"Pittance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of my habits call live on his pay and a hundred a year?" George cried out in great anger. "You must be a fool to talk so, Dobbin. How the deuce am I to keep up my position in the world upon such a pitiful pittance? I can't change my habits. I must have my comforts. I wasn't brought up on porridge, like MacWhirter, or on potatoes, like old O'Dowd. Do you expect my wife to take in soldiers' washing, or ride after the regiment in ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Men who, unmindful of their relation to you as brethren, of your long implicit submission to their laws; of the sacrifice which you and your forefathers made of your natural advantages for commerce to their avarice,—formed a deliberate plan to wrest from you the small pittance of property which they had permitted you to acquire. Remember that the men who wish to rule over you are they who, in pursuit of this plan of despotism, annulled the sacred contracts which had been made with your ancestors; conveyed into your cities a ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... time, but it inflamed their stomachs without assuaging the thirst that consumed them. Abundance of flying fish were seen; the impossibility of catching any of which only augmented the pain already endured, though M. de la Fond and his companions tried to reconcile themselves to the scanty pittance that they possessed. Yet the uncertainty of their destiny, the want of subsistence, and the turbulence of the ocean, all contributed to deprive them of repose, which they so much required, and almost plunged them in despair. Nothing but a feeble ray of hope preserved ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... composed of such persons as are actuated by principles of honour and a spirit of enterprise, you have little to expect from them. They ought to have such allowances as will enable them to live like, and support the character of gentlemen; and not be driven by a scanty pittance to the low and dirty arts which many of them practise, to filch the public of more than the difference of pay would amount to, upon an ample allowance. Besides, something is due to the man who puts his life in your hands, hazards his health, and forsakes the sweets of domestic enjoyments. Why a ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... attempt to break through that inflexible ring of death. Ten thousand of the strongest men who could still carry arms were picked out from the garrison, and every atom of eatable substance in the town was swept and scraped together to give them such a pittance as was grimly supposed to sustain them for two days. Two thousand of them dashed out of the Porte St. Hilaire and feverishly made for the headquarters of the King. Their very desperation sent them momentary victory, but their movement was only intended as a blind to the main attack arranged from ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... cup With reverie's wasteful pittance up, And while the fire burns slow away, Hiding itself in ashes gray, I'll think,—As inward Youth retreats, Compelled to spare his wasting heats, When Life's Ash-Wednesday comes about, And my head's gray with fires burnt out, While stays one spark to light the eye, With the last flash of memory, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... almost all the leading men possessed independent fortunes. Hamilton had manifested his ability from the first to equal the income of the wealthiest, did he give his unbroken services to the pursuit of his profession. But he had lived for years upon a pittance, frequently driven to borrow small sums from his friends, that he might devote his energies entirely to his country. And no man ever gave more generously or with less thought of reward; although he would have been the ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... virtues, if they had known at the time, that which our hero's manly pride concealed, that the son of doctor Cooper, whose goodness of heart had often been the refuge of the distressed, was for months languishing under the chill of public neglect, and dragging on existence upon a miserable pittance which scarcely afforded him physical support; or if they had seen him in his unaccommodated removal from that situation, walking on ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... later they erected another story, which remained intact until the church was sold. The remodeling and addition cost $1,100. This property proved to be very valuable, as they decided after many years to make it one of its most fashionable thoroughfares. Bought for almost a pittance, this property had advanced in value to such an extent that the business interests offered a high price for it and it ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... sovereign princes coveted. Lands and money had been bestowed on him so liberally that he was one of the richest subjects in Europe. Albemarle had as yet not even a regiment; he had not been sworn of the Council; and the wealth which he owed to the royal bounty was a pittance when compared with the domains and the hoards of Portland. Yet Portland thought himself aggrieved. He could not bear to see any other person near him, though below him, in the royal favour. In his fits of resentful sullenness, he hinted an intention ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the common course of nature increase, should not a more liberal portion of indulgence be dealt out to them? May not the want in most instances be inferred from the demand when the service can be proved, and may not the last days of human infirmity be spared the mortification of purchasing a pittance of relief only by the exposure of its own necessities? I submit to Congress the expediency of providing for individual cases of this description by special enactment, or of revising the act of the 1st of May, 1820, with a view to mitigate ...
— A Compilation of Messages and Letters of the Presidents - 2nd section (of 3) of Volume 2: John Quincy Adams • Editor: James D. Richardson
... a sailor—not that he knew anything of the sea, except that his father had spent his life on it. His mother could not read or write, and, unable to instruct him or to pay for his instruction, being, indeed, too poor to do without the pittance his labours brought, she had allowed him to grow up in extreme ignorance— though, according to the faint light that was in her, she had taught him, to the best of her power, to do right. Still, poor Ned knew nothing of religion. ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston
... "Don't talk to me. There are women in New York who to keep from starvation, will make love to any man that comes along, for a pittance. They do the very best they can to earn the money. I can't help admiring 'em. But your fashionable married woman, she's too refined, too delicately souled, too spiritual to do anything but eat herself sick on her man's money and spend him into a hole. It's bad enough to ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... purchase paper and ink, and worked diligently, you can guess how many weeks, until they were in English as readable as the French of their author. The task accomplished, I went to my patron, expecting of course to have the pittance counted down in current notes or gold; but——the market for such literature was by this time over stocked; he had supplied it too liberally; and with some insulting excuse ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... girl who had attended Sophia, begged to continue with me; we work for the milleners in the neighbouring towns, and, with the little pittance I have, ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... understanding. 'He's a good sport, I tell you,' he maintained warmly. 'And I like him. Who knows but that he may make his ten-strike here after all? Or,' as he marked the droop of the girl's mouth and understood how she must be thinking of how little was left of their pittance, he added briskly, 'this is a better place than the East any day; there are more chances. If a man is the right sort there is always a chance for him. If you want to teach—— Well, we've got schools out ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... millionaire," said Roger calmly. "So long as I only had my beggarly pittance, I could not ask you to marry me. There was nothing for it but to wait in patience. It has been a long weary wait, dear, but the sun has broken through the clouds at last. I am now in a position to support a wife. Tuesday at two," he went on, consulting his pocket diary; "or I could give you ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... not flourish among them, is true," answered Andrea, who loved so well to discourse on such subjects, that he would have stopped to reason on religion or manners with the beggar to whom he gave a pittance, did he only meet with encouragement; "but it is not as bad in France, on this important head, as it has been; and we may hope that there will be ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... father. I swore I would be an honest woman, and I sought employment to earn a living for my babe and myself, but every avenue was closed to me. I washed and scrubbed while I was able to teach music splendidly, but I could get no pupils. I made shirts for a pittance and daily refused, to me, fortunes for dishonor. I have gone hungry and almost naked to pay for my baby's board, but I was hunted down ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... rare profit of it, for without these poor fellows how could they hold their possessions in spite of native and foreign enemies? For what a paltry and cheap annuity do these men sell their lives? For what a miserable pittance do they dare all the horrors of a most deadly climate, without a chance, a hope of return to their native land, where they might haply repair their exhausted energies, and take a new lease of life! Good God! if these men may be thus heartlessly sacrificed to Mammon, why should I feel remorse ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... enforce them, or at any rate to prevent their frustration by you. If Barbara marries against my will before she is five and twenty, that is within the next two years, her entire fortune, with the exception of a pittance, goes elsewhere. This I am sure is a fact that will influence you, who have nothing and even if it did not, I presume that you are scarcely so selfish as to wish ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... upon you? Aline Lebrun lives for Victor, and for Victor alone. She has spoiled him into the worthless creature he is. She worships him and the ground he walks on. Robert is very well in a way, to give up all the money he can earn to the family, and keep the barest pittance for himself. Favorite son, indeed! I miss the poor fellow myself, my dear. I liked to see him and to hear him about the place the only Lebrun who is worth a pinch of salt. He comes to see me often in the city. I like to play to him. That Victor! hanging would ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... no drop of drink, had passed the lips of that wan company since the pittance of the night before, and yet for nine long hours of that fearful day, the air so heated that it hardly fed the lungs, and the sun blazing so pitilessly upon the log structure that a faint odor of parching wood mingled with the torrid air within the Fort, yes, for nine ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... different with my father. My father has what is called a regular income. One of these days I shall inherit it. It will keep us out of the poorhouse. But meanwhile I have only the pittance that he allows me." ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... mother had already lost so much money through my unfortunate luck, and as she had enough to do with her little pittance to keep my sisters at home; and as, on hearing of my condition, she would infallibly have sold her last gown to bring me aid, Mary and I agreed that we would not let her know what our real condition was—bad enough! ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... him and the poor for nothing; and, to the shame of the former be it spoken, the pedagogue's gains never equalled those of a skilful ploughman. He wrote, however, a good hand, and added something to his pittance by copying accounts and writing letters for Ellangowan. By degrees, the Laird, who was much estranged from general society, became partial to that of Dominie Sampson. Conversation, it is true, was out of the question, but the Dominie was a good listener, and stirred the fire with some address. ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... "Think of the host of teachers, clerks, small tradesmen, and innumerable other reputable human beings who marry and bring up families on that or less. Which do you think I would prefer, to amass a fortune in business and have my town and country house and steam yacht, or to exist on a pittance and discover before I die something to benefit the ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... times afterwards, subsisting on a pittance that I allowed him in the hope of gradually starving him back to Connecticut, assailing me with the old petition at every opportunity, looking shabbier at every visit, but still thoroughly good-tempered, mildly stubborn, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... destined to be fleeting. The fortune of its master was melted away by the mismanagement of others, leaving him but a slender pittance. He bore his loss like a man, sorrowing, but not repining. The estate was given up, and a new home found with his mother, in Edinburgh. This was in 1815. Four years later, fortune had smiled on his cheerful labors, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... are most instructive documents, and romantic enough for a novel; such fire, such passionate invective, such wild despair. But, since I learnt how and why you married me, I will tell you what I have made up my mind to do. I am going after the inquest to turn you out of this house, and give you a pittance to live on so long as you remain here. I wish you to become a visible moral, a walking monument of disgrace in the neighbourhood you ruled. Should you attempt to escape me, the payment will be stopped; ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... Straeten's book is cluttered up with documents of musty interest. Among them are a number that gain a pathetic interest by the frequence of the appeals of musicians or their widows for a pittance of charity from the hand of some royal or ducal patron. If there be in these democratic days any musician who feels humiliated by the struggle for existence with its necessities for wire-pulling and log-rolling ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... exists. From an anecdote preserved in William of Newbridge, Adrian IV. would seem to have pushed integrity in money matters to a harsh extreme; and so to have proved himself the antipodes of those popes who afterwards practised nepotism. For it is related of him, that rather than award a pittance towards the relief of his aged and destitute mother out of those ample revenues, which as pope he had at his disposal, but which he did not feel himself justified in diverting to private uses, he allowed her to subsist ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby
... That was the idea! And there'd be a chance for him at cards! ... Only, of course, Plank would ask Leila too. ... But what did he care! He was no longer afraid of her; he'd soon be independent of her and her pittance. Let her go to the courts for her divorce! ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... who had come from the provinces, and whom the young men then in fashion were teaching the art of running through an inheritance; but he had one last leg to stand on in his province, in the shape of a secure establishment. He was simply an heir who had passed without any transition from his pittance of a hundred francs a month to the entire paternal fortune, and who, if he had not wit enough to perceive that he was laughed at, was sufficiently cautious to stop short at two-thirds of his capital. He had learned at Paris, for a consideration of some thousands of francs, ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... the life his whole soul craved, yearning for books and study with all his heart, but forced to give the last atom of his poor strength in digging in the soil for the bare necessities of life, denied even a pittance to spend for the volumes he loved; Grace Conner marred in spirit and mind, as was Denny in body, by the cruel, unjust treatment of those to whom she had a right to look first for sympathy and help; and the nurse, who was sacrificing ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... knew that it was the most unlikely thing in the world to have come to pass; and yet those were happy days when he could think of it as barely possible. Now all he could look forward to was disfigurement, feebleness, and the bare pittance that keeps pensioners ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... story of Alta is full of sorrow. I told it to him, but he thanked me and went to his charge. I expected to see him within a week, but I did not see him for a year. Then I sent for him, and with his annual report in my hand I asked him how he lived on the pittance which he had received. He said that it took very little when one was careful and that he lived well enough—but his coat was threadbare and his shoes were sadly patched. There was a brightness in his eyes ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... of disbanded soldiers; thousands of whom, rather than starve, or turn highwaymen (which no few of their comrades did, stopping coaches at times in the most public streets), would work for such a pittance as to bring down the wages of all the laboring classes. Neither was our adventurer the least among the sufferers. Driven out of his previous employ—a sort of porter in a river-side warehouse—by this sudden ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... Walden was yet a small boy, he had learned all that could be taught by the faded mulatto teacher in the long, shiny black frock coat, whom local public opinion permitted to teach a handful of free colored children for a pittance barely enough to keep soul and body together. When the boy had learned to read, he discovered the library, which for several years had been without a reader, and found in it the portal of a new world, peopled with strange and marvelous beings. Lying prone upon the floor of ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... been for a collection of more than three hundred parrots, with which we sailed from the river, and which died very fast while we were in the northwest trades. Sai's allowance was one per diem, but this was so scanty a pittance that he became ravenous, and had not patience to pick all the feathers off before he commenced his meal. The consequence was, that he became very ill, and refused even this small quantity of food. Those around tried to persuade me that he suffered from the colder climate; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... which might help him to forget his darkened youth. Hilda and her mother would live as they could, and when the mother died Sigmundskron must go to the hammer. At all events it was not encumbered with debts, and its sale would leave the child a pittance to save her from starvation; possibly she would have more than before, but Frau von Sigmundskron could not judge of that. Possibly, too, Hilda's sixty-four quarterings would help her to gain admittance as a lady-canoness in one of those semi-religious foundations, reserved exclusively for ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... "the Church has fought truth desperately ever since the Master's day! It has fawned at the feet of emperor and plutocrat, and licked the bloody hand of the usurer who tossed her a pittance of his foul gains! In the great world-battles for reform, for the rights of man, for freedom from the slavery of man to man or to drink and drugs, she has come up only as the smoke has cleared away, but always in time to ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... his children might evade the stigma of "cattle-thief," that the shadow of the gallows-tree might not fall across their young lives, that the neighbors might give credence to the tale of Jim's escape from his enemies, that Alida and she might earn the pittance that would give the children the "clean start" that Jim had set his heart on so confidently. And she must dance and be the merriest of them all that these things might happen, but again and again she deferred the dread moment. The light, the music, the ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... came the rush of the land-hungry pioneer. Almost at a blow the old Indian territory passed away, populous cities came into being and it was not long before gushing oil wells made a new era of sudden wealth. The farm lands of the Middle West taken as free homesteads or bought for a mere pittance, have risen so in value that the original owners have in an increasing degree either sold them in order to reinvest in the newer cheap lands of the West, or have moved into the town and have left the tillage to tenant farmers. The growth of absentee ownership ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... that quarter then. The widow must live on her slender pittance, or on such aid as Joseph ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... often in the court, and to covet a base pittance, and with this pursuit he comforts his sluggish life, doing with venal tongue the business entrusted ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... period I commenced with, her slender earnings were the sole support of the family, including two younger sisters. I must throw a veil over some mortifying circumstances. Enough to say, that her Saturday's pittance was the only chance of a ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... this was the way of it: — Stung with the shame and the secret fury That comes to the man who has thrown his pittance Of self at a traitor's feet, I wandered Weeks and weeks in a baffled frenzy, Till at last the devil spoke. I heard him, And laughed at the love that strove to touch me, — The dead, lost love; and I gripped the demon Close to my ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... Open the book in what page you will, there is a frontispiece of themselves staring you in the face. They are a sort of Jacks o' the Green, with a sprig of laurel, a little tinsel, and a little smut, but still playing antics and keeping in incessant motion, to attract attention and extort your pittance of approbation. Whether they talk of the town or the country, poetry or politics, it comes to much the same thing. If they talk to you of the town, its diversions, 'its palaces, its ladies, and its streets,' they are the delight, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... doctor, whom Mrs. P. does not condescend to visit: that man educates a mirific family, and is loved by the poor for miles round: and gives them port-wine for physic and medicine, gratis. And how those people can get on with their pittance, as Mrs. Ponto says, is a ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not to marry till they have a sufficient sure income to support a family, and often accordingly postpone marriage till they are far advanced in life. The labourer who earns eighteenpence or two shillings a day, as a single man, will hesitate to divide that pittance among four or five, seeing the risks such poverty involves. The servants who live in the families of the rich have yet stronger inducements to forego matrimony. They live in comparative comfort and luxury, which as married men they ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... listened patiently to the arguments of counsel, whose fees for advocacy of claims before them would have paid the life income of half the bench. There was Mr. Attorney-General and his assistants still protecting the Government's millions from rapacious hands, and drawing the yearly public pittance that their wealthier private antagonists would have scarce given as a retainer to their junior counsel. The little standing army of departmental employes,—the helpless victims of the most senseless and idiotic form of ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... the clergy were composed under the prevailing influence of the parish priests. These men felt themselves to be wronged in the distribution of church property. They thought it outrageous that the working part of the clergy should receive but a pittance, while useless drones fattened in idleness.[Footnote: C., Paroisse de St. Paul, A. P., v. 270, Section 11.] Their proposals were radical. They would take from the few who had much and give to the many who had little. The salaries of those who ministered in ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... him, and gently warned many to keep a respectful distance. Aggressive and cutting he was, and he often said that death was the best friend of a man who is compelled to write for a living. He wrote a subscription book for a mere pittance, and one of the agents that sold it now lives in a mansion. He regarded present success as nothing to compare with an immortal name in the ages to come. He was born in the country, and his refined nature revolted at his rude surroundings, and ever afterward he held the country in contempt. ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... driven broad side with the full forse of a very strong current against some standing trees and instantly filled with water and sunk. Potts who was with them is an indifferent swimer, it was with much difficulty he made the land. they lost three blankets a blanket coat and their pittance of merchandize. in our bear state of clootheing this was a serious loss. I sent Sergt. Pryor and a party over with the indian canoe in order to raise and secure ours but the debth of the water and the strength of the current baffled every effort. I fear that we have also lost ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... amused with games and festivals, fed like slaves, and of course lost at last even the semblance of manliness and independence. They loitered in the public streets, and dissipated in gaming their miserable pittance; they spent the hours of the night in the lowest resorts of crime and misery; they expired in wretched apartments without attracting the attention of government; pestilence, famine, and squalid misery thinned their ranks, and they would have been ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... the promotion ladder in his first ten years; that a major at fifty, a colonel at sixty, and a general at seventy were quite the usual thing. And they realized that the pay they would receive would be a mere beggar's pittance in a neighborhood so expensive as Calcutta, and that their little private means would be eaten up by the mere, necessities of life. They showed their chagrin and it was not very easy for young Cunningham, ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... world of wonder had shrunk to a village peep-show. And the things which had kept their stimulating power—distant journeys, the enjoyment of art, the contact with new scenes and strange societies—were becoming less and less attainable. Lansing had never had more than a pittance; he had spent rather too much of it in his first plunge into life, and the best he could look forward to was a middle-age of poorly-paid hack-work, mitigated by brief and frugal holidays. He knew that he was more intelligent than the average, but he had long since concluded that his talents ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... approach her; And the morning was attended With but little hope or succour. Charity, in cold attendance, Came with many words and wishes; And, in fair and full pretending, Stood, and pitied, and regretted; But it gave a meagre pittance Or of comfort or appeasing, To withdraw the pangs of hunger, Or relieve her sunken spirit. But good Sero saw in pity. He beheld her calm endurance Of the anguish bearing on her; And he sent and took ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... first twenty years of her life like a princess and with all her blood derived from one of the oldest and most relaxed nations in Europe, she was suddenly forced to choose between sinking out of sight, the mere breath kept in her body, perhaps, on a pittance from distant relatives, or ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... delicate. Young brothers and sisters, probably, all crying aloud for the pittance she was able to earn by giving lessons at ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... it and felled by a hundred blows. I have been carted out of Marseilles in the dead of night, and carried leagues away from it packed in straw. It has not been safe for me to go near my house; and, with a beggar's pittance in my pocket, I have walked through vile mud and weather ever since, until my feet are crippled—look at them! Such are the humiliations that society has inflicted upon me, possessing the qualities I have ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... by the hand of friendship, who pine in unheeded obscurity, suffering the daily privations of life's indispensable requisites, or obtaining a scanty pittance at the will of opulent ignorance, and under the humiliating contumely, as we have just been informed, even ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... soldier is in all countries very small, much less than the wages of a day-labourer; and in some countries it is so mere a pittance, that it is quite astonishing how it can be made to ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... the fund, had the particular application given them of "sportularii," or basket-clerks, because, according to Origen, Tertullian, Cyprian, and others, they had their portion of sustenance, given them in baskets. These portions consisted but of a small pittance, sufficient only for their livelihood, and were given them on the principle laid down by St. Matthew, that the ministers of Jesus Christ were to eat and drink only such things as were set ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... She has but a small settlement, Tom, very inadequate to her position, as I told poor Mr. Bruce many a time. He used to say everything would be set right by his will, and now one of these girls is left penniless, and the other with a pittance, a mere pittance, brought up, as I make no doubt she was, to ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... accident, or to have sickness in his family, he may become the owner of a cheap home, or, by dint of much sacrifice, his children may be educated and enabled to enter one of the professions. Or, given all the conditions stated, he may be enabled to save enough to provide for himself and wife a pittance sufficient to keep them from pauperism and beggary in ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... that, like many another law student, he gave more time and thought to literature than to his legal studies; that this action deepened the hostility of his father, who {98} reduced Burke's allowance to a pittance, and that his daily need as well as his desire drove Burke to seek his ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... system have constantly occurred during the last forty years. In Ulster, where no such tithe is required, these insurrections are unknown. The double Church which Ireland supports, and that painful visible contribution towards it which the poor Irishman is compelled to make from his miserable pittance, is one great cause of those never-ending insurrections, burnings, murders, and robberies, which have laid waste that ill-fated country for so many years. The unfortunate consequence of the civil disabilities, ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... ruin and worse! Yet she risked it all, in order to help him. She did not love him, nor had she any hopes that he would of his own free will do more than give her a bare pittance for her needs once he had secured Lady Sue's fortune; but she was shrewd enough to reckon that the more completely she was mixed up in his nefarious projects, the more absolutely forced would he be to accede to her demands later on. The word blackmail had not been invented in those days, but ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... and one at the back, opposite to one in the outer wall, through which the monk may have conveyed the sweepings of his cell and the refuse of his garden to the "eremus'' beyond. By the side of the door to the court is a little hatch through which the daily pittance of food was supplied, so contrived by turning at an angle in the wall that no one could either look in or look out. A very perfect example of this hatch—-an arrangement belonging to all Carthusian houses—exists at Miraflores, near Burgos, which remains nearly as ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... my first quarter's wages, and was returning to my lodgings, possessed heart and soul with the pleasant feeling that the master who had paid me grudged every penny of that hard-earned pittance—(I had long ceased to regard Mr. Crimsworth as my brother—he was a hard, grinding master; he wished to be an inexorable tyrant: that was all). Thoughts, not varied but strong, occupied my mind; two voices spoke within me; again and again they uttered the same ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... her heart, did not at all thank Captain Aylmer for his generosity. She would have had everything from him, or nothing. It was grievous to her to think that she should owe to him a bare pittance to keep her out of the workhouse to him who had twice seemed to be on the point of asking her to share everything with him. She did not love her cousin Will as she loved him; but her cousin Will's assurance to her that he would treat her with a brother's care was sweeter to her by ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... living in Devonshire, and had now been dead some fifteen years. His mother and two sisters were still living in a small cottage in his late father's parish, on the interest of the money arising from a life insurance. Some pittance from sixty to seventy pounds a year was all they had among them. But there was a rich aunt, Miss Stanbury, to whom had come considerable wealth in a manner most romantic,—the little tale shall be told before this larger tale is completed,—and this ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... she; "and nothing seek. 'Twere base in me to rob my lord unware; Our hands will earn a pittance week ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... would be benefited by their citizens having an opportunity of disposing of the negroes which they can not comfortably support, or of removing with them to a country abounding with all the necessaries of life; and the negro himself would exchange a scanty pittance of the coarsest food for a plentiful and nourishing diet, and a situation which admits not the most distant prospect of emancipation for one which presents no considerable obstacle ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... would have pitied her, just as I did. She belonged to our village. Her mother was an old, old woman, and they used to sell string and thread, and soap and tobacco, out of the window of their little house, and lived on the pittance they gained by this trade. The old woman was ill and very old, and could hardly move. Marie was her daughter, a girl of twenty, weak and thin and consumptive; but still she did heavy work at the houses ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... either for him to go to Ireland or for myself to accompany him. But I pray you to consider how small a pittance he receives as Lord President of Wales. It is ever a struggle for my mother to maintain the dignity of your representative there. She is wearing out her life in a vain effort, and you, Madam, surely know that ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... had deserted the French army in 1738 and taken service under Maria Theresa, rising, it is said, to the rank of major. Amnestied in 1755 he returned to France, but soon sank into dire poverty, being forced to earn a pittance for his wife and family as a day labourer. The hardships endured by Babeuf during early years do much to explain his later opinions. He had received from his father the smatterings of a liberal education, but until the outbreak of the Revolution he was a domestic servant, and from 1785 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... a young man of twenty-five without a name, who might, if they were granted, become a colonel at thirty. Max accordingly sent in his resignation. The major —for among themselves Bonapartists recognized the grades obtained in 1815—thus lost the pittance called half-pay which was allowed to the officers of the army of the Loire. But all Issoudun was roused at the sight of the brave young fellow left with only twenty napoleons in his possession; and the mayor gave him a place in his office with a salary of six hundred francs. Max kept it a ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... long after he has discovered the futility of the hopes which urged him in the beginning. At present, the American Government is trying to remodel a social system which consists of a land-holding aristocracy and an ignorant peasantry, the latter not exactly willing to work for a pittance, but utterly helpless to extricate themselves from the necessity of doing so. To the aristocrat the Government says, "Come and aid us to help thy brother, that he may some day rob thee of thy prerogatives"; ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... everything else. His ambition seems to have been confined to the pleasure of hearing the players speak his lines while he lived. It does not appear that he ever contemplated the possibility of being read by after-ages. What a slender pittance of fame was motive sufficient to the production of such plays as the English Traveller, the Challenge for Beauty, and the Woman Killed with Kindness! Posterity is bound to take care that a writer loses nothing by ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... recover his lost plunder. He also sent to Switzerland to hire troops, and without difficulty engaged ten thousand men to meet, on the plains of Milan, the six thousand of their brethren whom Ludovico had hired, to hew each other to pieces for the miserable pittance of a few pennies a day. But Louis XII. was as great in diplomacy as in war. He sent secret emissaries to the Swiss in the camp of Ludovico, offering them larger wages if they would abandon the service of Ludovico and return home. They promptly closed the bargain, unfurled the banner ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... they paid by his administratrix and deputy, Munny Begum? Not a shilling. No fewer than forty-nine petitions, mostly from the widows of the greatest and most splendid houses of Bengal, came before the Council, praying in the most deplorable manner for some sort of relief out of the pittance assigned them. His colleagues, General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis, men who, when England is reproached for the government of India, will, I repeat it, as a shield be held up between this nation and infamy, did, in conformity to the strict orders of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... is good or evil in man at ripe years, were to be under pittance and prescription and compulsion, what were virtue but a name, what praise could be then due to well-doing, what gramercy to be sober, just, or continent? Many there be that complain of divine Providence for suffering Adam to transgress; ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... many sad pictures in the Satires of Juvenal are more pitiable than that of the wretched "Quirites" struggling at their patrons' doors for the pittance which formed their daily dole. (Sat ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... he saw a small cluster of stars blinking, voluptuous, immeasurably overhead. Their pittance of light, as his eyesight cleared, showed a ladder rising flat against the wall. He reached up, grasped the bamboo rungs, hoisted with an acrobatic wrench, and began to ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... altered the plan, though not the purpose, of the work which Griffin had set himself to accomplish. He was compelled to give up writing tragedies, and write for a livelihood; but London was overcrowded with impecunious journalists, and he received the merest pittance in return for the most arduous species of literary drudgery. The author of "Irene," on his arrival in London, was not more incontestably the literary helot at the mercy of Cave, Millar, and Osborne, than was Gerald ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... destinies and acquire the supreme direction of affairs, either as the High Priest or the Grand Lama of Europe, was not beyond the compass of his thoughts or the scope of his ambition. Now, he was petitioning the Queen for a small increase to his worldly pittance, and an opportunity of clearing himself before her Majesty's council from the foul and slanderous accusations by which he was continually assailed. Yet he had not abandoned his former projects. Though failing in his mission aforetime to the Emperor ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... of "his and the Muses' servant," and send a present to the Laureate's lodgings, its proportions were always so small as to excite the ire of the insulted Ben, who would growl forth to the messenger, "He would not have sent me this, (scil. wretched pittance,) did I not live ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... penniless. Grizel and her mother, financially assisted by some friends, journeyed to London, to petition the Government for an allowance out of the confiscated estates, and after much difficulty succeeded in obtaining a paltry pittance ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore
... capable. After a few years of ill-usage on his side, and endurance on his wife's, they parted. Tired of her person, and profiting by her gentleness of temper, he sent her to an obscure corner of the country, to starve upon the miserable pittance which was all he allowed her from his superfluities. Even then—such is the effect of the showy proprieties of form and word—Mr. Crauford sank not in ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... two fingers broad. {39} Item, no hounds are to be kept in the monastery for hunting, nor any dogs save watch-dogs. Persons in religion who come to the monastery are to be entertained there for two days, during which time the cellarer is to give them bread and wine, and the pittancer {40} pittance. ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... (added he) I meant nothing more than to lay down a comfortable plan of living within the bounds of our fortune, which is but moderate.' 'Sir (said she), you are the best judge of your own affairs — My fortune, I know, does not exceed twenty thousand pounds — Yet, even with that pittance, I might have had a husband who would not have begrudged me a house in London' — 'Good God! my dear (cried poor Baynard, in the utmost agitation), you don't think me so sordid — I only hinted what I thought — But, I don't pretend to ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... man of strict and moral life, as well as being the most delightful company. Surely it is not necessary that in our daily literary studies there should never be any fun at all. I have taken a lodging close to him, and as far as I can with my pittance I subsidise his narrow means. I have also begun practising declamation in Greek with Cassius; in Latin I like having my practice with Bruttius. My intimate friends and daily company are those whom Cratippus brought with him from Mitylene,—good scholars, of whom ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... of whom had even been proposed as confessor to Madame la Dauphine. One was long ill of a malady he died of. He was not properly nourished, and I sent him his dinner every day, for more than five months, because I had seen his pittance. I sent him even remedies, for he could not refrain from admitting to me that he suffered from the treatment ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... confinement of a debtor by his creditor, with no motive on earth but the hope that some friend, or some relative, perhaps almost as poor as himself, his mother it may be, or his sisters, or his daughters, will give up all their own little pittance, and make beggars of themselves, to save him from the horrors of a loathsome jail. Human retribution cannot reach this guilt; human feeling may not penetrate the flinty heart that perpetrates it; but an hour is surely coming, with more than human retribution on ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... as we are gravely told, but ten per cent. that she asks, and who could or should object to payment of such a pittance? Not many, perhaps, if unaccompanied by monopoly privleges that would multiply the ten by ten and make it an hundred! Alone, the cost to our readers might not now exceed an annual million. Let Congress then pass an ...
— Letters on International Copyright; Second Edition • Henry C. Carey
... state of the drama; and the drama was the department of polite literature in which a poet had the best chance of obtaining a subsistence by his pen. The sale of books was so small that a man of the greatest name could hardly expect more than a pittance for the copyright of the best performance. There cannot be a stronger instance than the fate of Dryden's last production, the Fables. That volume was published when he was universally admitted to be the chief of living English poets. It contains about twelve thousand lines. The versification ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... defiance of the law, to live by coshering, that is to say, by quartering himself on the old tenants of his family, who, wretched as was their own condition, could not refuse a portion of their pittance to one whom they still regarded as their rightful lord. [154] The native gentleman who had been so fortunate as to keep or to regain some of his land too often lived like the petty prince of a savage tribe, and indemnified himself for the humiliations which the dominant race made ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... are jumbled together. The museum of Lima bids fair to remain for some time to come on the footing on which it was when I saw it, for the establishment has no funds, save a monthly allowance of thirty-two dollars, and out of that scanty pittance the expense of fitting up the rooms, the glass cases, &c., has yet to be defrayed. The museum is open to the public four ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... were before a great assembly, "I will rise in the Senate and move a vote of want of confidence in the Government for the manner in which it has given away the richest possessions in the storehouse of my country, giving it not only to aliens, but for a pittance, for a share which is not a share, but a bribe, to blind the eyes of the people. It has been a shameful bargain, and I cannot say who is to blame; I accuse no one. But I suspect, and I will demand an investigation; I will demand that the value not of one-tenth, ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... with as gloomy a prospect before them as can well be imagined. The nearest land was about one thousand miles to the windward of them; they were in open boats, weak and leaky, with a very small pittance of bread and water for support of so many men, during the time they must necessarily be at sea. Sails had been prepared for the boats, before leaving the ship, which proved of material benefit. Steering southerly by the wind, they ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... will you prevent it? These Visitors, and those who commission them, are hungry folk. I hear they take the lands and goods of poor religious such as we are, and if these are fortunate, give one or two of them a little pittance to get bread. Once I had moneys of my own, but I spent them to buy back the Valley Farm which the Abbot had seized, and of late to satisfy his extortions," and she ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... Horace complaining of the dulness of his life, and begging him to repay Blandford the 6 shillings 6 pence, which had been weighing like lead on his mind ever since he left town, and which he now despaired of ever being able to spare out of the slender pittance on which he was doomed to subsist till Christmas. Happily that festive season was only a few weeks away now, and then how delighted he should be to send home a round half of his income, and convince himself he was after all a main prop to ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... endeavor to procure work to feed my children had failed—when I had not a dollar to purchase bread for my innocent babes, I applied for assistance. None but the most dire necessity would have prompted me to such a step, and, Oh, God! when it was refused—when the paltry pittance I asked for was refused, the hope which I had clung so despairingly to, vanished, and I felt myself indeed a miserable woman. Piece after piece of furniture went, until all was gone—my clothing was next sold to purchase bread. The miserable life I led, the hours spent with my children ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... and that he would have her, come what might and be the price what it would. Rather than the fortune for which his father had toiled and sacrificed, Donald preferred Nan's love; rather than a life of ease and freedom from worry, he looked forward with a fierce joy to laboring with his hands for a pittance, provided he might have the privilege of sharing it with her. And The Dreamerie, the house his father had built with such great, passionate human hopes and tender yearnings, the young laird of Port Agnew could abandon without a pang ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... really matter. There was a little bit of ingratitude there, but it doesn't matter. Only I made no fortune by grocery—barely enough to put my boy into the army and to educate him for it, and enough to keep us with a pittance now that we are old. But I have nothing to leave you, sweetest. You just have your pension from the Government, which don't ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... benefits and blessings anticipated from the actual enjoyment of cheap postage, have fully equalled the most sanguine expectations of the friends of the measure, and have far exceeded in public utility, the pittance of income to the treasury, which used to be wrung out by the tax upon letters. The same examination will also show, that there is no substantial reason, either in the system itself, or in any peculiarity of our circumstances, ...
— Cheap Postage • Joshua Leavitt
... have raised the dead—and have even visited the Sheik Ebn Hali in his cave in the deserts of Thebais? No, by Heaven!—he that contemns art shall perish through his own ignorance. Ten pieces!—a pittance which I am half ashamed to offer to Toinette, to buy her ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... officers and all; or else I must speak as I found them. I hope they were not a just sample of their whole nation; for these gentry would exercise every imposition, and even insinuate the thing that was not, the more easily to plunder us of our hard earned pittance of small change. Had they shown any generosity, like the British tar, I should have passed over their conduct in silence; but after they had stripped our men of every farthing, they would say to them—"Monsieur, you have won all our money, now lend us a little change ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... know that some of the investments poor father made would turn out badly, and that our income would be reduced to a mere pittance? For I tell you, Miss Belding," added the invalid less vehemently, "that we have almost nothing, divided by three, to live on. That is, an income for one must support us three. Aunt Jinny is one of ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... blow which shattered alike his brilliant dreams and his real prosperity. The large fortune brought by his wife vanished in a moment, so that scarcely a pittance remained in his hands. From the distant city where he had been to superintend his schemes, he thus wrote to his too ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to a dinner, or went into a bed, without hearts glowing with thankfulness to that Providence who had bestowed on them such unexpected blessings; for they no longer presumed to expect (what still they hoped they deserved) a secure pittance in this world of plenty. Their experience, since they came to town, had informed them that to obtain a permanent livelihood is the good fortune but of a part of those who are in want of it: and the precarious earning of half-a-crown, ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... to Lichfield, his father died; and the following memorandum, extracted from the little register which he kept in Latin, of the more remarkable occurrences that befel him, proves at once the small pittance that was left him, and the integrity of his mind: "1732, Julii 15. Undecim aureos deposui: quo die quicquid ante matris funus (quod serum sit precor) de paternis bonis sperare licet, viginti scilicet libras accepi. Usque adeo mihi fortuna fingenda est. Interea ne paupertate ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... been the chief support of the family, the ladies earning a mere pittance by the use of the needle and sewing-machine. Nothing had been laid by for a rainy day, and the expenses of his illness had to be met by the sale of the few articles of value left from the wreck of their fortunes. And now, but for the timely aid of these kind ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... made—surely a single machine might produce as many within a week. But there is danger that their work was only a sentimental expression of their world-grief. I'll sink to depths of practicality and claim that a pittance from their allowances would have bought more and better garments in ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... happier, too, many girls would be, if, instead of going out in all weathers, day after day, to earn a miserable pittance in any such employment as daily governesses, they would do some of the lighter housework, cooking, &c., at home. By being able to do with one servant instead of two, they would save probably more than they could earn in other ways, besides being much stronger from the exercise thus ...
— The Skilful Cook - A Practical Manual of Modern Experience • Mary Harrison
... Shall we suppose some revelation from above in favour of one of the faithful? Perhaps an angel from heaven appeared to this mirror of modern virtue, and informed her, that if she eat more than one piece of bread a day, her small pittance would not last her till the time she was to make her escape. Her mother, we know, is a very enthusiastical woman—a consulter of conjurors, a dreamer of dreams; perhaps the daughter dreamed also what was to happen, and so, in obedience to her vision, would not ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... are the most poorly paid of all professions and pursuits. And in every section of the Union, that distinguished lawyer who accepts a seat upon the bench, must hold the glories of his honor at a very high price, to surrender his ordinary professional emoluments for the wretched pittance which the various States dole out for days of public toil and nights of private study. We desire to look no further than this Empire State for examples. This Empire State, with its magnificent resources ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... Majesty knew what the public thought, and what became her own dignity. She could not for very shame suffer a woman of distinguished genius, who had quitted a lucrative career to wait on her, who had served her faithfully for a pittance during five years, and whose constitution had been impaired by labour and watching, to leave the Courts without some mark of royal liberality. George the Third, who, on all occasions where Miss Burney ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay |
