"Penury" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ye affluent, And when the overplus of your fortunes disturb Your minds, think how little stops the lash of penury, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Whittington • T. H.
... Arthur Gride, in whose face there was not a wrinkle, in whose dress there was not one spare fold or plait, but expressed the most covetous and griping penury, and sufficiently indicated his belonging to that class of which Ralph Nickleby was a member. Such was old Arthur Gride, as he sat in a low chair looking up into the face of Ralph Nickleby, who, lounging upon the tall office stool, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... formidable paper need not alarm you; it argues nothing beyond penury of other sorts, and is not at all likely to lead me into a long letter. If I were at all grateful it would, for yours has just passed for me a considerable part of a stormy evening. And speaking of gratitude, let me at once and with becoming eagerness accept ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... extraordinary day of the club festival may be passed over very cursorily. There were a number of skirmishes with Mrs. Hall on matters of domestic discipline, but in every case until late April, when the first signs of penury began, he over-rode her by the easy expedient of an extra payment. Hall did not like him, and whenever he dared he talked of the advisability of getting rid of him; but he showed his dislike chiefly by concealing it ostentatiously, and avoiding his visitor as much as possible. "Wait till the summer," ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... than a hundred thousand head of animals, which reduced the country to very great want, while the natives died of starvation in great numbers. Although there was more maize in Quito than can be told, this bad order of things brought such penury on the people that a measure of maize came to cost ten pesos, and a sheep the same. 7. When the said captain returned from the coast, he determined to leave Quito, to go in search of Captain Juan de Ampudia. He took ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... character to defend itself." There was a time when that contemptuous course would have sufficed, or rather, when to have spoken the truth of the Roman Priests would have cost a man his life, and overwhelmed his family in penury, disgrace, and anguish. The Canadian Jesuits may be assured that time has passed away, never more to return. They must take up this thing; for their characters cannot defend themselves; and every enlightened man in Canada knows, that in a moral ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... our souls be wrung, however, at contemplation of the luckless urchin cut off by parental penury from the rapture of new clothes. Just as the heroes of his dreams are his immediate seniors, so his heroes' clothes share the glamour, and the reversion of them carries a high privilege—a special thing not sold ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... required thousands to work them, and even with thousands they could only be worked by myself. Had I not done it, I should ere this probably have been swept from the surface of the earth, worn out with penury, disease, and heart-ache. And now I am Baptist Hatton with a fortune almost large enough to buy Mowbray itself, and with knowledge that can make ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... gathering up all her strength, 'nay, sir, do not swear what is impossible to perform. Not even to save those I love from penury will ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... their reputations unblemished, and minds content. The intelligent are aware that the zeal of devotion is warmed by good fare, and the sincerity of piety rendered more serene in a nicety of vesture; for it is evident what ardor there can be in a hungry stomach; what generosity in squalid penury; what ability of travelling with a bare foot; and what alacrity at bestowing from an empty hand:—Uneasy must be the night-slumbers of him whose provision for to-morrow is not forthcoming: the ant is laying ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... finding that Claire obviously had not thought it over, she threw out a hint that was little save a thinly veiled threat. She came in with a more genial manner than she was accustomed to waste upon the desert air of penury, and Claire, well schooled in reading the significance of proverbial calms, ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... was not sure of the number, but there were enough of them to have seemed to warm up for the time the penury of the schoolroom—to linger there as an afterglow of the hot heavy light Mr. Perriam sensibly shed. This was also, no doubt, on his part, an effect of that enjoyment of life with which, among her ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... forced desertion, of his innocence; of her hopeless longing to see him; of her despair as the conviction settled upon her that she could not hope to hear from him again; of the harrowing suspense that had slowly eaten out her life; of her penury and want—"and now, thank God," she said, "you will see ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... Borrow his refuge from middle age and Victorian England of the middle class. "Youth," he says in "The Romany Rye," "is the only season for enjoyment, and the first twenty-five years of one's life are worth all the rest of the longest life of man, even though these five and twenty be spent in penury and contempt, and the rest in the possession of wealth, honour, respectability, ay, and many of them in strength and health. . . ." Still more emphatically did he think the same when he was looking on his past life in the dingle, feeling his arms and thighs and teeth, ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... But here, on Marie-Gaston's side, perfect confidence ceased, after a time, to exist. He was hiding something; his proud determination to depend wholly on himself was a sad mistake. Each day brought him nearer to penury. At last, staking all upon one throw, he imprudently involved himself in journalism. Assuming all the risks of an enterprise which amounted to thirty thousand francs, a stroke of ill-fortune left him nothing to look forward to but a debtor's prison, ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... and (saddest of all) his wife and children are no better off, perhaps are worse off than before? What if his powers of work are being impaired by debauchery and he is thus surely losing the footing which he has won on the higher round of the industrial ladder and lapsing back into penury and despair? What if instead of gaining he is really losing in manhood and real independence? I see nothing shocking in the fact that a mechanic's wages are now equal to those of a clergyman, or an officer in the army who has spent perhaps thousands of dollars on his education. Every ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... to the widow who cast her two mites into the treasury, and then to the rich men who had cast in much more. "This poor widow hath cast in more than they all. For all these have of their abundance cast in unto the offerings of God: but she of her penury hath cast in all the ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... weariest and most loathed worldly life That age, ache, penury and imprisonment Can ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... fresh in memory. He had a fair estate, which in a few years he so lost at play, that he died in great want and penury. Since that Mr Ba—, who was a clerk in the Six-Clerks Office, and well cliented, fell to play, and won by extraordinary fortune two thousand pieces in ready gold; was not content with that, played on, lost all he had won, and ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... perish. He never allowed himself to show a tremor, and he won. Poor Edwards toiled on, in spite of hunger, poverty, and chill despair; he received one knock-down blow after another with cheery gallantry, and old age had clutched him before his relief from grinding penury came; but nothing could daunt him, and he is now secure. Heine lay for seven years in his "mattress grave;" he was torn from head to foot by the pangs of neuralgia; one of his eyes was closed, and at times the lid of the other had ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... And therefore out of all questions, the splendor and magnificence, and great retinues and hospitality, of noblemen and gentlemen, received into custom, doth much conduce unto martial greatness. Whereas, contrariwise, the close and reserved living of noblemen and gentlemen, causeth a penury ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... annals;—biographies, general and particular, which appear to have placed on record the name of every private individual justly entitled to such commemoration;—and numerous and extensive collections of original letters, state-papers and other historical and antiquarian documents;—whilst our comparative penury is remarkable in royal lives, in court histories, and especially in that class which forms the glory ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... long-established and highly-esteemed firm got into inextricable difficulties. In vain he and his partners struggled to maintain their credit. The final crash came, and although my mother's marriage settlement saved the family from penury, he had no capital with which to recommence business. I was too young to take his place. One of his partners died broken-hearted, and he had not the energy left to undertake the onerous duties he would have been called upon to perform. He and my mother and sisters retired to a modest cottage ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... the Tachytes' game-larder for itself and to visit a second and a third, when the first is too frugally furnished, it may be imagined that the hazard of the road does not favour all in the same way, but rather allots abundance to one and penury to another. The grub that does not eat its fill remains small, while the one that gluts itself grows fat. These differences of size, in themselves, betray parasitism. If a mother's pains had amassed the food, ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... these sentences; for if ever they had occasion to show their charity, they have it now at this present; the poor people being so many, and victuals so dear; for although I have been long in prison, yet have I heard of the great penury ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... that, being tried by many, comes purest out of all. If prosperity melts it as a flux, well; but better too than well, if the acid of affliction afterwards eats away all unseen impurities; whereas, to those with whom the world is in their hearts, affluence only hardens, and penury embitters, and thus, though burnt in many fires, their hearts are dross in all. Like those sullen children in the market-place, they feel no sympathies with heaven or with earth: unthankful in prosperity, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... one of the many unfortunates who are swept off by rum, and in the prime of early manhood he had gone, leaving a young wife with four children in absolute penury. ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... Before night she had decamped with her son. At eight years of age Kichitaro[u] was placed as disciple (deshi) at the Jo[u]shinji of Fukagawa. Receiving the name of Myo[u]shin he became the favourite of the rector (ju[u]shoku) of the temple. The mother now became reduced to the greatest penury. For a time she was bawd in the Honjo[u] Warigesui district. Subsequently she was promoted to the position of favourite sultana (wife) of her master Toemon, local head of his profession. Her name now was O'Matsu. When ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... so had thought of placing Training ships at various ports for the very purpose of supplying the demand for sailor boys. Doubtless they would have done this well, but it is better still if by private effort we can fill the ships. At any rate let us empty the prisons, the dens of penury, and the kerb-stones, where the young and prime material, spoiling by ignorance and neglect, wastes the vigour of our land, pesters this generation with beggars, poor-rates, and gaols, and infects and ruins the generation to ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... Conveyed their cattle, and slew them without measure. In time of Ahaz, a hundred thousand and twenty Were slain at one time for their idolatry. Two hundred thousand from thence were captive led, Their goods dispersed, and they with penury fed. Seldom they fail it, but either the Egyptians Have them in ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... fop; and if I drive, the wheels of my carriage do not roll on the solid ground, absolutely indispensable in these days, of property invested in the funds. But if I am not rich, neither do I have the reliefs and consolations of life in a garret, the toil uncomprehended, the fame in penury, which belong to men who are worth far more ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... tour from Genoa to Rome, crossed in the air to Greece and Egypt, and came back over the Balkans and Germany. His family fortunes, which were largely invested in bank shares, coal mines, and house property, were destroyed. Reduced to penury, he sought to earn a living. He suffered great hardship, and was then caught up by the war and had a year of soldiering, first as an officer in the English infantry and then in the army of pacification. His book tells all these things so simply and at the same time so explicitly, ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... which he purchased for a few coppers. He had the linguistic gift which soon after made the young carpenter Mezzofanti of Bologna famous and a cardinal. But the gift would have been buried in the grave of his penury and his circumstances had his trade been almost any other, and had he not been impelled by the most powerful of all motives. He never sat on his stall without his book before him, nor did he painfully toil with his wallet of new-made ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... kingly tyrant, with golden crown and iron sceptre, surrounded by wealthy nobles and dissolute beauties, had disappeared, and a many-headed monster, rapacious and blood-thirsty, vulgar and revolting, had emerged from mines and workshops and the cellars of vice and penury, like one of the spectres of fairy tales to fill his place. France had passed from Monarchy, not to healthy Republicanism, but to Jacobinism, to the reign of the mob. Napoleon utterly abhorred the tyranny of the king. He also utterly abhorred ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... life—the thousands of wives and mothers, who in our revolutionary struggle, and in our recent war, gave up freely at their country's call, their best beloved, regretting only that they had no more to give; knowing full well, that in giving them up they condemned themselves to penury and want, to hard, grinding toil, and privations such as they had never before experienced, and not improbably to the rending, by the rude vicissitudes of war, of those ties, dearer than life itself—those who in the presence of ruffians, capable of any atrocity dared, and in ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... mansions and came, to Rephidim, where as they had no water. Then all grudging they said to Moses, Give us water for to drink. To whom Moses answered: What grudge ye against me, why tempt ye our Lord? The people thirsted sore for lack and penury of water saying: Why hast thou brought us out of Egypt for to slay us and our children and beasts? Then Moses cried unto our Lord saying: What shall I do to this people? I trow within a while they shall stone me to death. Then our Lord said to Moses: Go before the people ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... had even returned to the domestic ark, and in the result a day of welcome and comparative peace, then discord and jangling strife as before, and the ever weighing-down, depressing, crushing consciousness of squalid penury for the rest of his natural life. From such visions he had awakened, awakened with a start of exultant gratulation, to find the glow of the African sun streaming into the room; every nerve tingling with a consciousness ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... appearance, or can offer such disgusting and loathsome sights, as this abominable Brass Town. Dogs, goats, and other animals run about the dirty streets half-starved, whose hungry looks can only be exceeded by the famishing appearance of the men, women, and children, which bespeaks the penury and wretchedness to which they are reduced; whilst the persons of many of them are covered with odious boils, and their huts are falling to the ground ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... their eyes her ample page Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll; Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage, And froze the genial current of ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... tire in thy race, or turn back, teacheth thee a certain and sweet way of singular proficiency and progress in the ways of God. It may be, it is not thy work, nor mine, to write both against these soul-murdering, however magnified, methods of taking men off Jesus Christ; but our penury of parts for that, should first put us to seek plenty of tears, that we may weep, to see our master so wounded by the piercing pens of those who, to patronise their mock religion, wrest the Scriptures, and with wicked hands wring the word of the Lord, till it weep blood: this, I say, ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... greater, my sister, than you can believe. For is there anything more cruel than this mean economy to which we are subjected? this strange penury in which we are made to pine? What good will it do us to have a fortune if it only comes to us when we are not able to enjoy it; if now to provide for my daily maintenance I get into debt on every ...
— The Miser (L'Avare) • Moliere
... needed in order to live. Somers, the English traveler already quoted, pronounced this generous custom "outrageously absurd," for the Negroes had so many privileges that they refused to make use of their opportunities. "The soul is often crushed out of labor by penury and oppression," he said, "but here a soul cannot begin to be infused into it through the sheer excess of privilege and license with which it is surrounded." The credit system which was developed beside the share system made a bad condition worse. On the 1st of January, a planter ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... to the present enlightened age. A few favourites occupy the Goshen of patronage, who at their death are not remembered, and whose works do "follow them;" and then, the works of those who have lived neglected, lived, worked, and died in penury, are eagerly sought after at any price. Such men, whilst they lived, were yet teaching a lesson in taste which the world were slow to learn; for it is in the nature of genius to be before the age, and in some respects to teach a novelty, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... supplied by the trees and a few hollows of the embankment. Of these, the majority are young girls who have been seduced from the country by the soldiers and turned loose on the world in all the destitution of friendless penury, and all ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... unusual sense of chill penury, and brought Vale Leston before his eyes. He laughed rather bitterly, saying, 'Perhaps some day neither thirty pence nor thirty pounds may have so direful ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sinners and victims of penury either abandon Christianity altogether, or find refuge in the bosom of their true Mother, the Catholic Church, who, like her Divine Spouse, claims the afflicted as her most cherished inheritance. The parables descriptive of this Church which our Lord employed ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... have their own works praised and exalted to a level with the divine monuments of antiquity; but he, Scala, could not oblige them. And as to the honours which were offensive to the envious, they had been well earned: witness his whole life since he came in penury to Florence. The elegant scholar, in reply, was not surprised that Scala found the Age distasteful to him, since he himself was so distasteful to the Age; nay, it was with perfect accuracy that he, the elegant scholar, had called Scala a branny monster, inasmuch ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... times." He concludes by declaring, that he is not "weary of serving his king and country," nor very scrupulous as to the kind of service; for he promises that "if his habitation" could thereby be "graced with plenty in the room of penury, there shall be no services too dangerous and difficult, but your poor petitioner will gladly accept, and to the best of my power accomplish. I shall wholly lay myself at Your Honorable feet for relief." Marshal ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... many much more profitable rewards that Hia might fittingly demand. As none of these appeared to entice her imagination, he went on to rebuke her want of foresight, and, still later, having unsuccessfully pointed out to her the inevitable penury and degradation in which her thriftless perversity would involve her later years, to kick the less substantial ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... Parliament, and Newton, Locke, Prior, Gay, Rowe, Congreve, Tickell, Parnell, and Pope all received direct or indirect aid from the government, in the reigns of George I and George II, Steele died in poverty, Savage walked the streets for want of a lodging, Johnson lived in penury and drudgery. Thomson was deprived of a small office which formed his sole dependence.[92] This neglect of authors and of literature was only partially due to an unappreciative government. It was supported by the indifference of a public in a high degree material and unintellectual. Conversation ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... not interfered, Ernest would have had to expiate his offence with ache, penury and imprisonment. As it was the boy was "to consider himself" as undergoing these punishments, and as suffering pangs of unavailing remorse inflicted on him by his conscience into the bargain; but beyond the fact that Theobald kept ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... would take upon them the charge of an infant, about to be immediately forsaken by its mother. At length, one of the maid-servants at the inn remembered to have heard Mrs Brandon say, that rather than live on among all her squalidness and penury, she would endeavour to suckle another child besides her own; and, as she was then in redundant health, and had two fine breasts of milk,—for a fine breast of milk would not have served my turn, or, rather, Mary and I must have taken it by turns,—she was accordingly sent for. Yet, when she ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... years in which Borrow had failed to find remunerative work. Wherever he wandered there had always been a home in the Willow Lane cottage. It is probable that much the greater part of the period of his eight years of penury was spent under her roof. Yet we may be sure that the good mother never once reproached her son. She had just that touch of idealism in her character that made for faith and hope. In any case never more was Borrow to suffer penury, or to be a burden on his mother. Henceforth ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... from "home." She very nearly turned her back upon the bed and its pretty burden. But then the mere snowy whiteness of the muslin and freshness of the ribbons, and the burning curiosity to see herself decked therein, overcame a nature which, in the midst of its penury, had been always really possessed by a more than common hunger for sensuous beauty and seemliness. Marcella wore it, was stormily happy in it, and kissed Mademoiselle Renier for it at night with an effusion, nay, some tears, which no ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to a chap like that! He walks in fear—he wallows in it. Poor devil!' And a curious feeling swelled his heart, of elation, of lightness such as he had not known for years. Those two young things were safe now from penury-safe! After dealing with those infernal creditors of his he would go round and have a look at the children. With a hundred and twenty a year the boy could go into the Army—best place for a young scamp like that. The girl would go off like hot cakes, of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and doth lose, He makes a record that he did invest A part of my belongings in the venture? Belike by now there's not a ducat left. For that however I have naught but joy Because it means that she who was my daughter And that Lorenzo who's her paramour Will, when I die, inherit penury. ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... beast out of his own country and many a nook of refuge in other lands, Perez, who had been "the most powerful personage in the Spanish monarchy," was, when we first meet him in the company of Bacon, an exile in penury. And so he died, an impoverished outcast, leaving to posterity a name which befits, if it cannot adorn, a tale, and ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... should look with great and deep self- humiliation at his early association with Gawtrey. He was in this respect more severe on himself than any other mind ordinarily just and candid would have been,—when fairly surveying the circumstances of penury, hunger, and despair, which had driven him to Gawtrey's roof, the imperfect nature of his early education, the boyish trust and affection he had felt for his protector, and his own ignorance of, and exemption from, all the worst practices of that unhappy criminal. But still, when, with the ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... her turret, serene and benignant, Sat in the midst of her children and maidens, a household mother; Want, and the sons of penury dwell not among her neighbours; Full is her heart of love: her hands wipe the tears of another, Yet brings she the gold and the pearls of her manifold labours, To add to that shining legend the grace of ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... prosperity as the American War Correspondent I had met in the Transvaal led me to expect. Indeed, after six months of successful lecturing on the subject of the Boers before various lyceums in the country, I was reduced to a state of penury which actually drove me to thievery of the pettiest and most vulgar sort. There was little in the way of mean theft that I did not commit. During the coal famine, for instance, every day passing the coal-yards to and fro, I would appropriate a single ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... these punishments we must remember that they implied confiscation of property. Thus whole families were orphaned and consigned to penury. Penitence in public carried with it social infamy, loss of civil rights and honors, intolerable conditions of ecclesiastical surveillance, and heavy pecuniary fines. Penitents who had been reconciled, returned to society in a far more degraded condition ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... needed not. Talk for you is good discipline. You converse imperfectly. While you speak, there can be no oblivion of inferiority—no encouragement to delusion: pain, privation, penury ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... up, on every text that is not difficult, our London trading St. Thomas in his vestry, and add to boot St. Martin and St. Hugh, have not within their hallowed limits more vendible ware of all sorts ready made: so that penury he never need fear of pulpit provision, having where so plenteously to refresh his magazine. But if his rear and flanks be not impaled, if his back door be not secured by the rigid licenser, but that a bold book may now and then issue forth and give the assault ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... east save the smoke from the valley where lay the habitations of men, nothing audible anywhere but the deep rumble of the waves' bellow, or the chirp of the birds overhead, or, perhaps, when the wind was southerly, the church bells on Sunday morning. Never have I looked upon such lonely penury, and yet there, even there, these forlorn women kept their souls alive. "Yes," they said, "we're working when we can get the work, ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... sleeping-place and the store-room; and there is generally a second wicket for timely escape. The only furniture consists of mats, calabashes, and a standing bedstead of rude construction, or a bamboo cot like those built at Lagos,—in fact, the four bare walls suggest penury. But in the "small countries," as the "landward towns" are called, where the raid and the foray are not feared, the householder entrusts to some faithful slave large stores of cloth and ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... it into a conflagration. The gift of faith implies the charitable obligation of weaving our belief into our every day life and, through that life and its influence, into the lives of others. The plenitude of some make up for the penury of others. If St. John, to urge the precept of alms-giving, said: "He that hath the substance of this world and shall see his brother in need, and shall shut up his bowels from him: how doth the charity of God abide in him?" (I. ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... victuall, for such a number, was landed; howses few or none to entertain them, so that being quartered in the open feilde they fell uppon that small quantitye of corne, not beinge above seaven acres, which we with great penury & sufferance had formerly planted, and in three days, at the ...
— Colonial Records of Virginia • Various
... their scarcely disguised contempt for an improvident starveling like himself. He, Mathieu, and she, Marianne, would never have factory, nor mansion, nor mill, nor an income of twelve thousand francs a year; and their increasing penury, as the others said, had been their own work. They had certainly shown themselves imprudent, improvident. And he went on with his recollections, telling Marianne that he feared nothing for himself, but ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... on every gate. If sleeping, wake; if feasting, rise before I turn away; it is the hour of fate, And they who follow me reach every state Mortals desire, and conquer every foe Save death; but those who doubt or hesitate, Condemned to failure, penury, and woe, Seek me in vain and uselessly implore; I answer not, and I ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... grimly and victoriously sure that both Jones and Wren had had the best of the struggle against indifference and philistinism—as he too would have the best of the struggle, though he should die obscure and in penury. He was miserable and resentful, and yet he was triumphant. The ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... together, and in consequence of various causes; to what purpose should they ask one another what countrymen they are? Alas, two thirds of them had no country. Can a wretch who wanders about, who works and starves, whose life is a continual scene of sore affliction or pinching penury; can that man call England or any other kingdom his country? A country that had no bread for him, whose fields procured him no harvest, who met with nothing but the frowns of the rich, the severity of the laws, with jails and punishments; who owned not a single foot of the extensive surface ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... the little girl he saw abruptly the penury of heart, the desert-like aridity of this bourgeois class of which he formed a part. Dry and wornout earth which little by little has imbibed all the juices of life and does not renew them any more, just like those lands in Asia where the fecundating rivers, drop by drop, have disappeared ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... unwarrantable prejudices and ridiculous vanity, Boaz listened to the tale and immediately addressed her in affectionate terms. It is by no means improbable, that a blush of shame crimsoned his cheek, from the recollection of his past negligence in suffering Naomi to pine away in solitary sadness and penury, when it was in his power to have afforded her relief. Reasons might have existed to justify this delay, though they must have been very imperious to furnish even a plausible pretence for such indifference; but the best construction we can put upon ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... race what life await! Labour and Penury, the racks of Pain, Disease, and Sorrow's weeping train, And Death, sad refuge from the storms of Fate! The fond complaint, my Song! disprove, And justify the laws of Jove. Say, has he given in vain the heavenly Muse? Night and all her sickly ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... to say that he is going to dine with me one day this week. I hope I may not injure his character by stating that in those days I lived very much with him. He, too, was impecunious, but he had a home in London, and knew but little of the sort of penury which I endured. For more than fifty years he and I have been close friends. And then there was one W—— A——, whose misfortunes in life will not permit me to give his full name, but whom I dearly loved. He had been ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... character and minds of the people. He was wont to say there was no hereditary transmission of mind; that this was democratic, and a Caesar, a Solon, or a Demosthenes was as likely to come from a cottage and penury as from a palace and wealth; that virtue more frequently wore a smock-frock than a laced coat, and that the institutions of every government should be so modelled as to afford opportunity to these to become what nature designed ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... favor of the higher clergy; on the contrary, the lower clergy have obtained five-sixths of these deputations. These are the sons of peasants, who have done all the drudgery of the service, for ten, twenty, and thirty guineas a year, and whose oppressions and penury, contrasted with the pride and luxury of the higher clergy, have rendered them perfectly disposed to humble the latter. They have done it, in many instances, with a boldness they were thought insusceptible of. Great hopes ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... before me to a dozen pages. The coffin of the pauper, which to-day I saw carried carelessly along, is as good a subject as the funeral procession of an emperor. Craped drum and banner add nothing to death; penury and disrespect take nothing away. Incontinently my thought moves like a slow-paced hearse with sable nodding plumes. Two rustic lovers, whispering between the darkening hedges, is as potent to project my mind into the tender passion as if I ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... of furniture, she took care that it should be of the best, she could not bring herself to spend much on the transient pleasures of the table. Therefore, for totally different reasons, her food was as poor as Mrs. Archer's, and her wines did nothing to redeem it. Her relatives considered that the penury of her table discredited the Mingott name, which had always been associated with good living; but people continued to come to her in spite of the "made dishes" and flat champagne, and in reply to the remonstrances of her son Lovell (who tried to retrieve the family ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... thee the poor man can abide Oppression, want, the scorn of pride, The curse of penury, Companion of his lonely state, He is no longer desolate, And still can brave an adverse fate, ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... violence round about The pendent world; or to be worse than worst Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts Imagine howling!—'tis too horrible! The weariest and most loathed worldly life That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment Can lay on nature, is a paradise To what we fear of death.'' Measure for Measure, act iii., ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... giving him time to answer, he continued: "What have they done with that France I left so brilliant? I left peace; I find war. I left victories; I find reverses. I left the millions of Italy, and I find spoliation and penury. What have become of the hundred thousand Frenchmen whom I knew ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... her ample page, Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll; Chill Penury repressed their noble rage, And froze the genial current of ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Gobertz seeth no less Her honour and her sweetness, Soon her small hand to kiss Taketh he, Saying, "Now for that stress Drave thee here thou shalt bless God, for so ending this Thy penury." ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... Mr. TITTERTON has the DU MAURIER manner, but his jocular skittishness, aided by asterisks, exclamation marks and suspensive dots, has curiously little behind it. It is not enough to-day to paint the gay impropriety of models and the devil-may-care penury of lighthearted artists. Trilby began the movement, Louise ended it, and Mr. TITTERTON is behind his day. I am glad, however, to learn that he was so splendid a model. The students at JULIEN'S fall back aghast before his magnificent figure, and now, in every ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 147, August 12, 1914 • Various
... spoons, without leave, and then took his leave. No attempt was made to recover him. He was fifteen. "He pitted his wits against starvation." He found the world terribly full everywhere he went. He went through a career of penury, of honest and dishonest callings, of 'scapes and captures, imprisonments and ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... He died in the hour of victory, like some old faithful hound that has brought the boar to bay, and gets his death on the tusks. He died as happily as might be, seeing that he left the great House all but ruined, and the heir in penury, bored to death by an idle life, and without a hope of establishing himself. That bitter thought and his own exhaustion, no doubt, hastened the old man's end. One great comfort came to him as he lay amid the wreck of so many hopes, sinking under the burden of so many cares—the old Marquis, ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... even my besotted optimism could not prevail. My pioneering spirit, subdued by years of penury and rough usage, yielded more and more to the honor and the intellectual companionship which the East offered. To Fuller I privately remarked: "As soon as I can afford it I intend to establish ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... of his kind, dark, deliberate of his movements, bred in the courtesies, but seemingly, to the acuter intuitions of Montaiglon, possessed of one unpardonable weakness in a gentleman—a shame of his obvious penury. ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... a sense of the responsibility of my task disheartened me, the novel facilities of my new way of life contributed to relax the tension of my will. During my school days, the sufferings I underwent from jealousy of my stepfather, the disappointment of my repressed affections, the meanness and penury of my surroundings, many grievous influences, had maintained the restless ardor of my feelings; but this also had undergone a change. No doubt I still continued to love my mother deeply and painfully, but I now no longer asked her for what I knew she would not give me, my unshared ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... puzzle; as its plain meaning is a tenant-farmer, and nothing more nor less. So he had played with the name till he became fond of it, and considered that he had a right to it, through seven long years of weary struggles, penury, disappointment, as he climbed the Parnassian Mount, writing for magazines and newspapers, subediting this periodical and that; till he began to be known as a ready, graceful, and trustworthy workman, and was befriended by one kind-hearted litterateur after another. For in London, at this moment, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... throwing himself astride a chair and persuading her through subjective suggestion, that he is the forerider of a beautiful chariot in which she is seated, so that the poor woman, who all her life long has felt the pinch of penury, dies with a vision of wealth and glory before her eyes created for her by the son, worry over whom has hastened her death. In keeping with the lyric trend of his genius, Grieg has ignored the grotesque and ghastly humor of the situation, and has ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... of the Holy Spirit being limited to the pulpit or the platform, or to the inward experiences of the religious life, He is just as truly and properly concerned with the affairs of the shop and the street, the nursery and the kitchen, the chamber of suffering and the home of penury, as with preaching the Gospel or ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... I be left abandoned in the dust, 'When Fate, relenting, lets the flower revive? 'Shall Nature's voice, to man alone unjust, 'Bid him, though doomed to perish, hope to live? 'Is it for this fair Virtue oft must strive 'With disappointment, penury, and pain? 'No: Heaven's immortal spring shall yet arrive; 'And man's majestic beauty bloom again, 'Bright through the eternal ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... down to the minute distinctions of every day family conversation. This may arise, however, from a principle adverted to by Dr. Johnson, in speaking of the ancient languages, in which he says "nothing is familiar," and by the use of which "the writer conceals penury of thought and want of novelty, often from the reader, and often from himself." The Indian certainly has a very pompous way of expressing a common thought. He sets about it with an array of prefix and suffix, and polysyllabic strength, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... young Corsican would be nearer his native land, and might, perhaps, be detached for service in his home. They were both nominated in September, but the appointment was not made until the close of October. Buonaparte was reduced to utter penury by the long delay, his only resource being the two hundred livres provided by the funds of the school for each of its pupils until they reached the grade of captain. It was probably, and according to the generally received account, at ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... born in an aristocratic age, in the midst of a nation where the hereditary wealth of some, and the irremediable penury of others, should equally divert men from the idea of bettering their condition, and hold the soul as it were in a state of torpor fixed on the contemplation of another world, I should then wish that it were possible for me to rouse that people ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... Man was born free, and had as much Right to what would support him, as to the Air he respired. A contrary Way of arguing would be accusing the Deity with Cruelty and Injustice, for he brought into the World no Man to pass a Life of Penury, and to miserably want a necessary Support; that the vast Difference between Man and Man, the one wallowing in Luxury, and the other in the most pinching Necessity, was owing only to Avarice and Ambition ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe
... the study of law; but he soon turned to the more congenial pursuit of belles-lettres. In 1855 he went to Mexico where he resided eleven years. Though a most productive writer, Zorrilla spent most of his life in penury until, in his old age, he received from the government an annual pension of 30,000 reales. He became a member of the Spanish Academy in 1885, and four years later he was "crowned" in Granada. page 273 Zorrilla died in ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... said I, throwing the soft gray covering over the shoulders of a thin, shivering, haggard looking female, on whose face chill penury was written in withering lines. "You are ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... and busy intention of a prudent, wise, and devout man, should be to cast before and make secure the state and the end of this short life with deeds of mercy and pity, and especially to provide for those miserable persons whom the penury of poverty insulteth, and to whom the power of seeking the necessaries of life by act ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... hard to tell The millionth part of good thou hast achieved; By finite man it cannot be conceived! Thy sovereign virtues WILLIAM deeply felt, Howe'er engaged, and wheresoe'er he dwelt. In constant toil, and chilled by Penury, He knew 'twas blessed to be cheered by thee. Thou madest him content in low estate, And for Prosperity to patient wait; Till some, who thought his course deserved much blame, Were led to full ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... resolve to return to her primitive Poverty, rather than give up her Innocence.} I say, it is surprising, that a young Person, so circumstanced, could, in Contempt of proffer'd Grandeur on the one side, and in Defiance of Penury on the other, so happily and prudently conduct herself thro' such a Series of Perplexities and Troubles, and withstand the alluring Baits, and almost irresistible Offers of a fine Gentleman, so universally admired and esteemed, for the Agreeableness of his Person and good Qualities, among all ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... from Creech, he turned his steps towards Mossgiel and Mauchline. He had several reasons, and all serious ones, for taking Ayrshire in his way to the Nith: he desired to see his mother, his brothers and sisters, who had partaken of his success, and were now raised from pining penury to comparative affluence: he desired to see those who had aided him in his early struggles into the upper air—perhaps those, too, who had looked coldly on, and smiled at his outward aspirations after fame or distinction; but more than all, he desired to see one whom he once and still ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Alas! is he not a daily tyrant, scourging with meanest wants—a creature that, with all its bounty to others, is to the poor and destitute more terrible than Death? Let Comfort paint a portrait of Life, and now Penury take the pencil. "Pooh! pooh!" cry the sage LAURIES of the world, looking at the two pictures—"that scoundrel Penury has drawn an infamous libel. That Life! with that withered face, sunken eye, and shrivelled lip; and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... too, there was variety. Some were stupid and ungracious, hardened and dulled with long penury as some in this world are hardened and dulled with long riches. Some were as fat as beggars; some were old and shrivelled; some were shrivelled and young; some were bold; some were frightened; and here and ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... drop a tear, as we contemplated these baits hung out to tempt the coins from the exiguous purses of ancient maidens, forlorn widows, withered annuitants, stranded humanity in every stage of shipwrecked penury. I am reminded of Thackeray's "Jack Spiggot." "And what are your pursuits, Jack? says I. 'Sold out when the governor died. Mother lives at Bath. Go down there once a year for a week. Dreadful slow. Shilling ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... day, were being seized to satisfy the rapacity of a mercenary soldiery, Horace's paternal acres were not likely to escape. In Rome he found himself penniless. How to live was the question; and, fortunately for literature, "chill penury" did not repress, but, on the ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... and although every inducement was offered, so far as wealth was concerned, she remembered the injunction of the Scriptures, "Be ye not unequally yoked to unbelievers," and like Moses, who refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, but chose rather to suffer affliction, penury, and loss with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season, she declined to enter into the proposed matrimonial connection. And then she decided to emigrate to the United States, ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... nature. He considered them not only lawful, but praiseworthy employments. He could not help lying and cheating if he tried. By so doing, he had heaped up hoards of wealth—he had raised himself from abject penury, and how could he be expected to persuade his conscience, or what stood him in place of one, that he had not been acting rightly. True his gold was of no real use to him—he had no one to enjoy it with him—he had no relative to whom he could leave it. Some might say ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... government, the revolutions of public affairs, the plenty or penury in which people live, the situation of the nation with regard to its neighbours, and such ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... the treasurer, Placene, having long since grown indifferent to the source of his supplies. The agreement of certain dates is singularly convincing. Thus, at the beginning of December, 1805, d'Ache was at Mandeville with the Monfiquets, in a state of such penury that, as we have seen, Mme. de Combray sent him eight louis d'or by Lanoe; nevertheless, he was thinking of going to England to fetch back the princes. He would require a considerable sum to prepare for his journey, and to guard against all the contingencies of this somewhat audacious ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... trustees on the marriage of Madame Phoebus, to accumulate, "and when the genius and vanity of her husband are both exhausted, though I believe they are inexhaustible," remarked Mr. Cantacuzene, "it will be a nest's-egg for them to fall back upon, and at least save them from penury." The duke had no doubt that Mr. Cantacuzene was of imperial lineage. But the latter portion of the letter was the most deeply interesting to Lothair. Bertram wrote that his mother had just observed that she thought the Phoebus family would like to meet Lothair, and begged Bertram ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... commissions of high importance. He was to lay the ground for a treaty of commerce; he was to ascertain and report the state of the English fleets and dockyards; and he was to make some overtures to the Huguenot refugees, who, it was supposed, had been so effectually tamed by penury and exile, that they would thankfully accept almost any terms of reconciliation. The new Envoy's origin was plebeian, his stature was dwarfish, his countenance was ludicrously ugly, and his accent was that of his native Gascony: but his strong sense, his keen ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay |
