"Miserly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "You're a miserly coward," she declared. "I'm not robbing you; you will have an abundance for your needs. Why do you quarrel with Dame Fortune? Don't you realize you can pay your rent now and eat three square meals a day, and not have to work and slave for them? You can smoke a good cigar after your dinner, ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... small brains, without the actual, daily representations of the tales of Boccaccio and La Fontaine! Without the girdles and scapularies, what would you have our women do in the future—save that money and perhaps become miserly and covetous? Without the masses, novenaries, and processions, where will you find games of panguingui to entertain them in their hours of leisure? They would then have to devote themselves to their household duties and instead of reading diverting stories of miracles, we should then have to get ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... Sidney's right is Mackie, and the miserly looking one next to him is McVeigh," he whispered. "One of them will furnish your coffin, and the other will drive the nails into it. The big man with the beard is Brewster—a multimillionaire; and the one who looks like Senator Bailey is Magnus, president of the Mohican National. Connolly, the ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... duty of penetrating to the inmost recesses of their hearts could not have found one thought of personal interest. In 1814, when the rector of Guerande suggested to the baron that he should go to Paris and claim his recompense from the triumphant Bourbons, the old sister, so saving and miserly for the household, ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... their sorrow has chained them to the rock of horror, and grief insatiable tears out their broken hearts. But in their strength they are not loved. They cannot give themselves yet, for their strength hinders them, and women think them miserly of words and of love's little coin of change. If they get love at last, it is as the pity which the unhurt weak feel ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... make her husband out. He was so careful, so—so miserly in some ways, so wildly extravagant in others. All this furniture had come from Germany, and must have cost a pretty penny. It was true that he had got it, or so he assured her, with very heavy discount off—and ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... was a kindly man enough to live with, but miserly; counted his cheeses, and kept good note of every tuft of wool; Oline could not do as she liked with things, not by a long way. And then that matter of the accident last year, when she had saved him—if Axel had been the right sort, he would have given her the credit ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... volume tells how the hero ran away from his miserly guardian, fell in with a successful airman, and became ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... very fond of broiled eels. A rich merchant, named Kisaburo, who was very miserly with his money, once moved his quarters next door to the shop of one Kichibei, who caught and cooked eels for a living. During the night Mr. Kichibei caught his stock in trade, and in the day-time served them, smoking hot, ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... and setting-up of new, and many of the petty feuds and jealousies that divide and distract parishes or large families, the little circles of the great whole. At the foot of this column a paragraph records the death of a miserly bachelor schoolmaster, who had worn the same coat twenty years, and on the tester of whose bed were found, wrapped up in old stockings L1,600. in interest notes, commencing thirty-five years since, the compound interest of which would have been L4,000.; and for what purpose was this concealment?—a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 369, Saturday, May 9, 1829. • Various
... until a few years before her death she was rude of speech, untidy in appearance, loved nothing or respected nothing unless it might be her violin and her money, and lived alone in a little old house on the river-road to Springwells. Though she made shoes for a living, she was of so miserly a nature that she accepted food from her neighbors, and in order to save the expense of light and fuel she spent her evenings out. Yet she read more or less, and was sufficiently acquainted with Volney, ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... gave Dave the rudiments of a good education. But he could not make his farm pay, and soon got into the grasp of Aaron Poole, a miserly money-lender, who threatened to ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... spinsters, eking out their pitiful little incomes as best they might, by the surreptitious sale of delicate embroideries, confectioned in their dismal leisure; and a fat elderly widow, popularly supposed to be enormously rich, but of miserly propensities. "It is the widow of Harpagon himself," Madame Magnotte told her gossips—an old woman with two furiously ugly daughters, who for the last fifteen years had lived a nomadic life in divers boarding-houses, fondly clinging to the hope that, amongst so many strange bachelors, husbands ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... triumph they led the old war-horse back to his stable, knowing that for the future its miserly owner would not dare to begrudge it the comfort to which ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... and talked and wondered—how were we to meet the expense? There was nothing in the savings bank, and much was needed there. Mother had cherished for years her ideas for her baby's outfit. They would cost money; and I would be no miserly father, either! My child should have the best of everything, somehow. It was up to me to get it, somehow, to.... If only ...
— Making the House a Home • Edgar A. Guest
... truth, lady Feng, you're a miserly creature!" Mrs. Hseh laughed. "It's simply for mere fun, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... smiled, for he well knew that his Lordship of Treves was somewhat miserly in the dispensing of his hospitality. He preferred to see his guests drink the wine of a poor vintage rather than tap the cask which contained the yield of a good year. His Majesty smiled, because he imagined his nobles thought of the replenishing of their stomachs, ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... nodded swift acquiescence, on his part longing to be rid of "them miserly Dutchmen, ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... to overflowing with treasures. The inhabitants of this land were such misers that they would not indulge in a drop of oil for their gruel; if an egg broke, they did not use it, but sold it for cash. The hoardings of these miserly Canaanites God later gave to Israel to enjoy and ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... "does the miserly old hayseed expect me to spend a million for newspapers, cigarettes and Boston terriers? I thought he ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... Amelia, with a sarcastic laugh. "Look you, sire, I see that I have nothing to complain of. My hospital is splendidly endowed, and if I should ever become miserly, I may be able to lay aside a ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... no longer provide for them. The daughters were good scholars and favorites in the school, so long as the mother was able to maintain them there. A young man, the nephew and clerk of a wealthy but miserly merchant, became acquainted with the daughters, and was specially attentive to the older one. The uncle disapproved of the conduct of his nephew, and failing to control it by honorable means, resorted to the circulation of the vilest slanders against mother and daughters. He was a man of wealth ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... before her fifteenth birthday her mother married again a young jeweller, of the name of Le Sevre, a miserly fellow, who, under the pretext of taking them into the country, hired a little house at Chaillot, where they went with the girl for their Sundays; the thrifty stepfather planting its garden with the gay blossoms of the useful ...
— Vigee Le Brun • Haldane MacFall
... newspapers, old ledgers, old letter-backs, began to accumulate in heaps,—everything but books, for Jane had a religious respect for their recondite lore; she cut the margins off the magazines, and she grew miserly of the very shreds ravelling under Vivia's fingers. At length, one morning, after she had watched the windows unweariedly as a cat watches a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... but," you will answer to me, "we have heard Turner all our lives stigmatized as brutal, and uncharitable, and selfish, and miserly. How are we to ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... relished their food and talked about it. They grumbled at the restraints military discipline imposed upon them, and at the paltry shilling a day which they received for the first really hard work they had ever done. They appeared to regard England as a miserly employer, exacting their last ounce of energy for a wretchedly inadequate wage. To the casual observer, theirs was not the ardor of loyal sons, fighting for a beloved motherland. Rather, it seemed that of irresponsible schoolboys on a long holiday. They said nothing about patriotism or the ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... passed, and in that time several things happened. In the first place the miserly old banker, Edward Cossey's father, had died, his death being accelerated by the shock of his son's accident. On his will being opened, it was found that property and money to no less a value than 600,000 pounds passed under it to Edward ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... "Who can buy love without paying its price? When you fail to give yourself you make the whole world miserly." ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... began to get miserly as her bank-account grew. She grieved to part with a cent, poor creature, for twice in her hard-working life she had known what it was to be hungry, cold, friendless, sick, and without a dollar in the world, and she had a haunting dread of suffering ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Crowning of King Solomon") (1585), Samsons Faengsel ("The Imprisonment of Samson"), which includes lyrical passages which have given it claims to be considered the first Danish opera, and a farce, Karrig Niding ("The Miserly Miscreant"). Beside these works Ranch wrote a famous moralizing poem, entitled "A new song, of the nature and song of certain birds, in which many vices are punished, and many virtues praised." Peder Clausen[8] (1545-1614), a Norwegian by birth and education, wrote a Description of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... double existence of man, and he casts the reflexes on his magic mirror from a height where no object in life's panorama can cause one throb of delirious hope or grasping ambition. At any rate, if you study him, you may know all he has to tell. He is quite free from vanity, and conceals not miserly any of his treasures from ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... between the States and the despotic king, who loved to be called the father of the Republic and to treat the Hollanders as his deeply obliged and very ungrateful and miserly little children. The India trade was a sore subject, Henry having throughout the negotiations sought to force or wheedle the States into renouncing that commerce at the command of Spain, because he wished to help ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... answered. "Your income, added to Leonora's money, must make a very handsome sum. But one of the faults of the American women is that they are seldom good managers. Leonora is either no exception to the rule—or else she is getting very miserly. Why, an Italian on Leonora's income would ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... M. Thiers has been guilty of treating certain members of his family with great meanness, and in society many scandalous stories have been repeated illustrating his miserly economy. ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... an article. Yo por mi (or por mi parte) prefiero comprar al contado: I, for one, prefer to buy for cash. Por[206] rico que sea, no tendra suficientes recursos: No matter how rich he is, he will not have sufficient means. Es demasiado avaro por ser tan rico: for such a rich man, he is too miserly. Caro por caro prefiero generos ingleses: If I have to pay a dear price, I prefer English goods. Por si o por no: In any case, should it be so or not. Ir (venir) por: To go (come) for. Enviar por el medico: To send for ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... to their orders on the previous afternoon,—recognizable now only by their teeth or some still ungashed body mark. How long they had pluckily, cheerily held out, confident of the speedy coming of the comrades from over that westward spur, and therefore less miserly of their lead and eager to stretch some of their yelling foes upon the sward, could now only be conjectured. Little by little their fierce, defiant fire had slackened. Little by little confidence had waned, and doubt and dread replaced it. Some, probably, had ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... spent with both hands, made him welcome among them. Well pleased to enjoy themselves at his expense, the young nobles paid him a sort of court. As to Bernardone, he was too happy to see his son associating with them to be niggardly as to the means. He was miserly, as the course of this history will show, but his pride and self-conceit exceeded ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... Horace puts his fancies into the mouth of Alphius, a miserly money-lender. No one yearns so keenly for the country and its imagined peace as the overworked city man, when his pulse is low and his spirits weary with bad air and the reaction of over-excitement; no one, as a rule, is more apt to tire of the homely ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... waving marsh grass and the blue bloom of sweet calamus. Scattered around were mighty trees, but conspicuous above any, in the very center, was a giant sycamore, split at its base into three large trees, whose waving branches seemed to sweep the face of heaven, and whose roots, like miserly fingers, clutched deep into the ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... no use in exhausting your purse by lavishing money: I have never observed that money made any one beloved. You must not be miserly or unfeeling, or lament the distress you can relieve; but you will open your coffers in vain if you do not open your heart; the hearts of others will be forever closed to you. You must give your time, your care, your affection, ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... when I will return them most carefully by the same intervention; and particularly the curious piece of enamel; for though you are, as usual, generous enough to offer it to me, I have plundered you too often already; and indeed I have room left for nothing more, nor have that miserly appetite of continuing to hoard what I cannot enjoy, nor have ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... that you never knew when Putney grew up," declared the Governor. "You tried to boss him even after his marriage, and if Mrs. Congdon turned you out of her house she did only what any self-respecting woman would do. As the result of your miserly ways, your meddlesomeness and your selfishness, you've just about ruined your life. The penitentiary yawns for you." Eliphalet shuddered, and a look of fear not pleasant to see crossed his face. "But," the Governor went on, "in spite ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... angling with great dexterity and patience, under the direction of both her parents, my handsome sister Annabella had succeeded in catching an eligible husband, in the shape of a wizen, miserly, mahogany-colored man, turned fifty, who had made a fortune in the West Indies. His name was Batterbury; he had been dried up under a tropical sun, so as to look as if he would keep for ages; he had two subjects of conversation, the yellow-fever and the advantage of walking exercise: and he was ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... loved. There is a love of honors and dignities with a view to the increase of wealth. There is a love of wealth for the sake of various uses that give delight in the world. There is a love of wealth merely for the sake of wealth, which is a miserly love; and so on. The end for the sake of which wealth is sought is called its use; and it is the end or use that gives to love its quality; for the love is such as is the end in view, and all other things merely ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... savage dog belonging to the Dutch farmer with whom he and the Indians lodged. When he got off he lay two days hidden in the hold of the vessel that was to carry him away. Then the Indians came out and so frightened its officers that he was sent ashore and put under the care of a miserly old fellow who ate the most of the food that was provided for Jogues. While he was hidden in this man's garret he was within a few feet of Indians who came there to trade. Finally the Dutch satisfied the Indians by paying a large ransom and shipped ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... probably the means by which the miller had originally obtained the boat. He was of a miserly nature, was Uncle Jabez Potter, and the old boat—which its first owner had never considered worth coming after, following some spring freshet—served the miller well enough to transport ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... exclaimed one day. "It gets tiresome having everything laid ready to your hand, with nothing to do but take it. Life must be full of snap when you have to dash your will up against old Dame Fortune and wrest what you want out of her miserly clutches." ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... the house of Dunklee was not shared by the community at large. Abel Dunklee was by no means a popular man. Folk had the well-defined opinion that he was selfish, miserly, and hard. If he had not been actually bad, he had never been what the world calls a good man. His methods had been of the grinding, sordid order. He had always been scrupulously honest in the payment of his debts, and in keeping his word; but his sense of duty seemed to stop there: ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... their naked eyes handled. They come to feel at last that the books of a great collection are a part, not merely of their own property, though they are only the agents for their distribution, but that they are, as it were, outlying portions of their own organization. The old Librarian was getting a miserly feeling about his books, as he called them. Fortunately, he had a young lady for his assistant, who was never so happy as when she could find the work any visitor wanted and put it in his hands,—or her hands, for there were more readers among the wives ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... his stable for the day. Never was a man more pleased with a horse than Job was with the noble animal he then bestrode, and deeply did he regret the urgent necessity which compelled him to part with him. "Had it not been for that old miserly fellow in there, I might still have kept my poor Selim," said Job to himself, as he rode by a large mansion at the verge of the town; "that L100," continued Job, "he obliged me to pay him or his attorney, for taking away the remnant of my little property, is the cause of those very embarrassments ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... one single ruler who resembles his predecessor or his successor. Yet all these Hohenzollerns, whether capable or incapable, whether mad, half-mad, or sane, whether profligate or domesticated, whether extravagant or miserly, have certain common traits. They have all been inspired with the same dynastic policy. When we consider the individual variations from the family type, there can be here no question of physical heredity, like the lip of the Habsburg ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... "How miserly you are," said her brother; "and selfish, too; for you know I can't have a military funeral till you'll let me bury that ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... have forgotten if I mentioned how he contrived to be fed and warmed. He had a small allowance from the parish poor-box, about fifty shillings; this was eked out by an annual peregrination through the parish, when some gave him food, others money, wool, &c., which he hoarded most miserly. How he cooked his food I have not been able to learn, for his sister, who lived in the same cottage with him, was separated by a stone and lime wall, and had a separate door of the usual size, and window to match, and was ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... the old attorney's good graces. The paternal wrath subsided in face of the famous sculptor's authority. All Besancon congratulated itself on having brought forth a future great man. In the first outburst of delight due to his flattered vanity, the miserly attorney supplied his son with the means to appear to advantage in society. The long and laborious study demanded by the sculptor's profession subdued for a long time Sarrasine's impetuous temperament and unruly genius. Bouchardon, foreseeing ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... the feelings I describe, dear reader, I pity you, and am forced to conclude that you must have been either awkward or miserly, ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova • David Widger
... remembered objects, all intimate to his grandfather, each oddly entangled in his mind with his dislike of the old man. The iron bed; the chest of drawers, scratched and with broken handles; the closed colonial desk; the miserly rag carpet—all seemed mutely asking, as Bobby did, why their owner had deserted them the other night and delivered himself to the ghostly mystery of ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... it had grown into a passionate desire to see Alice married to me. She used occasionally to throw out hints on the subject, which I treated as jokes; and when she confided to me, two years before the time which I am speaking of, that her brother-in-law, an old miserly grocer at—, had left Alice L1,500, she looked anxiously into my face, and seemed disappointed at the indifference with which I received this communication, which she charged me to keep a secret. She lived so much alone, and the nature of ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... Suppose this same miserly A, on awaking and searching for, and finding his treasure gone, takes it so much to heart that ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... to being a friend and companion to his father, while Percival ran after ballet-dancers and music-hall stars—Murray, who had avowedly been the apple of his father's eye in consequence—was left with a miserly pittance of L300 a year, and no share whatever in the gigantic business of Brooks & Sons, ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... them wherever human nature is human nature. If they are types, however, each has a personality, but whether all of them would stand out with such individuality had one not seen them so fully realized on the stage, I cannot say. The tottering, bitter old woman of Miss Allgood and the miserly, fearful son of Mr. Sinclair are more memorable than the other impersonations only in that they are fatter parts than Sheila, Michael O'Callaghan, and Dan MacSweeney, played respectively by Miss McGee, Mr. O'Rourke, ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... the room and sat down in her old place on the stairs. So this was how Sophia Jane had spent the half-crown! How differently to anything Susan had imagined. Instead of being miserly and selfish, she was generous and self-sacrificing—instead of her own pleasure, she had preferred to give pleasure to Monsieur. And why? Because he had been kind to her. He was the only person, Susan remembered, who had ever ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton
... afar in Astrabad, A man the world agreed was mad, So wickedly he broke his joke Upon the heads of duller folk, So miserly, from day to day, He gathered up and hid away In vaults obscure and cellars haunted What many worthy people wanted, A stingy man!—the tradesmen's palms Were spread in vain: "I give no alms Without inquiry"—so he'd say, And beat the needy duns ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... rocket apparatus on this part of the coast; no mortar apparatus by which a line might be sent on board: Why not? The nearest lifeboat station is fifteen miles off: Whose fault is that? Is the storm our enemy here? Is not selfish, calculating, miserly man his own enemy in this case? So the ship goes to pieces, and the result is that the loss of this single vessel makes 60 widows and 150 fatherless children in one night! not to speak of thousands of pounds' worth of ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... times prove herself to be hard, cruel, and vindictive; she was mean, even miserly, when money was wanted for men or ships; she was excessively vain, loved dress and finery, and was often ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... Barnstaple, I do not know any one. My poor mother is in Cumberland, and that is not en route. I have a maternal uncle of the name of Forster, who lives on the road—a rich, old, miserly bachelor; but I can't say much for his hospitality. I have called upon him twice, and he has never even asked ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... despite the Bank Holidays Act, many shops are open, chiefly those devoted to the sale of articles eatable, drinkable, and avoidable; these last being in the shape of chemists' shops, and shops for Christmas presents—to be shunned by miserly old bachelors. Let us turn into the British Museum and see sensible, decorous Boxing-day there. At the corner of Museum Street there is a lively itinerant musician, evidently French, who plays the fiddle until his bow tumbles all to pieces, but he goes on ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... white man's fly. In fact, she was the epitome of the white man himself. She has the white man's craftiness, his industry, his architectural skill, his neatness and love of system, his foresight; and, above all, his eager, miserly habits. The honey- bee's great ambition is to be rich, to lay up great stores, to possess the sweet of every flower that blooms. She is more than provident. Enough will not satisfy her; she must have all she can get by hook or ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... miserly. Old Therese, the woman with the fish-cart, used to say that he was the stingiest man in all Tourraine. She ought to know, for she had sold him a fish every Friday during all those twenty years, and he had never once failed to quarrel about the price. Five ...
— The Gate of the Giant Scissors • Annie Fellows Johnston
... breaking cornice; the jack and spit, those utensils of original hospitality, locked up, through fear of being used; the clean and empty chimney, in which a fire is just now going to be made for the first time; and the emaciated figure of the cat, strongly mark the natural temper of the late miserly inhabitant, who could starve in the midst of plenty.—But see the mighty change! View the hero of our piece, left to himself, upon the death of his father, possessed of a goodly inheritance. Mark ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... and motioned him to sit beside her. He could not help thinking of the humiliating addition he was about to announce to the family. While his father counted out the change with a miserly accuracy he winked his off eye at Jim and ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... whatever the division thought, and he was right down to the basic root of things from the start. Coupled with the stunted growth that nature in a miserly mood had doled out to him, none knew better than himself that the name of "Toddles," keeping that nature stuff patently before everybody's eyes, damned him in his aspirations for a bona fide railroad career. Other boys got a job and got their feet on the ladder as call-boys, ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... man who was weighed down by his family, was anxious to be always saving, and he had thereby become as miserly as he could well be. Wherefore it is related that, having received at Parma a payment of sixty crowns in copper coins, and wishing to take them to Correggio to meet some demand, he placed the money ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... her brother had vacated and sat down, her thoughts drifting backward to the past. Backward four years, and she saw herself, a penniless orphan, dependent on the bounty of that miserly Uncle Roosevelt in Montreal. She saw again the stately gentleman who came to her, and told her he was her father's third cousin, Captain Danton, of Danton Hall. She had never seen him before; but she had heard of her wealthy cousin from childhood, and knew his history. She knew he had ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... them." "And who is the most generous of the Arabs and most steadfast in the guest-rite?"—"The Banu Tayy." "And wherefore so?" "For that the Hatim of Tayy[FN61] was one thereof." "And who is the vilest of the Arabs and the meanest and the most miserly, in whom weal is smallest and ill is greatest?" "The Banu Thakif."[FN62] "And wherefore so?" "Because thou, O Hajjaj, art of them." Thereupon the Lieutenant of Kufah raged with exceeding rage and ordered the slaughter of the youth; but the Grandees of the State rose ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... warm. Mr. Hopkins had come to realize that he had "the fight of his life" on his hands, and that defeat meant his political ruin. Close-fisted and miserly as he was, no one knew so well as the Honorable Erastus how valuable this position of Representative was to him in a financial way, and that by winning re-election he could find means to reimburse himself for all he had expended in the fight. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... confidence, although he was not, until yesterday, in mine. One more last word. When Allan Woodcourt spoke to you, my dear, he spoke with my knowledge and consent. But I gave him no encouragement; not I, for these surprises were my great reward, and I was too miserly to part with a scrap of it. He was to come and tell me all that passed, and he did. I have no more to say. This is Bleak House. This day I give this house its little mistress, and before God it is the brightest day in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... On the other hand, persons who are always active in injuring others and in practising deception on the world, lead a happy life. There are some who attain prosperity without any exertion. And there are others, who with the utmost exertion, are unable to achieve their dues. Miserly persons with the object of having sons born to them worship the gods, and practise severe austerities, and those sons having remained in the womb for ten months at length turn out to be very infamous issue of their race; and others begotten ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... acting on this suggestion, Van Nant told of an adventure Carboys had had in Persia some years previously. It appears that he saved the life of a miserly old Arab called Abdul ben Meerza at the risk of his own; that the old man was profuse in his expressions of gratitude, and, on their parting, had said: 'By the Prophet, thou shalt yet find the tree of this day's planting bear rich fruit for thee and ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... acres which comprised the two farms in one where he resided, he was the owner of several houses in the village, which brought him a handsome annual income. The chief aim of his life appeared to be the acquisition of money, and, when once it came into his possession, it was guarded with miserly care. The very countenance and manner of the Farmer bespoke his nature. Aided by memory, I see him now as I saw him years ago:—he was of medium height, strong and muscular, but thin in flesh. His hair had once been black, but was then sprinkled thickly with gray; he had small piercing, restless ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... have forgotten the best instance of all—the other grandson of the Bearnais, Louis XIV., my ex-master. Well, I hope he is miserly enough, he who would not lend a million to his brother Charles! Good! I see you are beginning to be angry. Here we are, by good luck, close to my house, or rather to that ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the American coolly. "Count Antonio Ferrari—that was the name; a hoary old sinner with a pedigree that nearly reached to Adam, and as rich and miserly as Shylock. He bid high for the girl, I can tell you that, but I believe our friend Saul had a tough job to get ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... earth she would never dream of marrying him. In fact, she never expected to stop being John Oskamp's widow. So since then I only laugh when I see old Amasa coming around and fetching big bouquets of flowers from his garden, which he must hate to pull, he's so miserly." ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... she went on. "Will you call me Elizabeth; and shall I call you Helena? Very well. Now I have got something else to say; another secret which must be kept from Philip (I call him by his name now, you see) for a few days more. Your happiness, my dear, must not depend on his miserly old father. He must have a little income of his own to marry on. Among the hundreds of unfortunate wretches whom I have relieved from torture of mind and body, there is a grateful minority. Small! small! but there they are. I have ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... A MISERLY old farmer, who had lost one of his best hands in the midst of hay-making, remarked to the sexton, as he was filling up the grave: "It's a sad thing to lose a good mower, at a time like this—but after all, poor Tom was ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... Seraphin. If I hear of any one, I will inform you. Good places are as difficult to find as good subjects;" then she added mentally, "Very likely I'd send you a poor girl to be starved to death in your hovel! Your master is too miserly and too wicked—to denounce, in one breath, poor Louise ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... mark those shades, those feminine delicacies, which double the price of things. Do not be miserly, but remember that the manner in which one gives adds to the value of the gift; or rather do not give—make yourself sought after. Think of those precious jewels that are arranged with such art in their satin-lined ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... England, there were two brothers named Nickleby who had grown up to be very different men. Ralph was a rich and miserly money-lender who gained his wealth by persecuting the poor of London—a thin, cold-hearted, crafty man with a cruel smile. The other, who lived in the country, was generous but poor, so that when he died he left his wife and two children, Nicholas and Kate, with hardly a penny to keep ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... to his desk as soon as this man had departed. "Here comes more trouble. That miserly wretch has no more use for his money than the man in the moon. It seems to give him delight to make every one feel his power. It is for no other reason than this, that I am now to be harassed half ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... expression, his eyes seemed dull, and something hard and icy in his looks revealed his wild character and foreign extraction. His tutor's portrait Petrarch has drawn for us: crimson face, hair and beard red, figure short and crooked; proud in poverty, rich and miserly; like a second Diogenes, with hideous and deformed limbs barely concealed ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... "Fool!" said the miserly prelate, "fool! if we do so, and the Norman conquer, what become of our abbacies and convent lands? The Duke wars against Harold, not ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and left her, his heart overflowing with joy. He worked steadily, spent little, tried to save some money that he might not be without a sou at the time of his marriage, and became as miserly as he had once been prodigal. Summer glided by; then autumn, and no one suspected the tie existing between Duroy and Mme. Forestier, for they ...
— Bel Ami • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... raiding my poppy field. During the process of disburdening them I was accustomed to explaining my side of the case, but I soon gave this over. It was a waste of breath. They could not understand. To one lady, who insinuated that I was miserly, I said: ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... has done its worst with the miserly propensities of the great lawyer and his wife, their long familiar intercourse exhibits a wealth of fine human affection and genuine poetry which sarcasm cannot touch. Often as he had occasion to regret Lady Eldon's peculiarities—the stinginess which ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... with the parson concerning her trouble, yet although he was not backward in giving her good advice, he nevertheless refused to assist her with his purse, for he was as miserly ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... that thou wilt perish of famine before the rest, and be the first to need a tomb; for thou hast passed this strange law of thrift in fear that thou wilt be thyself the first to lack food. Thou art thinking for thyself, and not for others, when thou bringest thyself to start such strange miserly ways." ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... mother-in-law of the doctor, were commission merchants in the wool-trade, and did a double business by selling for the producers and buying for the manufacturers of the golden fleeces of Berry; thus pocketing a commission on both sides. In this way they grew rich and miserly—the outcome of many such lives. Descoings the son, younger brother of Madame Rouget, did not like Issoudun. He went to seek his fortune in Paris, where he set up as a grocer in the rue Saint-Honore. That step led to his ruin. But nothing ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... though all drank abundance of this liting, or sweet beer. Both men and boys were eager to work for very small pay. Our men could hire any number of them to carry their burdens for a few beads a day. Our miserly and dirty ex-cook had an old pair of trousers that some one had given to him; after he had long worn them himself, with one of the sorely decayed legs he hired a man to carry his heavy load a whole day; a second man carried it ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... and when my uncle quoted passages from this tiresome book I astounded him by replying, in a phrase I wrongly attributed to the adorable Emerson, that if I had a quarter to spend instead of twelve cents, I would give half of it for a hyacinth! My miserly uncle said it sounded just like Mohammed, and that Emerson had doubtless found it in that dangerous book, ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... She was alive to the atmospheric chill of the village, though in no wise understanding it. She was troubled and fretted by many things, but she went her way. The money she had earned by posing she dealt out in miserly fashion to Susan Jane; while at the same time she assumed many household cares to ease ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... other resources eventually recovered his mother's fortune, but Rembrandt himself never rose above the misery, degradation, and poverty of this period. He lived thirteen years longer, but it was in obscurity—out of which the only records which reach us, are stories of miserly habits acquired too late to serve their purpose, a desperate resort to low company dating from his first wife's death, ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... wretched class of miserly so-called "economists" who are afraid to light their lamp, lest they should burn the oil, and who would rather sleep in the darkness, doing nothing, or break their necks fumbling about in their vain efforts to do little, when for a farthing dip they may put in hours ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... better. You will not perish like a peasant. I will not permit them to decapitate you on the same cloth on which they behead burghers. I have made an agreement with Amylej, that he furnish a new cloth, so handsome that it would be good enough to cover king's fur. I will not be miserly with prayers, either; ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... income to so experienced a gambler as yourself." Lord Bellasis did visit at Sir Richard's house during the first year of his cousin's marriage; but upon the birth of the son who is the hero of this history, he affected a quarrel with the city knight, and cursing him to the Prince and Poins for a miserly curmudgeon, who neither diced nor drank like a gentleman, departed, more desperately at war with fortune than ever, for his old haunts. The year 1827 found him a hardened, hopeless old man of sixty, battered in health and ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... wagon, bought an immense dinner bell and he was hit unmercifully. A rusty old fly-catcher elicited many remarks—as "no flies on that." I bought several chests, half full of rubbish, but found, alas! no hidden treasure, no missing jewels, no money hid away by miserly fingers and forgotten. Jake Corey, who was doing some work for me, encouraged me to hope. He said: "I hear ye patronize auctions putty reg'lar; sometimes there is a good deal to be made that way, and then ag'in there isn't. I never had no luck that ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... of Normandy was generally laid to the charge of Somerset. He was charged with a miserly hoarding of supplies as well as planning in conjunction with Suffolk the fatal sack of Fougeres. His incapacity as a general added to the resentment at his recall of the Duke of York, a recall which had been marked as a disgrace by the despatch ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... self-contained, and its members having little curiosity as to their neighbours, with whom they rarely met for any social intercourse, save at the stated times of sheep-shearing and Christmas; having a certain kind of sober pleasure in amassing money, which occasionally made them miserable (as they call miserly people up in the north) in their old age; reading no light or ephemeral literature, but the grave, solid books brought round by the pedlars (such as the "Paradise Lost" and "Regained,'" "The Death of Abel," "The Spiritual Quixote," and "The ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... share in the government. The result is that the state is not one, nor two, but diverse. Folk say what they like and do what they like, and anyone is a statesman who will wave the national flag. That is democracy. Such is the son of your miserly oligarch; deprived of unnecessary pleasures, he is tempted to wild dissipation. He has no education to help him to distinguish, and the vices of dissipation assume the aspect and titles of virtue. He fluctuates from one point of view to another—is ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... just at the time when earthquakes were prevalent in New England, and shook many tall sinners down upon their knees, there lived near this place a meagre miserly fellow of the name of Tom Walker. He had a wife as miserly as himself; they were so miserly that they even conspired to cheat each other. Whatever the woman could lay hands on she hid away; a hen could not cackle but she was on the alert to secure the new-laid egg. Her ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... get what you set your mind upon, and I do find my position of dependence upon Aunt Eliza too unspeakably galling. What a monstrous injustice it seems that I—who if I had been born a boy, must have been Earl of Gaverick, should be at the mercy of an ill-tempered, miserly, old woman who may leave the home of my forefathers to a crossing-sweeper if she pleases. I suppose it ought to go to Chris, but one doesn't feel called upon to arraign Fate on behalf of a distant cousin who by rights has no business to be ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... Villa Medici behind it; the lofty tower of the Capitol in the midst of the city; and the sun clasping all to its heart of gold, the new and the old alike, past and present, youth, age and decay,—generous as only the sun can be in this sordid and miserly world, where bread is but another name for blood, and a rood of growing corn means a pound of human flesh. The sun is the only good thing in nature that always gives itself to man for nothing but the mere trouble of sitting in the sunshine; and Rome without sunshine is a very ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... another objection," added Captain Keith, as he watched her busy fingers. "Have you considered how you are frightening people out of the society? It is enough to make one only subscribe as Michael Miserly or as Simon Skinflint, or something ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Where should a poor old wretch like me have a hundred guineas? If I had so much money, d'ya think I should be found travelling in a waggon, at this season of the year?" "Come, come," replied Jenny, "none of your miserly artifice here. You think I don't know Isaac Rapine, the money-broker, in the Minories. Ah! you old rogue! many a pawn have you had of me and my acquaintance, which was never redeemed." Isaac, finding it was ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... sir, never care three straws for praise or blame,—leather and prunella! Praise and blame are here!" and he struck his hand upon his breast with almost passionate emphasis. "Take a specimen. These Hogtons were the bane of the place,—uneducated and miserly; their land a wilderness, their village a pig-sty. I come, with capital and intelligence; I redeem the soil, I banish pauperism, I civilize all around me: no merit in me, I am but a type of capital guided by education,—a machine. ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... punish the failings of those who are not a whit more guilty than themselves! The swinish glutton condemns the drunkard—the villainous seducer reproves the frequenter of brothels—the arch hypocrite takes to task the open, undisguised sinner—and the rich, miserly old reprobate, whose wealth places him above the possibility of ever coming to want, who would sooner "hang the guiltless than eat his mutton cold," and who would not bestow a cent upon a poor devil to keep him from starving—that old ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... some giggling at this, as a well-deserved thrust at me for keeping back the wine that miserly fashion. But I did not know these girls, and cared nothing for them, ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... clergyman at length, blowing a great whiff among the white blossoms. "Oons! your Americans worship his Majesty stamped upon a golden coin. And though he saved their tills from plunder from the French, the miserly rogues are loth to pay for ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... burned away by a droughty old sun. Abbott snatched up some books and went below. In almost every front yard there were roses. Up and down the street, they bloomed in all colors, with delicate, penetrating, intoxicating fragrance. They were not hidden away in miserly back-gardens, these roses; they smiled for the meanest beggar, for the most self- sufficient tramp, for the knowledge-burdened scholar, for the whistling driver of the grocer's wagon. They had often smiled in vain for Abbott Ashton, but that was before he had made ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... morning, discoursing on the affairs of Egypt, the aspect of which, he assured me, was becoming daily worse and worse. 'There is no living for the poor people, brother,' said he, 'the chokengres (police) pursue us from place to place, and the gorgios are become either so poor or miserly, that they grudge our cattle a bite of grass by the wayside, and ourselves a yard of ground to light a fire upon. Unless times alter, brother, and of that I see no probability, unless you are made either poknees or mecralliskoe geiro ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... not know of the hours of patient toil, nor of the habits of miserly economy which had enabled Henry Schulte to accumulate so large a sum of money as to warrant him in entertaining the desire to increase his estate; nor did he know that his economical neighbor could see further into the future, and better appreciate ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... latter, as they drove away, "you are to be congratulated. You have brought your family into a nice little inheritance if all our miserly old ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... with veering winds, and glad to shrink back into harbor. And yet when something does really touch her—when something makes her feel—that curious indecision in her nature hardens into something irresistible. There was a half-witted girl in the village, ill-treated and enslaved by a miserly old aunt. Miss Coryston happened to hear of it from her maid, who was a relation of the girl. She went and bearded the aunt, and took the girl away bodily in her pony-cart. The scene in the cottage garden—Marcia with her arm round the poor beaten and starved creature, ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... if Inez had come down in the sisterly way she should. But she hasn't. I give you my word of honor her conduct has been shabby in the extreme. A few hundreds—I asked no more—and she wouldn't. What was a miserly fifty pun' note to a man like me, with expensive tastes, and who has not set foot on British soil for two years? Not a jewel would she part with—all Sir Victor's presents, forsooth! And she's in love with ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... earliest times a landmark of the old Santa Fe trail. When the freighters and plainsmen left the village and climbed to the top of the slope and set their faces to the west there lay before them only the wilderness wastes. Here Nature, grown miserly, offered not even a stick of timber to mend a broken cart-pole in all the thousand miles between the Neosho and the Spanish ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... house the Bower, with sordid signs on it of having been, through its long existence as Harmony Jail, in miserly holding. Bare of paint, bare of paper on the walls, bare of furniture, bare of experience of human life. Whatever is built by man for man's occupation, must, like natural creations, fulfil the intention of its existence, or soon perish. This old house ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Holmes is not miserly. I've knowed him since a boy. To buy place, power, perhaps, eh? Yet not that, neither," he added, hastily. "We think a sight of him out our way, (self-made, you see,) and would have had him the best office in the State before this, only he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... this account that the miserly dead wander at night in the neighborhood of the treasures they conceal during their life time. They keep a strict watch over their gold; but the trouble they give themselves, far from being of service to them, turns to their disadvantage; and it is not a rare ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... would seem that he diffused about him the same forbidding environment in his own house. He is described as stern, obstinate, masterful and miserly, domineering his household like a tyrant, roaring with fiery anger whenever he was opposed, and flying into fits of fury if his moods, designs and will were contested. His wife bore him thirteen children, twelve of whom she had brought ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... to have the power to betray all the miserly emotions and mean parsimonies usually concealed behind ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... eldest of three brothers, Walter coming next, and Larry being the youngest. They were orphans, and at the death of their widowed mother had been left in the care of their uncle, Job Dowling, a miserly man whose chief aim in life had been to hoard money, no matter at what cost, so long as his method was within the limit of ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... waste as wicked. His example in this particular, in a city so given to careless and ostentatious profusion as New York, was most useful. We needed such an example. Nor did he appear to carry this principle to an extreme. He was very far from being miserly, though keenly intent ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... himself a widower, with one daughter, Mary, about three years older than I, and certainly she was the dearest little treasure with which Providence ever blessed a miserly father; by the time she was fifteen, five farmers, three lawyers, twelve Protestant parsons, and a lieutenant of Dragoons had made her offers: it must not be denied that she was an heiress as well as a beauty, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... more such to come. When this comes to be known to that calculating organ it promptly tries to make a saving in its expenditure of attention. It is only when it believes something to be rare that the mind ceases to be miserly in assigning values. So in the streets of Calcutta I sometimes imagine myself a foreigner, and only then do I discover how much is to be seen, which is lost so long as its full value in attention is not paid. It is the hunger to really see which drives people ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... years ago the old house had been in the possession of her great-uncle, Sir Giles Courtenay, a most eccentric man, so odd and peculiar, indeed, that many people had considered him to be out of his mind. He was reputed to be extremely wealthy, yet lived in a miserly fashion, entertaining no visitors, and never spending a penny which it was possible for him to save. He never married, but passed his days as a recluse, shut up among the books in his library, seeing only a few old servants whose services he ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... is supposed to be a miserly, wealthy, sacrilegious fellow who goes about stealing children and dogs and anything else he can lay his hands upon. He may have his faults, but to see him kneeling before the shrine of his "patronne reine Sara," ragged and travel-worn and yet burning costly candles and saying his ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... owes its existence to this belief is the story of Bishop Hatto, the miserly prelate, who, annoyed by the clamours of the poor during a time of famine, had them burned alive in a deserted barn, like the rats whom he declared they resembled, rather than give them some of the precious grain which he had ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... Wilkesbarre Saturday night. He thought it useless to go up to Scranton simply to come back again on Monday morning. He spent the entire day on Sunday planning for the investment of the money he should receive, counting it over and over again in anticipation, chuckling with true miserly glee at ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... need of a large sum of money, and being at a loss to raise it with a celerity adequate to his necessity, bethought him of a wealthy Jew, Melchisedech by name, who lent at usance in Alexandria, and who, were he but willing, was, as he believed, able to accommodate him, but was so miserly that he would never do so of his own accord, nor was Saladin disposed to constrain him thereto. So great, however, was his necessity that, after pondering every method whereby the Jew might be induced to be compliant, at last he determined to devise a colourably reasonable ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... trading with it, they hoarded their coins; that is, they hid them away in a stocking, or a purse, or in a jar, or a cracked cooking pot, that couldn't be used. Often they put it away somewhere in the chimney, behind a loose brick. Then, at night, when no one was looking, these miserly folks counted, rubbed, jingled, and gloated over the shining coins and never helped anybody. So there grew up three sorts of people, called the thrifty, the spendthrifts, and the misers. These last were the meanest and most disliked of all. Others, again, hid their money ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... habits of the master were regarded as very eccentric by his neighbors, and furnished frequent food for comment and speculation among the gossips which usually abound in country villages—and not in this case without cause. His manner of living was miserly and penurious in the extreme, and all ideas of comfort ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... I was the leader of as wild and mischievous a band of crows as you ever heard tell of. There was one particular farm in our territory we loved to visit. The owner's name was Silas Whimple and he was the grouchiest, most miserly man in the county. He lived alone and what part of the ground that was tilled, he did it himself. As much to tease as to eat, we would pay him an occasional flying visit, digging up his newly planted seeds, nibbling at the young green shoots, or, later on, scratching up his potatoes. ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... the old lady,—alter her gowns and make and trim her hats, etc. "You're clever, and from helping me sew you have become proficient and have acquired considerable knowledge of dressmaking. If she's miserly and won't buy new, my child, you can flatter her by remodeling her old gowns, etc. Then she'll grow to depend on you. She'll consider you a good manager and feel that her money will not be wasted by you. Then, when you marry we'll go abroad to associate with ...
— How Ethel Hollister Became a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... visited Borrow at Oulton in 1842 he complained that 'There is no living for the poor people, brother, the chokengres (police) pursue us from place to place, and the gorgios are become either so poor or miserly that they grudge our cattle a bite of grass by the wayside, and ourselves a yard of ground to light a fire upon.' After a time Ambrose left the eastern counties and crossed to Ireland. In 1868 he went to Scotland, and ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... Sunbridge, as represented by many of its most staid and stately homes, received the surprise of its life—a surprise that sent hitherto complacently contented women scurrying into attics and closets, and stirred reputedly miserly men into thrusting hands into inside pockets ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... of wearing and using shoes; the other by the manipulation of an umbrella; and the prudent mother advises her son how the candidate for bride behaves toward a groom lying on the floor, or how she eats cheese—the extravagant one cuts the rind away thick, the miserly one eats the rind, the right one cuts the rind away thin and carefully. Many people judge families, hotel guests, and inhabitants of a city, and not without reason, according to the comfort and ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... name, I shall add a very droll "soi-disant" impromptu of his, composed to ridicule Mademoiselle Chapelain, the sister of the poet. Like her brother, she was most miserly in her habits, and not distinguished by that virtue which some say is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... all beggars are reconciled at the porringer. That cursed Observateur litteraire, I wish the devil had had both him and his sheet! It was that dog of a miserly priest who caused my disaster. He appeared on our horizon for the first time; he arrived at the hour that drives us all out of our dens, the hour for dinner. When it is bad weather, lucky the man among us who has a ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... Joel Fox at work along the roadside, mending a part of a stone wall which had tumbled down. Fox was a Yankee, and miserly and sour to the ...
— The Rover Boys on the Ocean • Arthur M. Winfield
... knew very well by experience that his old miserly aunt would send him supperless to bed. But in the simplicity of his soul, and knowing that he had been all the year as good and industrious as possible, he hoped that the Christ-child would not forget him, and he, too, looked eagerly forward by-and-by to putting his wooden ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... and receipt. All throve, till an argosy, on its way home, With a cargo worth more than their capital sum, In attempting to pass through a dangerous strait, Went down with its passengers, sailors, and freight, To enrich those enormous and miserly stores, From Tartarus distant but very few doors. Regret was a thing which the firm could but feel; Regret was the thing they were slow to reveal; For the least of a merchant well knows that the weal Of his credit ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... fastened his feet to the spit, and didn't unfasten them till they got it. That's how it was. They always went masked. Among all their expeditions they sometimes made unlucky ones. Hang it, there'll always be obstinate, miserly old fellows in the world! One of them, a farmer, old Cochegrue, so mean he'd shave an egg, held out; he let them roast his feet. Well, he died of it. The wife of Monsieur David, near Brives, died ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... lyric poems, Pushkin left several dramatic fragments: "The Rusalka" or "Water Nymph," on which Dargomyzhsky founded a beautiful opera, "The Stone Guest,"[11] "The Miserly Knight," and chief of all, and like "Evgeny Onyegin," epoch-making in its line, the historical dramatic fragment "Boris Godunoff." This founded a school in Russian dramatic writing. It is impossible ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... In the novel the heroine is shut up by a miserly hunks of an uncle to force her into a detested mercenary match with his son. In the play the mistress is the wife of the old and jealous keeper of ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... liberty on shore after their long voyage, and encouraged and even led on by the chief mate, had broken into the store-room, and consumed a quantity of spirits and other stores. Now as we had been most shabbily treated by the miserly and ruffian captain, and as the stores thus stolen had been paid for by the passengers, and withheld from them upon the voyage (stolen, in fact, by the captain himself), we were delighted with the robbery, and extremely sorry to hear that the chief mate had been committed to prison for trial ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... Dandin, in which the folly of unequal marriage between the substantial farmer and the fine lady is mocked with bitter gaiety. Before the year closed Moliere, continuing to write in prose, returned to Plautus, and surpassed him in L'Avare. To be rich and miserly is in itself a form of fatuity; but Harpagon is not only miserly but amorous, as far as a ruling passion will admit one of subordinate influence. Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1670), a lesson of good sense to those who suffer from the social ambition to rise above their proper rank, ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden |
