, not so much in avariciousness as in a total incapacity to realize the importance ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... through Tournai, I made inquiries as to this miser, and afterwards informed the King. It appears that he was surprised by robbers when despoiling one of these tombs. After robbing him of all that he possessed, they buried him alive in the very, grave where he was digging, so as to save expense. What a dismal sort of science! What a life, ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... must be as omniscient as that of the all-seeing Deity. The better he knew the uproarious rabble over whom he ruled, the more evidently was it his duty to watch over Caesar's person as anxiously as a mother over her child, as a miser over his treasure." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the beautiful little town of Saumur thinks of the historic figures connected with its name? Even the grand personality of Duplessis Morny sinks into insignificance by comparison with that of the miser's daughter, the gentle, ill-starred Eugenie Grandet! And who when Carcassonne first breaks upon his view thinks of aught but Nadaud's immortal peasant and ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... accumulation was criminal. I have seen, in a MS. Church-service of the thirteenth century, an illumination representing Church-Consecration, illustrating the words, "Fundata est domus Domini supra verticem montium," surrounded for the purpose of contrast, by a grotesque, consisting of a picture of a miser's death-bed, a demon drawing his soul out of his mouth, while his attendants are searching in ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... Can you not recall more than one person in your own circle of acquaintances who is sacrificing his health, his good name, his domestic comfort, to vicious indulgences? Worldly people recognize and act upon this principle. Look at that miser: he is hoarding up his thousands and his tens of thousands, but in order to do so, is he not sacrificing every thing which makes life worth having? It is a mistake to suppose that religion, or morality, or the public necessities, ever call upon us to make greater sacrifices than those which ...
— The Spirit Proper to the Times. - A Sermon preached in King's Chapel, Boston, Sunday, May 12, 1861. • James Walker
... less and less. But I found a certain joy in that, for I was becoming a miser for my child's sake, and the only pain I suffered was when I went to my drawer, as I did every day, and looked at my rapidly ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... deeper—they could never forgive her for dying. At last they settled down to a stolid, long wait for the old man's end. The chief theme of conversation at home was the uncertainties of life for the "old miser," and the sure probability of their move some day on to the big ranch, though not one of them knew what they would do with it if they got it. Dan felt no hesitation about telling this at school, and it was common gossip ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... that would do me, if I'd been killed!" muttered the miser. "I'm going to sue you for this. You might have put me in ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... when he was digging for roots, his poor sustenance, his spade struck against something heavy, which proved to be gold, a great heap which some miser had probably buried in a time of alarm, thinking to have come again, and taken it from its prison, but died before the opportunity had arrived, without making any man privy to the concealment; so it lay, doing neither ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... a good memory. In times of excitement such as that I seize all the best phrases and carry them away, and bury them out of sight, like a miser. They are ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... crab. His faded hair, scanty and slight, like the down on a young duck, allowed his scalp to be plainly seen. The brown, crimpled skin of his neck showed the big veins which sank under his jaws and reappeared at his temples. He was regarded in the district as a miser and a ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... it up, and counting it out. There may be a mania of this kind, in which men become enamored of Mammon for his own sake, and hug him to their breasts, and kiss his golden lips, with all the ardor of lovers. Still, I suspect that the genuine miser—that is, one who loves money for itself alone—is an exceptional man. But every man who is not absolutely inactive and useless in the world, is moved by some kind of passion. For, it is not correct to speak of outliving our passions. We may outlive the ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... concierge at Edmond's studio swore at him twice, and Sunday, when Edmond and I were breakfasting late, the old beast saw 'Loisette' on the stairs and threw water over her; she is a sale bete, that grosse femme! She shall see what it will cost her, the old miser; and you know I have always been most amiable with her. She is jealous of me—that is it—oh! I am certain of it. Because I am young and happy. Jealous of me! that's funny, is it not? The old pig! Poor ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... horse-doctor besides; and took a chief hand, almost from a boy, in the management of the estates. How hard a part that was, in the situation of that family, none knows better than myself; nor yet with how little colour of justice a man may there acquire the reputation of a tyrant and a miser. The fourth person in the house was Miss Alison Graeme, a near kinswoman, an orphan, and the heir to a considerable fortune which her father had acquired in trade. This money was loudly called for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he was like a miser who had been robbed of all his jewels but one, and the love of father, mother, and wife seemed to gather itself ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... frighten you out of your wits for a shilling. There's a man at Clerkenwell, a jeweller's journeyman from Venice, who pretends to practise the transmutation of metals, and to make gold. He squeezed hundreds out of that old miser Denham, who was afraid to have the law of him for imposture, lest all London should laugh at his own credulity and applaud the cheat. And you have not seen the Italian puppet-play, which is vastly entertaining. I could find you novelty and amusement ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... rich, lies," said he testily, and with an uneasy gesture which explained to my mind the dilapidated state of the place. Maurice Gorman was not only a poltroon but a miser, and five hundred pounds were worth more to him than ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... be wrong, however, to say that she had no love; she loved one thing—a base thing—she loved money. Lydia Purcell was saving money; in her heart she was a close miser. ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... says Cicero, had been a distinguished member of the equestrian order, and "fortissimus et maximus publicanus"; not greedy of money, but most liberal to his friends—in other words, he was not a miser, for that character was rare in this age, but lent his money freely in order to acquire influence and consideration. The son took up the same line of business, and engaged in a wide sphere of financial operations. He dealt largely in ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... we shall only notice the more striking articles. From the vast quantity of papers, falls an old written journal, where, among other memorandums, we find the following, viz. "May the 5th, 1721. Put off my bad shilling." Hence, we learn, the store this penurious miser set on this trifle: that so penurious is the disposition of the miser, that notwithstanding he may be possessed of many large bags of gold, the fear of losing a single shilling is a continual trouble ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... says my lord. "If I were rich, I often think I would be the greatest miser, and live in rags and on a crust. Depend on it there is no pleasure so enduring as money-getting. It grows on you, and increases with old age. But because I am as poor as Lazarus, I dress in purple and fine linen, and ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... toothless, wheezy, green-eyed old miser, who was so nearly dead from age and asthma that he had to be wheeled about by his ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... High Priest says, "Come, Judas, take the silver, and be a man." And when the thirty pieces are counted out to him, he cannot resist the temptation, but clutches them with a miser's grasp and hurries off to intercept the Master on his way through the Garden of Gethsemane. Meanwhile, after a tender farewell from his mother, Christ leaves the house of Simon of Bethany, and, with his disciples, takes the road ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... contagious. Losing all control over herself, and sobbing with rage, she behaved with the greatest impertinence to her father, calling him a tyrant and a miser. ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... The man who, though possessed of hundred kine, does not establish a domestic fire for daily worship, that man who though possessed of a thousand kine does not perform sacrifices, and that man who though possessed of wealth acts as a miser (by not making gift and discharging the duties of hospitality), are all three regarded as not worthy of any respect. Those men who make gift of Kapila king with their calves and with vessel of white brass for milking them,—kine, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... pocket-books, breast-pins, gilt-edged Bibles, stationery,—in short, everything which was like to prove seductive to the rural population. The Colonel had made money in trade, and also by matrimony. He had married Sarah, daughter and heiress of the late Tekel Jordan, Esq., an old miser, who gave the town clock, which carries his name to posterity in large gilt letters as a generous benefactor of his native place. In due time the Colonel reaped the reward of well-placed affections. When his wife's inheritance fell in, he thought he had money enough to give up trade, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... their lives to him. The sailor dream'd of tossing on the flood: The soldier of his laurels grown in blood: The lover of the beauty that he knew Must yet dissolve to dusty residue: The merchant and the miser of his bags Of finger'd gold; the beggar of his rags: And all this stage of earth on which we seem Such busy actors, and the parts we play'd, Substantial as the shadow of a shade, And Dreaming but a ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... anxious to be doing something again. I was a little afraid when he made the offer, but knew that he had made a great deal of money out of my improvements and was very wealthy, and I did think he would be true to me, knowing as he did my circumstances. Look at this miser, with not a child in the world, and no one on earth that he cares one straw about, and yet so grasping! Oh! what will the poor ...
— History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, - and Life of Chauncey Jerome • Chauncey Jerome
... again, and then he lays his chest on the table quite like Gaspard the Miser. 'Good friends, senores, to-morrow will be the great day of Liberty and Independence. The hearts of Americans and Salvadorians should beat together. Of your history and your great Washington I know. Is ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... is it for me, Lord Vargrave, to be a mendicant upon reluctant bounty,—a poor cousin, a pensioned led-captain? Heaven knows I have as little false pride as any man, but still this is a degradation I cannot stoop to. Besides, Caroline, I am no miser, no Harpagon: I do not want wealth for wealth's sake, but for the advantages it bestows,—respect, honour, position; and these I get as the husband of the great heiress. Should I get them as her dependant? No: for more than six years I have built my schemes and shaped my conduct according ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... If I knew a miser, who gave up every kind of comfortable living, all the pleasure of doing good to others, all the esteem of his fellow-citizens, and the joys of benevolent friendship, for the sake of accumulating wealth, Poor man, said I, you pay ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... corn-measure of a neighbour—a very rich but penurious man, who starved himself, hoarded up corn, cheated the labourer of his hire, robbed the widow and the orphan, and lent money on pledges. Now the measure had some cracks in the bottom, through which the miser shook some grains of corn into his own heap when selling it to the poor labourer, and into these cracks two or three small coins lodged, which the miser was not slow to discover. He goes to the woodcutter and asks him what it was he had been measuring. "Pine-cones ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... an austere unapproachable old man, having no relatives of whom any one knew; with few friends and fewer intimates; a rich man, according to the Mount Hope standard, and a miser according to the Mount Hope gossip, with the miser's traditional suspicion of banks. It was rumored that he had hidden away vast sums of money in his dingy store, or in the closely-shuttered rooms above, where the odds and ends of the merchandise in which he dealt had ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... nothing but the spirit of the extortioner is here manifested. There is no feeling of sorrow shown at her unfortunate position, no disposition evinced to shield the helpless mother and her babes. No! we find his actions narrowed down to the sordidness of the miser, the avariciousness of the extortioner. A feeling of surprise at such conduct may flit across your bosoms, gentlemen, and you may perchance doubt that I can show a man of this city, so bereft of charity, so utterly oblivious to all the better feelings of humanity, ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... laughed, and, raising the beer-pot aloft, commanded the gentlemen to drink to the health of the miser Pollnitz. ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... longing unexpressed, In pain most human, and in rapture brief Almost divine. Love would possess, yet deepens when denied; And love would give, yet hungers to receive; Love like a prince his triumph would achieve; And like a miser in the dark his joys would hide. Love is most bold, He leads his dreams like armed men in line; Yet when the siege is set, and he must speak, Calling the fortress to resign Its treasure, valiant love grows weak, And hardly dares ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... said Chi Foxy. "And all you've got to do is to explain them. You see, bo, I was a young feller when I murdered this old miser—" ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... merchants; and Fortune favoured the daring of both. In short, Mr. Taylor was no common, plodding trader, content with moderate gains and safe investments, and fixing his hopes on probabilities—he pursued traffic with the passion of a gambler, united to the close calculation of a miser; and yet, he spent freely what he had ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... Cigarette, with a volley of slang utterly untranslatable, "that is how you treat your betters, is it? Miser, monster, crocodile, serpent! He wanted the money and you refused it? Ah! son of Satan! You live on other men's miseries! Run after him, quick, and give him this, and this, and this, and this; and say you were only in jest, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... daydream, all perturbed minds gather, and become excited, in this ideal realm. They start out with curiosity and end up with enthusiasm. The man in the street rushes to the enterprise in the same manner as a miser to a conjurer promising treasures, and, thus childishly attracted, each hopes to find at once, what has never been seen under even the most liberal governments: perpetual perfection, universal brotherhood, the power ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... he has only a marraine [note 1:] who sends him tobacco and note-paper every fortnight. Not Barque, who would not toe the line; nor Blaire, the miser—he wouldn't understand. Not Biquet, who seems to have something against him; nor Pepin who himself begs, and never pays, even when he is host. Ah, if Volpatte were there! There is Mesnil Andre, but he is actually ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... Herr Sohnstein, doubtfully. "Ah," said Herr Sohnstein, "thou meanest that a very hard-hearted, money-lending man has hired a shop for thee and has made it the most splendid bakery and the finest restaurant on all the East Side, eh? And thou art afraid that this man, this old miser man, will keep thee to ...
— A Romance Of Tompkins Square - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... invariable. Money attracted money, accumulating always in the same places, going by preference to the scoundrelly and the mediocre. When, by an inscrutable exception, it heaped up in the coffers of a rich man who was not a miser nor a murderer, it stood idle, incapable of resolving itself into a force for good, however charitable the hands which fain would administer it. One would say it was angry at having got into the wrong box and avenged itself by going into voluntary ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... there was the murder of old Thayer, the rich miser in East Sixteenth Street. It was the sensation in all the newspapers for two weeks. Then they dropped it as an unsolvable mystery. Cumnock persuaded Mr. Bowring to let him keep on. After five days' work he heard of a deaf and dumb woman who sat every afternoon at a back window ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... had been intense; his satisfaction with the result was complete. Perhaps after every act of successful banking there takes place in the mind of man, spendthrift and miser, a momentary lull of energy, a kind of brief Pax vobiscum my soul and stomach, my twin masters of need and greed! And possibly, as the lad deposited his earnings, he was old enough to enter a little way into this adult and despicable joy. Be this as it ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen
... cost that old miser, Dave Wisner, about three or four million dollars," says he. "He's put up his life, his fortune and his sacred honor on that irrigation scheme, and he's going to be lucky if he gets through with any of them before ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough
... the fire! Foe defies foe; element, element. How sublime is the war! But the ladder, the ladder,—there, at the window! All else are saved,—the clerk and his books; the lawyer with that tin box of title-deeds; the landlord, with his policy of insurance; the miser, with his bank-notes and gold: all are saved,—all but the babe and the mother. What a crowd in the streets; how the light crimsons over the gazers, hundreds on hundreds! All those faces seem as one face, with fear. Not a than mounts the ladder. Yes, there,—gallant ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... de Conti wait," said Law, "and a plague take him for a grasping miser! He has gained enough. Time was when ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... buy a ticket in the lottery, love; there's my darling; and I'll be bound he'll have good luck. Tell him, I'll be bound we shall have a ten thousand pound prize at least; and all for a few guineas. I'm sure I think none but a miser would grudge the money, if he ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... hollow of his hand, he found it sweet, soft, and deliciously cool. Here was a discovery, indeed! The physical comfort for which he most pined was thus presented to him, as by a direct gift from heaven; and no miser who had found a hoard of hidden gold, could have felt so great pleasure, or a tenth part of the gratitude, of our young hermit, if hermit we may call one who did not voluntarily seek his seclusion from the world, and who worshipped God less ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... passion form'd, and still the strongest reigns. Huntsmen renew the chase they lately run, And generals fight again their battles won. Spectres and fairies haunt the murderer's dreams; Grants and disgraces are the courtier's themes. The miser spies a thief, or a new hoard; The cit's a knight; the sycophant a lord, Thus fancy's in the wild distraction lost, With what we most abhor, or covet most. Honours and state before this phantom fall; For sleep, like death, its image, ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... releasing her fingers as a miser might part with treasure. "Again? I have been here every ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... stood a small square writing-table, of some dark-coloured wood, with several drawers. In another corner, Max discovered a rusty gridiron and sauce-pan, a small iron pot and a toasting-fork, upon which he pounced with the eagerness of a miser lighting upon hidden treasures. The chest was empty, but a small box, or till, fixed in one end of it, contained a number of vials, a cork-screw, a tin-canister, and a French Bible, upon the last of which Arthur seized with as much avidity as Max had evinced in appropriating the cooking utensils. ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... cocked or pointed hat, on the point of which he often spins round like a top. You may often see him under the hedge mending shoes; where, if you are sharp enough, you may catch him and make him give up the big crocks of gold, of which the little miser has saved many and many. But you must be careful, for if after you have seen him once you take your eyes off him for a single instant, he vanishes into the air ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... just reflection, that all the good things of this world are no farther good to us than they are for our use; and that, whatever we may heap up to give others, we enjoy just as much as we can use, and no more. The most covetous, griping miser in the world would have been cured of the vice of covetousness if he had been in my case; for I possessed infinitely more than I knew what to do with. I had no room for desire, except it was of things which ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... to tell you one, which I remember imperfectly. It relates, as many such stories do, to a buried treasure. An old miser had an only daughter; he denied himself everything, but he educated her well, and treated her becomingly. He had accumulated a treasure, which he designed for her, but could not bear the thought of parting with it, and died without ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... back, and Mr. Burnside shook hands with becoming coldness, as having just given a lesson in manners. He was not a bad man, nor a miser, nor a Scrooge, but he was a great stickler for manners, especially with people who had nothing to give him. Besides, he had already lent Overholt money; or, to put it nicely, he had invested a little in his ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford
... of re-entering sees this action) The beggarly old miser! Sixty francs on account paid ten times makes six hundred francs. Come now, I have sown enough, it is time to reap the harvest. ...
— Mercadet - A Comedy In Three Acts • Honore De Balzac
... the parents thought His merit such as prudence would have sought; What more to wish?—the miser's hoarded store: The golden age's wealth is now no more, A silly shadow, phantom of the brain; O happy time! I see indeed with pain, Thou wilt return:—in MAINE thou shalt arise; Thy innocence, we fondly may ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... to know how to tackle the guv'nor; he's a quair sort. I've worked for the Rougeants for forty-two years, and the old fellow's never given me more than my day's wage." Then he added in an undertone, "He's a reg'lar miser, he's got some tin! They say he's ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... rightful occupation in this life? Why prate of our defects—of where we fail, When just the story of our worth would need Eternity for telling; and our best Development comes ever through your praise, As through our praise you reach your highest self? Oh! had you not been miser of your praise And let our virtues be their own reward, The old established order of the world Would never have been changed. Small blame is ours For this unsexing of ourselves, and worse Effeminizing ...
— Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days • Annie L. Burton
... of power, triumph, superiority, pleasure, safety, benevolence and a dozen and one other things. Men who seek money and goods may therefore be seeking very different things; one is merely acquisitive, has the miser trend; another loves the game for the game's sake, picks up houses, bonds, money, ships, as a fighter picks up trophies, and they stand to him as symbols of his superiority. Some see in property the fulcrum by which they can apply the power that will shift ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... said she intended, yet, after the funeral, my wages were duly paid by her second cousin, the heir, an avaricious-looking man, with pinched nose and narrow temples, who, indeed, I heard long afterwards, turned out a thorough miser: a direct contrast to his generous kinswoman, and a foil to her memory, blessed to this day by the poor and needy. The possessor, then, of fifteen pounds; of health, though worn, not broken, and of a spirit in similar condition; I might ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... but he never showed any discomfort, not to say unhappiness, when left alone for a while with Saffy—who was not always so reasonable as he would have liked her to be. When several were in the room, he would lie looking from one to another like a miser contemplating his riches—and well he might! for such riches neither moth nor rust corrupt, and they are the ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... givin' any real lifelike miser imitation; but he didn't indulge in high priced cafe luncheons on Saturdays, like most of the bunch; he'd scratched his entry at the college club; and he was soakin' away his little surplus as fast as he got his ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... of the gouty and irascible Pirkheimer's defamation of Frau Duerer as a miser and a shrew called forth a display of ingenuity on the part of Professor Thausing to prove the contrary. And I must confess that if he has not quite done that, he seems to me to have very thoroughly discredited Pirkheimer's ungallant abuse. Sir Martin Conway bids us notice that Duerer speaks ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... pounds for his passage and services, and Vanslyperken was so pleased, that he thought seriously, as soon as he had amassed sufficient money, to withdraw himself from the service, and retire with his ill-gotten gains; but when would a miser like Vanslyperken have amassed sufficient money? Alas! never, even if the halter were half round his neck. Ramsay then gave his instructions to Vanslyperken, advising him to call for letters previously to his sailing, ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... self-denying economy; husbanding my monthly allowance with anxious care, in order to obviate the danger of being forced, in some moment of future exigency, to beg additional aid. I remember many called me miser at the time, and I used to couple the reproach with this consolation—better to be misunderstood now than repulsed hereafter. At this day I had my reward; I had had it before, when on parting with my irritated uncles one of them threw down on the table before ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... flatterer or sycophant; 'tosspot' (Fuller), or less frequently 'reel-pot' (Middleton), tells its own tale as well as drunkard; and 'pinchpenny' (Holland), or 'nipfarthing' (Drant), as well as or better than miser. And then what a multitude more there are in like kind; 'spintext', 'lacklatin', 'mumblematins', all applied to ignorant clerics; 'bitesheep' (a favourite word with Foxe) to such of these as were rather wolves tearing, than shepherds ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... The Permanent Possibility is preserved, but the sensations carefully held at arm's length, as if one kept a photographic plate in a dark chamber. It is better to lose health like a spendthrift than to waste it like a miser. It is better to live and be done with it, than to die daily in the sick-room. By all means begin your folio; even if the doctor does not give you a year, even if he hesitates about a month, make one brave push and see what can be accomplished in a week. It is not only ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sympathy is not with them, is, if we follow Coleridge, really farce. Whatever "The Building Fund" is, its characterization is admirable. Some might say its men and women approximate to types, that Mrs. Grogan is the avaricious old woman, Shan the sanctimonious miser, Sheila the sly minx, Michael the benevolent old man, and Dan the gay blade. Types or not, you will find all of them in Ireland, and all of them wherever human nature is human nature. If they are types, however, each has a personality, ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... kept back, but which broke forth in spite of me, when you saved the linen that was being carried away by the Chevrotte. I recollect my anger when you robbed me of my poor people, by giving them so much money, and thus making me appear as a miser. I can still recall my fear on the evening when you forced me to run so fast through the grass with my bare feet. Oh, yes, I have not ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... high-tempered in them days, mind ye; and I had the gig manned. We was out in the stream, just ready to sail. 'T was no use waiting any longer for the wind to change, and we was going north-about. I went ashore, and when I walks into his shop ye never see a creatur' so wilted. Ye see the miser'ble sculpin thought I'd never stop to open the goods, an' it was a chance I did, mind ye! 'Lor,' says he, grinning and turning the color of a biled lobster, 'I s'posed ye were a standing out to sea by this time.' 'No,' says I, 'and I've got my men out here on the quay a landing ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... insipid in my sermons, and remiss in my conduct; having been more solicitous, during the exercise of my ministry, to advance my family than to build up the Lord's house, I will preach hereafter with fervor and zeal. I will be vigilant, sober, rigorous, and disinterested. Let the miser say: I have riches ill acquired. I will purge my house of illicit wealth. I will overturn the altar of Mammon and erect another to the supreme Jehovah. Let the prodigal say: I will extinguish the unhappy fires by which I am consumed and kindle ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... but a changed man. Never speaks to a soul, if he can help it. Some folk say he's not right in his head; or turned miser, or somewhat, and takes naught but bread and water, and sits up all night in the room as was hers, turning over her garments. Heaven knows what's on his mind—they do say he was over hard on her, and that drove her to it. All I know is, he has ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... She was a miser with her treasure, already; she wanted to fly with it, and to hide it away, and to test its reality in secret, alone. She had come running in from the wonderland down by the gate, just for this, ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... his field. In like manner the care of the world and the deceitfulness of riches lacerate the man who permits them to grow rank in his heart. The vain man is continually meeting with slights, or suspecting that his neighbours are about to offer them. The miser is always losing money, or trembling lest he should lose it in the next transaction. The world itself knows, and in its proverbs confesses, that around the most coveted pleasures are set sharp thorns, which wound the hand that tries to ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... advances slowly. The revenues, too, are inadequate to the state. The financial affairs of the crown are disordered, and it is only by the strictest economy that I am able to sustain the army. The people call me a miser, because Maria Theresa's prodigality of expenditure forces upon me measures of retrenchment, and necessitates unusual expedients ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... such romance. It is not because we love too little, but because our love is worthy of each other, that we disdain to make love a curse! We cannot wrestle against the world, but we may shake hands with it, and worm the miser out of its treasures. My heart must be ever yours; my hand must be Miss Cameron's. Money I must have,—my whole career depends on it. It is literally with me the highwayman's choice,—money or life." Vargrave paused, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I know no more, The clanging of the brazen wheels of greed, The taloned hands that build the miser's store, The stony streets where feeble feet must bleed. No more I walk beneath thy ashen skies, With pallid martyrs cruelly crucified Upon thy predetermined Calvaries: I, too, have suffered, yea, and I have died! Now, at the ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson |
