POUND-FOOLISH • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Pound-foolish

... to-morrow what you can do to-day' agrees ill with 'Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof'; and it is somewhat difficult to reconcile 'Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care of themselves' with the equally familiar 'Penny-wise, pound-foolish.' Yet the sayings are equally untrue; any maxim is, perforce, a general statement, and therefore fallacious, and therefore universally accepted. Art is long, and life is short, but the platitudes concerning them are both insufferable and eternal. We must remember that a general statement is merely ...

— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell

... of commerce in a splendid free dock, not executed so wisely as it would have been if Mr. Rendel, the original engineer, (the first man of the day as a marine engineer), had not been overruled by the penny-wise pound-foolish people, but still a very fine dock. Warehouses much better planned than anything in Liverpool; railways giving communication with the manufacturing districts; in fact, all the tools of commerce—gas, water, a park, and sanitary regulations, have not ...

— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney