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Miser   Listen
noun
Miser  n.  
1.
A wretched person; a person afflicted by any great misfortune. (Obs.) "The woeful words of a miser now despairing."
2.
A despicable person; a wretch. (Obs.)
3.
A covetous, grasping, mean person; esp., one having wealth, who lives miserably for the sake of saving and increasing his hoard. "As some lone miser, visiting his store, Bends at his treasure, counts, recounts it o'er."
4.
A stingy person; one very reluctant to spend money.
5.
A kind of large earth auger.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Miser" Quotes from Famous Books



... vain illusions! God grant that the man Voltaire may not cast down the genius Voltaire from the altar which, with willing hands, I have erected for him in my heart of hearts. I fear the cynic and the miser. I have a presentiment of evil! My altar will fall to pieces, and its ruins will crush my own heart. Say what you will, D'Argens, I have still a heart, though the world has gnawed at and ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... each glass of cider or wine that flowed through his gullet he thought he was regaining something of his own property, getting back a little of his money which all those gluttons were devouring, saving in fact a portion of his own means. And he ate in silence with the obstinacy of a miser who hides his coppers, with the same gloomy persistence with which he formerly performed ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... husband more than once with imaginary stories about their neighbour. "He was a miser—a recluse—a misanthrope—he had a wife in a lunatic asylum—he had known some great trouble that had embittered his life; he had made a vow never to let a human being cross his threshold; he was a Roman Catholic priest in disguise, an Agnostic, a Nihilist." ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... almost on his heels. He looked back once, and saw a pair of fiery red eyes which he felt must belong to the monster, the timber wolf, but Dick was no longer under the uncanny spell of the night and the place; he was rejoicing too much in his new treasures, like a miser who has just added a great sum to his hoard, to feel further awe of the wolves, the darkness, and ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler

... adorned with beautiful paintings. Numerous statues, vases, lamps, and other elegant works of art, have been recovered. Many skeletons have also been found, in the exact positions in which the living men were caught by the deadly shower of suffocating ashes. The excavators came upon the skeleton of a miser, who had been attempting to escape from his house, and whose bony fingers were still clutching the purse which contained the treasure he loved. There were also found in the barracks at Pompeii the skeletons of two soldiers chained to the stocks; and the writings ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous

... cost that old miser, Dave Wisner, about three or four million dollars," says he. "He's put up his life, his fortune and his sacred honor on that irrigation scheme, and he's going to be lucky if he gets through with any of them before I call ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough

... like manner the care of the world and the deceitfulness of riches lacerate the man who permits them to grow rank in his heart. The vain man is continually meeting with slights, or suspecting that his neighbours are about to offer them. The miser is always losing money, or trembling lest he should lose it in the next transaction. The world itself knows, and in its proverbs confesses, that around the most coveted pleasures are set sharp thorns, which wound the hand that tries ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... Mexican hacendado, who acquires riches by running Federal blockades into Southern ports. He is both a coward and a miser. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... developed. I tried to make out the names of plants, and collected all sorts of things—shells, seals, franks, coins, and minerals. The passion for collecting which leads a man to be a systematic naturalist, a virtuoso, or a miser, was very strong in me, and was clearly innate, as none of my sisters and brothers ever had ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... The old miser did not wait to hear any reply to this announcement; but the tears dropped from the widow's eyes as the door closed upon the hard old man. The squire and Ethan walked down to the main street, talking with every one they met about the treasure, protesting that it ought ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic

... him one day at Button's Coffee House, that 'he excelled him in painting, for that he could only paint from the originals before him, but that he (Dogget) could vary them at pleasure, and yet keep a close likeness.'" In the character of Moneytrap, the miser, in Vanbrugh's comedy of "The Confederacy," Dogget is described as wearing "an old threadbare black coat, to which he had put new cuffs, pocket-lids, and buttons, on purpose to make its rusticness more conspicuous. The ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... glance around the wretched apartment, "the way we live. Our food is insufficient and of bad quality; we never buy clothes; the rent of this hole is a mere nothing. What am I to think of the wretched girl who plunges me into this misery? Is she a miser, think you?—or a female gamester?—or—or—does she squander it riotously in places I know not of? O Doctor, Doctor! do not blame me if I heap imprecations on her head, for I have suffered bitterly!" The poor man here closed his eyes and sank ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... from the shelf; and then, to my great surprise, instead of drawing more beer, he poured an accurate half from one cup to the other. There was a kind of nobleness in this that took my breath away; if my uncle was certainly a miser, he was one of that thorough breed that goes near ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson

... sufficient to enable him to purchase some cattle, the value of which he understood, and these he sold to advantage. He proceeded by degrees to undertake larger transactions, until at length he became rich. The result was, that he more than recovered his possessions, and died an inveterate miser. When he was buried, mere earth went to earth. With a nobler spirit, the same determination might have enabled such a man to be a benefactor to others as well as to himself. But the life and its end in ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... delightful and free from evil. The voice, pronunciation, and minds of all men become clear and cheerful. Diseases disappear and all men become long-lived. Wives do not become widows, and no person becomes a miser. The earth yields crops without being tilled, and herbs and plants grow in luxuriance. Barks, leaves, fruits, and roots, become vigorous and abundant. No unrighteousness is seen. Nothing but righteousness exists. Know these to be the characteristics, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... than six hundred thousand francs, he will not give one penny to nephews whom he has never seen. As for me, you know I cannot dispose of a farthing while my husband lives. Hochon is the greatest miser in Issoudun. I do not know what he does with his money; he does not give twenty francs a year to his grandchildren. As for borrowing the money, I should have to get his signature, and he would refuse it. I have not even attempted to speak to your brother, who lives with a concubine, ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... black dog. Other monks who broke their vows shared no better. Because a monk had been guilty of hoarding up a large sum of money, contrary to the rules of his order, he was denied Christian burial, and his body was cast upon a dunghill. After mass was said for the miser thirty days, the deceased monk appeared to a brother of his order and told him that he had been in purgatory till that day. From this blessed liberation St. Gregory instituted the custom of saying thirty masses for the dead. A gentleman in Rome, who was ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... six, The lowest price a miser could fix: I don't pretend with horns of mine, Like some in the advertising line, To 'MAGNIFY SOUNDS' on such marvellous scales, That the sounds of a cod seem as big as a whale's; But popular rumours, right or wrong, - Charity sermons, short or long, ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... conversation, the possessive pronoun your is sometimes used in a droll way, being shortened into your in pronunciation, and nothing more being meant by it, than might be expressed by the article an or a: as, "Rich honesty dwells, like your miser, sir, in a poor house; as, your pearl in your ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... turning on some plot of love or tale of seduction, and there was alongside of this a popular sort of farce known as the Commedia dell' Arte, in which only the outline of the plot was sketched, and the characters, usually typical persons as the Lover, his Lady, the Bragging Captain, the Miser, would fill in the dialogue and such comic "business" as tickled ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... was your age," . . . he would begin saying—but Julio would suddenly bring the dialogue to a close. He had heard his father's story too many times. Ah, the stingy old miser! What he had been giving him all these months was no more than the interest on his grandfather's legacy. . . . And by the advice of Argensola he ventured to get control of the field. He was planning to hand over the management of his land to Celedonio, the old overseer, who was now such a grandee ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... much less any respect for restraints or fidelities of what kind soever, forgot his assumed gravity when he heard this determination, and laughed outright at the simplicity of such a proceeding. He pronounced it, in his peremptory way, to be foolish and frivolous; compared it with the miser who, in burying a treasure, does good neither to himself nor any one else; and said, that lions and serpents might indeed be shut up in cages, but not things ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt

... quodam loco custodiret, uacca una peperit coram eo uitulum. Veniens uero imacie omnino confectus [canis][1] cupiens de hiis que cum uitulo cadunt de uentro matris [uentrem suum][2] implere, stetit coram pio pastore. Cui ait "Commede, miser, uitulum istum, quia multum eo indi[ deg.10]ges." Canis uero iussa Querani complens, usque ad ossa uitulum commedit. Redeunti uero Querano cum uaccis ad domum, illa ad memoriam reducens uitulum mugiendo huc illucque discurrebat. Causam uero mugitus cognoscens mater Querani, cum ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous

... money, people know he cannot help them, if he would; whereas the rich man always can, if he will, and for the chance of that, will have much weight.' BOSWELL. 'But philosophers and satirists have all treated a miser as contemptible.' JOHNSON. 'He is so philosophically; but not in the practice of life[349].' BOSWELL. 'Let me see now:—I do not know the instances of misers in England, so as to examine into their influence.' JOHNSON. 'We have had few misers in England.' BOSWELL. 'There ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... Mulligan Jacobs first came in to go to work, and I could not help observing the startled, avid glance he threw at my big shelves of books. He advanced on them in the way a robber might advance on a secret hoard of gold, and as a miser would fondle gold so Mulligan Jacobs fondled ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... Besant reaches from the somewhat conventionalized 'Dorothy Forster' to 'St. Katharine's Tower,' where deep tragedy approaches the melodramatic, or from the fascination of 'The Master Craftsman' to the 'Wapping Idyll' of the heaps of miser's treasure. There is largeness of stroke in this list, and a wide prospect. His humor is of the cheerful outdoor kind, and the laugh is at foibles rather than weakness. He pays little attention to fashion in literature, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... and actions, the favourable with the unfavourable, are recalled, and by a mental process classified and marshalled against each other, and compared and balanced with as much exactitude as the pros and contras of a miser's bank-book; and in this process we have a new alternation ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid

... no virtues and probably told the truth, Jones decided. In which case he cannot be a miser. But he also said he had no vices and probably lied like a thief. The old scoundrel is a philanthropist. I would wager an orchard of pippins on that, but there is no one to take me up—except ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... must be experienced before we can really know them. We must in our hearts live through Abraham's harsh and bitter experiences if we would know the blessedness which follows them. The ancient curse will not go out painlessly; the tough old miser within us will not lie down and die obedient to our command. He must be torn out of our heart like a plant from the soil; he must be extracted in agony and blood like a tooth from the jaw. He must be expelled from our soul by violence ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer

... words: Apparuit jam beatitudo vestra [Now has appeared your bliss]. At that instant the natural spirit, which dwells in that part where our nourishment is supplied, began to weep, and, weeping, said these words: Heu miser! quia frequenter impeditus ero deinceps [Woe is me, wretched! Because often from this time forth ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... that they alternately seek to supplant one another as absolutely as possible, as though by turns one had been in the company of a religious devotee and an atheist, of a poet and a dull philistine, of a spendthrift and a miser. No man so firm in character but undergoes this influence. And it still regularly befalls even me, after so many years, that at the end of day I face the night with its wonders with critical unbelieving expectancy. ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden

... whether it dealt with Romans or Greeks, the Romans also added the atellane, which came to them from the Etruscans (Atella, a city of Etruria) and which was a sort of farce with stereotyped characters (the fat glutton, the lean glutton, the old miser always baffled, etc.). Pomponius and Naevius endeavoured to raise this popular recreation to a literary standard and succeeded. It then became a thoroughly national characteristic. There was considerable analogy between it and the modern popular Italian comedy, showing its Cassandras, its ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet

... pity A youth should be lost, that had been so witty: Without more ado, he vamps up my spark, And now we'll suppose him an eminent clerk! Suppose him an adept in all the degrees Of scribbling cum dasho, and hooking of fees; Suppose him a miser, attorney, per bill, Suppose him a courtier—suppose what you will— Yet, would you believe, though I swore by the Bible, That he took up two news-boys for crying ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... eddied beyond the window-glass. The most shadowy of smiles touched her lips, the faintest shade of deepened color rested on her cheeks.... She was thinking of—him? As long as he dared, the young man, his heart in his own eyes, watched her greedily, taking a miser's joy of her youthful beauty, striving with all his soul to analyze the enigma of that ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... noticed, too, in his drawer, a box, which was quite heavy with money. She did not believe he had bought so much as a fish-hook, since he had been in their family. If he should go on in this way he will grow up to be a miser. Mr. Johnson smiled at his wife's earnestness, and remarked that with such an example of generosity as Reuben had constantly before him, he could not believe the child was in much danger from the fault she feared. "It must be remembered," he ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various

... wisdom being to him the source of riches. The Hebrews of the city were grieved at this blemish on the wisest of their people; but though the elders of the tribes continued to reverence him for his fame, the women and children of Cairo called him by no other name than that of Rabbi Jochonan the miser. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various

... scarcely moves him from her side— Her every hour with joy beguiles. To make the gulf between us wide, He acts the miser of ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey

... miser, that's what you are! A regular old miser! Every one knows that. Every one calls you a miser. If you aren't a miser, I should like you to tell me why you live on about three pounds a week when your income ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett

... multa per aequora vectus Advenio has miseras, frater, ad inferias, Ut te postremo donarem munere mortis Et mutam nequiquam alloquerer cinerem, 4 Quandoquidem fortuna mihi tete abstulit ipsum, Heu miser indigne frater adempte mihi. Nunc tamen interea haec prisco quae more parentum Tradita sunt tristes munera ad inferias, 8 Accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu, Atque in perpetuum, ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce

... of costly refinements with the barest and shabbiest necessaries of life, of fastidious culture with manifest poverty. I could make nothing of it. What manner of man, I wondered, was this new patient of mine? Was he a miser, hiding himself and his wealth in this obscure court? An eccentric savant? A philosopher? Or—more probably—a crank? But at this point my meditations were interrupted by the voice from the adjoining room, ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman

... Nino sits before his book and broods, Thin and brow-burdened with some fine distress, Some gloom that hangs about his mournful moods His weary bearing and neglected dress: So sad he sits, nor ever turns a leaf— Sorrow's pale miser o'er ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman

... day, when he was digging for roots, his poor sustenance, his spade struck against something heavy, which proved to be gold, a great heap which some miser had probably buried in a time of alarm, thinking to have come again and taken it from its prison, but died before the opportunity had arrived, without making any man privy to the concealment; so it lay, doing neither good nor harm, in the bowels of the earth, its mother, as if it had never come ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... the Penny Bank weekly his savings he took, And soon had a pretty round sum in his book: No miser was he, but he thought it sound sense In the days of his youth to put by a ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling

... embellishments, and for the last ten years there had been no painting, either inside or out. Twenty years ago the Squire had been an embarrassed man, and had taken a turn in his life and had lived sparingly. It could not be said that he had become a miser. His table was kept plentifully, and there had never been want in his house. In some respects, too, he had behaved liberally to Kate and to others, and he had kept up the timber and fences on the property. But the house had ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... lot of good that would do me, if I'd been killed!" muttered the miser. "I'm going to sue you for this. You might have ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton

... Aulularia with some unknown play of Menander's in which a miser is represented dedio:s me: ti to:n eidon ho kapnos oichoito phero:n. Euclio's distress[9] at seeing any smoke escape from his house seems at least to suggest that Plautus may have borrowed the Aulularia from Menander. The allusion to praefectum ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius

... and good only for the land. I say seemed, because what we call degeneracy is often but the unveiling of what was there all the time; and the evil we could become, we are. If I have in me the tyrant or the miser, there he is, and such am I—as surely as if the tyrant or the miser were even now visible to the wondering dislike of my neighbors. I do not say the characteristic is so strong, or would be so hard to change ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald

... tragic poet, "est nemo miser nisi comparatus;" which, by substituting one single word, is exactly applicable to our present subject; "est nemo serus nisi comparatus." All early rising is relative; what is early to one, is late to another, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various

... leaves of gold, set on a vast beaten platter of gold. And the man and the woman, like all things else in the landscape, were suffused in this still, Parnassian, penetrating brilliancy, which ought to make even a miser feel that his hoarded eagles and ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... occasion, when he was sick, even kept old Viner in food. She had not, at the time, failed to realize that the man was grasping, rapacious, even unthankful, but she had little dreamed that he was a miser worth fifty thousand dollars! ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard

... a store of facts about linguistic matters, or the chronology of literary productions. Unless such activity reacts to enlarge the imaginative vision of life, it is on a level with the busy work of children. It has the letter without the spirit of activity. It readily degenerates itself into a miser's accumulation, and a man prides himself on what he has, and not on the meaning he finds in the affairs of life. Any study so pursued that it increases concern for the values of life, any study producing greater sensitiveness ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... a town where extravagance was almost impossible, but where rigid economy was supposed to pile up tremendous wealth. Hitherto it had pained Uncle Loren to devote a penny to anything but the sweet uses of investment. Now it suddenly occurred to the old miser that he had invested nothing in the securities of New Jerusalem, Limited. He ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... the solemnly silly physician, the priest, mariner, fisherman, and the like. To these fall to be added, lastly, the parts delineative of character in the strict sense, such as the superstitious man of Menander and the miser in the -Aulularia- of Plautus. The national-Hellenic poetry has preserved, even in this its last creation, its indestructible plastic vigour; but the delineation of character is here copied from without rather than reproduced from inward experience, and the more ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... hang-dog gallows gait. How such a most unmartial vagabond had insinuated himself into the honourable marine corps was a perfect mystery. He had always been noted for his personal uncleanliness, and among all hands, fore and aft, had the reputation of being a notorious old miser, who denied himself the few comforts, and many of the common necessaries of ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... of the Duchy of Lancaster were steadily increasing, she had inherited a considerable property from the Prince Consort, and she had been left, in 1852, an estate of half a million by Mr. John Neild, an eccentric miser. In these circumstances it was not surprising that when, in 1871, Parliament was asked to vote a dowry of L30,000 to the Princess Louise on her marriage with the eldest son of the Duke of Argyle, together with an annuity of L6,000, there should ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey

... stifling and destructive of vitality. And it has become all the more oppressive since families in France have been reduced to the minimum: father, mother, one or two children, and here and there, perhaps, an uncle or an aunt. It is a cowardly, fearful love, turned in upon itself, like a miser clinging tightly ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... shook the monk vigorously, but the latter only held his piece of money tighter like a miser whose treasure is threatened, and snored the louder. Again the fool essayed to waken him, and this time he opened his eyes, felt for his beads and commenced to mutter a prayer in Latin words, strung ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... the altar and the cross; It dignifies the monarch and the clown; The wealth of moral worth is counted dross; The million miser wears the ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms

... of life. Avarice again is so repulsive to the native nobility of the human heart, that it rarely obtains the dignity of a passion: great energy of character is requisite to form a consistent and accomplished miser: and of the mass of men it may be said—that, if the beneficence of nature has in some measure raised them above avarice by the necessity of those social instincts which she has impressed upon their hearts, in some measure also they sink below it by their deficiencies in that austerity of self-denial ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... she lived only to scrape and hoard, moidering away her loveless life on the futile energies and sordid aims of a miser's wretched pleasures. But every now and then she had risen up out of the slough into which she had gradually sunk, and had done some grand things that marked her name with so many white stones. While she gloried in her skill in filching from the pig what would serve the chickens, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various

... known tradition of royalty. The king business is usually the business of spending unearned money. Your royal spendthrift is a much more familiar figure than the royal miser. Moreover, nobody ever associates productive power with a king save in the big family line. His task is inherited and with it a bank account sufficient to meet all needs. This immunity from economic necessity is a large price to pay for lack of liberty in speech and action. ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... the contented man desires, The poor man has, the rich requires; The miser gives, the spendthrift saves, And all must carry to ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 38, Saturday, July 20, 1850 • Various

... the form of dusting the huge metal-bound chest, which had attracted the mistress' eyes as a new article of furniture. Had her husband turned miser since Fortune had whirled on her wheel at his door as soon as she quitted it? It was not Hedwig's place, and it was not in her power to solve enigmas, so she ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... life was of greater value than the life of ... of a clerk. I suppose, the finer a man is, the more willing he is to take his share in war, and if that's true, I'm not really a fine man. I'm simply a coward, hoarding up my life in a cupboard, like a miser hoarding up his money. I should have been the first to spend myself ... like Gilbert and Ninian. I'm the only one of the Improved Tories who hasn't gone! ... Oh, I couldn't offer you myself, dear. I'm too mean ... I'm a failure in fineness.... I used to feel contempt for Jimphy Jayne ... but ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... retribution. The oppressor bears Sway for a while,—but look!—the downfall comes. His offspring shall not flourish, nor his grave Be wet with widow's tears. The unjust rich man Heapeth up silver for a stranger's hand, He hoardeth raiment with a miser's greed To robe he knows not who, though he himself Had grudg'd to wear it. Boastfully he builds A costly mansion to preserve his name Among the people. But like the slight booth, Brief lodge of summer, ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney

... everything to the verge of ruin, and only after it has toppled over the brink, and we have followed it, does the danger of the game we had been playing become apparent.—A second qualifies this view, and shouts, that our vice is not so much greed, which is the vice of the miser, as extravagance, which is the vice of the spendthrift; and that as soon as we get one dollar, we run in debt for ten. We must have fine houses, fine horses, fine millinery, fine upholstery, troops of servants, and give costly dinners, and attend magnificent balls. Our very shops and counting-houses ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... illa inventa est, quam ille amat, recte valet, si non inventa est, minus valet moribundusque est animast amica amanti. si abest, nullus est; si adest, res nullast. ipsus est—nequam et miser, sed tu quid ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius

... beyond a slight feeling of the imagination, which serves only to excite sentiments of complacency or ensure, and makes them apply to the object either honorable or dishonorable appellations. A griping miser, for instance, praises extremely INDUSTRY and FRUGALITY even in others, and sets them, in his estimation, above all the other virtues. He knows the good that results from them, and feels that species of happiness with a more lively sympathy, than any other you ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume

... courtesan, and the other is simply very generous, the Sages say that the preference should be given to the generous lover, but Vatsyayana is of opinion that the one who is really attached to the courtesan should be preferred, because he can be made to be generous, even as a miser gives money if he becomes fond of a woman, but a man who is simply generous cannot be made to love with real attachment. But among those who are attached to her, if there is one who is poor, and one who is rich, the preference is of course to be ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana

... beauty of his own glorious person into your soul if you will but be quiet. Have no anxieties about the things that pertain to this life, and Jesus will clothe you with the beauties of heaven. Character, as the years pass on, is revealed on the face. The miser's face shows the miserly condition of his heart. Jesus will stamp his own image upon the soul if the soul is kept in quietness, and this image will stand out in beauty on the face and ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr

... Buckingham, was not less notable than my Lord Rochester. By turns he played such diverse parts in life's strange comedy as that of a spendthrift and a miser, a profligate and a philosopher, a statesman who sought the ruin of his country, and a courtier who pandered to the pleasures of his king. But inasmuch as this history is concerned with the social rather than the political life of those mentioned in its pages, place ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... not only by his acts that the individual in a crowd differs essentially from himself. Even before he has entirely lost his independence, his ideas and feelings have undergone a transformation, and the transformation is so profound as to change the miser into a spendthrift, the sceptic into a believer, the honest man into a criminal, and the coward into a hero. The renunciation of all its privileges which the nobility voted in a moment of enthusiasm ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... Heaven will surely punish me. Oh, if you would save me, give away one hundred coffins [47] and one hundred suits of wadded clothes." "My friend," replied Chia, "my object in getting money was not to hoard it up like a miser." Mr Chen was delighted at this; and during the next three years Chia engaged in trade, taking care to fulfil always his promise to Mr Chen. At the expiration of that time Mr Chen himself reappeared, and, ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner

... the shore goes out the ship Wherein is set the treasure that I hold Closer than miser all his hidden gold, Dearer than wine Zeus carried ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... defies foe; element, element. How sublime is the war! But the ladder, the ladder,—there, at the window! All else are saved,—the clerk and his books; the lawyer with that tin box of title-deeds; the landlord, with his policy of insurance; the miser, with his bank-notes and gold: all are saved,—all but the babe and the mother. What a crowd in the streets; how the light crimsons over the gazers, hundreds on hundreds! All those faces seem as one face, with fear. Not a than mounts the ladder. Yes, there,—gallant ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... bridegroom too, in youth's gay ensigns drest; A shroud were fitter garment far for him than bridal vest; I mark'd him when the ring was claim'd, 'twas hard to loose his hold, He held it with a miser's clutch—it was his darling gold. His shrivell'd hand was wet with tears she pour'd, alas! in vain, And it trembled like an autumn ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various

... suspicions of affection are often more apparent than real, in this they were not mistaken; for, without consulting his child—and as if her soul had been in his hand—he promised her in marriage to a rich old miser, ay, twice as rich, and nearly ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir

... equally certain, as he left behind several works upon the subject. Those who knew him well, and who were incredulous about the philosopher's stone, give a satisfactory solution of the secret of his wealth. They say that he was always a miser and a usurer; that his journey to Spain was undertaken with very different motives from those pretended by the alchymists; that, in fact, he went to collect debts due from Jews in that country to their brethren ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... shabbier and more crabbed, they were readily believed. Barney carried his ring and filed keys all day, coining money, so the reasoning ran, and spent none; so he must be hiding it away. The alley hugged itself in the joyful sensation that it had a miser and his hoard in the cockloft. Next to a ghost, for which the environment was too matter-of-fact, that was the thing for an alley ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... An old miser who lived at T——-, a pleasure resort if there ever was one, had married a young and pretty woman, and he was so wrapped up in her and so jealous that love triumphed over avarice; he actually gave up trade in order to guard his wife more closely, but his only real change was that his covetousness ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac

... we deposit our notes, Is a miser who always wants guineas for groats; He keeps all his customers still in arrears By lending them ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... inviting; nevertheless, Gladys did her best to swallow a few morsels, because she really felt faint and weak. It did not occur to the miser that he might kindle a cheerful spark of fire to give her a welcome, and to make her a cup of tea. He was not less cold and hungry himself, it may be believed, but he had long inured himself to such privation, and bore it with ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... Pleasure, Past Love, or any thing that tends that way; Ill-favour'd, ill-bred, and ill-qualify'd, With more Diseases than a Horse past Service; And only blest with Fortune and my Julia; For him, I say, this Miser, to obtain her, After my tedious nights and days of Love, My midnight Watchings, Quarrels, Wounds and Dangers; —My Person not unhandsom too, By Heav'n, 'twas ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn

... the task of proving it. It required some clever work to unmask the villainous miser, but Ralph succeeded, and Farrington, to escape facing disgrace, left the town, ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman

... advance of their slow aid, by guesswork or by hook or crook, what shall we say of them? Were all of Clifford's works, except the Ethics of Belief, forgotten, he might well figure in future treatises on psychology in place of the somewhat threadbare instance of the miser who has been led by the association of ideas to prefer his gold to all the goods he might ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... wears a red coat with seven buttons in each row, and a cocked or pointed hat, on the point of which he often spins round like a top. You may often see him under the hedge mending shoes; where, if you are sharp enough, you may catch him and make him give up the big crocks of gold, of which the little miser has saved many and many. But you must be careful, for if after you have seen him once you take your eyes off him for a single instant, he vanishes into the air ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester

... old miser, obstinate as are the half-fuddled, began to mumble, 'I came not here to drink, O Ukleet, but to make a bargain; and my bags be here, and I like not yonder veil, nor the presence of yonder Vizier, nor the secresy of this. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... such respect and cherishing as mine will be. Rather exalt yourself as more valuable to a miser than his whole lendings, and greater than all your father's losses as an equivalent, and even then putting your husband in debt, being so much ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... upon spiting the big people at the great house by refusing to sell, or selling to another person. The great house was believed to have secured the first 'refuse' of Luke's property, if ever he thought of selling. Luke, in fact, among the lower classes was looked upon as a capitalist—a miser with an unknown hoard. The old man used to sit of a winter's evening, after he had brought down the rabbits, by the hearth, making rabbit-nets of twine. Almost everybody who came along the road, home from the market town, stopped, lifted the latch without knocking, ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies

... contagious. Losing all control over herself, and sobbing with rage, she behaved with the greatest impertinence to her father, calling him a tyrant and a miser. ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy

... past. Yes, that's his little game! And—" he slowly concluded, controlling himself, "I have reason to think he may go about it at once. He is afraid of me, also, about some old official business. Now, I will watch over your interests. The least this old miser can do is to give you a neat little home in Geneva, as ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... John the Miser, or Seagan na Stucaire, as they call him. That is the man that is hardest in this country. He never gave a penny to any person since he ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others

... pitching headlong to their final catastrophe; others, raising their youthful forms to begin the drama of existence. The world of society is as full of exciting interest, as nature is full of beauty. The great dramatic throng of life is bustling along—the wise, the fool, the clown, the miser, the bereaved, the broken-hearted. Life mingles before us smiles and tears, sighs and laughter, joy and gloom, as the spring mingles the winter-storm and summer-sunshine. To this vast Theatre which God hath builded, where stranger plays are seen than ever author writ, man seldom cares to come. ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... being rated for his stinginess. "Ay," said they, "this comes of living like a curmudgeon, in a great house by yourself, working your eyes out to hoard up money. What must a young man like you do with scraping up pots full of money, like a miser? It is a shame!—it is a sin!—it is a judgment! Nothing better could come of it. At all events, you might afford to have a light burning in the house. People are ever likely to rob you. They see a house as dark as an oven; they see nobody in it; they go ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... separates effectually. With what jealousy a husband claims his wife, a mother her children, a miser his possessions! Pray that the Holy Spirit may show how God brought you to Himself, that you should be His. 'He is a holy God; He is a Jealous God.' God's love shed abroad in the heart ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray

... appeared like the full moon shining into a chamber at two windows. Our people, who discovered the cause of my mirth, bore me company in laughing, at which the old fellow was fool enough to be angry and out of countenance. He had the character of a great miser; and, to my misfortune, he well deserved it by the cursed advice he gave my master, to show me as a sight upon a market-day in the next town, which was half an hour's riding, about two-and-twenty miles from our house. I guessed there was some mischief contriving, when ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift

... that. But if he is one of the blots on the business, he is not the principal one. If the real degradation of Wegg is not very convincing, it is at least immeasurably more convincing than the pretended degradation of Boffin. The passage in which Boffin appears as a sort of miser, and then afterwards explains that he only assumed the character for reasons of his own, has something about it highly jerky and unsatisfactory. The truth of the whole matter I think, almost certainly, is that Dickens did not originally mean ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton

... thinnest being possible to imagine, in grey clothes. His nose was enormous, and he pushed up his glasses when Kate came into the room with a movement of the left hand that was clearly habitual. On the other side of the round table sat Mr. Joe Mortimer, the heavy lead, the celebrated miser in the Cloches. A tall girl standing behind him playfully twisted his back hair. He addressed paternal admonitions to her from time to time in an ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore

... that on the earth abound; The tender grass that clothes the ground; The little birds that fly in air; The sheep that need the shepherd's care; The pearls that deep in ocean lie; The gold that charms the miser's eye; The fruitful and the thorny ground; The piece of silver lost and found; The reaper, with his sheaves returning; The gathered tares prepared for burning; The wandering sheep brought back with joy; The father's welcome for his boy; The wedding-feast, prepared in state; The foolish virgins' ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton

... not asleep, we say he is delirious or mad; nor are those persons who are inflamed with love, and who dream all night and all day about nothing but their mistress, or some woman, considered as less mad, for they are made objects of ridicule. But when a miser thinks of nothing but gain or money, or when an ambitious man thinks of nothing but glory, they are not reckoned to be mad, because they are generally harmful, and are thought worthy of being hated. But, in reality, Avarice, Ambition, ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza

... was in no fibre of his being a miser, but he acted always upon those cold-blooded prudential principles that had brought him wealth. It was not money that this great captain of commerce worshiped, but success. Success was the one god of his idolatry. Outside of his ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston

... search, but failed to discover any more money. He felt indignant. That a miser should have but a paltry ten dollars in his ...
— A Cousin's Conspiracy - A Boy's Struggle for an Inheritance • Horatio Alger

... I go on with my own narrative, that Charles Grammont, with whose murder I lie charged, developed a remarkable and unexpected characteristic. A reckless spendthrift whilst penniless, he became a miser when he found himself possessor of five thousand pounds. He had returned to Naples, and had for some time engaged himself in drinking, to the exclusion of all other pursuits. But he drank sullenly and ...
— The Romance Of Giovanni Calvotti - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray

... the strange pleasure he feels in them must have some good reason in the nature of things, he yields to his destiny, enjoys his dark canal without scruple, and mourns over every improvement in the town, and every movement made by its sanitary commissioners, as a miser would over a planned robbery of his chest; in all this being not only innocent, but even respectable and admirable, compared with the kind of person who has no pleasure in sights of this kind, but only in fair ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... from the outside. She was none too soon in taking this precaution, for as she swung the heavy oak bar into its socket,—a convenient device of the old German, who had the reputation of being a miser,—she could hear Preston dragging himself toward the door, cursing as he stumbled over the furniture. She crept wearily downstairs into the bare room. Some one was moving in ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... very different character: he was always sullen and morose, and disgusted every body, without regard to their rank or quality. Instead of commanding respect by the liberal distribution of his immense wealth, he was so perfect a miser as to deny himself the necessaries of life. In short, nobody could endure him; and nothing good was said of him. But what rendered him most hateful to the people, was his implacable aversion to Khacan. He was always putting the worst construction on the actions ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... ultimate destination of such moneys. My patron possessed, as has already been intimated, a lively—nay, an exaggerated—sense of the value of money. He was, indeed, as I remember thinking at this time, somewhat of a miser, loving money for its own sake, and not, as did the Baron Giraud, merely for the grandeur and position ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman

... prophecy,—the perpetuity of the Davidic sovereignty in the dim, far-off future. Thankfulness delights to praise the Giver for the greatness of His gift. Faith strengthens its hold of its blessings by telling them over, as a miser does his treasure. To recount them to God is the way to possess ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... friend/ said Karta, speaking with drunken rage, and thrusting his face into Simi's, 'he is as good a man as thee any day. To strike him or any one of us thou art afraid, thou cat-hearted coward and miser.' ...
— The Brothers-In-Law: A Tale Of The Equatorial Islands; and The Brass Gun Of The Buccaneers - 1901 • Louis Becke

... point of view, but that to reach that age unmarried she must have resisted many a suit. Had he lived longer in New England, he would have known more women of this kind, women who hide the passionate heart of a Helen beneath the austere life of a Diana, hoarding their gifts of love as a miser hoards his gold, partly because of cruel necessity, partly influenced by the impulse to deny ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... before their minds can have unfolded what little is in them; so that there is small reason why a man should covet one of them much more than another. A savage may be as eager to possess a woman as a miser is to own a gold piece: but he has little more reason to prefer one girl to another than a miser has to prefer one gold piece to another of the ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... to believe in the permanence of accidental states. The generosity of a miser, the good nature of an egotist, the gentleness of a passionate temperament, the tenderness of a barren nature, the piety of a dull heart, the humility of an excitable self-love, interest me as phenomena—nay, even touch me ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... sin's sway in our bodies, and to live henceforth unto righteousness, until we shall be completely and finally released from sin through death. Therefore, if before you believed on Christ you were an adulterer, a miser, a coveter, a maligner, you ought now to regard all these sins as dead, throttled through Christ; the benefit is yours through faith in his sacrifice, and your sins should henceforth cease to reign in you. If you have not ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther

... clock, as they were miser's gold, Counts and recounts the mornward steps of Time, The darkness thrills with conscience of each crime By Death committed, daily grown more bold. Once more the list of all my wrongs is told, And ghostly hands stretch to me from my prime Helpless farewells, as from an alien clime; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... During the recent Liberty Loan campaigns, for example, when it was of the most crucial practical importance that bonds be bought, the stimuli used were not in the form of reasoned briefs, but rather emotional admonition: "Finish the lob," "Every miser helps the Kaiser," "If you were out in ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... she answered, serenely; "but I shall still find time for higher duties. I shall be a miser, and treasure all my minutes. But I have wasted nearly half-an-hour now; but it is such a luxury to talk to somebody who can understand." And then she kissed me affectionately and bade me hasten to bed, for it was getting late, and ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... thought Fido, "this must be Mr. Parrot." And, sure enough, so it was,—Mr. Parrot, indeed, and making the warmest of love to old Mrs. Daw, the widow of Miser Jack Daw, who, during a long life, and by means of stealing and saving, had laid by a large fortune, which he had ...
— The Faithless Parrot • Charles H. Bennett

... are a miser," she said. "You bury your money in a hole instead of buying me a Greek mantle like what ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger

... forasmuch as nothing is useful except inasmuch as it is used; nor is there a perfect existence with inactive goodness. Even so of gold, and pearls, and other treasures which are subterranean, those which are in the hand of the miser are in a lower place than is the earth wherein the treasure was concealed. The gift truly of this Commentary is the explanation of the Songs, for whose service it is made. It seeks especially to lead men to wisdom and to virtue, as will be seen ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri

... DEAR MISS HELENE,—If you will let me call you so, considering that my head is white and that I have grownup daughters. Your beautiful letter has given me such deep pleasure! I will make bold to claim you for a friend and lock you up with the rest of my riches; for I am a miser who counts his spoil every day and hoards it secretly and adds to it when he can, and is grateful ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... wealth that was accumulating so rapidly in Bleeding Heart Yard. But, above all, he didn't like the mean side of the Manchester philosophy: the preaching of an impossible thrift and an intolerable temperance. He hated the implication that because a man was a miser in Latin he must also be a miser in English. And this meanness of the Utilitarians had gone very far—infecting many finer minds who had fought the Utilitarians. In the Edinburgh Review, a thing like Malthus could be championed by ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... heart so narrow—I, who spare Love for all these? Do I not even hold My favourite books in special tender care, And prize them as a miser does his gold? ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter

... shall those possessing large capitals best employ them as stewards of God? I speak not of the hoarding of the miser; that would be a waste of breath. I speak not of property invested in stock that habitually violates the Sabbath. No remark is necessary in so plain a case. But I speak of large capitals, professedly kept to bring in an income for the service of the Redeemer. ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble

... the toothache, is Saint Francis. Othello is here a saint; and the sleeping Desdemona is now the sleeping Virgin. The monster that poisoned six husbands, and sits meditating the death of a seventh, is now dressed in the latest Paris finery, and is a saint. The old miser, who laid up such hoards while he starved himself to death, is here placed among saints; the clothes are different, but there is the same forbidding visage. Here, too, are the Queen of Sheba, the Babes in the Wood, ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... High Priest says, "Come, Judas, take the silver, and be a man." And when the thirty pieces are counted out to him, he cannot resist the temptation, but clutches them with a miser's grasp and hurries off to intercept the Master on his way through the Garden of Gethsemane. Meanwhile, after a tender farewell from his mother, Christ leaves the house of Simon of Bethany, and, with his disciples, takes ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan

... sermons, and remiss in my conduct; having been more solicitous, during the exercise of my ministry, to advance my family than to build up the Lord's house, I will preach hereafter with fervor and zeal. I will be vigilant, sober, rigorous, and disinterested. Let the miser say: I have riches ill acquired. I will purge my house of illicit wealth. I will overturn the altar of Mammon and erect another to the supreme Jehovah. Let the prodigal say: I will extinguish the unhappy fires by which I am consumed and kindle in my bosom the flame ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser

... a miser, who gave up every kind of comfortable living, all the pleasure of doing good to others, all the esteem of his fellow-citizens, and the joys of benevolent friendship, for the sake of accumulating wealth—"Poor man," said I, "you pay too dear for ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... ideally the white robe of the Levite, like Petrarch, who never entered Laura's presence unless clothed in white. With what impatience I awaited the first night of my return to my father's roof, when I could read the letter which I felt of during the journey as a miser fingers the bank-bills he carries about him. During the night I kissed the paper on which my Henriette had manifested her will; I sought to gather the mysterious emanations of her hand, to recover the intonations of her voice in the hush of my being. Since then I have ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac

... whose life has been devoted to the things seen and temporal, when he finds himself in a condition of being where none of these have accompanied him? Nothing to slake his lusts, if he be a sensualist. No money-bags, ledgers, or cheque-books if he be a plutocrat or a capitalist or a miser. No books or dictionaries if he be a mere student. Nothing of his vocations if he lived for 'the world.' But yet the appetite is abiding. Will that not be a thirst ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... some modest degree by himself, without the unnecessary delay of waiting for his brother's death. It would be bad enough to wait, seeing how probable it was that that brother might outlive himself. But now to be told not only that his hopes in this respect were vain, but that the old miser had absolutely repudiated his connection with his nephew! This was almost too much for his diplomatic equanimity. Almost, I say; for in fact he did ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... Saxon saw of Mercedes Higgins the less did she understand her. That the old woman was a close-fisted miser, Saxon soon learned. And this trait she found hard to reconcile with her tales of squandering. On the other hand, Saxon was bewildered by Mercedes' extravagance in personal matters. Her underlinen, hand-made of course, was ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... (on the water of the North Sea) was effected in a Short biplane after one hour and twenty minutes in the air. I reckon every minute like a miser counting his hoard, for, if what I've got is mine, I am not likely now to increase the tale. That feeling is the effect of age. It strikes me as I write that, when next time I leave the surface of this ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad

... visit Silas Shank the miser, as the people call him, though he must be very poor and miserable, as I cannot suppose that he would nearly starve himself if he had the means of buying ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston

... outbound trip was uneventful, but on the return voyage, after passing the Straits of Magellan, they ran into the calms, and the frigate lay motionless in the Atlantic almost a month, and the store of provisions soon ran low. The miser of a ship-owner had victualled the vessel with scandalous parsimony, and the captain, in his turn, had sailed with a scanty supply, appropriating to his own uses part of the ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... boy shrugged his shoulders again. "I do not want pay for what I do—no. I want no money. I would not work a day for all my grandmother's wealth—and she is a miser," and Roberto laughed again, showing all his ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson

... Scoto Pallas concedit honores; Subter stat nomen, facta superque vide. Scote miser! quamvis nocuisti Palladis aedi, Infandum facinus vindicat ipsa Venus. Pygmalion statuam pro sponsa arsisse refertur; Tu statuam rapias, Scote, sed ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... but to whom did the land belong?—and what a chorus arose! Miss Anderson thought it belonged to Mr. Nicolson, because the wagons of slate had James Nicolson on them, and, if so, they had no chance, for he was an old miser—and six stories illustrative thereof ensued. Miss Rich was quite sure some Body held it, and Bodies were slow of movement. Mrs. Ledwich remembered some question of enclosing, and thought all waste lands were under the Crown; she knew that the Stoneborough people once had ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... light, to watch how they gleamed and glistened. He was never so happy as when he was alone with his riches, and it was all he could do to tear himself away from them when the time came to go back to his shady corner. In fact he was becoming a selfish miser instead of the holy man the people of Sravasti thought he was. By the time the siesta was over he was always back again in his place beneath the tree, holding out his bowl and looking as poor and thin as ever, so that nobody had the least ...
— Hindu Tales from the Sanskrit • S. M. Mitra and Nancy Bell



Words linked to "Miser" :   cheapskate, hoarder



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