"Parsimony" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... diplomatic representative undeniably depends much upon the appropriateness of his surroundings, and a country like ours, while avoiding unnecessary glitter and show, should be certain that it does not suffer in its relations with foreign nations through parsimony and shabbiness in its diplomatic outfit. These considerations and the other advantages of having fixed and somewhat permanent locations for our embassies would abundantly justify the moderate expenditure necessary to carry out ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... high enough for want of money? But was it want of money that made you put that blunt, overloaded, laborious ogee door into the side of it? Was it for lack of funds that you sunk the tracery of the parapet in its clumsy zigzags? Was it in parsimony that you buried its paltry pinnacles in that eruption of diseased crockets? or in pecuniary embarrassment that you set up the belfry foolscaps, with the mimicry of dormer windows, which nobody can ever reach nor look out of? Not so, but in mere incapability ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... into a study from which she roused herself to say, "You'd better let me bargain for the office and the furniture,—and the big sign." She knew—but could not or would not teach me—how to get a dollar's worth for a dollar; would not, I suspect, for she despised parsimony, declaring it to be another virtue which is becoming only in ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... second richest man in the United States," he continued, "and the first in parsimony. I shall mulct you in ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... staging of the play there was a right Shakespearian parsimony. If all the scenery and costumes cost twenty-five pounds, I am surprised. No attempt was made to invest "lo spettro del padre del Amleto" with supernatural graces. He merely walked on sideways, a burly, very living Italian, and with a nervous quick glance, to see if he was clearing the wing ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... and the lamps having nearly burnt out, and all being dim and dark, rendered the illusion complete. The quondam protégé of these chiefs was too ill, too much upset, to speak. I bade him good night, and returned home, half-admiring The Giant and his troop, and abusing the foolish parsimony of the merchant, who ought to have thrown a few lumps of flesh to these hungry and wolfish sons of The Desert, and satisfied them at once. One of the party was Hateetah's brother; and Hateetah told me next day that ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... my returning again to Philadelphia, advis'd me to behave respectfully to the people there, endeavour to obtain the general esteem, and avoid lampooning and libeling, to which he thought I had too much inclination; telling me, that by steady industry and a prudent parsimony I might save enough by the time I was one-and-twenty to set me up; and that, if I came near the matter, he would help me out with the rest. This was all I could obtain, except some small gifts as tokens of his and my mother's love, ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... the profession of teaching disreputable, and to constitute the very name of schoolmaster, or pedagogue, a hissing and a by-word. And why is this? I can account for it in but one way. The school teacher is subject to the same organic laws as other men; and, either on account of the ignorance or parsimony of his employers, he has been shut up with their children several hours a day, in narrow and ill-ventilated apartments, where, whatever else they may have done, their principal business has of necessity been to poison one another to death. And, as if not satisfied ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... he longed for barren walls, a cot of straw, parsimony, discipline. It was not the first time that his exhausted organism had sought consolation in the thought of a monastic life. This Protestant, this descendent of a long line of Protestants, had long ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... to be equivalent to the promised restitution of the money, and begged me to warn him that nothing short of the sum squandered would be deemed sufficient at Riversley. My dear aunt, good woman though she was, seemed to me to be waxing miserly. The squire had given her the name of Parsimony; she had vexed him, Janet told me, by subscribing a miserable sum to a sailors' asylum that he patronized—a sum he was ashamed to see standing as the gift of a Beltham; and she had stopped the building of a wing of her village school-house, designed upon his plan. Altogether, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... week there was stock unused to the amount of $1.00, making $2.85 for actual board, (I did not dine out once,) and this included the most expensive meats, which one might not always care to get; for it is not parsimony that often prefers a sirloin steak at thirty cents to a tenderloin at forty cents. But this note may be added. Don't buy quails, they are all gizzard and feathers; and don't buy halibut, till you have inquired the price. It will also be perceived ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... Mrs. Mason was not her forte. She had been a beauty; but if it had been her lot to be known in history, it was not as a beauty that she would have been famous. Parsimony was her great virtue, and a power of saving her strong point. I have said that she spent much money in dress, and some people will perhaps think that the two points of character are not compatible. Such ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... brothers. Idleness is vitiating: waiting for the death of those we ought to love is vitiating; and these two one-idea'd curs were ready to tear any one to death that should interfere with that miserable inheritance which was their thought by day and their dream by night. Their parents' parsimony was a virtue; it was accompanied by industry, and its motive was love of their offspring; but in these perverse and selfish hearts that homely virtue was perverted into avarice, than which no more fruitful source of crimes is to ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... father, skinny and angular like him. She was thirty-three years of age, always dressed in black stuff, shy and retiring in manner, with a head too small in proportion to her height and narrowed on either side until the nose seemed to jut forth in protest against such parsimony. And yet it would be impossible to say that she was ugly, for her eyes were extremely beautiful, soft and grave, proud and a little sad: pathetic eyes which to see ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... the building work at S. Lorenzo is being carried forward very slowly, and money spent upon it with increasing parsimony. Still he has his pension and his house; and these imply no small disbursements. He cannot make out what the Pope's real wishes are. If he did but know Clement's mind, he would sacrifice everything to please him. "Only if I could obtain permission to begin something ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... was employed in the Spanish treasury at Malaga. This man had knowledge that a galley was fitting out for sea to convey to Naples the gold destined for the pay of the Spanish troops in garrison there. Through parsimony this treasure-galley was to be afforded no escort, but was under orders to hug the coast of Europe, where she should be safe from all piratical surprise. It was judged that she would be ready to put to sea in a week, and the Morisco had set out at once to bring word of it to ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... worn-out. Necessity had made the poor girl so niggardly that Grandet had grown to love her as we love a dog, and Nanon had let him fasten a spiked collar round her throat, whose spikes no longer pricked her. If Grandet cut the bread with rather too much parsimony, she made no complaint; she gaily shared the hygienic benefits derived from the severe regime of the household, in which no one was ever ill. Nanon was, in fact, one of the family; she laughed when Grandet laughed, felt gloomy or chilly, warmed herself, and toiled ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... amount of industry which A's profusion feeds; he observes not the far greater quantity which it prevents from being fed; and thence the prejudice, universal to the time of Adam Smith, that prodigality encourages industry, and parsimony is ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... to the financial pursuits of Cosimo's mother, Maria Salviati, and concluded with a mendicant whine about the bad times and so forth. When Cosimo pensioned him, which he did liberally, considering his habitual parsimony—to the extent, at least, of 160 ducats a year—he had doubtless an eye to Aretino's dangerous character as Spanish agent. Aretino could ridicule and revile Cosimo, and in the same breath threaten the Florentine agent that he would obtain from the Duke his immediate recall; ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... as he preferred to call them, were free to roam the house or the grounds at their will; if the table he kept was not liberal, a certain etiquette was indulged in which did something to cover the parsimony, and the insane inmates who remained in the house were pushed out of the way into odd corners as much ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... was that Jory, throwing to the winds all his habits of prudence and parsimony, was now secretly providing for Mathilde. She had gained an ascendency over him ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... reasons," says Dr. Johnson, "either not known, or not mentioned, Congreve bequeathed a legacy of about ten thousand pounds to the Duchess; the accumulation of attentive parsimony, which, though to her superfluous and useless, might have given great assistance to the ancient family from which he descended, at that time, by the imprudence of his relation, reduced to ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... was living upon money borrowed from Mrs. Perce, her one friend and protector. Mrs. Minto could not work. She wrote to Aunt Emmy, and Aunt Emmy helped her from her prizewinnings, and for several weeks they were thus enabled to stave off want. Once Mrs. Minto was back at home the old order of parsimony was revived, and it cost them very little to keep life going on from day to day. Sally's seven shillings a week helped. And at last Mrs. Minto was allowed to go out, and Mrs. Roberson took her back. Slowly, half-starving, they managed to ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... manager was baffled how the pirates were to ascend a ladder to their sleeping loft. They had no place to go. They would crack their ugly heads upon the ceiling. The costumer was positive (parsimony!) that a hole—even a little hole—should not be cut in the plaster overhead for their disappearance. If the chandelier had been an honest piece of metal they might have perched on it until the act ran out. Or perhaps the candles could be extinguished when ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... though the creature recognises the impossibility of renewing its store of liquid, and so economises the little it possesses, using only just so much as is necessary in order to escape as quickly as possible from surroundings which are strange to its inherited instincts. This parsimony is so well judged that the insect gains the surface at ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... that all parsimony is of a quality approaching to unkindness; and that (on some person or other) every reform must operate as a sort of punishment. Indeed, the whole class of the severe and restrictive virtues are at a market almost too high for humanity. ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... of short-sighted mortals, is never more extremely absurd than in their unprofitable parsimony of what is of no use to them, but would be of actual value to others, who, in return, would willingly repay them tenfold. However, I hope I may be permitted to quote, in defence of these culinary professors, a couple of lines ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... at hand. Sometimes it belonged to one of the Cossacks, but oftener was lent to him by his aid-de-camp, Tichinka. He was without servants, keeping but one attendant to wait upon himself, and employing some of the soldiers in the service of his house. This mode of living arose not from parsimony, but from an utter indifference to any kind of indulgence, which he considered beneath a soldier's attention. He had a contempt for money as a means of procuring gratification, but valued it as often affording him the pleasure of ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... might defeat our purpose by delaying the blaze too long. But Kagig had requisitioned every drop of kerosene in Zeitoon, and the stuff was splashed on with the recklessness that comes of throwing parsimony to the winds. Then I grew afraid lest they should fire the stuff too soon, or lest some stray spark from a man's pipe or an overturned lantern should do the work. Every imaginable fear presented itself, because, ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... the public agents, because ignorant of what was really necessary, repeatedly changed the form of its engagements with them, and, at length, by its fluctuating policy, real wants, and imprudent parsimony, brought matters to such extremities that Washington was compelled to require the several counties of the State of New Jersey to furnish his army with certain quantities of provisions within six days in order to prevent them from being ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... judge, to bring forward frivolous and self-contradictory accusations, and then in the same breath to blame me on both charges at once? Is it not a sheer contradiction to object to my wallet and staff on the ground of austerity, to my poems and mirror on the ground of undue levity; to accuse me of parsimony for having only one slave, and of extravagance in having three; to denounce me for my Greek eloquence and my barbarian birth? Awake from your slumber and remember that you are speaking before Claudius Maximus, a man of stern character, burdened with ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... grasping money-dealer, unless a certain negligence of the exterior might be supposed to betray the abode of such a man. His friends wished to ascribe this to an indifference to appearances; but the multitude, more accurately imputed it to parsimony. When the very soul gets to be absorbed in the process of rolling gold over and over, in order to make it accumulate, the spirit grudges the withdrawal of the smallest fraction from the gainful pursuit; and here lies the secret of the disdain of appearances ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... in, he took a seat in front of the fire. His mother followed, bringing the sugar-bowl and the honey, which she locked in a closet in the wall: the iron in her blood was parsimony. Then she seated herself under the mantelpiece on the opposite side and looked silently across at the face of her husband. (She was his second wife. His offspring by his first wife had died young. David was ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... the absolute power of the prince who being master of the lives and fortunes of his subjects, will quickly find expedients to pay his debts: and so will the other, by their prudent administration, the greatness of their trade, their wonderful parsimony, the willingness of their people to undergo all kind of taxes, and their justice in applotting as well as collecting them. But above all, we are to consider that France and Holland fight in the continent, either upon, or ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... straps and dozens of items are administered with the same spirit of jealous guardianship by Day, Lashly, Oates and Meares, while our main storekeeper Bowers even affects to bemoan imaginary shortages. Such parsimony is the best guarantee that we are prepared to face any ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... distinguished dead. It is but just towards the memory of the departed, to believe his conduct to have been principally influenced by such considerations. All men have many faults—most men have grave faults. Is parsimony intrinsically more culpable than prodigality? Have not most of mankind a tendency towards one or the other? for how few are ennobled by the ability to steer evenly between the two! And even granting that Sir William Follett had a tendency towards the former failing, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... consequently, a bore to dine with him. Ascanio and others, especially Cardinal Monreale, who formerly were his Holiness's table companions, and Valenza too, broke off this companionship because his parsimony displeased them, and avoided it ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... engaged. My patience, however, is now worn out, and I have come here to learn whether I am to expect the steam-vessels or not,—whether the scandalous blunders of Mr. Galloway are to be remedied by those concerned, or if an ill-timed parsimony is to doom Greece to inevitable destruction; for such will be the consequence, if Ibrahim's resources are not cut up before the period at which it is usual for him to commence operations. You know my opinions so well, that it is unnecessary to repeat them to you. I shall, ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... Bourbons let the States-General of France, without any overt breach of the constitution. After all, the original design of the crown had been to get money out of parliament, and the main object of parliament had once been to make the king live of his own. A king content with parsimony might lawfully dispense with parliament; and the eleven years had shown the precarious basis of parliamentary institutions, given a thrifty king and an unambitious country. Events were demonstrating the truth of Hobbes's maxim that sovereignty is indivisible; peace could not be kept between a sovereign ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... X knew what it meant for old Skeffington to "fool 'em again." He had been dying for three years. At the first news that he was seized of a mortal illness his near relations, who had been driven from him by his temper and his parsimony, gathered under his roof from far and near, each group hoping to induce him to make a will in its favor. He lingered on, and so did they—watching each other, trying to outdo each other in complaisance to the humors of the old ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... matter of economy, at least, they are worthy of all praise. No other community spends less in proportion to its income. From the emperor down, each person seems to count his pence. This self-denial, which borders at times on parsimony, is the result of training and circumstances. The soil in the eastern part of the kingdom, and especially around Berlin, is not fertile. It yields its crops only to the most careful tillage. Moreover, prolonged struggles for political ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... have been enough to cause dismay even if the estimates of other departments, upon which the Indian public looks with more favour, had not clearly been pruned down with more than usual parsimony to meet the large increase in military expenditure. But Lord Rawlinson, who had done his utmost to reduce them to the extreme limit of safety as he conceived it in existing circumstances, wisely decided to take the Assembly as far as possible into his confidence, ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... little or no social legislation. The politicians taught the people that low taxes were the greatest possible good and, when prosperity began to return and a heavier burden of taxation might easily have been borne, the belief that the efficiency of a government was measured by its parsimony had become a fixed idea. There was little scandal anywhere. No governments in American history have been conducted with more economy and more fidelity than the governments of the Southern States during the ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... familiar observation and a perfectly true one that we have no record of our Lord's ever having used miraculous power for the supply of His own wants, and the reason for that, I suppose, is to be found not only in that principle of economy and parsimony of miraculous energy, so that the supernatural in His life was ever pared down to the narrowest possible limits, and inosculated immediately with the natural, but it is also to be found in this—let me put it into very plain words—that Christ liked ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... terrestrial runner, contrived, in the mean while, to keep himself from flying skyward without return, is not too clear from these Documents. Good old Gretchen seems to have vanished from the scene, perhaps from the Earth; other Horn of Plenty, or even of Parsimony, nowhere flows for him; so that "the prompt nature of Hunger being well known," we are not without our anxiety. From private Tuition, in never so many languages and sciences, the aid derivable is small; neither, to use his own words, "does ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... Smith has very justly observed that nations as well as individuals grow rich by parsimony and poor by profusion, and that, therefore, every frugal man was a friend and every spendthrift an enemy to his country. The reason he gives is that what is saved from revenue is always added to stock, and is therefore taken from the maintenance of labour that is generally unproductive ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... to relate to his having been curtailed in his military operations by the parsimony of Vespasian, who refused him permission to attack other people than the ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... they may administer their own local government and tax themselves for such improvements as they desire. This separation of the village from the township has been inevitable where the farmers take no pride or interest in it, and has often been necessitated by their parsimony or conservatism. This is well illustrated by an incident related by ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... extravagances I must record the fact that my parsimony in monetary matters survived. Mr. John, in Sussex Street, presently raised my salary to two pounds ten shillings a week; but I continued to share Mr. Smith's bedroom, and to pay only sixteen shillings weekly for my board and lodging. What was more to the point, I was equally careful in most ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... February 1869; and this long hesitation seems to have been followed by an even longer repentance, for the piece was never included in any one of his volumes of essays. But the ten years of his professorship are, according to the wise parsimony of the chair, amply represented by the two famous little books—On Translating Homer, which, with its supplementary "Last Words," appeared in 1861-62, and On the Study of Celtic Literature, which appeared at the termination of his tenure in 1867. It may be questioned whether he ever did ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... approval, thought the boy too young to assume so much responsibility, and sent him back to Philadelphia with no money, but with his blessing and abundant good counsel, advising him to restrain his natural tendency to lampoon, and telling him that by steady industry and prudent parsimony he might save enough by the time he was twenty-one to set himself up, and withal promising help if he came ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... explained to him how it was that the city fathers were proverbially poor. It was all, he said, owing to the parsimony of the old comptroller, who, when they felt inclined to be liberal to one another, set himself up for an inquisition. And after expressing his warmest sympathy for the major's misfortunes, referred him to Alderman Dan Dooley, who was a great discounter of notes, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... you are too precipitate in either extreme, either with profuseness or with parsimony too great. Into the same error will you fall from the one side as from the other. In the first place, formerly, rather than allow your son to visit a young woman, who was then content with a very little, and to whom any thing was acceptable, you frightened him ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... women, delicate topics are handled, and some things said from which a squeamish reader may shrink, the vital importance of the matter and the motive of the treatment furnish the only needful apology. Prudery is the parsimony of a shrivelled heart, and is scarcely worthy of respect. The subject of the relations of sentiment and passion between the sexes has paramount claims on our attention. It actually occupies a foremost place in the thoughts of most persons. ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... exceeding all belief! Summer, my lord, this saucy upstart Jack, That now doth rule the chariot of the sun, And makes all stars derive their light from him, Is a most base, insinuating slave, The sum[44] of parsimony and disdain; One that will shine on friends and foes alike, That under brightest smiles hideth black show'rs Whose envious breath doth dry up springs and lake And burns the grass, that beasts can ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... culminated almost in an open row; and Napoleon found himself called upon either to explain his position, or become both unpopular and an "outcast" because of what his schoolmates considered his stinginess and parsimony. ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... sumptuously, first God's house; but in the Prince's house things went on more slowly, for it did not please the Doge [Footnote: Tomaso Mocenigo.] to restore it in the form in which it was before; and they could not rebuild it altogether in a better manner, so great was the parsimony of these old fathers; because it was forbidden by laws, which condemned in a penalty of a thousand ducats any one who should propose to throw down the old palace, and to rebuild it more richly and with greater ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... Cyr, in spite of all the sums they have absorbed, have no external nobility or grandeur. The foundress put upon it the seal of her parsimony, or, rather, of her general timidity. She is like Moliere's Harpagon, who would like to do great things ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... moment when the finances of Egypt were for the first time used to develop what is naturally the richest soil in the world, progress towards betterment grew rapidly into the remarkable prosperity of to-day. For a time, however, the government was obliged to use extreme parsimony in order to keep the country from further falling under the control of the irresponsible bondholders. Finally, in the year 1888, Sir Evelyn Baring wrote to the home government that the situation was so far improved that in his judgment "it would take a series of untoward ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... Bentley, the mightiest of English scholars, should fill no more space in the Encyclopaedic pantheon than Alford, who was hardly even the mightiest of English deans. But the fault was more probably with the rector's parsimony of words than with the editor. In 1877 he delivered a lecture, afterwards reprinted in one of the reviews, on Books and Critics. It is not without the usual piquancy and the usual cynicism, but he had ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... recently been severely taxed, but they appear never to have the heart to deny shelter and food, although they carry economy to such a height as would be styled by many of my affluent countrymen absolute parsimony; which is perceptible in all their transactions, and is in a great degree the cause of the miserable state of their agriculture, which is also in some measure owing to the utter ignorance of the farmers, who in all that tends towards improvement ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... would give up all we own were the glory or honour of England at stake. And yet you call us rebels, and accuse us of meanness and of parsimony. If you wish money, leave the matter to our colonial assemblies, and see how readily you will get it. But if you wish war, persist in trying to grind the spirit from a people who have in them the pride of your own ancestors. Yes, you are estranging ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Scarron's pension? Scarron asked that it be renewed; and Mazarin refused, bidding the wit to be of good cheer. Scarron replied, 'Monseigneur, I should indeed be in good cheer were I not positive that I shall not outlive your parsimony.'" ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... we should no doubt vindicate slavery, and inherit as a birthright all the evils it engrafts upon the character. If they lived on our rocky soil, and under our inclement skies, their shrewdness would sometimes border upon knavery, and their frugality sometimes degenerate into parsimony. We both have our virtues and our faults, induced by the influences under which we live, and, of course, totally different in their character. Our defects are bad enough; but they cannot, like slavery, affect the destiny and rights ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... a wrangling proctor in an Ecclesiastical Court, he had been a quarrelsome disputant rather than a statesman. His parsimony went to the extreme of meanness; his avarice was insatiable and restless. So long as he connived at smuggling, he reaped a harvest in that way; when Grenville's sternness inspired alarm, it was his study to make the most money ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... came to town, fully persuaded that fortune must necessarily change, and that next season he should reap the happy fruits of his experience. In this confidence, he seemed to drown all ideas of prudence and economy. His former expense was mere parsimony, compared with that which he now incurred. He subscribed to the opera, and half a dozen concerts at different parts of the town; was a benefactor to several hospitals; purchased a collection of valuable pictures; took a house, and furnished it in a most magnificent taste, laid in a large stock of ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... conception, by representing this being to ourselves as containing in itself, as an individual substance, all possible perfection—a conception which satisfies that requirement of reason which demands parsimony in principles, which is free from self-contradiction, which even contributes to the extension of the employment of reason in experience, by means of the guidance afforded by this idea to order and system, and which in no respect conflicts ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... assist her in doing the honors of the palace. They were Mesdames de Remusat, de Tallouet, de Lucay, and de Lauriston. Under the Empire they became ladies-in-waiting. Madame de Lauriston often raised a smile by little exhibitions of parsimony, but she was good and obliging. Madame de Remusat possessed great merit, and had sound judgment, though she appeared somewhat haughty, which was the more remarkable as M. de Remusat was exactly the reverse. Subsequently there ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... mind of Frederic William was so ill regulated that all his inclinations became passions, and all his passions partook of the character of moral and intellectual disease. His parsimony degenerated into sordid avarice. His taste for military pomp and order became a mania, like that of a Dutch burgomaster for tulips, or that of a member of the Roxburghe Club for Caxtons. While the envoys of the Court of Berlin were in a state of such ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... terrace. The furniture was hardly ancient, but yet antiquated and uncomfortable. Throughout the house, and indeed throughout the estate, there was sufficient evidence of wealth; and there certainly was no evidence of parsimony; but at Scroope Manor money seemed never to have produced luxury. The household was very large. There was a butler, and a housekeeper, and various footmen, and a cook with large wages, and maidens in tribes to wait upon each other, and a colony of gardeners, and ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... wonder; and all proceeds from your being in the grace of God in every deed, whose incomprehensible goodness is pleased with seeing you, in holiness of life and innocence of heart, cause to be restored in those proud countries, solemnity to Easters, abstinence to Lents, sobriety to Fridays, parsimony to Saturdays, fulfilment to vows, fasts to vigils, observances to seasons, chrism to creatures, unction to the dying, festivals to saints, images to churches, masses to altars, lights to lamps, organs to quires, benedictions to olives, robings to sacristies, and ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... escape of his vessel off Caphereus, and those of us whom he had invited attended the banquet in Piraeus. After the libations you went your several ways. I myself, as it was not very late, walked up to town for an afternoon stroll in Ceramicus, reflecting as I went on the parsimony of Mnesitheus. When the ship was driving against the cliff, and already inside the circle of reef, he had vowed whole hecatombs: what he offered in fact, with sixteen Gods to entertain, was a single cock—an old bird afflicted ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... Alarum to stir up the Government to be in full readiness to guard against a revengeful invasion of England by her old enemy. He had thought out the whole situation, he had planned the defences of England by land and sea, and his new favour at Court had enabled him to put pressure on the royal parsimony, and to insist that things should be done as he saw fit. He was perfectly right in thinking that Philip II. would rather suffer complete ruin than not try once more to recover his position in Europe, but he saw that the late losses at Cadiz would force the Catholic king to delay his ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... from that circumstance, naturally induced a favourable disposition towards his benefactors, their laws, and their institutions. Though the Padre was extremely liberal in his political opinions, his management of his worldly affairs bore the stamp of the most sordid parsimony. He worshipped the golden calf, and his adoration of the image was manifest in everything around him. He wore a cassock of cloth which had in former times been of a black colour, but was now of a dusky grey, the woollen material being so completely incorporated with dust ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... ambassadors of the Alemanni had been offended by the harsh and haughty behavior of Ursacius, master of the offices; who by an act of unseasonable parsimony, had diminished the value, as well as the quantity, of the presents to which they were entitled, either from custom or treaty, on the accession of a new emperor. They expressed, and they communicated to their countrymen, their strong sense of the national affront. The irascible minds of the chiefs ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... price had been given to him to cheer his melancholy fireside. Why has the poetic spirit of England folded its wings, and been content to abandon its brilliant region to the butterflies of albums, but that the spirit of England has suffered itself to be fettered by the red tape of a peddling parsimony? Should we have had a Shakspeare without the smiles of an Elizabeth, and the generosity of a Southampton? No. He would have split his pen after his first tragedy; have thrown his ink-stand into the Thames; have taken the carrier's cart to Stratford, and there finished his days in writing epitaphs ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... Uncle Gilbert would go to Dr. Leiser and have his parsimony removed he'd have more fun as he breezes ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart
... or three hundred taels, it would never be the proper thing; should this involve a breach of the main principles of decorum. With this course duly put into practice, outside, the accountancy will issue in one year four or five hundred taels less, without even the semblance of any parsimony; while, inside, the matrons will obtain, on the other hand, some little thing to supply their wants with; the nurses, who have no means of subsistence, will likewise be placed in easy circumstances; and the plants and trees in the garden will year by year increase in strength and grow ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... begin by pleading for more careful design, and less parsimony in expenditure upon the usual church adornments. It is once more a received dogma in ecclesiastical art, one in which all religious opinions agree, that the building in the parish which is set apart for the first public duty, that of worship, should show as much ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... (at which point I thought the judge's eye had a cast in my direction), was almost immaculate. There had been, he admitted, a trivial blemish or so in its rate of progress, but this was exaggerated and had been entirely owing to the "parsimony of the public," which guilty public, it appeared, had been until lately bent in the most determined manner on by no means enlarging the number of Chancery judges appointed—I believe by Richard the Second, but any other king will do ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... of our own supplies, by assisting our prisoners to maintain a luxurious scale of living while held as hostages, would certainly have forfeited the confidence of the public, and justly so. Upon the whole, it is safe to say that German sneers at British parsimony and Puritanism may fairly be accepted as tribute, and, as such, need in no sense ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... drawing to a close; and they had not conquered the King. They had not obtained even those advantages which they had expected from a policy obviously erroneous in a military point of view. They had wished to husband their resources. They now found that in enterprises like theirs, parsimony is the worst profusion. They had hoped to effect a reconciliation. The event taught them that the best way to conciliate is to bring the work of destruction to a speedy termination. By their moderation many lives and much property had been wasted. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... had arisen from making special appropriations for incorporated villages. Such appropriations, the superintendent had observed, excited prejudice and parsimony; for the trustees of some villages had learned to expend only the special appropriations for the education of the colored pupils, and to use the public money in establishing and maintaining schools ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... were tables laden with Chinese delicacies,—fish, flesh, fowl, tea, rice, whisky, lichee nuts, preserved limes, ginger, and other sweetmeats; all of which, when not proffered, could be easily purloined, for there was no spirit of parsimony or hostility afloat in the air. In cubby-holes back of the counters, behind the stoves, wherever they could find room for a table, groups of moon-eyed men began to congregate for their nightly game of fan-tan, ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... that we may assume the operation of higher causes where the operation of lower ones is sufficient to explain the observed phenomena, and all our science and all our philosophy are scattered to the winds. For the law of logic which Sir William Hamilton called the law of parsimony—or the law which forbids us to assume the operation of higher causes when lower ones are found sufficient to explain the observed effects—this law constitutes the only barrier between science and superstition. It is always possible ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... this was not clearly kept in view even in Germany that the volume before us is an exposition of a thesis which is novel in these islands, that it was not England that was unprepared, but Germany herself. For the confusion of objectives that led to this Tirpitz blames Bethmann's peace policy, the parsimony of the Reichstag, and the Emperor's failure to attain to ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... supposed amount of each item of expense. Those who are early accustomed to calculations of this kind, will acquire so accurate a knowledge of what their establishment demands, as will suggest the happy medium between prodigality and parsimony, without in the least subjecting themselves ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... feels acutely, and expresses strongly. Some of his attacks are evidently aimed at Nero, but his principal object is to denounce the vices of the times. Hence, indolence and prurient literature are stigmatised. He ridicules the extremes of extravagance, and of that parsimony by which it is usually accompanied. "Am I on a festive day to have a nettle dressed for me, and a smoked pig's cheek with a hole in its ear, in order that that grandson of yours may be surfeited with goose liver, and indulge in patrician amours. Am I to be a living ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... was considered to be opulent; and he did not dispel that favourable notion by any imprudent exhibition of parsimony. On entering the world of London, the Clubs flew open to receive him, and he woke one morning to find himself, not indeed famous—but the fashion. To this fashion he at once gave a certain gravity and value, he associated as much as possible with public men ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a methodical manner, his writings exhibit great parsimony of language. There is no fascination in his style. It is without ornament, and very condensed. His merit consisted in great logical precision and scrupulous exactness ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... possession at once without worrying about the waste of half a quarter. Olivier was more prudent, though not less ardent in their friendship, and thought it better to wait until their respective tenancies had expired. Christophe could not understand such parsimony. Like many people who have no money, he never worried about losing it. He imagined that Olivier was even worse off than himself. One day when his friend's poverty had been brought home to him he left him suddenly and returned a few ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... and the language in this sentence are pretty nearly on a par; for as misery makes men acquainted with dissimilar companions, why may not parsimony conglutinate heterogeneous compositions? I venture to deny altogether that the engraved border on the title-page was executed by an English artist. It seems rather to be an original imitation of Holbein's design: and as regards the date, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various
... initiate me in commerce, and, opening one of his subterranean treasuries, counted out ten thousand pieces of gold. This, young man, said he, is the stock with which you must negotiate. I began with less than the fifth part, and you see how diligence and parsimony have increased it. This is your own, to waste or to improve. If you squander it by negligence or caprice, you must wait for my death, before you will be rich: if, in four years, you double your stock, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... books "filled thirteen handsome chambers, and two long galleries." Osborne the bookseller purchased them for L13,000: a sum little more than two thirds of the price of the binding, as paid by Lord Oxford. The bookseller was accused of injustice and parsimony; but the low prices which he afterwards affixed to the articles, and the tardiness of their sale, are sufficient refutations of this charge. Osborne opened his shop for the inspection of the books on Tuesday the 14th of February, 1744; for fear "of the curiosity of the spectators, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the intricacies of Kant, Kreis reminded him that all good little German philosophies when they died went to Oxford. A little later Norton reminded them of Hamilton's Law of Parsimony, the application of which they immediately claimed for every reasoning process of theirs. And Martin hugged his knees and exulted in it all. But Norton was no Spencerian, and he, too, strove for Martin's philosophic soul, talking as much at him as ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... parsimony that made the old gentleman "hem and haw" over Janice Day's proposal. Naturally, an innovation of any kind would have made him shy, but especially one calculated to yield any pleasure ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... his parsimony, he generally indulged himself in a glass of bitters, of which he was very fond, whenever he went to the village. His parsimony stood him in good stead in one respect, at least, for it ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... and so forth, that were crammed with homespun cloth and linen, tanned and undressed sheepskins, dried fish, and every conceivable species of produce. Nevertheless, such a phenomenon is rare in Russia, where the tendency is rather to prodigality than to parsimony. ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... cause with a liberality excelled only by the digger; he will pay gambling debts with the easy, careless grace which makes every P. of W. so popular in English sporting circles—in a word, the smallest of his many sins is parsimony. But the penal suggestiveness of trespass— penalty touches the sullen dignity of his nature; and the vague, but well-grounded fear of a law made and administered solely by his natural enemies makes him feel about as apprehensive as John Bunyan, though certainly more dangerous. ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... shake off the pinching necessity of years. A wealthy uncle who had refused to help him whilst he lived, bequeathed all his money to him when he died. But when late in life the nephew became rich, habits of parsimony were a second nature, and seemed to have grown chronic and exaggerated under the novel anxieties of wealth. He still 'starved—and bought books.' During the last years of his life he consulted my mother (and, I fancy, other people also) on the merits of various public charities in the place ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... a single article of luxury in the house which he had not in some way got rid of. Parsimony reigned unchecked in the hotel Graslin. The master's face, greatly improved during the three years spent with his wife (who induced him to follow his physician's advice), now became redder, more fiery, more blotched than before. Business had taken such proportions that it was necessary to promote ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... whispered significantly, "The missionaries always used to be entertained at the brick house; your grandfather never would let 'em sleep anywheres else when he was alive." She meant this for a stab at Miss Miranda's parsimony, remembering the four spare chambers, closed from January to December; but Rebecca thought it was intended as a suggestion. If it had been a former custom, perhaps her aunts would want her to do the ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... were properly understood throughout the country, and excited a glow of enthusiasm in his favor. The Legislature, too, began at length to act, but timidly and inefficiently. "The country knows her danger," writes one of the members, "but such is her parsimony that she is willing to wait for the rains to wet the powder, and the rats to eat the bowstrings of the enemy, rather than attempt to drive them ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... the talk about the imperial cities is mere boasting. I am famous, admired and loved here, it is true, but the people are worse than the Viennese in their parsimony." ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... building worthy of her ancient fame, worthy to increase the love and honor in which she is held,—a building that adds a new beauty to her old beauties of hall and chapel, of quadrangle and cloister. She does not mistake parsimony for economy; she does not neglect to regard the duty that lies upon her, as the guardian and instructress of youth, to set before their eyes models of fair proportion, noble structures which shall exercise at once an influence to refine the taste and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... or of private producers the property which otherwise they must at once consume or allow to lie idle. Eventually, however, the minority came over to the view of the majority, who preferred to fix the maximum higher than was necessary, rather than by untimely parsimony expose the commonwealth to the danger of seeing the capital withdrawn which could be so profitably used in the equipment of production. The voting was influenced by the consideration that we, as the first, outside of Freeland, among whom capital would receive no interest, ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... what can be said of it? I was without the pale of fortune, although several of my school-mates, who had established themselves in London, acquired, by dint of perseverance, parsimony and servility, affluent 23circumstances; convinced, however, that I was not destined to acquire wealth and honour, and being unsolaced even with the necessaries of life, I abandoned in London all hope of success, and emigrated to Ireland, where I ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... its meetings with reference to the appearance of the great actress." How one would have enjoyed hearing that Scotsman say, after one of her most splendid flights of tragic passion, "That's no bad!" We have read of her dismay at this ludicrous parsimony of praise, but her self-respect must have been restored when the Edinburgh ladies fainted by dozens during her impersonation of Isabella in ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... Titles. Cromwell's wife was, as a matter of fact, very averse to all grandeur and state. The satires of the time laugh at her homeliness and parsimony. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... act of refusing to vote the supplies was in itself a species of treason. To more practical people this act presented itself in a different aspect. It seemed to them indicative of a niggard and ruinous parsimony. They gazed with ill-concealed envy at the marvellous prosperity of the neighbouring State of New York. Any one crossing the Canadian frontier in that direction at once became aware that he had passed from a land of comparative stagnation to a land of activity and progress. This contrast had ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... Such was the parsimony exercised by the great Monarch towards a woman who had laboured strenuously for French interests so long as her sway over Charles of England lasted, and which sway only ceased with his life. "Therein she employed unceasingly all her talent for politics, all her fascinations, all her wit," says ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... greatest experience, the difference in the thriving of the different lots upon the same keep is great. They must not be oppressed with having too many in charge, or the owner will suffer by his ill-judged parsimony. From August till November a man may take care of, and pull turnips for, thirty cattle very well, or a few more, if the cattle are loose; but when the day gets short, twenty to twenty-five is as many as one man can feed, to do them justice, if tied up. Good cattlemen are invaluable. They must ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie
... by an appeal to the Local Government Board, and that it was needful is seen from the fact that under Wyndham's Act only 25 cottages were built. It is hoped thereby to circumvent the apathy of District Councils, and their parsimony is to be appeased by the fact that the funds, which are largely derived from economics in the Irish Executive are advanced at a rate of interest, not as heretofore of 4-7/8 per cent., but, as in the case of land purchase advances, of 3-1/4 per cent., repayable in a period of ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... get is saving, so that by habit there may be some hopes (if I grow richer) of my becoming a miser. All misers have their excuses. The motive to my parsimony is independence."[7] ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... doubt but that the larger sums are nearest the truth; indeed, the grants and charters still in existence, or noticed by historians, would rather lead to the supposition that the revenues must have been even greater. Parsimony in the endowment of religious buildings, was not a prevailing vice in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Least of all was it likely that it should be practised in the case of establishments, thus founded in expiation of the transgressions of wealthy and powerful ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... extreme carelessness and inattention which, on visiting properties, the works and buildings present to our view. It is utterly impossible to manufacture good produce unless the machinery and buildings are kept in good order; and the parsimony which is thus displayed in this necessary outlay is fallacious, when one thinks of the result of one or two shillings per 100 lbs. lost on a crop through ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... nor even smokes a pipe there, always asserting that whatever the Emir possesses has been unlawfully obtained. There are different degrees of Akal, and women are also admitted into the order, a privilege which many avail themselves of, from parsimony, as they are thus exempted from wearing the expensive head-dress and rich silks ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... though perhaps natural. Pyotr Petrovitch had despised and hated him from the day he came to stay with him and at the same time he seemed somewhat afraid of him. He had not come to stay with him on his arrival in Petersburg simply from parsimony, though that had been perhaps his chief object. He had heard of Andrey Semyonovitch, who had once been his ward, as a leading young progressive who was taking an important part in certain interesting circles, the doings of which were a legend in the ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the majority of directors of institutions where music forms a feature is well known; as are their instinctive aversion to whatever disturbs old-established customs, their indifference to the interests of art, their parsimony wherever an outlay for music is needed, and the utter ignorance of the principles of our art among those in whose hands rests the ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... his estimate of the danger, and of the immediate evils which produced it. He was right in thinking that want of method, want of control, want of confidence, and an untimely parsimony, prevented severity from having a fair chance of preparing a platform for reform and conciliation. He was right in his conviction of the inveterate treachery of the Irish Chiefs, partly the result of ages of mismanagement, ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... formed of her character. In her honesty he placed every confidence, and permitted her to manage his money and regulate his expenses; but this was merely because her frugality and economic habits gratified his parsimony, and fostered one of his strongest passions, which was avarice. There was something about this amiable creature that won powerfully upon the affections of Ellen Neil; and in entrusting her with the secret of her love, she she felt assured that she had not misplaced it. Their private conversations, ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... praising the man's parsimony, he archly ridicules it; introduces Grosphus to him, and concludes with a few articles of news concerning the ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... will never mention a word of it." Jones was going to rebuke him, but the stranger prevented it by proceeding thus: "I had a chum, a very prudent, frugal young lad, who, though he had no very large allowance, had by his parsimony heaped up upwards of forty guineas, which I knew he kept in his escritore. I took therefore an opportunity of purloining his key from his breeches-pocket, while he was asleep, and thus made myself master of all his riches: after which I again conveyed his key into his pocket, and ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... an occasion presented itself for some rapid and abrupt action: catching a running dog by the tail, pulling off a woman's kerchief, or jumping over a big hole. It need hardly be said that with such parsimony of movement Savka was as poor as a mouse and lived worse than any homeless outcast. As time went on, I suppose he accumulated arrears of taxes and, young and sturdy as he was, he was sent by the commune to do an old man's job—to be watchman and scarecrow in the kitchen ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... judge. He appeared not to see any one in the court-room, though Kitty Tynan had so placed herself that he must see her if he looked at the audience at all. Kitty thought him magnificent as he told his story with a simple parsimony but a careful choice of words which made every syllable poignant with effect. She liked him in his grave mood even better than when he was aflame with an internal fire of his own creation, when he was almost wildly ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... We thus seem to be reduced to the conclusion that Justin's Gospel or Gospels was an unknown entity of which no historical evidence survives, and this would almost be enough, according to the logical Law of Parsimony, to drive us back upon the assumption that our present Gospels only had been used. This assumption however still does not appear to me wholly satisfactory, for reasons which will come out more clearly when from considering the matter of the ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... which we have immediate intuition, is a theory of the greatest practical importance and validity. By its light we carry on all our affairs, and the success of our action while we rely upon it is the best proof of its truth. The imaginative parsimony and discipline which such a theory involves are balanced by the immense extension and certitude it gives to knowledge. It is at once an act of allegiance to nature and a Magna Charta which mind imposes ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... a methodical manner, yet there is great parsimony of language. There is no fascination in his style. It is without ornament, and very condensed. His merit consisted in great logical precision, and scrupulous exactness in ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... free-handed and careless, of course had his share, and though no great one, one quite enough to alarm his scrupulous and conscientious mother. She had some savings; Pen's magnificent self-denial, and her own economy amounting from her great simplicity and avoidance of show to parsimony almost, had enabled her to put by a little sum of money, a part of which she delightedly consecrated to the paying off the young gentleman's obligations. At this price, many a worthy youth and respected reader would hand ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... obstinate mouth. His dress was severely, obstinately, contemptuously plain. Again it was as if the King said, This is not the greatness or the glory of France! But love and care had redeemed the derisive parsimony. All the lad wore was exquisitely neat and the very severity lent the little figure a ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... inconveniences would attend such a system. The States, to whose lot it might fall to support the necessary establishments, would be as little able as willing, for a considerable time to come, to bear the burden of competent provisions. The security of all would thus be subjected to the parsimony, improvidence, or inability of a part. If the resources of such part becoming more abundant and extensive, its provisions should be proportionally enlarged, the other States would quickly take the alarm at seeing the whole military force of the Union in the hands ...
— The Federalist Papers
... remarkable genius of the great man who infused courage into the English mind, there can be no question. Marlborough, in spite of his many faults, his selfishness and parsimony, his ambition and duplicity, will ever enjoy an enviable fame. He was not so great a moral hero as William, nor did he contend against such superior forces as the royal hero. But he was a great hero, nevertheless. His glory was reached by no sudden indulgence of fortune, by no fortunate ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... great but irregular efforts and produced a forced smartness that, like a cheap dye, refused to stand sunshine. He acquired a sort of parsimony also, in which acquisition he was helped by one or two phases of absolute impecuniosity. But he was hopeless in competition against the naturally gifted, the born hustlers, the young men who meant ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... others. As a lad he lacked frankness, and in later life was disingenuous and intriguing. When he was displeased his temper was sullen and resentful. He was always overcareful about money, and in old age this tendency developed into parsimony. His education was deficient; it had not been carried on steadily, and he had been allowed to indulge a constitutional inertness. Though he overcame this habit, the time which he had lost could not be made up for, and ideas which might have ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... illustrate, it nevertheless appears to the writer that the effect may be even harmful to the people at large, if it be permitted to conceal the deeply mortifying condition to which the country was reduced by parsimony in preparation, or to obscure the lessons thence to be drawn for practical application now. It is perhaps useless to quarrel with the tendency of mankind to turn its eyes from disagreeable subjects, and to dwell complacently upon those which minister ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... all priceless. In the third drawer lay an unset emerald, worth a king's ransom, a clasp of two amethysts, and a necklace of black pearls graduated to a hair's-breadth. By this time I could see—I read it even in the exquisite parsimony of the collection—that I had to deal with an artist, and sighed that in this world artists should prey upon one another. The fourth drawer was reserved for miniatures, the most of them circleted with diamonds: the fifth for snuff-boxes-gold snuffboxes bearing royal ciphers, ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... had its habitues and each veranda its traditions. There was but one single porch, in fact, facing its stately trees whereon no flocks of birds, old or young, ever alighted, and that belonged to Peter Skimmerton—the meanest man in town—who in a fit of parsimony over candles, so the girls said, had bared his porch of every protesting vine and had placed opposite his door-step a glaring street gas-lamp—-a monstrous ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... commander like myself, with a wife and seven children, and that, struggling for many years to support them, you found yourself, notwithstanding the utmost parsimony, gradually running into debt. That, after many long applications, you had at last succeeded in obtaining employment by an appointment to a fine sloop, and there was every prospect, by prize-money and increased pay, ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... of Ruy Gomez. He is very discreet and amiable, and possesses much authority and learning. By his agreeable manners, he goes on tampering and disguising much of the disgust which people would feel at the king's slowness and sordid parsimony. Through his hands have passed all the affairs of Italy, and also those of Flanders, ever since this country has been governed by Don Juan, who promotes his interests greatly, as do, still more, the Archbishop of Toledo and the Marquis de ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... at Courcy. He had as yet taken to himself no wife, and as he had not hitherto made himself conspicuously useful in any special walk of life his family were beginning to regard him as a burden. Having no income of his own to save, he had not copied his brother's virtue of parsimony; and, to tell the truth plainly, had made himself so generally troublesome to his father, that he had been on more than one occasion threatened with expulsion from the family roof. But it is not ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... private income, but lived on his pay, without allowing himself the slightest luxury. Moreover, he was reserved and ambitious, and his companions rarely had an opportunity of making merry at the expense of his extreme parsimony. He had strong passions and an ardent imagination, but his firmness of disposition preserved him from the ordinary errors of young men. Thus, though a gamester at heart, he never touched a card, for he considered ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... seashore, and also built everywhere throughout the suburbs, as if the palaces, in which their predecessors had always been content to live, were no longer suitable for himself and Theodora; so that it was not merely parsimony, but a desire for the destruction of human life, that prevented him from repairing the aqueduct, for no one, from most ancient times, had ever shown himself more eager than Justinian to amass wealth, and at the same time to spend it in a most wasteful and extravagant ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius
... baneful in its consequences, it was less disgustful in its progress than avarice; yet, insuperably averse to both, and almost equally desirous to fly from the unjust extravagance of Mr Harrel, as from the comfortless and unnecessary parsimony of Mr Briggs, she proceeded instantly to St James's Square, convinced that her third guardian, unless exactly resembling one of the others, must inevitably be ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... deprecation, but which came to be considered a polite acknowledgement. His real name was not known in Muirtown—not because he had not given it, but because it could not be pronounced, being largely composed of x's and k's, with an irritating parsimony of vowels. We had every opportunity of learning to spell it, if we could not pronounce it, for it was one of the Count's foreign ways to carry a card-case in his ticket-pocket, and on being introduced to an inhabitant of Muirtown to ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... little remained to them and depart thence; which accordingly they did. Without leave-taking, or any ceremony, they quitted Florence; nor did they rest until they had arrived in England and established themselves in a small house in London, where, by living with extreme parsimony and lending at exorbitant usances, they prospered so well that in the course of a few years they amassed a fortune; and so, one by one, they returned to Florence, purchased not a few of their former estates besides many others, and married. The management ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... title of Rosati. A few men of merit, a great number of youths, and some useless members. Too many futile readings, too many fugitive verses, too many little rivalships. It is faulty on account of its regulations, the basis of which is weak, and it exhibits too much parsimony in its expenses. It has not enough of that public consideration which perpetuates establishments of this description. Under such circumstances, it is to be apprehended that it ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... state queests, or enjoys a harmless chit-chat with her, and then retires. This custom meets with the perfect sanction of the most circumspect parents, and the freedom is seldom abused. The author traces its origin to the parsimony of the people, whose economy considers fire and candles as superfluous luxuries in the ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... at this local hit at the old man's parsimony, and Wise, who was clearly the privileged wit of the family, sank back in ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... $3,000 offered to the council was increased to $9,000, about one-half of the existing funds; the Samoan Government, which was to profit by the customs, now agreed to bear the expenses of collection; the President, while refusing to be limited to a specific figure, promised an anxious parsimony in the Government expenditure, admitted his recent conduct had been of a nature to irritate the councillors, and frankly proposed it should be brought under the notice of the Powers. I should not be a fair reporter if ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... disagreeable to the old man. This had the effect of cutting down the intended allowance of L250 to L220 per annum, for which sum the father had been told that his son could live like a gentleman at the University. This parsimony so disgusted uncle Babington, who lived on the other side of the county, within the borders of Suffolk, that he insisted on giving his nephew a hunter, and an undertaking to bear the expense of the animal as long as John should remain at the University. No arrangement could ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... slovenliness and laziness displayed by his servants. He would marry Ramon to Bernarda—an ugly, ill-humored, yellowish, skinny creature—but sole heiress to her father's three beautiful orchards. Besides, she was conspicuous for her industrious, economical ways, and a parsimony in her expenditures that came pretty close ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... received such an accumulating amount of money, some other party must pay it, and to pay it must make it. In fact, the doctor looked on the increase of money by compound interest as a mere arithmetical process. The world, however, finds it to be a process of working, and the making of money by toil, parsimony, ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... for the three years before her mother's death there had been surreptitious lessons from a Portland teacher, paid for out of Mr. Lord's house allowance; for one of his chief faults was an incredible parsimony, ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... opposed to aristocracies and so-called privileged classes, because they are opposed to the masses. They make inequalities, out of which grow all the miseries of society, because there is no limit to their avarice, parsimony and cruelty. So they thrive, all the rest of humanity may go to the dogs; so they revel in luxury and debauchery, all the rest of humanity may revel in poverty, vice and crime; so they enjoy all the blessings of organized society, all the rest of humanity may bear its curses. Man ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... Pop with parsimony and he charged her with recklessness. She accused him of trying to tie them down to a village; he accused her of trying to drive him to bankruptcy. She demanded to know whether he wanted his children to be like ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... young doctor are very oddly contrasted with each other. I should not be surprised at any time to hear that he had endowed a scholarship or professorship or built a college dormitory, in spite of his curious parsimony in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... at some time or other been subjected to the awkward moment when the waiter presents the check to the host. For a host to count up the items is suggestive of parsimony, while not to look at them is disconcertingly reckless, and to pay before their faces for what his guests have eaten is embarrassing. Having the check presented to a hostess when gentlemen are among her guests, ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post |
