Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Frugal   Listen
adjective
Frugal  adj.  
1.
Economical in the use or appropriation of resources; not wasteful or lavish; wise in the expenditure or application of force, materials, time, etc.; characterized by frugality; sparing; economical; saving; as, a frugal housekeeper; frugal of time. "I oft admire How Nature, wise and frugal, could commit Such disproportions."
2.
Obtained by, or appropriate to, economy; as, a frugal fortune. "Frugal fare."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Frugal" Quotes from Famous Books



... to good account with Robert's help. The present owner had made a fortune by it, and after thirty years of business, he was thinking of retiring to one of the ornamental cottages in the outskirts of the city, a usual retreat for the frugal and successful working man. Michael had not indeed the two thousand francs which must be paid down; but perhaps he could have persuaded Master Benoit to wait. Robert's presence would have been a security for him; for the young man could not fail to insure the prosperity ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur

... granted to the Church; the O'Byrnes of Wicklow commuted for 15,000 pounds, and the London Companies, for their Derry estates, paid no less than 70,000 pounds: a forced contribution for which those frugal citizens never forgave the thorough-going Deputy. By these means, and others less violent, such as bounties to the linen trade, he raised the annual revenue of the kingdom to 80,000 pounds a year, and was enabled to embody ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... about for some time, and at length the savory odor of the frugal breakfast she was preparing reached him, and at that moment ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey

... Give's more drink, give's more drink, boys. Let those that are frugal take care; Our gaolers and we will live by our chink, boys, While our creditors live by the air; Here we live at our ease, And get craft and grease, 'Till we've merrily spent all our store; Then, as drink brought us ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay

... dress and with only his sling in his hand. So there he stands, drawn for us with wonderful vividness, in one hand his staff, in the other his sling, both familiar and often used, and by his side the simple wallet which had held his frugal meal, and now received the smooth pebbles that he picked up as he passed the gulley to the Philistine ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... these children of bondage were not of the most exemplary character. Each family, who wished it, had a small lot of ground set apart as a garden in some district bordering upon the mountains, where those who were frugal and industrious cultivated yams, cassava, plantains, and other varieties of vegetables or fruit, which were sold to managers of estates, or carried to the nearest town on a Sunday and sold in the market place. In this way some of the most thrifty could supply all reasonable wants, and even indulge ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... curly hair in some of the younger ones. The soft curling hair Mr. Bernard had inherited,—something, perhaps, of the high spirit; but that we shall have a chance of finding out by and by. But the long sermons and the frugal board of his Brahmin ancestry, with his own habits of study, had told upon his color, which was subdued to something more of delicacy than one would care to see in a young fellow with rough work before him. This, however, made him look more interesting, or, as the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... as he thought of those savings. Certainly the children had not cost what was paid for them. He began to be oddly exercised this Sunday morning on the subject of the porridge Louie hated so much. Was it his fault or Hannah's if the frugal living which had been the rule for all the remoter farms of the Peak—nay, for the whole north country—in his father's time, and had been made doubly binding, as it were, on the dwellers in Needham Farm by James Grieve's Scotch blood and habits, had survived ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the Convention at Sendomer. The union, which prevails both among the congregations, and the individuals which compose them, their modest and humble carriage, their moderation in lucrative pursuits, the simplicity of their manners, their laborious industry, their frugal habits, their ardent but mild piety, and their regular discharge of all their spiritual observances, are universally acknowledged and admired. Their charities are boundless, their kindness to their poor brethren is most edifying; there ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler

... irregular compartments by means of slanting, upright or curved partitions, subject to the dictates of space. There is no art, consequently, in the accumulation of little cells; the architect's only task is to use the breadth at her disposal in a frugal manner. The material employed for the partitions is a green, vegetable putty, which the Osmia must obtain by chewing the shredded leaves of a plant whose nature is still uncertain. The same green paste serves for the thick plug that closes the abode. But in this case the insect does not ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... Nat; "and that is the reason I doubt the truth of Dr. Franklin's remark. Some of the most industrious and frugal people in the ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer

... outer life of the new teacher, a severity marked by his plain black robe and the frugal table which he preserved amidst his later dignities, his lively conversation, his frank simplicity, the purity and nobleness of his life, even the keen outbursts of his troublesome temper, endeared him to a group of scholars, foremost among whom ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green

... woman, he would have treated the prediction as mere folly. To go far enough back in accounting for this one would arrive at the female sort, sterling and arid, that had presided over his childhood and represented the sex to his youth, the Aunt Lizzie, widowed and frugal and spare, who had brought him up; the Janet Wilson, who had washed and mended him from babyhood, good gaunt creature half-servant and half-friend—the mature respectable women and impossible blowsy ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... squares of glass with lead is little used in Scotland, and in some places is totally forgotten. The frames of their windows are all of wood. They are more frugal of their glass than the English, and will often, in houses not otherwise mean, compose a square of two pieces, not joining like cracked glass, but with one edge laid perhaps half an inch over the other. Their windows do not move upon hinges, but are pushed up and ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson

... already have imbibed Calvinism from him. He was not yet—he never was—a full-blown Presbyterian, and, while thinking nothing of "orders," would not have rejected a bishop, if the bishop preached and was of godly and frugal life. Already sermons were the most important part of public worship ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang

... circumstantial influences, had made him quite exclusively an American and a republican; when he began to give expression, therefore, to his mind, he was unimpeded and unstimulated by anything outside of the horizon of his frugal life; he was not so much opposed to foreign culture as he was absolutely ignorant of it; and in his career we are called upon to observe the growth of a mind as nearly native as was possible. If I am not ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder

... peons in this country. That is the question into the answer of which so much prejudice enters that it is hardly worth while to reason about it. My opinion is that as the colored man gets land, becomes chaste, frugal, temperate, industrious, veracious, that he will gradually acquire respect, and will attain political equality. Let us not be in a hurry. Evils, if they be evils, which have existed from the foundation of the world, are ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... to the shore, where the deep blue water came softly rippling upon the sand, they sat down to their frugal breakfast by the spring, carefully husbanding the supplies, and then with enough provision to keep them for about a couple of days, they started off, this provision being the only luggage they had to carry, what few ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn

... like to putter 'round the walks and yards of life, To spray at night the roses that are burned and browned with strife; To eat a frugal dinner, but always to have a chair For the unexpected stranger that my simple meal would share. I don't care to be a traveler, I would rather be the one Sitting calmly by the roadside helping weary ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest

... nations of Europe generally, belong. They belong to a far older division of the human family—the Turanian—and were doubtless in possession of Europe long before the Indo-European nations commenced their westward migrations from Central Asia. They are described as being brave, industrious, and frugal, with patriarchal manners and habits. They scorn authority, except what emanates from themselves, and have but few nobility. They are impetuous, merry, and hospitable, fond of music and dancing. Of their warfare we are told they are "not distinguished in open warfare, but unconquerable ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... ground became rougher. Steadily it ascended toward the mountains, into which they filed through a narrow canon close to noon. By the side of a little rivulet Gernois called the midday halt. Here the men prepared and ate their frugal meal, ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Douglas, who spoke as with the voice of a million, he instantly called a meeting of Congress, and summoned the people to come up and repossess the forts, places, and property which had been seized from the Union. The men of the North were trained in schools; industrious and frugal; many of them delicately bred, their minds teeming with ideas and fertile in plans of enterprise; given to the culture of the arts; eager in the pursuit of wealth, yet employing wealth less for ostentation than for developing the resources of their country; ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various

... seems to have had no prepared itinerary, but to have wandered as the spirit moved her—Naples, Leghorn, Turin, Genoa. The cheapness of Italy appealed to her frugal mind. ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville

... some wood that had floated down the stream from the mountains and was sparingly scattered along the shores of the river near to the camp. This was brought in, when small fires were made over which their frugal meal was prepared, after which the men lay down to rest. Many persons there are who would think that after escaping such perils once, it would take very great inducements to make them thus expose themselves ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... an object of universal human interest is infinitely loftier than the corporeal enjoyments of the passing moment, that the fete in its essence is only the proclamation of a great idea, and so we ought to be content with the most frugal German ball simply as a symbol, that is, if we can't dispense with this detestable ball altogether," so great was the aversion she suddenly conceived for it. But she was pacified at last. It was then that "the literary quadrille" and the other ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... hunger. Fortunately I had shot a crow in the morning, and now, gathering a few wild greens that grew about the water, I cooked a breakfast for myself and the native without being obliged to draw upon my little store of flour. This frugal repast having been washed down by a few mouthfuls of water, I resumed my meditations of ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey

... frugal, modest, fair, As lilies by her burnies growin'; An' ilka swain may here repair, Whase heart wi' virt'ous love is glowin'. Fife, an' a' the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... that offered. Now was disclosed an astonishing variety. There were sandwiches, of course, and a salad, and the tea, but wonderful to contemplate was a deep dish of potted quail, row after row of them, with delicious white sauce. In place of the frugal bite or so that would have left us alert and fit for an afternoon's work, we ate until nothing remained. Then we lit pipes and lay on our backs, and contemplated a cloudless sky. It was the warm time of day. The horses snoozed, a hind leg tucked up; ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... have heard Violet babbling on during the evening, of the clothes she would buy for the youngsters, about the good times they would have with the money, about the ways they were going to spend the little fortune that was theirs, Laura Van Dorn—thrifty, frugal, shrewd Laura, might have helped the thoughtless woman before it was too late. But even if Laura had interfered, it would have been but for a few months or a ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... a little of Norway. The same austere and frugal beauty—the same bare valley floors. But no pines, no ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Their principal occupation is the rearing of cattle and horses. The Buriat horse is famous for its power of endurance, and the attachment between master and animal is very great. At death the horse should, according to their religion, be sacrificed at its owner's grave; but the frugal Buriat heir usually substitutes an old hack, or if he has to tie up the valuable steed to the grave to starve he does so only with the thinnest of cords so that the animal soon breaks his tether and gallops off to join the other horses. In some districts the Buriats ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... are not freeholders, they earn wages; these wages accumulate, are turned into capital, into new freeholds, and small capitalists are created. Such is the case, and such the course of things, among the industrious and frugal. And what can these people think when so respectable and worthy a gentleman as the member from Louisiana undertakes to prove that the absolute ignorance and the abject slavery of the South are more in conformity with the high purposes and destiny ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... long hours drag on as he paced up and down the room, or sat by the flickering logs, which threw out but a moderate degree of heat. His frugal meals were soon despatched, and at last evening came. He had tried the bars of his window more than once, but his utmost exertion of strength could not shake one of them. No; he must abide in that prison until released from without. ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson

... eventually retire on the Civil List. Eccentricity is the breath of their nostrils, their very existence depends upon it, publicity is essential. My friend's eccentricity was for his own pleasure. He lived in a frugal—some might think in a miserly way—in two rooms in one of the Inns of Court. Perhaps I shall be more correct if I say he existed in one. A loaf of bread and half a pint of milk was his daily fare. The room he slept in he worked ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... After a frugal meal with his mother, and the planting of a kiss of unusual warmth upon her cheek, Ensal stepped forth for his day's duties. As he went out of his gate he noticed a white man across the street acting as though he was sketching his (Ensal's) home. Feeling that he was warranted in having ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs

... would be unfair to withhold the praise of Benjamin West (who succeeded Reynolds as President of the Royal Academy)—a painter, prudent in speech, and frugal in commendation. "I remember, when I was a lad," says Smith, in his account of Nollekens, "asking the late venerable President West what he thought of Hogarth's Analysis of Beauty, and his answer was, 'It is a work of the highest ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies

... Discourse on Civil and Penal Legislation (1802), Punishments and Rewards (1811), Parliamentary Reform Catechism (1817), and A Treatise on Judicial Evidence. By the death of his f. he inherited a competency on which he was able to live in frugal elegance, not unmixed with eccentricity. B. is the first and perhaps the greatest of the "philosophical radicals," and his fundamental principle is utilitarianism or "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," a phrase of which he ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... pioneers from Connecticut who put up their old fashioned log houses in Wyoming were George Ripley and his wife Ruth. They were young, frugal, industrious, and worthy people. They had but one child—a boy named Benjamin; but after awhile Alice was added to the family, and at the date of which I am telling you she was six years and her brother thirteen ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis

... was the real Epicurus, not a seeker after effeminate luxury, but a chaste and frugal philosopher, serene of mien, and of gentle disposition, firm in his friendships, but sacrificing to them none of the high ideals which characterized his thought. He erred, doubtless, in the avoidance of responsibilities and in narrowing his efforts to promoting the happiness ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.

... Monarch's to the Muses' Court, Their meals were frugal and their sleeps were short; To couch at curfew time they thought no scorn, And froze at matins every ...
— The Charm of Oxford • J. Wells

... despair of guardians of the street when assailed by showers of eggs and overripe lo-quats, or any other variety of humiliating pain inflicted upon the innocent and unwary, never fail to win approval. The prosperous and substantial find contentment in hearing of the unassuming virtues and frugal lives of the poor and unsuccessful. Those of humble origin, especially tea-house maidens and the like, are only really at home among stories of the exalted and quick-moving, the profusion of their robes, the magnificence of their palaces, and the general high-minded ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah

... of the ley of your own potash; fat you get from your pigs or your sheep, which supply you with candles and food; and by and by the good ox and the fatted calf, the turkey, the goose, and the chicken, give your frugal board an air of gourmandism; whilst in this climate all the English garden vegetables and common fruits require only a little care to bring them to perfection. Indian corn and buckwheat make excellent cakes and hominy; and you take your own wheat ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... daughter, did not exceed three thousand francs. No life could be more regular; the old man rose as soon as it was light, breakfasted on bread rubbed with a clove of garlic, and ate no more food until dinner-time. Dinner, a meal frugal enough for a convent, he took at home. All the forenoons he spent among his treasures, walking up and down the gallery where they hung in their glory. He would dust everything himself, furniture ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... the date-stones fell; and each time he threw one, she examined the Frenchman with an eye of commercial distrust. [Footnote: An eye of commercial distrust. Explain this term.] However, the examination seemed to be favorable to him, for, when he had eaten his frugal meal, she licked his boots with her powerful, rough tongue, cleaning off the dust, which was caked in the wrinkles, in a ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... life and undoubted piety, lived a Court society as dissolute as our country ever knew. George II's bad morals bore their fruit in George III's early years; as I believe that a knowledge of that good man's example, his moderation, his frugal simplicity, and God-fearing life, tended infinitely to improve the morals of the country ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... and of which he partook with Mrs. Tinker. "You see, Miss Sharp, when I'm not here Tinker's on board wages: when I'm in town she dines with the family. Haw! haw! I'm glad Miss Sharp's not hungry, ain't you, Tink?" And they fell to upon their frugal supper. ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... from the East-Indies, and what other useful curiosities do not approach our northern Bear, (and that are yet incicurabiles amongst us) and to plant them in Jamaica, and other of the Western Islands, as a more safe and frugal expedient to humble our emulous neighbours; since there is nothing in their situation, or defect of nature's benignity, which ought in the least to discourage us: And what if some of the trees of those countries (especially such as aspire to be timber, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... thoroughly we cannot be trained to know that Would, in this world of ours, is as mere zero to Should, and for most part as the smallest of fractions even to Shall. Hereby was laid for me the basis of worldly Discretion, nay, of Morality itself. Let me not quarrel with my upbringing! It was rigorous, too frugal, compressively secluded, everyway unscientific: yet in that very strictness and domestic solitude might there not lie the root of deeper earnestness, of the stem from which all noble fruit must grow? Above all, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... the good wives of Beauport and Lauzon, were rarely to be seen, and commanded unheard-of prices. The hungry children who used to eat tartines of bread buttered on both sides were now accustomed to the cry of their frugal mother as she spread it thin as if it were gold-leaf: "Mes enfants, take ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... wisdom—or his sagacity. But it was he who had first helped Renouard in his plans of exploration: the five-years' programme of scientific adventure, of work, of danger and endurance, carried out with such distinction and rewarded modestly with the lease of Malata island by the frugal colonial government. And this reward, too, had been due to the journalist's advocacy with word and pen—for he was an influential man in the community. Doubting very much if Renouard really liked him, he was himself ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad

... republic of Baltimore, which esteems itself the world, particularly among its mercantile aristocracy, who live like the old Venetian nobility among their flat lagoons, and do commerce chiefly with the Turk in the more torrid and instinctive Indies and South. Amiable, social, afraid of new ideas, frugal of money; if hospitable at the table, with a certain spiritedness that is seldom intellectual, but a beauty that powerfully attracts, till, by the limited sympathies beneath it, the husband from the outer world discerns how hopelessly slavery and caste sink into an old shipping society, ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... herself thus celebrated, celebrated not only as a semi-divine person, but as herself unrivalled in the art of "making" or poetry,—"her peerless skill in making well,"—granted Spenser a pension of 50l. a year, which, it is said, the prosaic and frugal Lord Treasurer, always hard-driven for money and not caring much for poets, made difficulties about paying. But the new poem was not for the Queen's ear only. In the registers of the Stationers' Company occurs ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... collier marks his status in society by the possession of a mahogany chest of drawers—if mounted in brass so much the better—which it is the pride and privilege of his wife to keep in a state of resplendent polish. Mr. Morgan Griffiths having had a long run of prosperity, and being of a frugal mind, had launched out largely in the purchase of mahogany chests of drawers, and his kitchen may be said to bristle with them. Each had its history, and it was to the patient listening to the repetition thereof, and to the expenditure of much appreciative criticism upon the varied ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy

... have battles, and occasionally the Irish fight with the Canadians. The latter, however, are much the more peaceable, never quarrelling among themselves, and seldom with their neighbors. They are frugal, and often go back to Canada with considerable sums of money. B—— has gained much influence both with the Irish and the French,—with the latter, by dint of speaking to them in their own language. He is the umpire in their disputes, and their adviser, and they look up to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... where some fifty children were assembled. Clara begged leave to accompany them, and gladly took charge of three or four of the youngest, though by this time she felt so exhausted that she could with difficulty speak. The school over, the nuns hurried to the refectory, where a frugal dinner was placed on the table by the serving Sisters. In silence the nuns took their places; in silence they ate the portions served to them. Clara, sick from hunger, had the greatest difficulty in swallowing ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston

... way as well as their mistresses. They had served them for upwards of twenty years, and knew every secret of the family, being as regularly consulted as any of the members of it. They regulated the expenses too, much as they liked, which was in a very frugal, economical manner. The two Jennies had not much relished their removal to the country, and still often sighed with regret for the gossipings they once enjoyed in the Castlegate of Lanark. But ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... me, though sometimes thought so; and I met with many points both of family and of authorial interest. Then I was entertained by the New England Society, which, amongst abounding luxuries, still produces as a characteristic dish the frugal pork and beans of Puritan times. And the Century and other Clubs made me free of them. And of course Longfellow, Bryant, Fields, Biglow, O.W. Holmes, and many others, opened their houses and hearts to me. And I met ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... way into a summer parlour, where a frugal meal was placed on the table. As they sat down to the board, they were joined by a young lady about eighteen years of age, and so lovely, that the sight of her carried off the feelings of the young stranger from the peculiarity ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... before discussing those manufactured aids to composting that can make a consumer of you, I want to inform you that I am a frugal person who shuns unnecessary expenditure. I maintain what seems to me to be a perfect justification for my stinginess: I prefer relative unemployment. Whenever I want to buy something it has become my habit first ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon

... who had brought him to the park—this bleak barren he would have called it, had he had the faculty of thinking in terms of human speech, this range more fitted for the frugal caribou than for a ranger of the deep forests like himself—these men stood watching him curiously after they had loosed him from his bonds. For a few minutes he forgot all about them. Then his eyes fell on them, and a heat crept slowly ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts

... millions of our money. Sir William Temple, in his interesting work on the Batavian federation, had told his countrymen that, when he was ambassador at the Hague, the single province of Holland, then ruled by the frugal and prudent De Witt, owed about five millions sterling, for which interest at four per cent. was always ready to the day, and that when any part of the principal was paid off the public creditor received his money ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... sagacious, and an apology for portrait-painting, which appeals so effectually to the kindly side of human nature, Johnson repaid a hundred dinners."—P. 276. The liberality to De Gree is shortly told.—P. 298. "I have said that the President was frugal in his communications respecting the sources from whence he drew his own practice—he forgets his caution in one of these notes."—P. 303. We must couple this with some previous remarks; it is well known that Sir Joshua, as Northcote tells us, carefully locked up ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... a disordered walk, Archie was admitted into Lord Glenalmond's dining-room, where he sat with a book upon his knee, beside three frugal coals of fire. In his robes upon the bench, Glenalmond had a certain air of burliness: plucked of these, it was a may-pole of a man that rose unsteadily from his chair to give his visitor welcome. Archie ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... augment the sum of human happiness, must be an object of solicitude to the conscientious and intelligent physician. He will be anxious that his fellow citizens should be sober, peaceable, and virtuous; that they should be industrious, frugal, and prosperous. Whatever will produce such results should receive the decided approbation of every benevolent member of the Faculty. It follows, of course, that whatever has an opposite tendency should meet his ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister

... loves good sweet butter on the hot cakes in the morning. At the present prices of butter the frugal housewife looks upon the fast disappearing pat of butter with alarm. Now try this and save the butter and yet give the folks the butter flavor upon their cakes; place two tablespoonfuls of butter in a pitcher which will hold a cupful of syrup. Add ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson

... to the epoch. It must be observed that the Louis in question was somewhat close-fisted, and rarely drew his purse-strings unless he was certain of a good interest for his money. But courts in those days were very simple and frugal. The sumptuary laws of Philip le Bel (1285) had fixed supper at three dishes and a lard soup. The king's own dinner was likewise limited to ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... Grange Lane from its little window. There she established herself in the darkness, an affectionate spy. There ought to have been a moon that night, and accordingly the lamps were not lighted at that end of Grange Lane, for the authorities in Carlingford bore a frugal mind. But the sky had become cloudy, and the moon shone only at intervals, which gave a certain character of mystery and secrecy to the night. Through this uncertain light the anxious woman saw her two nephews coming and going under the window, apparently in the ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... civilization shall exist, or whether she shall be extinguished in the bosom of her family. As we often apply to Eloquence and her parts the terms we apply to Architecture and hers, let me do it also, and remark that nothing can be more simple, solid, and symmetrical, nothing more frugal in decoration or more appropriate in distribution, than the apartments of Demosthenes. Yours excel them in space and altitude; your ornaments are equally chaste and beautiful, with more variety and invention, more airiness and light. But ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... voted you a bore, But never quite so much before Besought you with a frugal mind To sail not quite so near ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 20, 1892 • Various

... of the things of this life, while it certainly existed, was far from being predominant in the affections of the Puritan. He was frugal from habit and principle, more than from an undue longing after worldly wealth. He contented himself, therefore, with acquiring an estate that should be valuable, rather from its quality and beauty, than from its extent. Many such places ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... on a mossy bank at the foot of a tree, filling my pipe after a frugal lunch, and thinking how hard it would be to find in any quarter of the globe a place more fair and fragrant than this hidden vale among the Alleghany Mountains. The perfume of the flowers of the forest is more sweet and subtle than the heavy scent of tropical blossoms. ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke

... present from Herr von Erfft among the musicians and discharged them, he took a long walk in the woods. He ate a frugal meal in a village restaurant, and then sauntered around until evening. When he returned, he found his hosts sitting at the table. He neglected to beg their pardon; Frau Agatha looked at her husband and smiled, and told the maids ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... their officers then sat down to a table improvised of boards laid across barrels and dined together most amicably, but on very frugal fare. General Burgoyne took occasion to compliment the discipline of the American army. He then proposed a toast to General Washington. General Gates then drank to the health of the king. High above the marquee ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott

... was a tent-stitch rug before the Dutch-tiled fireplace, and on the walls hung two framed prints,—one representing the stately and graceful Duke of Marlborough; the other, the small, dark, pinched, but fiery Prince Eugene. On the spotless white cloth was spread a frugal meal of bread, butter, cheese, and lettuce; a jug of milk, another of water, and a bottle of cowslip wine; for the habits of the family were more than usually ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... she affected no such frills, but she was ever ready to defend those of her horse. A hard-working, frugal, ambitious young person was Mlle. Zaretti, whose few extravagances were mostly on Calico's account. For him she demanded the Blue Danube waltz in the face ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford

... the pond, while munching their frugal lunch and discussing the prospect of game, they espied a splendid stag who had evidently been disturbed while drinking, and stood with head erect and dilated eyes gazing upon the first white men he had ever seen, and ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... sun, striking level with the mouth of the cave, fell full upon the lad's face, rousing him in a double sense. He sprang to his feet and drew in a deep breath of the morning air. How blue the sky! How golden the sun! As he sat eating his frugal breakfast of oat-cake and honey he rapidly reviewed his present condition and future prospects, coming at last to the decision that he would go to Croye and see what his uncle Hugolin might be ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen

... drab would seem to have been Bernard Barton. His verse certainly infringed none of the superstitions of the sect; for from title-page to colophon there was no sin either in the way of music or color. There was, indeed, a frugal and housewifely Muse, that brewed a cup, neither cheering unduly nor inebriating, out of the emptyings of Wordsworth's teapot. How that little busy B. improved each shining hour, how neatly he laid his wax, it gives us a cold shiver to think of—ancora ci raccappriccia! Against a ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... cultivated, we should gain from one Nation; and if another, from another. I have heard him prove that Diligence makes more lasting Acquisitions than Valour, and that Sloth has ruin'd more Nations than the Sword. He abounds in several frugal Maxims, amongst which the greatest Favourite is, 'A Penny saved is a Penny got.' A General Trader of good Sense is pleasanter Company than a general Scholar; and Sir ANDREW having a natural unaffected Eloquence, the Perspicuity of his Discourse gives the same ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... planters." From the cross-fertilization of the ideas of two social groups—this back-country gentry, of innate qualities of leadership, democratic instincts, economic independence, and expansive tendencies, and the primitive pioneer society of the frontier, frugal in taste, responsive to leadership, bold, ready, and thorough in execution—there evolved the militant American expansion ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson

... and by which only, in the present state of things, he has it in his power to gratify the prejudices of his people, and prolong his popularity among them. Had he lived in the days of Hyder, he would have been a formidable ally or enemy; for he is, by the testimony of all in his neighbourhood, frugal, bold, popular, and insinuating. At present, with less power than an English nobleman, he holds his head high, and appears contented; and the print of Buonaparte, which hangs in his library, is so neutralized by that of Lord Hastings in full ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... of flour, denotes a frugal but happy life. For a young woman to dream that she sees flour on herself, denotes that she will be ruled by her husband, and that her life will be ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... this news was great. All were glad that AElia was to dance and sing no more, for all wished her at home, and her profession had kept her absent almost every day. The table was now spread, and we sat down to the frugal repast, Macer first ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... busied herself with their frugal supper. Before the meal was over she was pleased to see that her mother was becoming more composed and natural. When Miss Jennings came in both ladies greeted her warmly. There was a hectic glow in her cheeks, and she ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon

... frugal and temperate habits, a wiry man at the height of his physical powers, with lean ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various

... a tradition that a planter once wrote to him: "I have worked hard and been frugal all my life, and the results of my industry have mainly taken the form of slaves, of whom I own about a hundred. Before I vote for President I want to be sure that the candidate I support will not so act as to divest me of my property." To which the general, with ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... a strange, gaunt wilderness of stone, this old villa of the Marchioni. It would have held hundreds of serving-men. It had as many chambers as one of the palaces down in Rome; but life is homely and frugal here, and has few graces. The ways of everyday Italian life in these grand old places are like nettles and thistles set in an old majolica vase that has had knights and angels painted on it. You know what I mean, you who know Italy. Do you remember those pictures of Vittario Carpacio and of Gentile? ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... out directly on that bleak, wide expanse—is contrasted with the glow, and busy brightness of the cheerful kitchen where these remarkable children are grouped. Tabby moves about in her quaint country- dress, frugal, peremptory, prone to find fault pretty sharply, yet allowing no one else to blame her children, we may feel sure. Another noticeable fact is the intelligent partisanship with which they choose their great men, who are almost all stanch Tories of the time. Moreover, they do not confine themselves ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... his best, we must place ourselves in Twickenham on some fine day, when the long disease has relaxed its grasp for a moment; when he has taken a turn through his garden, and comforted his poor frame with potted lampreys and a glass or two from his frugal pint. Suppose two or three friends to be sitting with him, the stately Bolingbroke or the mercurial Bathurst, with one of the patriotic hopes of mankind, Marchmont or Lyttelton, to stimulate his ardour, and the amiable Spence, or Mrs. Patty Blount ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen

... transported their ladies on pillions for want of coaches, and themselves struggled through mire for want of pavements; who, with a knowledge of the manufacture of glass, and possessed beyond ourselves of an exquisite skill in coloring it, were yet too frugal or careless to use it freely in lighting their houses. It was an age when the sick were plied with such delicate restoratives as 'mummy and the flesh of hedge-hogs,' and tables loaded with such dainties as cranes, lapwings, sea-gulls, bitterns and ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various

... notion of the society into which I fell after John Paul left London. It was, above all, a gaming society. From that prying and all-powerful God of Chance none, great or small, escaped. Guineas were staked and won upon frugal King George and his beef and barley-water; Charles Fox and his debts; the intrigues of Choiseul and the Du Barry and the sensational marriage of the Due d'Orleans with Madame de Montesson (for your macaroni knew his Paris as well as his London); Lord March and his opera ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... knocking knees, And envies every sparrow that he sees. A salmon's belly, Helluo, was thy fate; The doctor called, declares all help too late: "Mercy!" cries Helluo, "mercy on my soul! Is there no hope!—Alas!—then bring the jowl." The frugal crone, whom praying priests attend, Still tries to save the hallowed taper's end, Collects her breath, as ebbing life retires, For one puff more, and in that puff expires. "Odious! in woollen! 'twould a saint provoke" (Were ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope

... still left who believe their husbands, sons, or male friends can study, read and vote for them. They are like some frugal house-mothers, who think their is no need of a dinner if the good-man of the family is not coming home to share it. Just as if the man-half of the human family can "eat, learn and inwardly digest," to make either physical or mental strength ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... misfortune to attract the attention of the Spartan Pausanias, who was in command of the united Greek fleet at the Hellespont after the battle of Plataea. Like many Spartans, when first brought into contact with real luxury after his frugal upbringing at home, he completely lost his mental balance, and grew intoxicated with the splendour of his position, endeavouring to imitate the Persians in their manners, and even aspiring, it is said, to become tyrant of the whole of ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley

... meeting I found a large box of woolen goods forwarded by Edward Atkinson. I sold $100 worth the next day. Though providing for their wants quite freely, the people seem more frugal with their money than last summer, and I am glad ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various

... he found in the wide upper hall without his door, spread upon a small leaf table, a meal frugal and delicate. A breeze came through the open window, and with it the scent of jasmine. The wind blew the candle flame until his mother, stepping lightly, brought a glass shade and set it over the silver ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... have exercised on themselves, it was with difficulty they could repress the fury of their passions." Hilarion, says Jerome, saw visions of naked women when he lay down on his solitary couch and delicious meats when he sat down to his frugal table. Such experiences rendered the early saints very scrupulous. "They used to say," we are told in an interesting history of the Egyptian anchorites, Palladius's Paradise of the Holy Fathers, belonging to the fourth century (A.W. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... not knowing how to dispose of their ready money, ariseth the high purchase of lands, which in all other countries is reckoned a sign of wealth. For, the frugal squires, who live below their incomes, have no other way to dispose of their savings but by mortgage or purchase, by which the rates of land must naturally increase; and if this trade continues long, under the uncertainty of rents, the landed men of ready money will ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... lawyers were fond of alluding to themselves as forming part of the bonne bourgeoisie. It is this bonne bourgeoisie who form the backbone of France. Frugal, immensely industrious, cultured, and with a very high standard of honour, they are far removed from the frivolous, irresponsible types of French people to be seen at smart watering-places, and they are less ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... me," said he, "naught falleth ill to the favourites of the Immortals. I owe no grudge to the day I took thee into my protection. As a printer, count on me as thy patron. As a man, call me thy friend. And if some day, at thy frugal fireside (for the which thou art already provided with the chiefest ornament), thou shouldst have a spare chair and platter, I will even deign to fill the one and empty the other now and again, in memory ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed

... during the night. These seamen obviously belonged to different nationalities, although indications of European physical traits could be seen in them all. If I'm not mistaken, I recognized some Irishmen, some Frenchmen, a few Slavs, and a native of either Greece or Crete. Even so, these men were frugal of speech and used among themselves only that bizarre dialect whose origin I couldn't even guess. So I had to give up any notions of ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... had been spread for the mixed midday meal of dinner and tea, which was common among frugal countryfolk. "The parishioners about here," continued Mrs. Day, not looking at any living being, but snatching up the brown delf tea-things, "are the laziest, gossipest, poachest, jailest set of ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy

... mountaineer is generally coupled suspicion toward strangers, extreme sensitiveness to criticism, superstition, strong religious feeling, and an intense love of home and family. The bitter struggle for existence makes him industrious, frugal, provident; and, when the marauding stage has been outgrown, he is peculiarly honest as a rule. Statistics of crime in mountain regions show few crimes against property though many against person. When the mountain-bred man comes down into the plains, he brings with him therefore ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... von Ilgen," son of the old gentleman we used to know, "and Hofrath Sellentin who is RENDANT OF THE LEGATIONS-KASSE" (Ambassadors' Paymaster, we could guess, Ambassador Body having specialty of cash assigned it, comparable with the specialty of value received from it, in this strict frugal Country),—neither of which two latter names shall the reader be troubled with farther. "A good many resolutions, and responses by the King, I have seen: they combine laconic expression with an admirable business eye ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... old-fashioned brown bed that was sacred to the memory of Miss Gunter, and woke happily to the fact that another blue day was shining, and that in a few hours Eric and I would be at Heathfield. I ate my frugal breakfast in a small back parlour overlooking the blank wall of a brewery, and before I had finished there was a quick tap at the door, and Eric entered. A boyish blush crossed his handsome face as I looked at him in some surprise. He had laid aside his workman's dress, and wore the ordinary ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... Greek or Roman, as he was very conversant with their writings. And one day Sir Robert Howard, who was a friend of Milton's, and a well wisher to the liberty of his country, asked him, how he came to side with the Republicans? Milton answered, among other things, 'Because theirs was the most frugal government; for the trappings of a Monarchy might set up an ordinary Commonwealth.' But then his attachment to Cromwell must be condemned, as being neither consistent with his republican principles, nor with his love of liberty. It may be reasonably ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... written in his seventy-third year, two years before his death, and this must have been about the time of Hawthorne's visit to him. Read the "Amen" in the light of that beautiful description of patient and frugal old age, and it is a touching and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... to the opening of the dungeon door, to see Gabord entering with a torch and a tray that held my frugal breakfast. He had added some brandy, also, of which I was glad, for it was bitter cold outside, as I discovered later. He was quiet, seeming often to wish to speak, but pausing before the act, never getting beyond a stumbling aho! I greeted him cheerfully enough. After making a little toilette, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... river, and his ships a-swing at their moorings. The wall at his back cast its shadow broadly over the water to the opposite shore. Above him the endless tramp upon the bridge went on. Esther was holding a plate for him containing his frugal supper—some wheaten cakes, light as wafers, some honey, and a bowl of milk, into which he now and then dipped the wafers after dipping ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... Ch'ing Wen's illness were, it is true, grave; yet fortunately for her she had ever had to strain her physical strength, and not to tax the energies of her mind. Furthermore, she had always been frugal in her diet, so that she had never sustained any harm from under or over-eating. The custom in the Chia mansion was that as soon as any one, irrespective of masters or servants, contracted the slightest chill or cough, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... from gold or silver mines, which were very rarely found in Italy, in case there were any; and the expenses of which must, for that very reason, have swallowed up all the profit. The Romans, in the frugal and simple life they led, in their zeal for the public welfare, and their love for their country, possessed funds which were not less ready or secure than those of Carthage, but at the same time were far more honourable ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... keeping his eye on his plate attacked his frugal meal in silence, and soon after-wards went upstairs to bed to think ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs

... simplify life? How, indeed! It is a subject that interests me strangely. Of course, the easiest method is to let one's ancestors do it for one. If you have been lucky enough to choose a simple-minded, quiet-natured quartet of grandparents, frugal, thrifty and foresighted, who had the good sense to buy property in an improving neighborhood and keep their money compounding at a fair rate of interest, the problem is greatly clarified. If they have hung on to the old farmstead, with its huckleberry pasture and ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley

... at Tarnside. The meal was served with some ceremony, although the bill of fare was frugal except when game could be shot and, as a rule, nobody but Osborn talked much. Now he had satisfied his appetite he looked about the spacious room. The handsome, molded ceiling was dark from neglect and the cornice was stained by damp. The light of the setting ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss

... in Rome in the early years of the 1850-60 decade, living in the old port by the Tiber nearly opposite to the new and splendid building of the law courts. Near the Tarpeian Rock Frederika Bremer had perched, in a tiny room of which she took all the frugal care, even to washing the blue cups and plates when she invited the Hawthornes to a tea of a simplicity that suggested, indeed, the utmost degree of "light" housekeeping. Thomas Buchanan Read was one of the hosts and guests of this social group, and it was ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... no better than he knew them. They had no money to waste on education. They needed all they could scrape together to keep the wolf out of Wall Street. He had no use in this direful emergency for frugal society leaders; he was after the ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon

... when he found that his agricultural scheme had failed, and retreat homewards, for want of means, was impracticable, he wedded a Norwegian woman, and renting a tract of land, turned farmer on his own account. All that his frugal wife had collected for household use among these solitary mountains, milk, eggs, and salmon, was freely offered to us; and having brought our own tea and sugar, together with a few bottles of beer, we easily made a wholesome meal. After we had supped, our host said that his house was small, ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... since, as he says, "the borrower is a slave to the lender and the debtor to the creditor," disdain the chain, preserve your freedom, and maintain your independence. Be industrious and free; be frugal and free. At present, perhaps, you may think yourself in thriving circumstances, and that you can bear a ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... would immediately abolish their grievances and give to the worker the entire produce of his labour. "At present the frugal workman only gets about one-third of his earnings. Under Socialism he would get all his earnings."[189] "Under the new order all will be productive workers, receiving an equivalent for what they produce—not merely one-half of it as now under the wage-system—in some ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... pride—that gorgeous imagination rather than vanity, which had led the Tribune into spectacle and pomp, was now lulled to rest, by the sober memory of grave vicissitudes, and the stern calmness of a maturer intellect. Frugal, provident, watchful, self-collected, 'never was seen,' observes no partial witness, 'so extraordinary a man.' ("Vita di Cola di Rienzi", lib. ii. c. 23.) 'In him was concentrated every thought for every want of Rome. Indefatigably occupied, he ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... From the serene frugal household of Roper Ellwell where the wife had fitted boys "in the classical tongues" for Camberton, the family had come to this uncertain state, feverish, like the fickle fluctuations of the stock market; now ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick

... largest apartment in the house, and its great fire-place, with a ruddy back-log and pine knots flaming and sparkling on the iron-dogs, offered a most cheerful welcome on a New England winter's night. The baking oven, heated with fine-split dry wood, cooked the frugal but savory meal, which was served up on a solid old-fashioned table, around which the household gathered, first giving thanks to the Giver of all. When not busied with other duties, the housewife pressed with measured round the treadles of the loom, as she ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... at Valley Forge, the young nobleman suddenly changed his manner of living. Used to ease and personal comforts, he became even more frugal and self-denying than the half-starved and half-frozen soldiers. How different it must have been from the gayeties and the luxuries of the French court of the ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell

... as pretty as might be found In the dangerous length of the Neutral Ground, In a cottage, cozy, and all their own, She and her mother lived alone. Safe were the two, with their frugal store, From all of the many who passed their door; For Jennie's mother was strange to fears, And Jennie was large for fifteen years; With vim her eyes were glistening, Her hair was the hue of a blackbird's wing; And while the friends who knew her well ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various

... easy to transfer them from one to another, and to give the best quality a bad name. Thus, by calling a sober man sour, a cheerful man vain, a conscientious man morose, a devout man superstitious, a free man prodigal, a frugal man sordid, an open man simple, a reserved man crafty, one that stands upon his honour and honesty proud, a kind man ambitiously popular, a modest man sullen, timorous, or stupid, is a way in which the detractor ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... their frugal supper of corn beef and biscuit, talked over a plan for protecting the men, should they be fired at as they ascended. They arranged to build a barricade of hammocks and bags to defend the helmsman on the port side while the crew were sent below, they ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston

... this a cloud rolled gradually away and disclosed a small and scantily furnished but neat apartment. Little children were gathered round a bright fire, clinging to their mother's gown, or gamboling round her chair. A frugal meal was spread upon the table and an elbow-chair was placed near the fire. Soon the father entered and the children ran to meet him. As he sat down to his meal the mother sat by his side and all seemed happiness ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various

... answered, "you do not know how hard a thing you ask of me. But be it so. I am now inured to humiliation; and it would be strange if I refused you this, after having granted you so much. Know, then, that although I now make so quiet an appearance - frugal, solitary, addicted to study - when I was younger, my name was once a rallying-cry among the most astute and dangerous spirits of London; and while I was outwardly an object for respect and consideration, my true power resided in ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson

... a Swiss, captain in the Genoese navy. Of this union, Joseph, later Cardinal Fesch, was the child. Although well born, the mother of Napoleon had no education and was of peasant nature to the last day of her long life—hardy, unsentimental, frugal, avaricious, and sometimes unscrupulous. Yet for all that, the hospitality of her little home in Ajaccio was lavish and famous. Among the many guests who were regularly entertained there was Marbeuf, commander in Corsica of the first army of occupation. There was long afterward a malicious tradition ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... offer any inducements. If I depended on my law business, I should fare poorly, but thanks to a frugal and industrious father, I have a fair income outside of my earnings. Mrs. Rand, my visit this morning is to you. How would you like to take ...
— Chester Rand - or The New Path to Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr

... the open air, and abstemiousness in diet, is proven from the health of those nations that train their children in all the exercise of riding, leaping, running and fencing, and subject them from infancy to the most frugal diet. Thus the perfect forms and vigorous health of the Greeks, the Romans and Persians were the fruit of national attention paid to physical education. Every home should have its suitable gymnasium. How many parents, ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... the example of its predecessor in leaving supplies at marked caches along the trail for the return trip. Therefore, it reached camp with a frugal amount for distribution. The first rations were doled out with careful hand, lest harm should come to the famishing through overeating, still, the rescuers administered sufficient to satisfy the fiercest cravings and to give strength for the ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton

... the purity of their manners, their universal kindliness, and their devotion to the welfare of their husbands and children. It was a pleasure to pass them on the road-side; the fare at their tables was always of the nicest, even if it happened to be frugal; and people of all classes could have testified to their helpful liberality. In these respects they might almost have served as models, but otherwise they were as different as possible. Mrs. Emerson was of a tall, slender, and somewhat angular figure (like her husband), ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... Opdyke lent himself more and more to the assimilating process. He sought out Scott more often, had him in his room, taught him to fill a pipe and smoke it after the fashion of a gentleman, dropped into his ears specious hints regarding manners, and about the efficiency of one's mattress as frugal substitute for a tailor's pressboard. To be sure, upon that latter count Scott took him with unforeseen literalness; and, in his zeal to carry out his teacher's dictum, subjected his coat to the mattress treatment, as well ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... about the situation and pedigree of his new mistress, who, he learned, was the only daughter of a field-officer, who died before he had it in his power to make suitable provision for his children; that the widow lived in a frugal though decent manner on her pension, assisted by the bounty of her relations; that the son carried arms as a volunteer in the company which his father had commanded; and that Emilia had been educated in London, at the expense of ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... faction: now thou see'st me Spent, overpower'd, despairing of success. Let me advise thee to retreat betimes To thy paternal seat, the Sabine field; Where the great Censor toil'd with his own hands, And all our frugal ancestors were bless'd In humble virtues, and a rural life; There live retired, pray for the peace of Rome; Content thyself to be obscurely good. When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, The post of honour is ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison

... village on her bicycle. The hospital Commandant was waiting for her, with such workpeople as could be found, and the preparation of the empty house for fifty more beds was well begun. Elizabeth was frugal, but resolute, with the Squire's money. She had leave to spend. But she would not abuse her power; and all through her work she was conscious of a queer remorseful gratitude towards the man in whose ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... say another word about the blasted coat I'll split your head open," was his angry reply. It was evidently a sore topic with him and a familiar one with his frugal townsmen, for some man in the crowd cried out, "'Tinna big enough for the missis, be it, Timothy?" And while the peppery little beadle's eyes were searching the japer out, another added, "More's the pity, for 'er's a bit of a light-skirt." At this there was a roar of laughter, so I saved ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough

... sure. I know I'd go back and be Medora, if I could. Mamma is always telling Polly that she must be careful about William's dinner. But Conrad didn't care for his dinner. 'Light toil! to cull and dress thy frugal fare! See, I have plucked ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... the nights were long. On such occasions he lit his own fire and wrote or read by candle-light. He breakfasted at seven in summer and eight in winter. Two small cups of tea and three or four cakes of Indian meal (called hoe-cakes) formed his frugal repast. Immediately after breakfast he mounted his horse, and visited those parts of the estate where any work was going on, seeing to everything with his own eyes, and often aiding with his ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... distinguished merit, and had been for many years the vicar of Smiledale. The situation of the parsonage was truly beautiful, but the income of the living was not very considerable; so, as the old gentleman had two sons with the young Jemima to provide for, it was necessary to be rather frugal in his expenses. Mrs. Placid was remarkably handsome in her youth, but the beauty of her person was much impaired by a continued state of ill-health, which she supported with such a degree of cheerful fortitude as did honour to human nature. As she had had the advantage of ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas

... should take all fair means to learn what is the general conduct and habits of your male acquaintance in their family circle and with their daily connections. "Are they good-humored and kind—able to bear the troubles they meet with? Are they industrious, frugal, temperate, religious, chaste? Have they had the prudence to insure against sickness and death?" Or, on the other hand, are they addicted to drinking, smoking, betting, keeping late hours, frequenting casinos, etc.? Your mother and other prudent ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous

... almost immediately as Mr. Bellingham was in the midst of a profound yawn, and sat down to her frugal meal, when her father mystified me considerably ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman

... make a fire in the cracked and rusty stove. Peter was only eleven, but the children of the slums are little men and women almost from their cradles, and Peter was really the man of the family. He it was who cared for the baby and prepared their frugal meals; he it was who cried his papers upon the street in the cold darkness of the winter mornings, who ran errands all day for the grocer on the next corner and again in the evening sallied forth with his papers under his arm in order to procure food to keep the life in ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams

... seat in the cabinet, or a foreign mission. It may be supposed that we of Jaalam were not untouched by a feeling of villatic pride in beholding our townsman occupying so large a space in the public eye. And to me, deeply revolving the qualifications necessary to a candidate in these frugal times, those of Mr. S. seemed peculiarly adapted to a successful campaign. The loss of a leg, an arm, an eye, and four fingers, reduced him so nearly to the condition of a vox et praeterea nihil, that I could think of nothing but the loss of ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell

... heart. He was a frank pagan, and I believe remained a pagan all his life, in spite of the remonstrances of Augustin and those of the gentle Paulinus of Nola, who lectured him in prose and verse. A great eater and a fine drinker, he found himself obliged to do penance at St. Monnica's rather frugal table. But when the fever of inspiration took hold of him, he forgot eating and drinking, and in his poetical thirst he would would have drained—so his master says—all the fountains of Helicon. Licentius had a passion for versifying: "He is an almost perfect poet," wrote ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... sophron]: and they call that virtue [Greek: sophrosynen], which I at one time call temperance, at another time moderation, and sometimes even modesty; but I do not know whether that virtue may not be properly called frugality, which has a more confined meaning with the Greeks; for they call frugal men [Greek: chresimous], which implies only that they are useful; but our name has a more extensive meaning: for all abstinence, all innocency (which the Greeks have no ordinary name for, though they might use the word [Greek: ablabeia], for innocency is that ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... brought with her sufficient dowry to enable him to pay off the major portion of the mortgages which then crippled the estate. But at that time agriculture flourished, and the rents from the property were considerable; moreover, the Colonel was never of a frugal turn of mind. So it came about that ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard



Words linked to "Frugal" :   colloquialism, scotch, sparing, economical, stinting, frugality, frugalness



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com