"Prodigal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sequence in the presentation of signs by deaf-mutes, the following is quoted from an essay by Rev. J.R. Keep, in American Annals of the Deaf and Dumb, vol. xvi, p. 223, as the order in which the parable of the Prodigal ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... "I've got a dinner date to-night. Sort of a 'return of the prodigal,' you know. I can't be late. So please don't go too far from Mother Earth. If necessary we can get the ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose
... kneeling in front of him and gazing into the gloom beyond; Baptiste lay upon his stomach, his chin in his hands and his upturned eyes fastened upon Sandy's face; Lachlan Campbell sat with his hands clasped about his knees, and two other men sat near him. Sandy was reading the undying story of the Prodigal, Nelson now and then stopping him to make a remark. It was a scene I have never been able to forget. To-day I pause in my tale, and see it as clearly as when I looked through the chink upon it years ago. The long, low stable, ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... this tantalizing paradise, tramped the streets of cattle towns, herded with outcasts lower than himself. In Los Angeles he had washed dishes in a cafeteria, in Fresno polished the brasses in a saloon. And all around him was plenty, an unheeding prodigal luxuriance, Nature rioting in a boundless generosity. Her message came to him from sky and earth, from sweep of flowered land, from embowered village and thronging town—that life was good, to savor it, plunge in it, live it to ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... last resort Germany is sending her remaining Hun to attack the Chinese. What they can hope to achieve by so prodigal a waste of "cannon-fodder" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 19, 1917 • Various
... poor forecast you are making, Cousin Janet," said he, cheerfully. "I am to play the prodigal son, then. But I will take the letter. And good-bye again, Janet; and God bless you, for you ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... how it drops from their tongue like poison! At their every word a reputation dies. Life and all its opportunities of doing good and having good done to us is laid like a bag of treasure at our feet, but, like the prodigal son in the Interpreter's House, with all those passions raging in our own hearts at other men, and in other men's hearts at us, we have soon nothing left us but rags. God be thanked for every man here who sees and feels that he has nothing left him but rags; and, still more, thanks for all those ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... "mercilessly voluble," the poet of The Ring and the Book undoubtedly is. But it is the volubility of a consummate master of expression, in whose hands the difficult medium of blank verse becomes an instrument of Shakespearian flexibility and compass, easily answering to all the shifts and windings of a prodigal invention, familiar without being vulgar, gritty with homely detail without being flat; always, at its lowest levels, touched, like a plain just before sunrise, with hints of ethereal light, momentarily withheld; and rising from time to time without effort to a magnificence of phrase and ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... a man sings, denotes him to be of a strong constitution, and of a good understanding, neither too penurious nor too prodigal, also ingenious and an admirer of the fair sex. A weak and trembling voice shows the owner of it to be envious, suspicious, slow in business, feeble and fearful. A loud, shrill and unpleasant voice, signifies ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... slip! Its hours have run, Its golden hours, with prodigal excess, All run to waste. A day of life the less; Of many ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... an expensive hotel. He knew, that within a few hours, perhaps minutes, he and Verka would be corpses; and for that reason, although he had in his pocket only eleven kopecks, all in all, he gave orders sweepingly, like a habitual, downright prodigal; he ordered sturgeon stew, double snipes, and fruits; and, in addition to all this, coffee, liqueurs and two bottles of frosted champagne. And he was in reality convinced that he would shoot himself; but thought of it ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... of Infinite Justice, Who deigns so lovingly to pardon the sins of the Prodigal Son, be also just to me ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... were in an unhappy condition, many of his friends and acquaintance having died in the plague time, and those of his family having long since been in disorder and in a kind of mutiny against him. For the eldest of his sons, Xanthippus by name, being naturally prodigal, and marrying a young and expensive wife, was highly offended at his father's economy in making him but a scanty allowance, by little and little at a time. He sent therefore, to a friend one day, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... Hear Sermons on the Prodigal Son? Distinction Between the Mentally Competent and the Defective in Criminal Classes. Moral Invalids. Rehabilitation of the Competent. The Right Use of Leisure Time. The Moving Picture. The Automobile and Its Influence. Parents Need Social Help in Moral Training of Children. Parental ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... the habit of this man never to be prodigal in the display of energy. He usually sat when there was no need for standing; he always considered speech to be golden, but silence, to his way of thinking, was priceless. And like most men of such opinion he cultivated ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... childish folly on the boy's part no doubt, this going away; due to his impetuous nature and his immature years; but, he had made his bed, now let him lie in it till he should come to a realization of what he had done, and, like the prodigal son of old, should come back of his own accord, and ask to be forgiven. Yet the days went by, and the weeks grew long, and no prodigal returned. There was no abatement of determination on the grandfather's part, but the idea grew ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... truth is, as was afterwards seen, nothing could be obtained from him, neither grace, nor justice, except by working upon his fears, to which he was very susceptible; or by extreme importunity. He tried to put people off by words, then by promises, of which he was monstrously prodigal, but which he only kept when made to people who had good firm claws. In this manner he broke so many engagements that the most positive became counted as nothing; and he promised moreover to so many different ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... was closed. "I have this morning received a communication from your agent containing a cheque for the interest due to me from M. Rochebriant, and a formal notice of your intention to pay off the principal on behalf of that popinjay prodigal. Though we two have not hitherto been the best friends in the world, I thought it fair to a man in your station to come to you direct and say, 'Cher confrere, what swindler has bubbled you? You don't know the real condition of this Breton property, or you ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... most of them were young men who had once been in better circumstances, but who now were reduced to get their living by calling papers about the streets. A few fine characters might have been picked out amongst those prodigal sons, as they stood warming their backs, or grouped together in ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... ANSWER. The prodigal came thus, and his father received him, and fell upon his neck and kissed him. Thus Christ received the Colossians, and consequently all that are ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... too blindly believing— A truth, no unkindness could move; My prodigal heart hath expended At once, ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... while in thy early years, How prodigal of time! Mis-spending all thy precious hours— Thy glorious, youthful prime! Alternate follies take the sway; Licentious passions burn; Which tenfold force gives Nature's law. That man ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... with my last bomb. The other platforms were occasionally dropping them: I had been too hasty, too prodigal. ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... story, however, in such a way as to discredit the average social view. He begins by making us feel that whatever follies the prodigal had committed, he had already been punished for them in the miseries he had endured. It is not for man to punish with his whip of scorn one who has already been flaggellated with a whip of scorpions in the desert places of disgrace and shame. Jesus makes us feel also that whatever sins might be ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... not contain something which a broken and contrite spirit may not apply to itself? And so it fell out that, as he read, Ruth's heart was smitten, and she sank down, and down, till she was kneeling on the floor of the pew, and speaking to God in the spirit, if not in the words, of the Prodigal Son: "Father! I have sinned against Heaven and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be called Thy child!" Miss Benson was thankful (although she loved Ruth the better for this self-abandonment) that the ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... entirely repentant of her disobedience, and entreating forgiveness; and I soon saw that she need fear no great severity from Mr. Greensleeves, who showed himself extraordinarily fond, loud, greedy of caresses and prodigal of tears. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the fire until his eyes ached. Then he looked at the highly-coloured scripture pieces on the walls, in little black frames like common shaving-glasses, and saw how the Wise Men (with a strong family likeness among them) worshipped in a pink manger; and how the Prodigal Son came home in red rags to a purple father, and already feasted his imagination on a sea-green calf. Then he glanced through the window at the falling rain, coming down aslant upon the sign-post over against the ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... wisdom of this remarkably prudent young woman to thoroughly comprehend—by some of those fresh intuitions, probably—that her truly repentant father would plead for her forgiveness and ask her blessing upon his prodigal return only after a long, long wrestle with the wholesalers in blasted reputations, who so showily presented designs for a disgraced suitor that pleased him greatly. He had placed an order with these architects of infamous ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... his reappearance; he had been numbered with the dead. But his love still seemed strangely coy; willing, but yet somehow mysteriously withheld. The old intrigues were still on foot. Israel soon discovered, that though rejoiced to welcome the return of the prodigal son—so some called him—his father still remained inflexibly determined against the match, and still inexplicably countermined his wooing. With a dolorous heart he mildly yielded to what seemed his fatality; and more intrepid in facing peril for himself, than in endangering others ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... the hills like a yellow carpet called this "The Land of Fire." This beautiful flower is one of California's natural wonders—"Copa-de-oro"—cup of gold. It is as famed in the East as in the West, and thousands come to California to see it in its prodigal beauty. Steps should quickly be taken to conserve this wild splendor, and restrictions should be put upon the vandals, who, not content with picking what they can use to beautify the home, tear them up by the roots just to see how large an armful they can gather, scattering ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... meeting this evening, as Bro. R was absent, I conversed with those who came; explained the parable of 'The Prodigal Son' making personal application; three young persons requested prayers; one was only 'almost persuaded;' the other two expressed their determination to begin a new life at once; invited Elias Johnson and ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... letting its fine-spun, flaming locks droop through the trees, sipping from the springs with amber lips that thrilled the water. Beneath that flaming dust the vast garden ran riot like some delighted beast let loose at the world's very end, far from everything and free from everything. So prodigal was the luxuriance of foliage, so overflowing the tide of herbage, that from end to end it all seemed hidden, flooded, submerged. Nought could be seen but slopes of green, stems springing up like fountains, billowy masses, woodland curtains closely drawn, ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... the Premier has learned that practical politics is a game that taxes all a man's technique in Christianity. Autocratic Hydro and Mackenzie the loosening octopus; New Ontario preaching up the old plaint of secession; better roads and prodigal Mr. Biggs; what to do with Education that Cody had not started to do; how to stave off commissions on reform of the school system; the constant queues of moral reformers; the new menace of the movies and the censorship farce; the timber stealers; disconcerting ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... lords did not disdain to rank themselves among his dependants and followers. His table was resorted to by all the luxurious feasters, and his house was open to all comers and goers at Athens. His large wealth combined with his free and prodigal nature to subdue all hearts to his love; men of all minds and dispositions tendered their services to Lord Timon, from the glass-faced flatterer, whose face reflects as in a mirror the present humour of his patron, to the rough and unbending cynic, who affecting a contempt ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... on us would be excessive, and we should have the melancholy prospect of their increasing on our posterity. The scale of officers, from the rapacious and needy commissioner to the haughty governor, and from the governor, with his hungry train, to perhaps a licentious and prodigal viceroy, must be upheld by you and your children. The fleets and armies which will be employed to silence your murmurs and complaints must be supported by ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... of the country, he seldom quitted it for any of those joys which the town offered. He was a young man, of a handsome person, and was, what his neighbours called, "A man of spirit." He was an excellent fox-hunter, and as excellent a companion over his bottle at the end of the chace—he was prodigal of his fortune, where his pleasures were concerned, and as those pleasures were chiefly social, his sporting companions and his mistresses (for these were also of the plural number) ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... not have been thought a cheerful feast for Joe Louden. The fatted calf was upon the board, but it had not been provided for the prodigal, who, in this case, was the brother that stayed at home: the fete rewarded the good brother, who had been in strange lands, and the good one had found much honor in his wanderings, as he carelessly let it appear. Mrs. Louden brightened inexpressibly whenever Eugene spoke of himself, and ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... Joanna's breath away on Rye platform; it had been very much like old times when she came home for the holidays and checked the impulse of her sister's love by a baffling quality of self-containment. Joanna, basing her expectations on the Bible story of the Prodigal Son rather than on the experiences of the past winter, had looked for a subdued penitent, surfeited with husks, who, if not actually casting herself at her sister's feet and offering herself as her servant, would ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... have been prodigal in abuse and defamation of Lavengro, have been your modern Radicals, and particularly a set of people who filled the country with noise against the King and Queen, Wellington, and the Tories, in '32. About these people the writer will presently ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... how, a sinner and prodigal as I was, our heavenly Father met me, and received me to the arms of his mercy; how he made known to me his free grace and heavenly gift, of which I was utterly unworthy. It is his grace that has accomplished all in me. He it was who ...
— The Village in the Mountains; Conversion of Peter Bayssiere; and History of a Bible • Anonymous
... if it had been a mother or a dear sister. The prodigal son put his arms about his father's neck for the first time since he had been a little boy, and clung to him and wept as though ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... cup of coffee almost anywhere, or we could eat a sandwich in the park, but the matter of a bed, the business of sleeping in a maelstrom like New York was something more than serious—it was dangerous. Frank, naturally of a more prodigal nature, was all for going to the Broadway Hotel. "It's only for one night," said he. He always was ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... charming, quiet, wise women of whom Russia is so prodigal, a man or two whom I had met at different times, especially one officer, one of the finest, bravest, and truest men I have ever known; some of the inevitable giggling girls—and then suddenly, ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... given them any importance; the few anecdotes which tradition has preserved are seized upon with the utmost avidity and placed in the most conspicuous position; but in these later books we have illustrious children portrayed with a Pre-Raphaelitic and most prodigal pencil. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... the prodigal, who had planned to suggest as his only possible desert, a place among the hired servants, but was so lifted into realisation of sonship by the father's welcome, that perforce he ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... the prodigal supply of clothing, rather took Dick's breath away. Even the initials, "R. K.," were painted on the trunks and ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... son, who ordered a dish of fish that cost a zechine, which is equal to about ten shillings sterling. The old gentleman no sooner saw it appear on the table, than unable to suppress his concern, he burst into tears, and exclaimed, Ah Figliuolo indegno! Siamo in Rovina! Siamo in precipizio! Ah, Prodigal! ruined! undone! ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... those vices which had risen to an enormous height in the last reign; and to replenish the exchequer, which had been drained by the prodigality of his predecessors. 18. However, permitting himself to be governed by favourites, he at one time showed himself severe and frugal; at another remiss and prodigal; condemning some illustrious persons without any hearing, and pardoning others, though guilty. In consequence of this, seditions were kindled, and factions promoted. 19. Galba was sensible that, besides his age, his want of an heir rendered him less respected: he resolved, therefore, ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... Rue Miromesnil his wife was just arriving. The two met on the great staircase, whose walls exhaled an icy chill. They lifted up their eyes and beheld one another. The count still wore his muddy clothes, and his pale, bewildered face betrayed the prodigal returning from his debauch. The countess looked as though she were utterly fagged out by a night in the train. She was dropping with sleep, but her hair had been brushed anyhow, and ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... story of the Prodigal Son has always plenty of originality for the Prodigal. I have returned, and thank Heaven sincerely I do not need to ask you for anything. My blessed girl Julia has supported herself and little Jewel these years while ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... Steward to relieve all the poor Prisoners about Town; among the rest he visited those in the common Side of the King's Bench, where he heard 'em call Sir William Wilding to partake of his Lady's Charity. The poor Prodigal was then feeding on the Relief of the Basket, not being yet able to get his Bread at his new Trade: To him the Steward gave a Crown, whereas the other had but Half a Crown apiece. Then he enquir'd ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... distribute the "movements" of this repertoire through the whole opera of a passion. Lousteau, regarding this adventure with Dinah as a mere temporary connection, was eager to stamp himself on her memory in indelible lines; and during that beautiful October he was prodigal of his most entrancing melodies and most elaborate barcarolles. In fact, he exhausted every resource of the stage management of love, to use an expression borrowed from the theatrical dictionary, and ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... inst.; they had killed nothing. We have heretofore usually divided the meat when first killed among the four messes into which we have divided our party leaving to each the care of preserving and the discretion of using it, but we find that they make such prodigal use of it when they hapen to have a tolerable stock on hand that we have determined to adapt a different system with our present stock of seven Elk; this is to jerk it & issue it ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... that Betty became of age and was entitled to go home and claim her own. She and Tom went first to a small village in Kent, where dwelt an old lady who for some time past had had her heart full to the very brim with gratitude because of a long-lost prodigal son having been brought back to her—saved by the blood of the Lamb. When at last she set her longing eyes on Tom, and heard his well-remembered voice say, "Mother!" the full heart overflowed and rushed down the wrinkled cheeks in floods of inexpressible joy. And the floods were ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... in and sat down at the door. The sermon wass on the Prodigal Son, but there iss only one word I remember. 'You are not forgotten or cast off,' the preacher said; 'you are missed,' and then he will come back to it again, and it wass always 'missed, missed, missed.' ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... before we appraise what is exacted of him by our modernly complex life. We have attacked the problem on one side by the promotion of cooperative marketing, and we might well inquire into the benefits of cooperative buying. Admittedly, the consumer is much to blame himself, because of his prodigal expenditure and his exaction of service, but Government might well serve to point the way of narrowing the spread of price, especially between the production of food and ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Warren Harding • Warren Harding
... deep humility which fits the soul For heavenly intercourse, and renovates The blessed image of obedient love That Eden forfeited. Out of the depths Of true contrition sigh'd a trembling tone In utter abnegation, "I repent! In dust and ashes. I abhor myself." —Thus the returning prodigal who cries Unclothed and empty, "Father! I have sinn'd, And am not worthy to be called thy son," Finds full forgiveness, and a free embrace, While the best robe his shrinking ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... To them you slip eagerly from your homes. As for me, poor alien, had I been a member of the club whose demolition has been my theme, I should have grieved for it not one whit the more bitterly. Indeed, my tears would have been a trifle less salt. It was my detachment that enabled me to be so prodigal of pity. ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... that even an Indian would be so prodigal of time and labor as to make the necessary quantity of well-twisted cord or thread, and weave it into shape for the mere purpose of serving as a mold which must be destroyed in making a ...
— Prehistoric Textile Fabrics Of The United States, Derived From Impressions On Pottery • William Henry Holmes
... statesman of the Byzantine Empire. He was steeped to the lips in profligacy; he had no moral sense whatever, unless that which was supplied by the so-called code of honor. His intrigues, his carouses, his debaucheries, his hordes of mistresses, gave scandal even in that time of prodigal license. But he had a cool head, a daring spirit, and an intellect capable of accepting new and original ideas. He must be called a statesman; and, despite the vulgarity of some of his vices, he has to be called a ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... for service surged through him—to pray, and serve, and love and do; to write and give and lift and smile; always to help; to fall asleep blessing the near and the far; to awake prodigal with strength.... Such a spirit of giving brimmed into his life, that his flesh thrilled with the ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... his opponents on the Treasury Bench to a line of exhausted volcanoes. They had taken office when they were full of mighty aspirations; they had poured forth measures of all sorts with prodigal vigour; and at last they were reduced to wait, supine and helpless, for the inevitable swing of the political pendulum. A similar process of exhaustion goes on among literary men; and there are certain symptoms which cause expert persons to say, "Ah, poor Blank seems to have written ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... swine; employ a steam engine to crack a nut, waste powder and shot, break a butterfly on a wheel; labor in vain &c. (useless) 645; cut blocks with a razor, pour water into a sieve. leak &c. (run out) 295; run to waste; ebb; melt away, run dry, dry up. Adj. wasted &c. v.; at a low ebb. wasteful &c. (prodigal) 818; penny wise and pound foolish. Phr. magno conatu magnas nugas[Lat]; le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle[Fr]; " idly busy rolls ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... this co-operative work, Diderot did much, and in many directions, single-handed, flinging out his thoughts with ardent haste, and often leaving what he had written to the mercies of chance; a prodigal sower of good and evil seed. Several of his most remarkable pieces came to light, as it were, by accident, and long after his death. His novel La Religieuse—influenced to some extent by Richardson, whom he superstitiously admired—is a repulsive exposure of conventual life as it ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... the echo there that shall Arouse the drowsy dog, that he may bay The household out to greet the prodigal That ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... assure you I am not angry. I am merely a little sorry for human nature. I could have sworn Woods was honest. But rogues all, rogues all, Kathleen! Money rules us in the end; and now the parable is fulfilled, and Love the prodigal returns to make merry over the calf of gold. Confess," Mr. Kennaston queried, with a smile, "is it not strange an all-wise Creator should have been at pains to fashion this brave world about us for little men and women such as we to lie and pilfer in? Was it worth while, think you, ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... in the case of the precocious boy of the street, the cold vices of cynicism, misanthropy, and avarice—the reptilians of society—are found almost exclusively among adults. The younger brother is the prodigal. Experience has not taught him how to value ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... in its promise and prodigal in its favors. The rains fell just right, and all that the pioneers planted came up in abundance. The soil, so kind to the wheat, was not less so to the corn and the gardens. Henry surveyed with pride the field of maize cultivated by himself, in which the stalks were now almost a foot high, ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the head of one of the most ancient families in the north of England. I was his eldest son and heir. I am still, I have every reason to believe, his eldest son, but my heirship, I regret to say, is more doubtful. I spent a prodigal youth and a larger sum of money than my poor father approved of. He was a strict though a kind parent, and for the good of my health and the replenishment of the family coffers, which had been sadly drained by my extravagance, he sent ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... created within the Netherlands, that an affair of such slight importance came to occupy so large a space in contemporary history. The defenders of Solmstold wild stories about the losses of the besieging army. The cardinal, who was thought prodigal of blood, and who was often quoted as saying "his soldiers' lives belonged to God and their bodies to the king," had sacrificed, it, was ridiculously said, according to the statement of the Spaniards themselves, five thousand soldiers ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of childhood keep in the grown woman a frankness of manner which distinguishes them, and makes them recognisable among all others, bonds woven naively and firm as the needlework of little girls in which an experienced hand had been prodigal of thread and big knots; plants reared in fresh soil, in flower, but with strong roots, full of vitality and new shoots. And what a joy, hand in hand—you glad dances of boarding-school days, where are ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... have admitted it, there were really a great many people in the concert-hall who knew what the prodigal daughter of their country was singing, and how well she was doing it. They thawed gradually under the beauty of her voice and the subtlety of her interpretation. She had sung seldom in concert then, and they had supposed her very dependent upon the accessories of the ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... salient facts were eventually precipitated like sediment from a clouded solution. It seemed that the engaging Messrs. X, Y and Z had been induced, practically under false pretenses to book passage, they having read in the public prints that the prodigal and card-foolish son of a cheese-paring millionaire father meant to take the ship too; but he had grievously disappointed them by not coming aboard at all. Then, when in an effort to make their traveling expenses back, they uncorked ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... his divisions from the Verdun sector, bringing guns to answer the British and French fire and men whose prodigal use alone could enforce his determination to maintain morale and prevent any further bold strokes such as that ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... "The Prodigal Son might have started home much sooner had he received an interesting letter about the fatted calf ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... in Spanish Town and Kingston, opened its arms and insisted that the fair star of Barbadoes should enter them, and there were parties and dances and dinners, and it might have been supposed that everybody had been a father or a mother to a prodigal son, so genial and joyful were the festivities—Kate ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... fatted calf killed for the return of the prodigal in Miss Vantine's school. At her reappearance an air of chastened endurance settled upon all the teachers from Miss Vantine down to the elocution teacher. But their fears were doomed to disappointment, because Isabelle was for the time being ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... warning. So great is God's mercy in Christ that even you are welcome when you come; the gate stands open; the Redeemer from within is calling chief sinners in, He has pledged himself to cast no comer out because of his worthlessness. Nor does the freeness of his grace prove that the prodigal's sins are small; it proves only that the forgiving love of Christ ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... apparent that she received more, and that with the love of her people, than any two of her predecessors that took most; which was a fortune strained out of the subjects, through the plausibility of her comportment, and (as I would say, without offence) the prodigal distribution of her grace to all sorts of subjects; for I believe no prince living, that was so tender of honour, and so exactly stood for the preservation of sovereignty, was so great a courtier of the people, yea, of the Commons, and that stooped and declined low in presenting ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... opposition to the principles of religion, or the dictates of reason, I can honestly assure you I had always the highest veneration for both. The world and I may now shake hands, for I dare affirm that we are heartily weary of one another. Oh, doctor, what a prodigal have I been of that most valuable of all possessions, time. I have squandered it away with a profusion unparalleled; and now that the enjoyment of a few days would be worth a hecatomb of worlds, I cannot flatter myself with a prospect of half a dozen hours. How despicable, my dear friend, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various
... and ingenuous in his remorse, something that Raffles and I had lost so long ago, that in our hearts I am sure we took his follies more seriously than our own crimes. But foolish he indeed had been, if not criminally foolish as he said. It was the old story of the prodigal son of an indulgent father. There had been, as I suspected, a certain amount of youthful riot which the influence of Raffles had already quelled; but there had also been much reckless extravagance, of which Raffles naturally knew less, ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... and situation of hundreds of quadroon females in this city, soon attracted my attention, and deserve notice. I saw numbers of them not only at the bazaars or shops making purchases, but riding in splendid carriages through the streets. So prodigal are these poor deluded creatures of their money, that, although slaves and liable to immediate sale at the caprice of their keepers, they have often been known to spend in one afternoon 200 dollars in a shopping excursion. Endowed with natural talents, they are readily instructed in every ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... beyond measure, whose prodigal soil rewards labor with an unharvestable abundance of exuberant fruits, occupied by a people signalized by enterprise and industry—there came a summer of prosperity which lingered so long and shone so brightly, that men forgot that winter could ever come. Each ...
— Twelve Causes of Dishonesty • Henry Ward Beecher
... a prodigal doth nature seem, When thou, for all thy gold, so common art! Thou teachest me to deem 75 More sacredly of every human heart, Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam Of Heaven, and could some wondrous secret show, Did we but pay the love we owe, And with a child's undoubting wisdom look 80 On ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... Wood f. Captious and sophistical f. Greedy f. Soritic f. Senseless f. Catholoproton f. Godderlich f. Hoti and Dioti f. Obstinate f. Alphos and Catati f. Contradictory f. Pedagogical f. Daft f. Drunken f. Peevish f. Prodigal f. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... sprung to their feet, astonished at this prodigal waste of a delicacy fit for kings. Chook stood for a moment, glowering with rage, and then ran at his enemy; but ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... come in the cool twilight, when the garish day is past, and the young modest flowers, which refused their perfume to the sun, that, with his hot and fiery beams, sought to command their incense, now welcome back the evening, and become prodigal of sweetness;—within some rustic temple, clustered with woodbine, where the robin or the tiny wren hath formed a nest of matchless skill and neat propriety, and trembles not at the approaching footstep, while the soft breath of heaven plays with those blossoms of the sun—the ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... the sinews, the bones—for the marrow and the very heart's blood of Great Britain. But let us examine what we are to purchase at this price. Liberty, it appears, is now their staple commodity: but attend, I say, and examine how little of real liberty they themselves enjoy, who are so forward and prodigal in ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... had in Allen a real friend; but now he had in Lewis only a profligate and unfeeling associate. Lewis cared for no one but himself; and he was as avaricious as he was extravagant; "greedy of what belonged to others, prodigal of his own." ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... Balaam's ass, and shod him 2.08 Put earrings in the ears of Sarah 5.00 Put a new stone in David's sling, enlarged Goliath's hand and extended his legs 2.00 Decorated Noah's Ark 1.20 Mended the shirt of the Prodigal Son, and cleaned the pigs ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... "Our prodigal has returned," answered Giselle, with a little air of satisfaction, very artificial, however, for she could hardly breathe, so great was her fear and her emotion. "My house is ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... fruit. Every connoisseur of blackberries knows what a difference there is between the little hard seedy ones that commonly flourish in the hedges and the big juicy ones with the larger leaves. Nature had been prodigal here, and a bounteous harvest hung within ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... once more left alone. He had plenty of time now to think of all this, and he wondered if the One he had forsaken for so long was thus hounding him that He might bring him back to His feet. The story of the Prodigal Son came into his mind, and he knew that the Master's parable was being re-enacted in his own life there in the ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... associations we can link with our localities, the richer will be the daily life that feeds upon the past, and the more valuable the things that have been long established: so that our children will be less prodigal than their fathers in sacrificing good institutions to passionate impulses and impracticable theories. This herb of grace, let us hope, may be found in the old footprints ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... wreathed with some appropriate garland, you will behold the victim come smiling to the altar." The last words are characteristic of his attitude when he was lured into society,—he went a willing victim, with no affectation of martyrdom. The few who met him in Edinburgh drawing-rooms found him prodigal of tongue, somewhat puzzling with his wholesale enthusiasms, absurd flights of fancy, theories he had to propound, and ever ready to change like a chameleon to tone with his surroundings. The spritish, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • E. Blantyre Simpson
... personal ministries in those large and widening circles which centred in her literary and pastoral life. Those who were favored with her friendship in times of sorrow found her a comforter indeed. Her letters, of which, at such times, she was prodigal, were to many sore hearts as leaves from the tree of life. She did not expect too much of a sufferer. She recognized human weakness as well as divine strength. But in all her attempts at consolation, side by side with her deep and true sympathy, went the lesson of the harvest of sorrow. She ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... much to be condemned as judicious liberality is to be lauded. Saadi gives the following account of a Persian prodigal son, who was not so fortunate in the end as his biblical prototype: The son of a religious man, who succeeded to an immense fortune by the will of his uncle, became a dissipated and debauched profligate, in so much that he left no heinous crime unpractised, nor ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... been her ruin, and instead of civilizing others has brutalized herself. Her late reduction of India, under Clive and his successors, was not so properly a conquest as an extermination of mankind. She is the only power who could practise the prodigal barbarity of tying men to mouths of loaded cannon and blowing them away. It happens that General Burgoyne, who made the report of that horrid transaction, in the House of Commons, is now a prisoner ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... prodigal living, hazards by trade, which often affect private banks, are equally to be apprehended ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley
... Christians," he said one day, when I, with the idea of getting him to spend some of the money that was rightfully his, had been trying to persuade him to make a visit to his own island in one of our schooners—a special voyage which I had hoped to make a record breaker in the matter of prodigal expense. ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... Some sign of his repentance may be found in a tradition handed down by the islanders, that he had given orders that everyone on the island should repeat each noontide the prayer of the returning and repentant prodigal: "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... doom'd to daily cares By pugilistic pupils and by bears!) Fines, tutors, tasks, conventions, threat in vain, Before hounds, hunters, and Newmarket plain: Rough with his elders; with his equals rash; Civil to sharpers; prodigal of cash. Fool'd, pillaged, dunn'd, he wastes his terms away; And, unexpell'd perhaps, retires M.A.:— Master of Arts!—as Hells and Clubs[10] proclaim, Where scarce a ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Phantom! Scorpion King, away! Reserve thy terrors and thy stings display For coward Wealth and Guilt in robes of State! Lo! by the grave I stand of one, for whom 10 A prodigal Nature and a niggard Doom (That all bestowing, this withholding all) Made each chance knell from distant spire or dome Sound like a seeking Mother's anxious call, Return, poor Child! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... it had been built by the last proprietor, Northmour's uncle, a silly and prodigal virtuoso - presented little signs of age. It was two storeys in height, Italian in design, surrounded by a patch of garden in which nothing had prospered but a few coarse flowers; and looked, with its ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... services. Others had merely amused his leisure or pandered to his vices. His mistresses were munificently rewarded. Estates sufficient to support the highest rank in the peerage were distributed among his illegitimate children. That these grants, however prodigal, were strictly legal, was tacitly admitted by the Estates of the Realm, when, in 1689, they recounted and condemned the unconstitutional acts of the kings of the House of Stuart. Neither in the Declaration of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... high, stately in their carriage after the Portugal manner, of whom I think they have learned: yet they hold it no scorn to admit the meanest to come to speech of them. They are very thrifty, and it is a disgrace to them to be prodigal, and their Pride & Glory to be accounted near & saving. And to praise themselves they will sometimes say, That scraps and parings will serve them; but that the best is for their Husbands. The Men are not jealous of their Wives, for the greatest ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... prodigal came home, the stray lamb returned to the fold—Mr. Keeler returned to his desk and his duties. There was a premonition of his return at the Snow breakfast table. For three days Mrs. Ellis had swathed her head in white and her soul in black. For three ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... had bargained for. He wanted Ernest to return, but he was to return as any respectable, well-regulated prodigal ought to return—abject, broken-hearted, asking forgiveness from the tenderest and most long-suffering father in the whole world. If he should have shoes and stockings and whole clothes at all, ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... Ghiberti's Competitive Panel Font at Hildesheim, 12th Century Portrait Statuette of Peter Vischer A Copper "Curfew" Sanctuary Knocker, Durham Cathedral Anglo-Saxon Crucifix of Lead Detail, Bayeux Tapestry Flemish Tapestry, "The Prodigal Son" Tapestry, Representing Paris in the 15th Century Embroidery on Canvas, 16th Century, South Kensington Museum Detail of the Syon Cope Dalmatic of Charlemagne Embroidery, 15th Century, Cologne Carved Capital from Ravenna Pulpit ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... legislative act is necessary to show the world that those who have forfeited all claims upon the Government are not to be held to the strict rigor of the law of their own invoking, the decision of the tribunal of their own choosing; that they are to be welcomed back as the prodigal son, whenever they are ready to return as the ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... guide descend through the third circle where the sin of gluttony is punished; through the fourth, where they find the prodigal and avaricious; through the fifth where immersed in a filthy pool are the souls of the irascible. The sixth circle is the city of Dis, with walls of heated iron, filled within with open fiery tombs from which issue the groans of the ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... of his observations about the middle station of life, how easy, how comfortably he had lived all his days, and never had been exposed to tempests at sea or troubles on shore; and I resolved that I would, like a true repenting prodigal, go home to ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... struggle with physical nature is necessarily and of itself a curse. It may call out man's powers, stimulate to action, and result in growth and development. Where a prodigal nature amply provides for man's bodily necessities without much effort on his part, the result may be, in the absence of other stimulating influences giving rise to new wants, a paralyzing slothfulness, an animal passivity and ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton |
