"Groat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... forthwith weighed anchor, and, setting sail, stood for England. The Sally Rose sprang a leak, and scarcely could she be kept afloat till, coming up Channel, they entered the port of Dartmouth. Here landing, Batten was making his way without a groat in his pocket to London, when Providence directed him to ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... In a velvet coat, He kissed a maid And gave her a groat. The groat it was crack'd And would not go,— Ah, old man, ...
— The Real Mother Goose • (Illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright)
... were thronged with sharpers and setters as much as the groom-porters, or any gaming-ordinary in town, where a man had nothing to do but to make a good figure and prepare the keeper of the office to give him a credit as a good man, and though he had not a groat to pay, he should take guineas and sign polities, till he had received, perhaps, 300 pounds or 400 pounds in money, on condition to pay great odds, and then success tries the man; if he wins his fortune is made; if not, ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... laymen, being present. Sprot incidentally remarked that Logan visited London, in 1603, after King James ascended the English throne. Logan appears to have gone merely for pleasure; he had seen London before, in the winter of 1586. On his return he said that he would 'never bestow a groat on such vanities' as the celebration of the King's holiday, August 5, the anniversary of the Gowrie tragedy; adding 'when the King has cut off all the noblemen of the country he will live at ease.' But many citizens disliked ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... twelve ships, which had in them, by the report, 200,000 livres in gold and silver, all which (being in my possession with the King's island, as also the passengers before in my way thitherward stayed) I set at liberty, without the taking from them the weight of a groat; only, because I would not be delayed of my despatch, I stayed two men of estimation, and sent post immediately to Mexico, which was two hundred miles from us, to the presidents and Council there, showing them of our arrival there by the force of weather, and the necessity ...
— Voyager's Tales • Richard Hakluyt
... the word a great shout sprang from all mouths at once, as clear and sudden as a shot from a gun. For I must tell you that I knew somehow, but I know not how, that the men of Essex were gathering to rise against the poll-groat bailiffs and the lords that would turn them all into villeins again, as their grandfathers had been. And the people was weak and the lords were poor; for many a mother's son had fallen in the war in France in the old king's time, and the Black Death had slain a many; so that the lords had ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... quick for me, and set (sat) up and lost it and more to Lord Stavordale. I know that he could have pleaded his debt to Lord Cholmondly, and to Brooks himself, &c., neither of whom probably would have received a groat; but that matter is over for the present. However, Brooks has promised me that (sic), if any event of this kind happens again, to avail himself of ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... and nets. When He preached to farmers the word of God was the seed falling on rocky soil or the fertile furrow. When the merchants with caravans and silken tunics surrounded Him it becomes the pearl of great price. When amongst simple villagers it is the lost groat in search of which the housewife sweeps the floor and ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... great canal, with its circumference of twenty miles, its prodigious multitudes swarming the streets, its physicians, philosophers, and magicians; Sugui, with the ginger which was so common that forty pounds of it might be bought for the price of a Venetian silver groat, the silk which was manufactured in such vast quantities that all the citizens were dressed in it and still ships laden with it sailed away; Sugui under whose jurisdiction were sixteen wealthy cities, where trade and the arts flourished. If you ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... you even that,' he answered, his face flushing at my tone. 'Have you ever heard of an elephant? Yes. Well, it has a trunk, you know, with which it can either drag an oak from the earth or lift a groat from the ground. It is so with me. But again you ask,' he continued with an airy grimace, 'why I wanted a few crowns. Enough that I did. There are going to be two things in the world, and two only, M. de Marsac: brains and money. The former I have, and had: the latter ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... So it is with our Money; For, suppose Twelve hundred Thousand pounds goes out of the Nation in one year (which, some say, is much more) This never returns again; But if the same sum be paid for making so much Cloth at home, there's not one Groat the less at the years end; So that the very Money which pays for one years work, may pay for two years, and consequently for 20 years, and yet pass through all necessary Trades, and as well to the ...
— Proposals For Building, In Every County, A Working-Alms-House or Hospital • Richard Haines
... shall make our fortune, but I am worn to a ravelling. Take this groat (which is our last fourpence), and, Simpkin, take a china pipkin, but a penn'orth of bread, a penn'orth of milk, and a penn'orth of sausages. And oh, Simpkin, with the last penny of our fourpence but me one penn'orth of ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... don't care for the bankruptcy now. I can face my creditors, like an honest man; and I can crawl to my grave, afterwards, as poor as a church-mouse. What does it signify? Job Thornberry has no reason now to wish himself worth a groat:—the old ironmonger and brazier has nobody to board his money for now! I was only saving for my daughter; and she has run away from her doating, foolish father,—and ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... be quite an undertaking getting Smith's tri-plane on the sky-way. It's useful for a family party, though. I hear he packed twenty or thirty on to it for the picnic they had at John-o'-Groat's last week. By the way," added John, as he moved upstairs, "aren't the Robinsons ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various
... that it liked her well that the angel Gabriel loved her, seeing she loved him well nor ever failed to light a candle of a groat before him, whereas she saw him depictured, and that what time soever he chose to come to her, he should be dearly welcome and would find her all alone in her chamber, but on this condition, that he should not leave her for the Virgin Mary, whose great well-wisher ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... companion! I am happy to see there is still so much enthusiasm surviving in the world. Thou hast fairly won the minstrel groat; and if I do not pay it in conformity to my sense of thy merit, it shall be the fault of dame Fortune, who has graced my labours in these Scottish wars with the niggard pay of Scottish money. A gold piece or two there must be remaining of the ransom of one French knight, whom chance ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... you, Madam, for that Reprimand. Look in that Glass, Sir, and admire that sneaking Coxcomb's Countenance of yours: a pox on him, he's past Grace, lost, gone: not a Souse, not a Groat; good b'ye to you, Sir. Madam, I beg your Pardon; the next time I come a wooing, it shall be for my self, Madam, and I have something that will justify it too; but as for this Fellow, if your Ladyship have e'er a small Page at leisure, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... he will not go hence, nor will he perform, and has persuaded others to join with him, his very worthlessness having made him their leader, and they threaten, unless they may receive additional 4 shillings per week, and a groat each night for sack, they will have no plays performed, nor will they allow others to be hired in their stead. They do further demand that you shall write shorter plays; that you shall write no tragedies requiring ...
— Shakespeare's Insomnia, And the Causes Thereof • Franklin H. Head
... and 'gad, my limbs yearn for bed, Joe. This fellow can still carry the bag; 'tis worth a groat." ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... seem, consisted in calling Jeffreys "a pitiful little Fellow with a perriwig".[862] He had also been heard to say that the Lieutenant-Governor was "a worse Rebel than Bacon", that he had broken the laws of Virginia, that he had perjured himself, that he "was not worth a Groat in England". Nor was it considered a sufficient excuse that Ludwell had made those remarks immediately after consuming "part of a Flaggon of Syder".[863] The jury found him guilty of "scandalizing the Governor", but acquitted him of any intention of abusing his Majesty's ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... Sir Liudegast, too, struck many a savage blow; the might of each broke full upon the shields. Thirty of Liudegast's men stood there on guard, but ere they could come to his aid, Siegfried had won the fight, with three groat wounds which he dealt the king through his gleaming breastplate, the which was passing good. The blood from the wounds gushed forth along the edges of the sword, whereat King Liudegast stood in sorry mood. He begged for life and made offrance of his lands and said that his name was Liudegast. Then ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... and I will come by and by. Now for a pair of spurs I would give a good groat, To try whether this jade do amble or trot. Farewell, my masters, till I come again, For now I must make ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... Irish houses were the poorest cabins he had seen, erected in the middle of fields and grounds which they farmed and rented. 'This,' he added, 'is a wild country, not inhabited, planted, nor enclosed.' He gave an Irishman 'a groat' to bring him into the way, yet he led him, like a villein, directly out of the way, and so ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... not give a silver groat For good or evil weather. He carried in his white cap A long red feather. He wore a long coat Of the Reading-tawny kind, And darned white hosen With a blue ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes
... greater obligations to the Queen than to Essex. What these obligations were it is not easy to discover. The situation of Queen's Counsel, and a remote reversion, were surely favours very far below Bacon's personal and hereditary claims. They were favours which had not cost the Queen a groat, nor had they put a groat into Bacon's purse. It was necessary to rest Elizabeth's claims to gratitude on some other ground; and this Mr. Montagu felt. "What perhaps was her greatest kindness," says he, "instead of having hastily advanced Bacon, she had, with a continuance of her friendship, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... rules my luckless lot, Has fated me the russet coat, And damned my fortune to the groat; But, in requit, Has blest me with a random ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... not all, some sing another note; My mother will say no, I hold a groat. But I thought 'twas somewhat, he would be a carter; He hath been whipping lately some blind bear, And now he would ferk the blind boy here ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... we seen men, by the mere strength of their credit, trade for ten thousand pounds a-year, and have not one groat of real stock of their own left in the world! Nay, I can say it of my own knowledge, that I have known a tradesman trade for ten thousand pounds a-year, and carry it on with full credit to the last gasp, then ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... he cannot think to wed Quiteria. A pleasant fancy, forsooth, for a fellow who has not a groat in his pocket to look for a yoke-mate above the clouds. Faith, sir, in my opinion a poor man should be contented with what he finds, and not be seeking for truffles at the bottom of ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... paltry silverlings. [18] Fie, what a trouble 'tis to count this trash! Well fare the Arabians, who so richly pay The things they traffic for with wedge of gold, Whereof a man may easily in a day Tell [19] that which may maintain him all his life. The needy groom, that never finger'd groat, Would make a miracle of thus much coin; But he whose steel-barr'd coffers are cramm'd full, And all his life-time hath been tired, Wearying his fingers' ends with telling it, Would in his age be loath to labour so, And for a pound to sweat ...
— The Jew of Malta • Christopher Marlowe
... "Neither groat nor maravedi Have I got my soul to bless; And I'd feel extremely seedy, Languishing in vile duresse. Therefore listen, ruthless taylzeour, Take my steed and armour free, Pawn them at thy Hebrew uncle's, And I'll work ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... art thou a-chiding? I will play a spurt, why should I not? I set not[150] a mite by thy checking: What hast thou to do, and if I lose my coat? I will trill the bones, while I have one groat; And, when there is no more ink in the pen,[151] I will make a shift,[152] ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... Called couplets, all creation moves, And the whole world runs mad in lines. Add to all this—what's even still worse, As rhyme itself, tho' still a curse, Sounds better to a chinking purse— Scarce sixpence hath my charmer got, While I can muster just a groat; So that, computing self and Venus, Tenpence would clear the amount between us. However, things may yet prove better:— Meantime, what awful length of letter! And how, while heaping thus with gibes The Pegasus of modern scribes, My own small ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... or for Geneva, For the table or the altar, This spawn of a vote, He cares not a groat - For the PENCE he's your dog in a halter, ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... the bellows, "this fellow is too lazy to stand, so we have to hang him up; and he is too lazy to breathe for himself, so he pays me a groat a day to do it for him ...
— Prince Vance - The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box • Eleanor Putnam
... moderation, every principle gave way.'—WORKS OF SALLUST, WITH ORIGINAL ESSAYS, vol. ii. p.17.]—There is a slap in the face now, for an honest fellow that has been buccaneering! Never could keep a groat of what he got, or hold his fingers from what belonged to another, said you? Fie, fie, friend Crispus, thy morals are as crabbed and austere as thy style—the one has as little mercy as the other has grace. By my soul, it is unhandsome to make personal reflections on an old acquaintance, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... consists in omnium rerum vacatione, that is, the chiefest felicity that may be to rest from all labours. Now who doth so much vacare a rebus, who rests so much, who hath so little to do as the beggar? who can sing so merry a note, as he that cannot change a groat?[33] Cui nil est, nil deest: he that hath nothing wants nothing. On the other side, it is said of the carl, Omnia habeo, nec quicquam habeo: I have all things, yet want everything. Multi mihi vitio vertunt quia egeo, saith Marcus Cato in Aulus Gellius; ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... chickens, I had cocks, Gamesome cocks, loud-crowing cocks; Mysie ducks, and Elspie drakes,— For a wee groat or a pound; We lost nae ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... a great difference between such a climate as that of Scotland, damp and cold, snowy and blowy, and a continental ice-sheet, a mile or two thick, reaching from John o' Groat's House to the Mediterranean. We can see that the oranges of Spain can grow to-day within a comparatively short distance of Edinburgh; but we can not realize that any tropical or semitropical plant could have survived in Africa when a precipice of ice, five thousand feet high, ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... them no giftes, They can[46] no more minstrelsy nor music men to glad, Than Mundie, the miller, of multa fecit Deus. Ne were their vile harlotry, have God my truth, Shoulde never king nor knight, nor canon of Paul's Give them to their yeare's gift, nor gift of a groat, And mirth and minstrelsy amongst men is nought; Lechery, losenchery,[47] and losels' tales, Gluttony and great oaths, this mirth they loveth, And if they carpen[48] of Christ, these clerkes and these lewed, And they meet in their mirth, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... take breath. She was almost stifled, for she was up to her ears in ten thousand yards of cloth. She could have afforded to have sold Lady Mary Wortley a clean shift, of the usual coarseness she wears, for a groat halfpenny. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... been an Athenaeum, and if the people had been readers, years ago, some leaves of dedication in your library, of praise of patrons which was very cheaply bought, very dearly sold, and very marketably haggled for by the groat, would be blank leaves, and posterity might probably have lacked the information that certain monsters of virtue ever had existence. But it is upon a much better and wider scale, let me say it once again—it is in the effect ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... Mary. "'Tis no matter. Barbara," to her companion, "hast thou the purse? Give the lad a groat. Marry! thou art all alike. Ye wish bounty whether ye deserve it or not. Go, and trouble me ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... said. 'Ay, there's a pack of 'em all round. Some seen, some unseen—Papists and Puritans—but, thank the stars, I care not a groat for either. I am contented, any way. Saint or sinner, Puritan or Papist, I say, let 'em alone, if they'll let ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... Horncastle. I believe I have told you my history,' said he—'no, not quite; there is one circumstance I had passed over. I told you that I have thriven very well in business, and so I have upon the whole: at any rate, I find myself comfortably off now. I have horses, money, and owe nobody a groat; at any rate, nothing but what I could pay to-morrow. Yet I have had my dreary day, ay, after I had obtained what I call a station in the world. All of a sudden, about five years ago, everything seemed to go wrong with me—horses ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... But when he fairly embarked for France, with a troop of servants, and a suite of carriages, like a nobleman, then did the old fellow fairly curse and swear, and call him all the unnatural and petticoat-pinioned fools in his vocabulary, and prophesy his bringing his ninepence to a groat. Tom and Lady Barbara, however, upheld the honor of England all over the Continent. In Paris, at the baths of Germany, at Vienna, Florence, Venice, Rome, Naples—every where, they were distinguished by their fine persons, their fine equipage, their exquisite tastes, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... boy," he exclaimed, "you have a brand new football which you may kick from John o' Groat's house to the Land's End without its being much the worse for its journey, only you must not treat it as ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... subject of frugality we cannot do better than take the worthy Mentor for our text, and from it address our remarks. A man may, if he knows not how to save as he gets, "keep his nose all his life to the grindstone, and die not worth a groat at last. A fat kitchen ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... can gie a guess," said the robber. "Weel, sirs, I am laith to enter into deadly feud with you by spilling ony of your bluid, though Earnscliff hasna stopped to shed mine—and he can hit a mark to a groat's breadth—so, to prevent mair skaith, I am willing to deliver up the prisoner, since nae ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... believe the mind is less evil than people say it is; its great characteristic is imitation, and it will imitate the good as well as the bad, if we will set the example. I thank Heaven, sir, that my boy now might go from Dan to Beersheba and not filch a groat by ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Mr. Thornton's voyages in the Black Sea with Greek vessels, they gave him the same idea of Greece as a cruise to Berwick in a Scotch smack would of Johnny Groat's house. Upon what grounds then does he arrogate the right of condemning by wholesale a body of men of whom he can know little? It is rather a curious circumstance that Mr. Thornton, who so lavishly dispraises ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... made. Ridley gave his gown and tippet to his brother-in-law, and distributed remembrances among those who were nearest to him. To Sir Henry Lee he gave a new groat, to others he gave handkerchiefs, nutmegs, slices of ginger, his watch, and miscellaneous trinkets; "some plucked off the points of his hose;" "happy," it was said, "was he that might get any ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... a silver groat, A silver groat o' Scots money, "If I come with a poor man's dole," he said, "True Thomas, ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... another, and I decided for the profession of gamester. But Dame Fortune was not of the same opinion, for she refused to smile upon me from the very first step I took in the career, and in less than a week I did not possess a groat. What was to become of me? One must live, and I turned fiddler. Doctor Gozzi had taught me well enough to enable me to scrape on the violin in the orchestra of a theatre, and having mentioned my wishes to M. Grimani he procured me an engagement at his own theatre ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Quick, Suett, and Mrs. Mattocks were the reigning favourites; and, about 1800, Elliston and Fawcett became occasional stars. But Quick and Suett were the king's especial delight. When Lovegold, in the "Miser," drawled out "a pin a day's a groat a year," the laugh of the royal circle was somewhat loud; but when Dicky Gossip exhibited in his vocation, and accompanied the burden of his song, "Dicky Gossip, Dicky Gossip is the man," with the blasts of his powder-puff, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 355., Saturday, February 7, 1829 • Various
... (Mich. 30 Geo. III., reported Term Rep. 499), it appears that Cranstoun, for his concern in the murder of Mr. Blandy, was prosecuted to outlawry, the learned judge observing with reference to the form adopted on that occasion, "It was natural to suppose groat care had been taken in settling it, because some of the most eminent gentlemen in the profession were employed ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... is famous for this, where the Lord Jesus takes more care, as appears there by three parables, for the lost sheep, lost groat, and the prodigal son, than for the other sheep, the other pence, or for the son that said he had never transgressed; yea, he shows that there is joy in heaven, among the angels of God, at the repentance of one sinner, more than over ninety and nine just persons which need no ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the sentence of the others is not known. Sedley employed Killigrew and another to procure a remission from the king; but (mark the friendship of the dissolute!) they begged the fine for themselves, and exacted it to the last groat. In 1665, lord Buckhurst attended the duke of York, as a volunteer in the Dutch war; and was in the battle of June 3, when eighteen great Dutch ships were taken, fourteen others were destroyed, and Opdam, the admiral, who engaged the duke, was blown ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... can take it or leave it. Phoebe Dawson it is, the sister of the blacksmith. Let us work back and have a drop of the right Nants before we go. I have an anker newly come, which never paid the King a groat.' ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... after Roving and Tipling all Night, For his Groat in the Morning may set his Head right. And the Beau, who ne'er fouls his White fingers with Brass, May have his Sixpen' worth ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... the father would soon become reconciled to it. But on the contrary, the attorney, on being told the news, turned his daughter out of doors and would have nothing more to do with either of them. The bridegroom, finding his heiress worth not a groat, did what other sailors have done before and since, and slipped away to sea without so much as saying good-bye to his bride. But a more gallant lover soon hove in sight, the handsome, rich, dare-devil pirate, Captain John ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... will gladly go and do battle for you on this saucy king or his knight. I ween ye shall have your truage to the last groat, for I fear not the best knight of the Round Table, unless it be Sir Lancelot, and I doubt not King Mark hath no knight of such worth ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... other men's souls. How much of good was in his ill, how much of ill in his good, let his life declare! He played fast and loose with truth, I know, till all the world played fast and loose with him. He juggled with empires as with puppets, but he died not a groat the richer, which is better record than greater ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... make your fortune. Morland's pigs and pig-styes, on paper or canvas, were always worth half a hundred of the originals. One of Tenier's inside-out pictures of a village feast, with drunken boors—not worth a groat apiece when alive—would now fetch its weight ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... but as ill-luck would have it, my old Evesham keepsake," touching his side, "burst forth again one evening, and left me so spent, that Bessee sent the boy to get me a draught of wine. The boy—mountebank as he is—lost her groat, and played truant; and she, poor wench, got into such fear for me that she went herself, and fell in with a sort of insolent masterful rogues, from whom this young knight saved her. I took her home safe enough after that, and thought to be rid of the knaves when ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "My cloak it was a very good cloak, It hath been always true to the wear, But now it is not worth a groat; I have had it four and forty year: Sometime it was of cloth in grain, 'Tis now but a sigh-clout, as you may see, It will neither hold out wind nor rain; And I'll have ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... will be before my countrymen find out that it is worth while to spend a penny in order to get a groat? ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley
... yet there they shall become high and eminent; and that wicked men shall be turned into beasts. There is a Spider among them, that breeds an Egg, which she carries under her belly, 'tis as wide as groat, and bigger then the body of the Spider. This egg is full of young Spiders that breed there: it hangs under her belly wheresoever she goes: and as their young ones grow to bigness they eat up the old one. Now the Chingulayes say, that disobedient children shall become Spiders in the other ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... beauty and grandeur. And then consider the great historical fact that, for three centuries, this Book has been woven into the life of all that is best and noblest in English history; that it has become the national epic of Britain, and is as familiar to noble and simple, from John-o'-Groat's House to Land's End, as Dante and Tasso once were to the Italians; that it is written in the noblest and purest English, and abounds in exquisite beauties of mere literary form; and, finally, that it forbids the veriest hind who never left his village to be ignorant ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... despoiler, and red with the blood of the Frasers. "Bury me," he said, "in my own tomb in the church of Kirk Hill; in former days, I had made a codicil to my will, that all the pipers from John O'Groat's house to Edinburgh should be invited to play at my funeral: that may not be now—but still I am sure there will be some good old Highland women to sing a coronach at my funeral; and there will be a crying and clapping ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... cheerful spirit. Harald now also often found his favourite dishes for his dinner; nay, Susanna herself began to discover that one and another of them were very savoury, and among these may particularly be mentioned groat gruel with little herrings. This course, with which dinners in Norway often begin, is so served, that every guest has a little plate beside him, on which lie the little white herrings, and they eat alternately a piece of herring and a spoonful ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... "For, not by Skill or Art, are these Diviners; "But superstitious Prophets, Guessers impudent, "Or idle Rogues, or craz'd, or mere starving Beggars. "They know no way themselves, yet others would direct; "And crave a Groat of those, to whom they promise Riches: "Thence let them take the Groat, and give back all ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... knows this is a scandalous place, for they say your Honour was but a broken Excise-Man, who spent the King's Money to buy your Wife fine Petticoats; and at last not worth a Groat, you came over a poor Servant, though now a Justice of the Peace, and ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... in the pound on all who enjoyed twenty pounds a year and upwards; one shilling on all who possessed between twenty pounds and forty shillings a year; and on the other subjects above sixteen years of age, a groat a head. This last sum was divided into two yearly payments; the former into four, and was not therefore at the utmost above sixpence in the pound. The grant of the commons was but the moiety of the sum demanded; and the cardinal, therefore, much mortified with the disappointment, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... some such tax upon authors, only the payment must be lessened in proportion as the animal, upon which it is raised, is less necessary; for many a man that would pay for his dog, will dismiss his dedicator. Perhaps, if every one who employed or harboured an author, was assessed a groat a year, it would sufficiently lessen the nuisance ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... poor men and four women; and the same on Good Friday with a penny dole, and, on that day, the clerk to toll the bell at three of the clock after noon, and read the lamentation of a sinner, and receive one groat. ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... of my father's life, was a failure; the sea proved too strong for man's arts; and after expedients hitherto unthought of, and on a scale hyper-cyclopean, the work must be deserted, and now stands a ruin in that bleak, God-forsaken bay, ten miles from John-o'-Groat's. In the improvement of rivers the brothers were likewise in a large way of practice over both England and Scotland, nor had any British ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sudden danger, were of necessity called to the bar and arraigned, and having pleaded NOT GUILTY, were forced to enter a traverse to avoid a present commitment: all the favour the court could show them being to take them bail one for the other, though probably both not worth a groat, else they must have gone to gaol for want of bail, which would have put them besides their business, spoiled the informing trade, and broke the design; whereas now they were turned loose again to do what mischief they could until ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... coast many vessels were wrecked, and many lives were lost that night, while many more were saved by the gallant lifeboat crews, the details of which, if written, would thrill many a sympathetic breast from John o' Groat's to the Land's End; but passing by these we turn to one particular vessel which staggered in the gale of that night, but which, fortunately for those on board, was still at some distance from ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... been his caution for a gray groat against salt water or fresh," said Roland's adversary, the falconer; "marry, if he crack not a rope for stabbing or for snatching, I will be content ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... abuse me much, quoth the king, saying thus; I am a gentleman; lodging I lack. Thou hast not, quoth th' miller, one groat in thy purse; All thy inheritance hangs on thy back. I have gold to discharge all that I call;[133] If it be forty pence, I will ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown
... a groat's worth of his time per day, one day with another, wastes the privilege of using ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... alighted therefrom, first the superintendent, and then the over-dressed figure with the lank, fair hair and the fresh-coloured, insipid countenance of as perfect a specimen of the genus sap-head as you could pick up anywhere between John o' Groat's and Land's End. A flower was in his buttonhole, a monocle in his eye, and the gold head of his jointed walking-stick was sucked into the red eyelet of his ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... die not worth a groat, But should I die worth somewhat more, Then I give that, and my best coat, And all my manuscripts in store, To those who will the goodness have To cause my poor remains to rest, Within a decent shell and grave, This is the will ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... "A groat for your tidings," replied Rose, "we poor women hear none in this remote corner. But is it a secret? Women may keep one," she added, looking at the panel that had closed on Le Gallais, "but walls have ears: and so have you, as yet such as they are, ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... cumber us with his sermons for ever, and set every lazy lad thinking he must needs run after them? No, no, my good boy, take my advice. Thou shalt have two good bellyfuls a day, all my cast gowns, and a pair of shoes by the year, with a groat a month if thou wilt keep mine house, bring in my meals, and the like, and by and by, so thou art a good lad, and runst not after these new-fangled preachments which lead but to heresy, and set folk racking their brains about sin and such trash, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... and mix it with fair water, until the Honey be quite dissolved. If it will bear an Egge to be above the liquor, the breadth of a groat, it is strong enough; if not, put more Honey to it, till it be so strong; Then boil it, till it be clearly and well skimmed; Then put in one good handful of Strawberry-leaves, and half a handful of Violet leaves; and half ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... let nor set the same without your worship's consent under your hand in writing. And now for that it hath pleased God to call my said husband unto His mercy, having left behind him the charge of ten small children upon my hand, and my husband besides greatly indebted, not having the revenue of one groat any way coming in, but by making the best I may of such things as he hath left behind him, to relieve my little ones. May it therefore please your worship, of your abundant clemency and accustomed goodness, to consider a poor widow's distressed estate, ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... side or reins. You're not forsworn nor miserly: go kill A porker to the gods who ward off ill. You're headlong and ambitious: take a trip To Madman's Island by the next swift ship. For where's the difference, down the rabble's throat To pour your gold, or never spend a groat? ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... only that there is to be a continuance of the engagement: surely a beneficent provision for the poor teacher. (3) One cannot travel very far in Britain: for ten dollars one can go from London to John O'Groat's. (4) Vacancies are announced by bulletin in the office as they occur, and a notification is sent by post to distant registered candidates: secrecy in regard to the whereabouts and emoluments of a position is quite unnecessary, because the principals who patronize—or, rather, hire—the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... bad entertainment to which I have submitted. As for the people, you will believe, from the specimen I have given you, that they could not be very engaging company: though poor and dirty, they still pretend to be proud; and a fellow who is not worth a groat, is above working for his livelihood. They come abroad barefooted, and without any cover to the head, wrapt up in the coverlets under which you would imagine they had slept. They throw all off, and appear like so many naked ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... I chose the guava-berry; but without any immediately visible effect one officer took one and another the other. After soup came an elegant kingfish, and by and by the famous callalou and other delicate and curious viands. For dessert appeared "red groat"; sago jelly, that is, flavored with guavas, crimsoned with the juice of the prickly-pear and floating in milk; also other floating islands of guava jelly beaten with eggs. Pale-green granadillas crowned the feast. These were eaten with ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... after leaving Yarmouth, about nine this morning we passed the rugged and bold projecting rock, termed Johnny Groat's house, and soon afterwards Duncansby Head, and then entered the Pentland Firth. A pilot came from the main shore of Scotland, and steered the ship in safety between the different islands, to the outer anchorage at Stromness, though the atmosphere ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... cold per-tater—took reg'lar. O' course, for them as is flush o' the rhino, and wants a blow-out, there's nothin' like two o' leg o' beef with a dash o' pea, 'alf a scaffold-pole, a plate o' chats, and a swimmer—it's wholesome and werry filling, and don't cost more than a groat, but give me a cold per-tater to walk on. But you, sir," continued the Pedler, beginning to eat with great appetite, "you, being a reg'lar 'eavy-toddler now, one o' the gilded nobs—and all on account o' that there priceless wollum as I—give ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... ruinous, worm-eaten gentlemen of the round: such as have vowed to sit on the skirts of the city, let your Provost and his half dozen of halberdiers do what they can; and have translated begging out of the old hackney pace, to a fine easy amble, and made it run as smooth off the tongue as a shove-groat shilling, into the likeness of one of these lean Pirgo's, had he moulded himself so perfectly, observing every trick of their action, as varying the accent: swearing with an emphasis. Indeed, all ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... his end, And a' that's good watch o'er him! May peace and plenty be his lot, Peace and plenty, peace and plenty, May peace and plenty be his lot, And dainties a great store o' em! May peace and plenty be his lot, Unstained by any vicious spot, And may he never want a groat ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... 'Twas all sour grapes—sour grapes. He had cunning enough for envy, and pride enough for shame; and at last there was naught but cunning left wherewith to patch up a clout for him and his shame to be gone in. I watched him set out on his pestilent pilgrimage, crazed and stubborn, and not a groat to call his own." ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... down to his last groat, and will let it go for a song now," said Tom. "I would get there before any other fellow does. Jack Wyse and Hal Langton both want it, but they have gamed their pockets empty, and wait till necessity forces him to lower his price to their means. But an hour since I heard ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... art to talk by rote: At Nando's 'twill but cost you half a groat; The Redford school at three-pence is not dear, Sir; At White's—the stars instruct you for a tester. 21 But he, whom nature never meant to share One spark of taste, will never catch it there:— Nor no where else; howe'er the booby beau Grows ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... that it had called out. This was refused; but it was agreed, that as the parrot had offered a reward, the man should again refer to its determination for the sum he was to receive. 'Give the knave a groat,' the bird screamed aloud, the instant ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... venerable device, but useful upon occasion. I walked into the doctor's yard this morning and shot my syringe full of aniseed over the hind wheel. A draghound will follow aniseed from here to John o' Groat's, and our friend Armstrong would have to drive through the Cam before he would shake Pompey off his trail. Oh, the cunning rascal! This is how he gave me the slip ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... entire D'Orsay. There is great nicety required in cutting this article of dress, so that it may at one and the same moment display the figure and waistcoat of the wearer to the utmost advantage. None but a John o'Groat's goth would allow it to be imagined that the buttons and button-holes of this robe were ever intended to be anything but opposite neighbours, for a contrary conviction would imply the absence of a cloak in the hall or a cab at the door. We do not intend to give a Schneiderian ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... grudge one a groat, and squander a rouble! What if a fire WERE to break out? Oh, ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... said Kennedy to himself, silently chuckling, "mine for a groat!" He was in a mood to find things amusing. So, having won clear of the keen-eyed watcher, the young man made the best of his way with more caution to that northern gateway he had ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... to John O' Groat's is a long tramp, but that from Montreal to Hudson's Bay is far longer, and yet many have made it; more, however, in the days of which we are writing than now, and with greater hardships also then. But weighed against ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to his Soliloquy,—and, in a few Minutes, to his Doubts too; for a Labourer in the Town, who deem'd himself past his fifty-second Year, had been returned by the Constable in the Militia-List,—and he had come, with a Groat in his Hand, to search the Parish Register for his Age.—The Parson bid the poor Fellow put the Groat into his Pocket, and go into the Kitchen:—Then shutting the Study Door, and taking down the Parish Register,—Who knows, ...
— A Political Romance • Laurence Sterne
... hospitable people for four days. There was nothing that they would not do for us—no trouble was too groat, no labour was aught but a pleasure to them. They brought the Lucia round to a small sandy beach near the village, discharged her, carried everything up to the houses, and cleaned her thoroughly inside and out, and then put her ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... the only terrible agent at work in that same basement. If you only saw the electric batteries there that generate the electricity which enables us up-stairs to send our messages flying from London to the Land's End or John o' Groat's, or the heart of Ireland! You must know that a far stronger battery is required to send messages a long way than a short. Our Battery Inspector told me the other day that he could not tell exactly the power of ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... great chance, tolerably sober, separated the incensed opponents, with the assistance of Edward and Killancureit. The latter led off Balmawhapple, cursing, swearing, and vowing revenge against every Whig, Presbyterian, and fanatic in England and Scotland, from John-o'-Groat's to the Land's End, and with difficulty got him to horse. Our hero, with the assistance of Saunders Saunderson, escorted the Baron of Bradwardine to his own dwelling, but could not prevail upon him ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... same parish they belonged to, while they lay in fields; so that the care of above thirty thousand souls, hath been sometimes committed to one minister, whose church would hardly contain the twentieth part of his flock: neither, I think, was any family in those parishes obliged to pay above a groat a year to their spiritual pastor. Some few of those parishes have been since divided; in others were erected chapels of ease, where a preacher is maintained by general contribution. Such poor shifts and expedients, to the infinite shame and scandal, of so vast and flourishing a city, have ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... business; but to these we must add frugality, if we would make our industry more certainly successful. A man may, if he knows not how to save as he gets, keep his nose all his life to the grindstone, and die not worth a groat at last. 'A fat kitchen makes ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... latter half is reflected in his diary. The letters show Borrow's experiences in the earlier part of his journey, and from his diaries we learn that he was in Oban on 22nd October, Aberdeen on 5th November, Inverness on the 9th, and thence he went to Tain, Dornoch, Wick, John o'Groat's, and to the island towns, Stromness, Kirkwall, and Lerwick. He was in Shetland on the 1st of December—altogether a bleak, cheerless journey, we may believe, even for so hardy a tramp as Borrow, and the tone of the following extract from one of his rough notebooks ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... maintain a town of garrison in good swearing a twelvemonth. One other genuine quality he has which crowns all these, and that is this: to a friend in want, he will not depart with the weight of a soldered groat, lest the world might censure him prodigal, or report him a gull: marry, to his cockatrice or punquetto, half a dozen taffata gowns or satin kirtles in a pair or two of months, why, they ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... out of their jurisdiction, allowing him but one month for his departure, though in the winter season, and he a weakly ancient man: Endicott the governor, when applied to on his behalf for a mitigation of his fine, churlishly answered, 'I will not bate him a groat.'" [Footnote: Besse, ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... that there is an ancient custom at Coleshill, in Warwickshire, that if the young men of the town can catch a hare, and bring it to the parson of the parish before ten o'clock on Easter Monday, he is bound to give them a calf's head and a hundred eggs for their breakfast, and a groat in money. Can you inform me whether this be the fact? And if so, what is the origin ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 234, April 22, 1854 • Various
... accelerating velocity. At length in the autumn of 1695 it could hardly be said that the country possessed, for practical purposes, any measure of the value of commodities. It was a mere chance whether what was called a shilling was really tenpence, sixpence or a groat. The results of some experiments which were tried at that time deserve to be mentioned. The officers of the Exchequer weighed fifty-seven thousand two hundred pounds of hammered money which had recently been paid in. The ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the King, with a roar of laughter, following them with his eyes as they bustled down through the air. "Mend thy own altar-cloths, Bishop. Not a groat shall you have from me this journey. Pull them apart, falconer, lest they do each other an injury. And now, masters, let us on, for the sun ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... roof was provided, but there was still dinner to be thought of, since, if a man works, he must also eat. 'I went to the house [John o' Groat's] where I had always dined,' writes Haydon, 'intending to dine without paying for that day. I thought the servants did not offer me the same attention. I thought I perceived the company examine me—I ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... little worth in the markets of India. In that country, all the reports agreed, "they have every necessity of life very cheap"; and every luxury as well—forty pounds of "excellent fresh ginger for a Venice groat"; "three pheasants for an asper of silver"; five grains of silver buying one of gold; three dishes, "so fine that you could not imagine better," to be had for less than half a shilling. It was the Arab middlemen that made the difference: ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... incalculable. The little courtesies which form the small change of life, may separately appear of little intrinsic value, but they acquire their importance from repetition and accumulation. They are like the spare minutes, or the groat a day, which proverbially produce such momentous results in the course of a twelvemonth, or in ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon |
