"Miserly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... them. Well pleased to enjoy themselves at his expense, the young nobles paid him a sort of court. As to Bernardone, he was too happy to see his son associating with them to be niggardly as to the means. He was miserly, as the course of this history will show, but his pride ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... and came to live with her miserly uncle. Her adventures and travels make stories that will hold ...
— The Curlytops and Their Pets - or Uncle Toby's Strange Collection • Howard R. Garis
... angling with great dexterity and patience, under the direction of both her parents, my handsome sister Annabella had succeeded in catching an eligible husband, in the shape of a wizen, miserly, mahogany-colored man, turned fifty, who had made a fortune in the West Indies. His name was Batterbury; he had been dried up under a tropical sun, so as to look as if he would keep for ages; he had two subjects ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... with sordid signs on it of having been, through its long existence as Harmony Jail, in miserly holding. Bare of paint, bare of paper on the walls, bare of furniture, bare of experience of human life. Whatever is built by man for man's occupation, must, like natural creations, fulfil the ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... to t' master?" suggested Mrs. Dixon, not without, as it seemed to Netta, a touch of slyness in eyes and voice. Of course they all knew by now that she was a cipher—that she was not to count. Edmund had been giving all the orders—in his miserly cheese-paring way. No comforts!—no conveniences!—not even bare necessaries, for herself and the child. Yet she knew very well that her husband was a ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... hurried to the great city, without folding wing; merely stopping a moment to torment a miserly old landlord, who, the day before, had turned a poor widow, with two little children, out of his tenement house, because she was not quite ready with the rent. I put a great fly on his nose, and a great flea in his ear, and ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... that M. Thiers has been guilty of treating certain members of his family with great meanness, and in society many scandalous stories have been repeated illustrating his miserly economy. ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... Prince of the Seven Golden Cows passed along the road. He was richer than all the kings and emperors, but he was mean and miserly. He walked along with a stick in his hand, and as he walked he counted in his mind the millions that he had stored away in ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... Horace puts his fancies into the mouth of Alphius, a miserly money-lender. No one yearns so keenly for the country and its imagined peace as the overworked city man, when his pulse is low and his spirits weary with bad air and the reaction of over-excitement; no one, as a rule, is more apt to tire of the homely and uneventful life which the country ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... are very fond of broiled eels. A rich merchant, named Kisaburo, who was very miserly with his money, once moved his quarters next door to the shop of one Kichibei, who caught and cooked eels for a living. During the night Mr. Kichibei caught his stock in trade, and in the day-time served them, smoking hot, to his customers. Cut into pieces three or four inches long, they ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... often happens that a prophet has no honor among his own people, and David was the black sheep of the miserly household of Denton Farm. It consisted of old Christopher Denton, his three sons, Matthew, Sam, and David, and his daughter Jennie. They had the reputation of being "people well-to-do," but they were not liked among the Cumberland "states-men," ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... example of the grasshopper, but they will choose the ant . . . they will take the more pleasant part, which is a very natural thing." Another observer said: "As for me, I love neither grasshopper nor ant, neither avarice nor prodigality, neither the miserly people who lend nor the spendthrifts who borrow." These statements represent complex, analytic points of view which are probably outside the range of most children. They will see the grasshopper simply ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... here, and every new year I am troubled by a deficit, so that I am really no better off now than I was before. If it were not for my wife you would see something curious, and I should be proud to go about the world as a beggar; but the continual uncertainty, and the miserly condition in which we live, affects my poor wife more and more, and I can keep her mind at rest only by a certain economical security. More of this when I see you. That I ask you this question at the present moment when I am sick of life, and would see the end of it today rather than tomorrow, ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... them to decapitate you on the same cloth on which they behead burghers. I have made an agreement with Amylej, that he furnish a new cloth, so handsome that it would be good enough to cover king's fur. I will not be miserly with prayers, ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... instruments must be carefully handled or not handled at all. But how recklessly some people wield the judgments of God! If a man meet with business misfortune, how many there are ready to cry out: "That is a judgment of God upon him because he was unscrupulous, or arrogant, or overreaching, or miserly. I thought he would get cut down! What a clean sweep of everything! His city house and country house gone! His stables emptied of all the fine bays and sorrels and grays that used to prance by his door! All ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... all the world's seeing—and let him alone. The original expenditure for building and fitting must be magnificent, and the current expenditure for cleaning and refitting magnanimous; but a certain proportion of this current cost should be covered by small entrance fees, exacted, not for any miserly helping out of the floor-sweepers' salaries, but for the sake of the visitors themselves, that the rooms may not be incumbered by the idle, or disgraced by the disreputable. You must not make your Museum a refuge against either ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... that's my heart of honour! yon young gallant— Your miserly Intendant and dense noble— All—all suspected me; and why? because I am the worst clothed, and least named amongst them; Although, were Momus'[186] lattice in your breasts, My soul might brook to open it more widely Than theirs: ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... possible that the colonel had extracted the information he sent her FROM Briones. They had parted from Pendleton in London, as he was grumpy and queer, and, as Milly thought, becoming very miserly and avaricious as he grew older, for he was always quarreling over the hotel bills. But he had Mrs. Woods's New York address at Under Cliff, and, of course, guessed where she was. There was no address on his letter: he had said ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... old Nanny, who kept a marine store, and to whom I used to sell whatever I picked up on the beach. She was a strange old woman, and appeared to know everything that was going on. How she gained her information I cannot tell. She was very miserly in general; but it was said she had done kind things in one or two instances. Nobody knew her history: all that anybody knew was that she was Old Nanny. She had no kith or kin that she ever mentioned; some people ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... the quaint, and the faulty were so interwoven, that nobody cared to separate these elements, to take the trouble to criticize or to thank; and thus, though we all gladly enough received, we kept our miserly voices to ourselves, and she never met with any adequate recognition. After her first book, England quietly ignored her,—they could not afford to be so startled; as Sir Leicester Dedlock said, "It was really—really—"; she did very well for the circulating ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... around were mighty trees, but conspicuous above any, in the very center, was a giant sycamore, split at its base into three large trees, whose waving branches seemed to sweep the face of heaven, and whose roots, like miserly fingers, clutched deep into the ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... himself a widower, with one daughter, Mary, about three years older than I, and certainly she was the dearest little treasure with which Providence ever blessed a miserly father; by the time she was fifteen, five farmers, three lawyers, twelve Protestant parsons, and a lieutenant of Dragoons had made her offers: it must not be denied that she was an heiress as well as a beauty, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I have forgotten the best instance of all—the other grandson of the Bearnais, Louis XIV., my ex-master. Well, I hope he is miserly enough, he who would not lend a million to his brother Charles! Good! I see you are beginning to be angry. Here we are, by good luck, close to my house, or rather to that of my ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... have to fear in the course of our brief pilgrimage. We emerge from eternity, we plunge into eternity; we have but a brief space to poise ourselves in the light ere we drop into the gulf of doom, and our duty is to be miserly over every moment and every faculty that is vouchsafed to us. The essentials of thought and knowledge are contained in a very few books, and the most toilsome drudge who ever preached a sermon, drove a rivet, or swept a floor may become perfectly educated by exercising ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... revealed to the outer world. In fact, it is only by students at the same time tenacious and patient—continuously anxious to get at the truths of occult philosophy, but cool enough to bide their time when obstacles come in the way—that what looks, at first sight, like a grudging and miserly policy in this matter on the part of our illustrious teachers can be endured. Most men persist in judging all situations by the light of their own knowledge and conceptions, and certainly by reference to standards of right and wrong with which modern civilization is familiar ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... You lose only what your father left, and I have doubled that—trebled it. Besides, there is the little property that came to me from my parents. I've always meant, when I married, to give you more than my marriage would cost you. That is why I have worked so hard, and saved. Perhaps you thought me miserly, grasping? I know people do. But that is why. The money is to be yours, all yours and Jacqueline's—at once, not after I die. We shall need very little, Jacques and I. ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... wool-trade, and did a double business by selling for the producers and buying for the manufacturers of the golden fleeces of Berry; thus pocketing a commission on both sides. In this way they grew rich and miserly—the outcome of many such lives. Descoings the son, younger brother of Madame Rouget, did not like Issoudun. He went to seek his fortune in Paris, where he set up as a grocer in the rue Saint-Honore. That step led to his ruin. But nothing could have hindered it: a grocer is drawn to his business ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... "You're a miserly coward," she declared. "I'm not robbing you; you will have an abundance for your needs. Why do you quarrel with Dame Fortune? Don't you realize you can pay your rent now and eat three square meals a day, and not have ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... high wagon, bought an immense dinner bell and he was hit unmercifully. A rusty old fly-catcher elicited many remarks—as "no flies on that." I bought several chests, half full of rubbish, but found, alas! no hidden treasure, no missing jewels, no money hid away by miserly fingers and forgotten. Jake Corey, who was doing some work for me, encouraged me to hope. He said: "I hear ye patronize auctions putty reg'lar; sometimes there is a good deal to be made that way, and then ag'in there isn't. I never had no luck that way, but it's like ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... his feet and said: 'Heaven has bestowed on you beauty and charm. Tell me your secret; who are you, and how did you come here? I love you very much, and if you would like to leave this place I will go with you. I have wealth equal to the treasure of the miserly Qarun.' But the prince only made answer like a man distraught, and told her nothing. He said to himself, 'God forbid that the veil should be taken in vain from my secret; that would indeed disgrace me.' So, with streaming eyes and burning ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... spiced, applying apparently to their preparation the taste which she applies to dress; and her extraordinary luck in angling did not fail to supply her with the finest specimens, though, for that matter, this lake, with its old fish-hatcheries and fish-ladders, is not miserly in that way, swarming now with the best lake trout, river trout, red trout, and with salmon, of which last I have brought in one with the landing-net of, I should say, thirty-five to forty pounds. As the bottom ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... "celebrities," "men of the time," feted and written about, but eventually retire on the Civil List. Eccentricity is the breath of their nostrils, their very existence depends upon it, publicity is essential. My friend's eccentricity was for his own pleasure. He lived in a frugal—some might think in a miserly way—in two rooms in one of the Inns of Court. Perhaps I shall be more correct if I say he existed in one. A loaf of bread and half a pint of milk was his daily fare. The room he slept in he worked in. The other was empty, save for bundles of dusty ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... The miserly marquis had become, to him, something other than a curious survival of times past. There was a chance for Logan, his friend, the last of the name, but Logan was firmly affianced to Miss Markham, of the cloak department at Madame Claudine's. ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... poor child who was passing; "what I expect is, to have to work very hard for my living, and, as I am the eldest, I look upon it that I ought to do something for mamma, and the girls into the bargain. But for all that I hope I shall never turn a miserly screw. Why, when God gives us health, food, clothing, and lodging, don't you think that hoarding and hoarding, instead of dispensing the blessings, and performing such acts of kindness as may be in our power to bestow, is like doubting ...
— The Young Lord and Other Tales - to which is added Victorine Durocher • Camilla Toulmin
... Hylding ("The Crowning of King Solomon") (1585), Samsons Faengsel ("The Imprisonment of Samson"), which includes lyrical passages which have given it claims to be considered the first Danish opera, and a farce, Karrig Niding ("The Miserly Miscreant"). Beside these works Ranch wrote a famous moralizing poem, entitled "A new song, of the nature and song of certain birds, in which many vices are punished, and many virtues praised." Peder Clausen[8] (1545-1614), a Norwegian by birth ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... ceiling had gone down into the old "bear's" inventory, and not the smallest item was omitted; jobbing chases, wetting-boards, paste-pots, rinsing-trough, and lye-brushes had all been put down and valued separately with miserly exactitude. The total amounted to thirty thousand francs, including the license and the goodwill. David asked himself whether or not ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... the incessant wars and political intrigues in which he was constantly engaged would have given him no time for amusements of this kind, yet he was, nevertheless, the keenest sportsman of his day. This tyrant of the Castle of Plessis-les-Tours, who was always miserly, except in matters of hunting, in which he was most lavish, forbade even the higher classes to hunt under penalty of hanging. To ensure the execution of his severe orders, he had all the castles as well as the cottages searched, ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... the trade of crime was adopted strictly in subservience to the dictates of ill-regulated desires and emotions, suffering defeat in their hope of indulgence, and stimulating to a morbid action which became a disease. The references of Munro were always addressed to the petty gains; and the miserly nature, thus perpetually exhibiting itself, at the expense of all other emotions, was, in fact, the true influence which subjected him almost to the sole dictation of his accomplice, in whom a somewhat lofty distaste for such a peculiarity had ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... aspirations are summed up in this: to arrive at seizing a morsel—the biggest possible—of that prey which the fortunate of earth consume. And to this same category, little matter what their station in life, belong the profligate, the arrogant, the miserly, the weak, the crafty. Livery counts for nothing: we must see the heart. No class has the prerogative of simplicity; no dress, however humble in appearance, is its unfailing badge. Its dwelling need not be a garret, ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... burgomaster of Amsterdam, who, on some popular troubles, abandoned Holland and came over to the province during the government of Peter Stuyvesant. He was my ancestor by the mother's side, and an old miserly curmudgeon he was. When the English took possession of New-Amsterdam in 1664, he retired into the country. He fell into a melancholy, apprehending that his wealth would be taken from him and that he would come to beggary. He turned all his property into cash, and used to hide it away. ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... return them most carefully by the same intervention; and particularly the curious piece of enamel; for though you are, as usual, generous enough to offer it to me, I have plundered you too often already; and indeed I have room left for nothing more, nor have that miserly appetite of continuing to hoard what I cannot enjoy, nor have much time left ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... than were needed to 'try out' the sea-elephant oil. The schooner, however, had a very ample supply of wood to burn, that being an article which abounded on Shelter Island, and which the deacon had consented to lay in, in some abundance. Gardiner got this concession out of the miserly temperament of the old man, by persuading him that a sealer could not work to any advantage, unless he had the means of occasionally warming himself. The miserly propensities of the deacon were not ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... The world has commended the man who gives out of his superfluity, but it has condemned him who keeps too much to himself. All literature, from the earliest times, is full of denunciation of such a character. The miserly and the stingy have been impaled over and over again on the sword of ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... the brewery as now the Countess could have been. We are not dissecting human nature suffice it, therefore, from a mere glance at the surface, to say, that just as moneyed men are careful of their coin, women who have all the advantages in a conjunction, are miserly in keeping them, and shudder to think that one thing remains hidden, which the world they move in might put down pityingly in favour of their spouse, even though to the little man 'twere naught. She assumed that a revelation would diminish her moral stature; and certainly it would not increase ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a savage dog belonging to the Dutch farmer with whom he and the Indians lodged. When he got off he lay two days hidden in the hold of the vessel that was to carry him away. Then the Indians came out and so frightened its officers that he was sent ashore and put under the care of a miserly old fellow who ate the most of the food that was provided for Jogues. While he was hidden in this man's garret he was within a few feet of Indians who came there to trade. Finally the Dutch satisfied the Indians by paying a large ransom and shipped Jogues down the river. He ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... mentioned how he contrived to be fed and warmed. He had a small allowance from the parish poor-box, about fifty shillings; this was eked out by an annual peregrination through the parish, when some gave him food, others money, wool, &c., which he hoarded most miserly. How he cooked his food I have not been able to learn, for his sister, who lived in the same cottage with him, was separated by a stone and lime wall, and had a separate door of the usual size, and window to ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... Arthur's miserly employer is very good, and his shrewd friend Cheek is capitally drawn. It was a peculiarly happy thought to make Cheek into a railroad-conductor, and finally into a "gentlemanly and efficient" superintendent. Nothing else would have ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... in Astrabad, A man the world agreed was mad, So wickedly he broke his joke Upon the heads of duller folk, So miserly, from day to day, He gathered up and hid away In vaults obscure and cellars haunted What many worthy people wanted, A stingy man!—the tradesmen's palms Were spread in vain: "I give no alms Without inquiry"—so he'd say, And beat the needy duns away. The bastinado did, 'tis true, Persuade ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... last the miserly Chobei was persuaded to grant the prayer; and his wife was glad to add even two days more to the time permitted. And Kohagi, thus freed for five days, was so rejoiced that she at once without delay commenced her ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... Crawling up the sides, the Snails imprisoned in my apparatus sometimes reach the top, which is closed with a glass pane, and fix themselves to it with a speck of glair. This is a mere temporary halt, in which the Mollusc is miserly with his adhesive product, and the merest shake is enough to loosen the shell and send it to the bottom ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... now and then some fugitive felicities of expression; and this is more than can be said for either the play or the poem in which he has gone, with feebler if not more uneasy steps than Milton's Satan, over the same ground of burning marl. There is some spirit in the prodigal's denunciation of his miserly father: but the best thing in the pamphlet is the description of the soul of a hero bound for paradise, whose name is given only in the revised and enlarged edition which appeared a year later under the title of "A Knight's Conjuring; done in earnest; discovered ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... corner. It interested me, after so many years, to see the two women together. Tiny audits Lena's accounts occasionally, and invests her money for her; and Lena, apparently, takes care that Tiny doesn't grow too miserly. 'If there's anything I can't stand,' she said to me in Tiny's presence, 'it's a shabby rich woman.' Tiny smiled grimly and assured me that Lena would never be either shabby or rich. 'And I don't want to be,' the other ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... Leonora's money, must make a very handsome sum. But one of the faults of the American women is that they are seldom good managers. Leonora is either no exception to the rule—or else she is getting very miserly. Why, an Italian on Leonora's income ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... sir, never care three straws for praise or blame,—leather and prunella! Praise and blame are here!" and he struck his hand upon his breast with almost passionate emphasis. "Take a specimen. These Hogtons were the bane of the place,—uneducated and miserly; their land a wilderness, their village a pig-sty. I come, with capital and intelligence; I redeem the soil, I banish pauperism, I civilize all around me: no merit in me, I am but a type of capital guided by education,—a machine. And yet the old woman is not the only one ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fish," Jacket wheedled, "for the sake of Miguelito, who is bravely fighting in the manigua, to the shame of his miserly old father, fattening on the groans of good patriots like me! Must I remind you again that Miguelito was my brother? That I have robbed my own belly in order to give ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... course he continued on his best behaviour, but behind the scenes he permitted himself to grumble loudly at the old lady's meanness and miserly ways. ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... of Silas Wilson's miserly disposition, and judged that there would be a good chance to secure booty in the farm house. Bert, though he did not admire Mr. Wilson, felt that it was his duty to protect him from being plundered, if possible. He knew that he was in some personal peril, ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger
... Suppose this same miserly A, on awaking and searching for, and finding his treasure gone, takes it so much to heart that ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... his patient's recovery. The last stipulation follows. The Courier has a conscience; and with a view to keeping it easy, insists that he shall be left in ignorance of that part of the plot which relates to the sequestration of my Lord. Not that he cares particularly what becomes of his miserly master—but he does dislike taking other people's responsibilities on ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... accused of showy ostentation. If I didn't give it, I was accused of not putting money into honest circulation. If I donated to a church, it was called conscience money; and if I didn't donate to it, they said I was mean and miserly. So much for what I've done. I was just wondering—what the other fellow'd ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... before the opening of this story the trustees of the Fairham Poor-house had decided to bind Hal out to Daniel Scrogg, one of the most miserly farmers in ...
— The Missing Tin Box - or, The Stolen Railroad Bonds • Arthur M. Winfield
... herauld to fix us in our proper places, which with much difficulty being at last agreed on, we proceed to a whet of old hock to sharpen our appetites to our approaching dinner; though I confess my stomach was as keen already as a greyhound's to his supper after a day's coursing, or a miserly livery-man's, who had fasted three days to prepare himself for a Lord Mayor's feast. The honest cook gave us no leisure to tire our appetites by a tedious expectancy; for in a little time the cloth was laid, and our first course was ushered up ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... in a stocking, or a purse, or in a jar, or a cracked cooking pot, that couldn't be used. Often they put it away somewhere in the chimney, behind a loose brick. Then, at night, when no one was looking, these miserly folks counted, rubbed, jingled, and gloated over the shining coins and never helped anybody. So there grew up three sorts of people, called the thrifty, the spendthrifts, and the misers. These last were the meanest and most disliked of all. Others, again, hid ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... in England, there were two brothers named Nickleby who had grown up to be very different men. Ralph was a rich and miserly money-lender who gained his wealth by persecuting the poor of London—a thin, cold-hearted, crafty man with a cruel smile. The other, who lived in the country, was generous but poor, so that when he died he left his wife and two children, Nicholas and Kate, with hardly a penny ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... a way out of these troubles. He had been commissioned by an old lady of Leipzig, called Fraulein Leplay, a rich and very miserly old maid, to find a cheap lodging in Paris for her and for his stepmother, with whom she intended to travel. As our apartment, though not spacious, was larger than we actually needed, and had very quickly become a troublesome burden to us, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... tightly over the protruding bones, had lost all its crimson, and was green, white, yellow. The mouth was wide open. His drawn features wore a terribly sardonic look—a purely physical effect of the disease; but it seemed to the two spectators that this mean and disappointed slave of a miserly habit had by one superb imaginative effort realized the full vanity of all human wishes ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... I do not know any one. My poor mother is in Cumberland, and that is not en route. I have a maternal uncle of the name of Forster, who lives on the road—a rich, old, miserly bachelor; but I can't say much for his hospitality. I have called upon him twice, and he has never ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Ahab, it can only be said that he had his father's faults without his father's virtues. Ahab was liberal, Joram miserly, nay, he even indulged in usurious practices. From Obadiah, the pious protector of the prophets in hiding, he exacted a high rate of interest on the money needed for their support. As a consequence, at his death he fell pierced between his arms, the arrow going out at his ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... wealth yourselves, and you can make Brine and her comfortable if you wish. She is your only child"—("Blessed Father, think of him knowin' this!")—"and as you are well to do in the world, it's both a sin and a scandal for you to urge a pretty young girl of nineteen to marry an old miserly runt of fifty. You know now how to lay the ghost, Mrs. Houlaghan—and that is what I can do for you; but if you do not marry her to Brine Oge, as I said, another ghost will certainly contrive to haunt ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... once a taste for improvement [I mean building and gardening improvement] becomes a passion, gaming itself is scarcely more ruinous. I have no doubt that Sir Arthur's fortune has suffered, and is suffering severely; and that while that miserly wretch, Abimelech, is destroying the fabric, he is purloining and carrying off the best of the materials. I doubt whether there be an acre of land in the occupation of Sir Arthur, which has not cost ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... splitting for want of paint. Close by the sacred terrace itself lay the fragments of a broken chimney-pot, blown down during the last equinoctial gales and suffered to lie where it had fallen. Everywhere were visible tokens of that miserly thrift which, carried to excess, degenerates into unthrift of the worst and meanest kind, from which the transition to absolute ruin ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... tightly about his thinning figure and scowled as he followed her through the gate. He scowled at that invisible fate which preceded them both. Now, at the end of five years, they were living in a tenement house, a crowded, filthy place, ruled by a miserly, relentless landlord, whose ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... I, "you are a wicked old fraud, a miserly skinflint, a miserable land crab. Behold, your share for the year in all our partnership has been thousands of dollars. The head clerk has given me this paper. It says that in the year you have drawn just eighty-seven dollars and ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... initial volume tells how the hero ran away from his miserly guardian, fell in with a successful airman, and became a young ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... light he catalogued remembered objects, all intimate to his grandfather, each oddly entangled in his mind with his dislike of the old man. The iron bed; the chest of drawers, scratched and with broken handles; the closed colonial desk; the miserly rag carpet—all seemed mutely asking, as Bobby did, why their owner had deserted them the other night and delivered himself to the ghostly mystery of the ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... silvery face Reflects the mansions that her margins grace. Those mansions fair are seen on every hand, (What may not wealth, in such a place, command?) And mark their owners men of wealth and taste; Not miserly, nor yet ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... would seem that he diffused about him the same forbidding environment in his own house. He is described as stern, obstinate, masterful and miserly, domineering his household like a tyrant, roaring with fiery anger whenever he was opposed, and flying into fits of fury if his moods, designs and will were contested. His wife bore him thirteen children, twelve of whom she had brought up to maturity. A woman of almost rustic simplicity of mind and ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... the Countess, curtly. This was rather miserly measure, four ells and a third being the usual reckoning; but Mistress Underdone measured and cut ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... the former; but there were some mollifying circumstances to be taken into the account in the summing up of his character. His natural love of money had been stimulated and intensified by the malign influence of his wife. She was miserly when he married her. To keep what she had, and get what she could, was her ruling passion; besides which she had a passion for ruling. And often, when her husband's gentler heart would be touched by a tale of suffering, and his hand be opened to relieve ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... friends more than any other friends. Home is where love is truest and tenderest. We need never fear being misunderstood by the loved ones who there cluster about us. Yet too often home is the very place where we are most miserly of grateful and appreciative words. We let gentle spirits starve close beside us for the words of affectionateness that lie warm, yet unspoken, on our tongues. None of us know what joy and strength we could impart ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... shrink back into harbor. And yet when something does really touch her—when something makes her feel—that curious indecision in her nature hardens into something irresistible. There was a half-witted girl in the village, ill-treated and enslaved by a miserly old aunt. Miss Coryston happened to hear of it from her maid, who was a relation of the girl. She went and bearded the aunt, and took the girl away bodily in her pony-cart. The scene in the cottage garden—Marcia with her ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... furies! Where should a poor old wretch like me have a hundred guineas? If I had so much money, d'ya think I should be found travelling in a waggon, at this season of the year?" "Come, come," replied Jenny, "none of your miserly artifice here. You think I don't know Isaac Rapine, the money-broker, in the Minories. Ah! you old rogue! many a pawn have you had of me and my acquaintance, which was never redeemed." Isaac, finding it was in vain to disguise himself, offered twenty shillings for a discharge, ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... see a girl economical," he remarked, frowning, "but there's a diff'rence between that and being miserly. And," with resolution, "I go further, and I say that if there's anybody who's got a just and fair and proper claim on your consideration, ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... laboratory; and from such grains enough of the essence might, perhaps, have been drawn forth, to add a few years of existence to some feeble graybeard,—granting, what rests on no proofs, that some of the alchemists reached an age rarely given to man. But it is not in the miserly crucible, it is in the matrix of Nature herself, that we must seek in prolific abundance Nature's grand principle,—life. As the loadstone is rife with the magnetic virtue, as amber contains the electric, so in this substance, to which we yet want a name, is found the bright life-giving fluid. In ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Burtons hoisted. What will the owners say, sir? Let the owners stand on Nantucket beach and outyell the Typhoons. What cares Ahab? Owners, owners? Thou art always prating to me, Starbuck, about those miserly owners, as if the owners were my conscience. But look ye, the only real owner of anything is its commander; and hark ye, my conscience is in this ship's keel. —On deck! Captain Ahab, said the reddening mate, moving further into the cabin, with a daring so ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... eyes returned to the body of his victim, where it lay both humped and sprawling, incredibly small and strangely meaner than in life. In these poor, miserly clothes, in that ungainly attitude, the dealer lay like so much sawdust. Markheim had feared to see it, and, lo! it was nothing. And yet, as he gazed, this bundle of old clothes and pool of blood began ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... characteristic. She united the economy to which she owed her fortune with a full understanding of necessary expenses. Her relative prodigality, when it concerned her brother or Celeste, was the antipodes of avarice. In fact, she often bemoaned herself that she couldn't be miserly. At her last dinner she had related how, after struggling ten minute and enduring martyrdom, she had ended by giving ten francs to a poor workwoman whom she knew, positively, had been without food ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... industrious and frugal, and a loving husband spends lavishly on a loved wife and children, though miserly ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... almost never fails to injure that of the farm-servant. As he has to calculate on being part of every winter, and almost every spring, unemployed, he is compelled to practise a self-denying economy, the effect of which, when not carried to the extreme of a miserly narrowness, is always good; and Hallow-day returns him every season to the humanizing influences ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... worth a gooid bit o' brass, 'at he'd scraped together someway, but like moor sich like it didn't mak him a jot happier, an' he lived as miserly as if he hadn't a penny. Even th' sparrows knew what sooart ov a chap he wor, for they'd goa into iverybody's back yard for two or three crumbs but his, an' if one wor iver seen abaat his door, it wor set daan to be a young en 'at ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... surroundings, "on Lenten fare," as the wits said at the time. But Grushenka had succeeded in emancipating herself, while she established in him a boundless belief in her fidelity. The old man, now long since dead, had had a large business in his day and was also a noteworthy character, miserly and hard as flint. Though Grushenka's hold upon him was so strong that he could not live without her (it had been so especially for the last two years), he did not settle any considerable fortune on her and would not have been moved to do so, if she ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... up the arm-chair her brother had vacated and sat down, her thoughts drifting backward to the past. Backward four years, and she saw herself, a penniless orphan, dependent on the bounty of that miserly Uncle Roosevelt in Montreal. She saw again the stately gentleman who came to her, and told her he was her father's third cousin, Captain Danton, of Danton Hall. She had never seen him before; but she had heard of her ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... have sweated farthings to produce it," said I. "But eight thousand and sixty is the sum, beside odd shillings. And if you can think my patron miserly after that, this ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... antennae are those of vanity. Philip's agitated themselves, searched about and were surprised; they missed something.... Did he not have his circle of affection which rendered unto him the customary homage—the attentive audience to which in miserly fashion he doled out his stories—his parents who brooded him under their touched admiration—the young brother?... Stop there! It was he, exactly he who was missing ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... of frontier life. No longer sought as the belle of the soldiers' ball-rooms, she aspired to leadership among their wives and families, and was accorded that pre-eminence rather than the fierce battle which was sure to follow any revolt. She became avaricious,—some said miserly,—and Clancy miserable. Then began the downward course. He took to drink soon after his return from a long, hard summer's campaign with the Indians. He lost his sergeant's stripes and went into the ranks. There came a time when the new ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... "Stephen Holmes is not miserly. I've knowed him since a boy. To buy place, power, perhaps, eh? Yet not that, neither," he added, hastily. "We think a sight of him out our way, (self-made, you see,) and would have had him the best office in the State before this, only he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... not tolerate this legal brigandage. Since "agriculture has done nothing for liberty and has sought only its own gain,"[2179] we will put it under surveillance, and, if necessary, under control. Since "commerce has become a species of miserly tyrant," since "it has become self-paralyzed," and, "through a sort of anti-revolutionary contempt, neglected the manufacture, handling and expedition of diverse materials," we will thwart "the calculations of its barbarous arithmetic, and purge it of the aristocratic and corrupting fermentation ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... possession of her great-uncle, Sir Giles Courtenay, a most eccentric man, so odd and peculiar, indeed, that many people had considered him to be out of his mind. He was reputed to be extremely wealthy, yet lived in a miserly fashion, entertaining no visitors, and never spending a penny which it was possible for him to save. He never married, but passed his days as a recluse, shut up among the books in his library, seeing only a few old servants whose services ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... the mass of foliage of the Villa Medici behind it; the lofty tower of the Capitol in the midst of the city; and the sun clasping all to its heart of gold, the new and the old alike, past and present, youth, age and decay,—generous as only the sun can be in this sordid and miserly world, where bread is but another name for blood, and a rood of growing corn means a pound of human flesh. The sun is the only good thing in nature that always gives itself to man for nothing but the mere trouble of sitting in the sunshine; ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... intoxication among them, though all drank abundance of this liting, or sweet beer. Both men and boys were eager to work for very small pay. Our men could hire any number of them to carry their burdens for a few beads a day. Our miserly and dirty ex-cook had an old pair of trousers that some one had given to him; after he had long worn them himself, with one of the sorely decayed legs he hired a man to carry his heavy load a whole day; a second man carried it the next day for the ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... a very miserly fellow, and restricted his wife in what are considered the comforts of life—such as tea, sugar, &c. To make up for this, she set her wits to work, and, by the help of a slave, named Joe, used to take from the plantation whatever ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... have not experienced the feelings I describe, dear reader, I pity you, and am forced to conclude that you must have been either awkward or miserly, and ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova • David Widger
... of wearing and using shoes; the other by the manipulation of an umbrella; and the prudent mother advises her son how the candidate for bride behaves toward a groom lying on the floor, or how she eats cheese—the extravagant one cuts the rind away thick, the miserly one eats the rind, the right one cuts the rind away thin and carefully. Many people judge families, hotel guests, and inhabitants of a city, and not without reason, according to the comfort ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... see. Three, seven, twelve, fourteen, twenty-three—here is some mistake. Let us go over it again. Yes, here it is. This is not your accounting. The miserly Lombard would cozen you of your honor if he could but sell it again. Here is an error of near ten thousand livres; let me correct ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... whom all the merchants desire us to poke fun at is Mail-Order Petrie. Mail-Order Petrie is a miserly old codger who buys everything out of town that he can buy a penny cheaper than the home merchants sell it. He is a hard-working man, so far as that goes, and so stingy that he has been accused of going barefooted in the summer time to save shoes. When he is ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... only by their teeth or some still ungashed body mark. How long they had pluckily, cheerily held out, confident of the speedy coming of the comrades from over that westward spur, and therefore less miserly of their lead and eager to stretch some of their yelling foes upon the sward, could now only be conjectured. Little by little their fierce, defiant fire had slackened. Little by little confidence had waned, and doubt and dread replaced ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... And they are miserly because they have no means of openly acquiring the money which they prize; they will spend that which is another man's on the gratification of their desires, stealing their pleasures and running away like children from the law, their father: they have been ...
— The Republic • Plato
... and he determined that he would not say much about his being ill. Women did not always exactly understand some men, and when he left home, Mrs. Clark had expressed some very strong views as to Livingstone which had pained Clark. She had even spoken of him as selfish and miserly. He would just say now that Livingstone on his arrival had sent him straight ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... everyone a share in the government. The result is that the state is not one, nor two, but diverse. Folk say what they like and do what they like, and anyone is a statesman who will wave the national flag. That is democracy. Such is the son of your miserly oligarch; deprived of unnecessary pleasures, he is tempted to wild dissipation. He has no education to help him to distinguish, and the vices of dissipation assume the aspect and titles of virtue. He fluctuates from one point of view to another—is ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... that those, who cry out the loudest against the misuse of honour and the vanity of the world, are those who most greedily covet it. This is not peculiar to the ambitious, but is common to all who are ill—used by fortune, and who are infirm in spirit. For a poor man also, who is miserly, will talk incessantly of the misuse of wealth and of the vices of the rich; whereby he merely torments himself, and shows the world that he is intolerant, not only of his own poverty, but also of other people's riches. ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... plan of funding debts; but, curiously enough, sordid capitalists and miserly landlords don't. I offered the other day to fund all my personal debts, in the shape of a long loan at three per cent, but my creditors did not take kindly to the idea. Such is the sordid meanness which is too sadly characteristic of the merely commercial mind. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... was not from any miserly motive. He well knew the value of the money, and that peace at home was never better secured than by a full treasury. He made, moreover, a princely use of his money, encouraging scholarship, music, and architecture, and dazzled the eyes of foreign ambassadors with the splendour of ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... been Mr. Jabez Potter's housekeeper at the Red Mill for more than fifteen years, and if anybody knew the "moods and tenses" of the miserly miller, it must have been Aunt Alvirah. She even professed to know the miller's feelings toward his grand-niece, Ruth Fielding, better ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... parsimonious yet liberal London merchant, whose miserly habits gave Arbuthnot the materials of the story. See Professor Brown's Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, vol i. p. 244, and Martin Scriblerns, cap. xii., Pope, vol. iv. p. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... expression, his eyes seemed dull, and something hard and icy in his looks revealed his wild character and foreign extraction. His tutor's portrait Petrarch has drawn for us: crimson face, hair and beard red, figure short and crooked; proud in poverty, rich and miserly; like a second Diogenes, with hideous and deformed limbs barely ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... not that Uncle Abimelech was miserly or that he grudged us assistance. Not at all. He was ready to deal generously by us, but it must be in his own way. His way was this. Murray and I were to stay on the farm, and when Murray was twenty-one Uncle Abimelech said he would deed the ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... ill omen. She was the white man's fly. In fact, she was the epitome of the white man himself. She has the white man's craftiness, his industry, his architectural skill, his neatness and love of system, his foresight; and, above all, his eager, miserly habits. The honey- bee's great ambition is to be rich, to lay up great stores, to possess the sweet of every flower that blooms. She is more than provident. Enough will not satisfy her; she must have all she ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... the Government. Paul had been sordid and avaricious; his vast wealth was wrung from the necessities of the unfortunates Otho were obliged to borrow from him or succumb to financial disaster. Had he been a Jew, his greed, his miserly ways, his usuries, would have been stigmatized as Jewish traits, but being a devout Catholic he was spoken of ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... Giles Toller's miserly nature had offered to his lodger shelter from wind and rain, and the furniture absolutely necessary to make a bedroom habitable—and nothing more. There was no carpet on the floor, no paper on the walls, no ceiling to hide the rafters of the roof. ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... together he hath been forgot, They scarce could afford to hang on the pot; Such miserly sneaking in England hath been, As by our forefathers ne'er us'd to be seen; But now he's returned, you shall have in brief, Plum-pudding, ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... mind and was moreover well acquainted with the fantastic folly of allowing customers to call again. Within his experience of some thirty years he had not met half a dozen exceptions to the rule that customers who called again, if ever they did call, called in a mood of hard and miserly sanity which for the purposes of the jewellery business was sickeningly inferior to their ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... isn't in it any more when it comes to big deals. You see, he was so close and miserly in all his business affairs that a great many people became afraid ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... have the power to betray all the miserly emotions and mean parsimonies usually concealed behind its ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... of the story begins when the miserly old miner—who, all the time unknown to Jerry, is hoarding up gold for his young ward—discovers, to his great astonishment, that gold has no fascination for this strange young man, and fears that with his lofty ideals all his toil for him will be in vain ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... should have known this!" Tidemand would often say when he gave his signature. His father had a reputation for miserly thrift which had survived him; he was one of the old-fashioned tradesmen, who went around in his shirt-sleeves and apron, and weighed out soap and flour by the pound. He had no time to dress decently; his shoes were still a byword; the toes were sticking out, and when he walked ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... watch its performance with his everlasting, good-humoured, satisfied smile. In public she ventures only to abuse the doll. In the silent watches of the night she directs her sharp speeches at Christian himself. Not that she is altogether miserly, nor by any means an ill-disposed person. Had she been of such a disposition her husband would not have married her, for he is a very good man of business and a keen judge of other wares besides tobacco. She is a good mother and ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... and famine made bold, All dripping with wet and all trembling with cold, Away he set off to a miserly ant, To see if, to keep him alive, he would grant Him shelter from rain: A mouthful of grain He wished only to borrow, He'd repay it to-morrow: If not, he must die of ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... Very well. Now I have got something else to say; another secret which must be kept from Philip (I call him by his name now, you see) for a few days more. Your happiness, my dear, must not depend on his miserly old father. He must have a little income of his own to marry on. Among the hundreds of unfortunate wretches whom I have relieved from torture of mind and body, there is a grateful minority. Small! small! but there they are. I have ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... that was really willing to work wouldn't need no help," grumbled the miserly storekeeper. "It is only on account of ...
— The Young Bridge-Tender - or, Ralph Nelson's Upward Struggle • Arthur M. Winfield
... rummage. Garrets and closets surrendered their hoards to her; files of old newspapers, old ledgers, old letter-backs, began to accumulate in heaps,—everything but books, for Jane had a religious respect for their recondite lore; she cut the margins off the magazines, and she grew miserly of the very shreds ravelling under Vivia's fingers. At length, one morning, after she had watched the windows unweariedly as a cat watches a mouse-hole, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... Post, and we were beginning to practise a strict economy. My brother, who never makes up his mind whether he will be a Miser or a Spendthrift, is at all times a strange mixture of both: of this failing, the even economy of your correct brother's temper makes him an ill judge. The miserly part of Charles, at that time smarting under his recent loss, then happened to reign triumphant; and he would not write, or let me write, so often as he wished, because the postage cost two and four pence. Then came two or three of your poor Mother's letters nearly together; and ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... of charging parcels by the pound, when goods are sold by the pound, and so getting a miserly profit in the packing, is surely one of the absurdest disregards of the obvious it ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... received from her mother which advised her to be tactful and make herself agreeable and invaluable to the old lady,—alter her gowns and make and trim her hats, etc. "You're clever, and from helping me sew you have become proficient and have acquired considerable knowledge of dressmaking. If she's miserly and won't buy new, my child, you can flatter her by remodeling her old gowns, etc. Then she'll grow to depend on you. She'll consider you a good manager and feel that her money will not be wasted by you. Then, when you marry we'll go abroad to associate ...
— How Ethel Hollister Became a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... contact with others worse than himself, and shining out in the unclouded light of his own genuine goodness—to do my utmost to help his better self against his worse, and make him what he would have been if he had not, from the beginning, had a bad, selfish, miserly father, who, to gratify his own sordid passions, restricted him in the most innocent enjoyments of childhood and youth, and so disgusted him with every kind of restraint;—and a foolish mother who indulged him to the top of his bent, deceiving her husband ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... if you go first this way and then that, then you see everything. You are nearly as silly as the ants, who never see anything beautiful all their lives. Be sure you have nothing to do with the ants, Bevis; they are a mean, wretched, miserly set, quite contemptible and beneath notice. Now, I go everywhere, all round the field, and spend my time searching for lovely things; sometimes I find flowers, and sometimes the butterflies come down into the grass and tell me the news; and I am so fond of the sunshine, I sing to ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... from God to teach men anew that, if they would reach heaven and happiness, they must repent and shun evils as sins against God, and strive to live a life according to the commandments? Look at the fearful evils which prevail in our beloved country; the love of rule, civil and ecclesiastical; the miserly love of money, selfishness, vanity and sensualism, in their worst and most degrading forms! Customs and habits prevail which threaten the extinction of at least the Protestant portion of the community in large sections of our country. ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis
... we do not in the least advocate the formation of miserly, penurious habits; for we hate the scrub, the screw, the miser. All that we contend for is, that man should provide for the future,—that they should provide during good times for the bad times which almost invariably follow them,—that they should lay by a store of savings as a breakwater ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... carpenter nodded swift acquiescence, on his part longing to be rid of "them miserly Dutchmen, barring ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... flesh. Did you think I had gone? My dear Ethel, so I would have gone, if Inez had come down in the sisterly way she should. But she hasn't. I give you my word of honor her conduct has been shabby in the extreme. A few hundreds—I asked no more—and she wouldn't. What was a miserly fifty pun' note to a man like me, with expensive tastes, and who has not set foot on British soil for two years? Not a jewel would she part with—all Sir Victor's presents, forsooth! And she's in love with Sir Victor, you ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... her behalf. Nais was uneasy. The splendor was alarming to her mind. Provincial life had reacted upon her; she was painfully conscientious over her accounts, and economical to a degree that is looked upon as miserly in Paris. She had brought with her twenty thousand francs in the shape of a draft on the Receiver-General, considering that the sum would more than cover the expenses of four years in Paris; she was ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... edge my thoughts to action, When the miserly press of each day's need Aches to a narrowness of spilled distraction My soul appalled at the world's work's time-greed? How can I pause my thoughts upon the task My soul was born to think that it must do When every moment has a thought to ask To fit ...
— 35 Sonnets • Fernando Pessoa
... dead he had not a coin left. He went and begged grace of the owner of the hut, a cobbler who went every Sunday night to drink his pint of wine and smoke with Baas Cogez. The cobbler would grant no mercy. He was a harsh, miserly man, and loved money. He claimed in default of his rent every stick and stone, every pot and pan, in the hut, and bade Nello and Patrasche be out of it ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... all the while on Mdlle. Q——. I admired her charms, and I was delighted to see that she was not miserly in their display. After Zenobia had done her hair she left her to me, and went to attend on the others. She allowed me to put on her dress, and did not forbid my eyes wandering towards a large rent in her chemise, which ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... old Lady Humguffin, easily the most miserly old dear who ever wore a transformation (she even has a taxi-meter thing in her own motors and anyone driving with her is expected to pay what it registers!). Colour-experts say that if it weren't for the frightfully dull dusty purple in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... neighbours, with whom they rarely met for any social intercourse, save at the stated times of sheep-shearing and Christmas; having a certain kind of sober pleasure in amassing money, which occasionally made them miserable (as they call miserly people up in the north) in their old age; reading no light or ephemeral literature, but the grave, solid books brought round by the pedlars (such as the "Paradise Lost" and "Regained,'" "The Death of Abel," "The Spiritual Quixote," and "The Pilgrim's Progress"), were to be found in nearly every house: ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... where he came from, or what he was, they did not know, except that he was a Virginian,—they believed so, for that he had a tobacco estate there, which was carried on by his eldest son. He called the captain a stingy, miserly fellow, who would sacrifice any man's life to save a shilling, and that there were odd stories ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... go without them," replied the countess, laughing. "I will be very respectful to a twenty-franc piece, and grow as miserly as the country people themselves. Come, my dear abbe, give me your arm. Leave the general with his two ministers, and let us go to the gate of the Avonne to see Madame Michaud, for I have not had time since my arrival to pay her a visit, ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... think that nowadays people attach far too much importance to chastity. Not that I deny that chastity is a virtue, but there are degrees in virtues just as there are in vices. It seems to be absurd that a woman should be banished from society for having had a lover, while a woman who is miserly, double-faced and spiteful goes everywhere. The morality of this age is assuredly not that which is taught in the Gospel. In my opinion it is better to love too much than not enough. Nowadays dry hearts ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... his companion as they rowed home again. "An immense amount!" replied Erasmus, but his friend saw the discontent on his face, and drew from him how small the sum really was. Then the disappointed scholar burst into a string of indignant questions: was Warham miserly, or was he poor, or did he really think such a present expressed the value of the book? Grocyn frankly blurted out the true reason for Warham's economy in his shrewd suspicion that this was not the first dedication that had been prefixed ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... at the time when earthquakes were prevalent in New England, and shook many tall sinners down upon their knees, there lived near this place a meagre miserly fellow of the name of Tom Walker. He had a wife as miserly as himself; they were so miserly that they even conspired to cheat each other. Whatever the woman could lay hands on she hid away; a hen could ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving |
