IMPOVERISH • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Impoverish

"Impoverish" Quotes from Famous Books

... of the Chinese at home to make offerings to beggar spirits as well as to their own relatives. If any great misfortune happens to a man, he thinks he must have neglected or offended some dead relative, or perhaps one of these beggar spirits; and will impoverish himself for years, to atone for it by a great feast. They are very much afraid of the spirits, and build their houses with intricate passages, and put up screens, to keep them from seeing what happens; and they especially avoid openings north and south, as they think the spirits move only ...

— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton

... teaching, the property-owners as a class are useless idlers who impoverish the workers and who shamelessly spend their whole income on demoralising luxuries. "The idlers and non-workers produce no wealth and take the greater share. They live on the labour of those who work. Nothing is produced by idleness; ...

— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... religion under the head of play, and by that epithet condemning them, as a certain school seems to do, to gradual extinction as the race approaches maturity. But if all the useless ornaments of our life are to be cut off in the process of adaptation, evolution would impoverish instead of enriching our nature. Perhaps that is the tendency of evolution, and our barbarous ancestors amid their toils and wars, with their flaming passions and mythologies, lived better lives than are reserved ...

— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana

... us is that, in our efforts to sell ourselves for selfish ends or for the most dollars, we impoverish our own lives, stifle ...

— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... not now quite know what to do. He certainly did not wish to impoverish the Church by marrying Miss Mackenzie without any fortune. But might it not all be a trick? That she had been rich he knew, and how could she have become ...

— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope

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