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Stinginess   Listen
noun
Stinginess  n.  The quality or state of being stingy.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Stinginess" Quotes from Famous Books



... the 8th volume; the one, that Lambecius's heir, impatient at the slow sale of the work, sold many copies of it to the keepers of herb-stalls: the other, that, when the author was lying on his death-bed, his servant maid, at the suggestion and from the stinginess of the same heir, burnt many copies of this eighth volume [which had recently left the press] to light the fire in the chamber. This intelligence I glean from Vogt, p. 495: it had escaped Baillet and Morhof. But consult De Bure, vol. vi., Nos. 6004-5. Reimannus ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... take; the sick man at once sat up, complaining of nothing more than a burning thirst. When informed of this scandalous piece of buffoonery, Louis contented himself with saying, "I had rather make courtiers laugh by my stinginess than my people weep by my extravagance." He was pressed to punish some insolent comedians; but, "No," said he, "amongst their ribaldries they may sometimes tell us useful truths let them amuse themselves, provided that they respect the honor of women." ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... understand that this was my master's only daughter, who would have a very handsome fortune, on account of which, and her beauty, a great many young gentlemen made their addresses to her—that she had been twice on the brink of marriage, but disappointed by the stinginess of her father, who refused to part with a shilling to promote the match; for which reason the young lady did not behave to her father with all the filial veneration that might be expected. In particular she harboured the most perfect ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... the windows of the soul and being answerable for everything. For in the average human house there is one hole by which money comes in and a hundred by which it goes out; man has to do with the one hole, woman with the hundred. But though the very stinginess of a woman is a part of her spiritual breadth, it is none the less true that it brings her into conflict with the special kind of spiritual breadth that belongs to the males of the tribe. It brings her into ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... whole a sweet-tempered man, nor easily angered except by an affront on his vanity. His violent rancour against the people of Gantick arose from their indifference to his playing. Had they taken him seriously—had they even run out at their doors to listen and stare—he would not have minded their stinginess. ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... eat them. There's nothing you wouldn't eat, in the heavens above or the earth beneath. And all the thanks I get is to be taunted with stinginess." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... the miserly propensities of the great lawyer and his wife, their long familiar intercourse exhibits a wealth of fine human affection and genuine poetry which sarcasm cannot touch. Often as he had occasion to regret Lady Eldon's peculiarities—the stinginess which made her grudge the money paid for a fish or a basket of fruit; the nervous repugnance to society, which greatly diminished his popularity; and the taste for solitude and silence which marked her painfully towards the close of her life—the Chancellor never even hinted to her his dissatisfaction. ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... spent little more money than he did in Chapelizod, except in his stable; and Lord Castlemallard, who admired his stinginess, as he did everything else about him, used to say: 'He's a wonder of the world! How he retains his influence over all the people he knows without ever giving one among them so much as a mutton-chop or a glass of sherry in his house, I can't conceive. I couldn't do it, I know.' ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... servants found Mirth and abundance while the year went round; Where a huge pollard on the winter-fire, At a huge distance made them all retire; Where not a measure in the room was kept, And but one rule—they tippled till they slept - There would it see a pale old hag preside, A thing made up of stinginess and pride; Who carves the meat, as if the flesh could feel; Careless whose flesh must miss the plenteous meal; Here would the ghost a small coal-fire behold, Not fit to keep one body from the cold; Then would it flit to higher rooms, and ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe

... relief to the distresses of their fellow-creatures. It is rarely they hoard their gains. There are few who do not live up to the full measure of their incomes, and most of them very far beyond. Whether they spend their means for good or for evil, they are at least free from the groveling sin of stinginess. I never met more than one stingy Russian to my knowledge; but let him go. He reaped his reward in the dislike of all who knew him. Toward each other, even the beggars are liberal. There is nothing little or contemptible in the Russian character. Overbearing and despotic they may be; deficient ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... nearly a quarter of a pound into the palm of his broad hand, commenced spitting upon it and working the powder into a paste. Ivan, who directed this operation, was determined his plan should not fail by any stinginess in regard to the materials ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid

... of a Voluntary Criminal Court. "My criminals were tried for the faults which really make social life impossible. They were tried before me for selfishness, or for an impossible vanity, or for scandal-mongering, or for stinginess to guests or dependents." It is regrettable that Chesterton does not grant us a glimpse of this fascinating tribunal at work. However, it is Grant's job, on the strength of which he becomes the president and founder of the C.Q.T.—Club of Queer Trades. ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West

... each other's things. I do think there is no pleasure under heaven equal to that of wearing things that belong to your friend. Don't you remember how fond I was of wearing your clothes at school, though you were not so fond of changing as myself; but that was no wonder, for pa's stinginess kept me so shabbily dressed, that I was ashamed to let you be seen in them. Oh, Julia! I shall never forget those happy hours; nor you neither. Apropos—I hope you have not forgot the frock you promised to work for me, to remember you by. I long for it dreadfully, ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper

... Dyckman. He knew all too well what gulfs had parted him from Charity even while he sat with her in the train. He had suffered such rebuffs from her that he was bitterly aggrieved. He was telling himself that he hated Charity for her stinginess of soul at the very time that the whispers were damning her too great generosity in ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... is undoubtedly a splendid monument of the munificence of the city. But munificence without method may arrive at results indistinguishably similar to those of stinginess. I have been blamed for saying that the Central Institute is "starved." Yet a man who has only half as much food as he needs is indubitably starved, even though his short rations consist of ortolans and are ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... Bonamy the aunt was not long in finding out through a servant that Croizeau, by popular report of the neighborhood of the Rue de Buffault, where he lived, was a man of exceeding stinginess, possessed of forty thousand francs per annum. A week after the instalment of the charming librarian he was ...
— A Man of Business • Honore de Balzac

... interloper opposite—the Hippopotamus. Who so likely as he, who had his eye continually on Hans's door? But no matter—the thief was clear off; and the only comfort he got from his neighbors, was being rated for his stinginess. "Ay," said they, "this comes of living like a curmudgeon, in a great house by yourself, working your eyes out to hoard up money. What must a young man like you do with scraping up pots full of money, like a miser? It is a shame!—it is a ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... beset with persistent and irreconcilable difficulties. We saw that Brown's shyness would not allow him to give up the lap-robe. This would offend Mary and her mother; and it would surprise the other ladies, partly because this stinginess toward the suffering Old People would be out of character with Brown, and partly because he was a special Providence and could not properly act so. If asked to explain his conduct, his shyness would ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... stranger. But to see what I see every day, and have no one I dare breathe a word to, oh, it is very hard! But on what a thread things turn! If any one had told me an hour ago it was you I should open my heart to! It's not economy: it's not stinginess; they are not paying off their debts. They never can. The baroness and ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade

... about the dot, as he knew a way of getting something decent out of Sir Lionel for her. What he knew he firmly refused to divulge, and when I asked if he'd told you, he replied that he jolly well hadn't. Also he accused me of "stinginess," in not wanting "Pendragon to part," and wishing to keep the "whole hog" for myself; his delicate way of expressing my desire to retain the means of purchasing tiaras, etc., suitable to my rank, in case I should become the future ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... dreariest circumstance about them was exactly that this vacuity, this dreariness, this total want of all that can make the life of a boy and of a young man pleasant to our fancy or attractive to our sympathy, did not in the least depend upon any harshness or stinginess of fate. Indeed, perhaps, no man had ever prepared for him an easier existence; no man had ever less misfortune sent to him by Providence, or less unkindness shown towards him by mankind, than this constantly struggling, ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... choice. The golden mean between two extremes of excess and defect respectively has been already explained, and may be further shown by a review of the virtues. Besides fortitude and temperance, already described, liberality is a mean between prodigality and stinginess; magnificence between vulgar display and pettiness: magnanimity between vainglory and pusillanimity; truthfulness between exaggeration and dissimulation; friendship between complaisance, or flattery, and frowardness,—and so of the rest. The golden mean must ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... generosity, magnanimity, admiration, loyalty, or enthusiasm of self-surrender, the result is always the same. That whole raft of cowardly obstructions, which in tame persons and dull moods are sovereign impediments to action, sinks away at once. Our conventionality,[147] our shyness, laziness, and stinginess, our demands for precedent and permission, for guarantee and surety, our small suspicions, timidities, despairs, where are they now? Severed like cobwebs, broken like bubbles in ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... fully by letters of Virginia planters to English merchants. They show that the wealthy Virginian of the 17th century was careful in his business dealings, sharp in a bargain, a painstaking manager, and in his private life often economical even to stinginess. Robert Carter, one of the wealthiest men of the colony, in a letter complains of the money spent upon the outfit of the Wormley boys who were at school in England, thinking it "entirely in excess of any need." William Fitzhugh, ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... all in her house to grudge you a fresh cup of afternoon tea when you drop in to see her and her daughter. She says to herself that it is to spare the servants the stairs; but, all the time, under the stairs, the servants are blushing for the sometimes unaccountable stinginess of their unusually munificent mistress. I shall give you "line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little" of Aristotle upon munificence in little things till you come up to his pagan standard. "There is a real greatness," he says, "even in the way that some men will buy a ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte

... tails but the arms of a polypus. But to my story: my evil fortune, not content with having torn me from my studies, and from the calm and joyous life I led amid them; not content with having fastened me up behind a door, and transferred me from the liberality of the students to the stinginess of the negress, resolved to rob me of the little ease and comfort I still enjoyed. Look ye, Scipio, you may set it down with me for a certain fact, that ill luck will hunt out and find the unlucky one, though he ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... niggardly apprehension; "no, I haven't got a bit of tea." Trina's stinginess had increased to such an extent that it had gone beyond the mere hoarding of money. She grudged even the food that she and McTeague ate, and even brought away half loaves of bread, lumps of sugar, and fruit from the car conductors' coffee-joint. ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... your letter received yesterday, which, as always, set me thinking: I laughed at your attack at my stinginess in changes of level towards Forbes (Edward Forbes, 1815-1854, born in the Isle of Man. His best known work was his Report on the distribution of marine animals at different depths in the Mediterranean. An important memoir of his is referred to in my father's 'Autobiography.' He held successively ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... have acted in any given case, and always, it appeared, they had done exactly what Hilton desired. Susie's admiration for duchesses was slavish, and Hilton was treated with an indulgent liberality that was absurd compared to the stinginess displayed towards everyone else. Hilton was not more horrified than her mistress when she saw the farm cart, and understood that it was for the luggage and the maid. It was impossible to take her with them in what the porter called the herrschaftliche Wagen, for it was a kind of ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp

... he also approves. But hear another thing in which we can serve you. If a man vows to offer a sacrifice to some god, and then procrastinates, pretending that the gods can wait, and thus does not keep his word, we shall punish his stinginess. ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes

... pained to find the rising generation so prone to discard both frugality and economy, and to regard them as synonymous with narrowness, and meanness, and stinginess. There cannot possibly ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott

... his neighbors and townsfolk called a "hard-fisted" man; and he had earned the name by dint of persevering stinginess from boyhood up. He and his good wife Phoebe had accumulated a snug little property, besides the many-acred farm which was to be his when "grandmother" should relinquish her claim to all earthly possessions. So he was really able to live in comfort; but, instead of that, the old red farmhouse, ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous

... read of boys, especially in English books, who made a profit out of their fellows, I never knew any boy who had enough forecast to do it. They were too wildly improvident for anything of the kind, and if they had any virtue at all it was scorn of the vice of stinginess. ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells

... childish simplicity of Neander, but we deeply venerate the profound erudition and the subtle discernment of that extraordinary critic's mind. We may feel shocked at the clownish sallies of a Blumenbach, the stinginess of Gesenius, and the rude manners of Ernesti. But with the first, we connect vast realms in natural philosophy unconquered before him; to the second, the student of Hebrew refers with reverential affection and gratitude; whilst we know, that the burly demeanour of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... the children of the late Matiamvo came to beg from me, but never to offer any food. Having spoken to one young man named Liula (Heavens) about their stinginess, he soon brought bananas and manioc. I liked his appearance and conversation, and believe that the Balonda would not be difficult to teach, but their mode of life would be a drawback. The Balonda in this quarter are much more agreeable-looking than any of the inhabitants nearer the coast. The women ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... the Sheriff Court, declaring that the manse was like to fall about his ears, and that the heritors had palpably admitted the danger by erecting a scaffold. The Sheriff expressed strong disapproval of the heritors' stinginess, and ordered them to get a new manse built for the minister. Now as to the site! To spite Mr. Rogers, the heritors determined to deprive him of a good view, and directed the St. Andrews builder to erect the new manse down ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... this is the all-important point for these creatures, and I had the pain of seeing my wife think with them. In this fatal atmosphere, her provincial habits, her mean and narrow views were made still more odious by an incredible stinginess. ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet

... the free man alone can feel gratitude. To him who confers gifts man will ever resort, for bounty is fascinating. Sadden not with denial the countenance of the man of genius, for the liberal mind is disgusted at stinginess and haughty demeanour. Not a tenth part of mankind understand what is right, for human nature ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... son, Frank, were large-hearted generous creatures in the article of apology, as in all things less skimpingly dealt out. And seeing that Leonard Fairfield would offer no plaister to Randal Leslie, they made amends for his stinginess by their own prodigality. The Squire accompanied his son to Rood Hall, and none of the family choosing to be at home, the Squire in his own hand, and from his own head, indited and composed an epistle which might have satisfied all the wounds which the dignity ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... following Sal's first acquaintance with Mary, Alice cried until nearly day dawn. The milk which Miss Grundy's stinginess allowed her, was not particularly conducive to her health, and besides that, she missed the invigorating bath to which she had been accustomed during her mother's lifetime. Mary had spoken of it two or three times, but Miss Grundy only jerked her shoulders, saying, ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes

... nigh, and the day before they commenced I received a kind of petition from the prisoner, entreating me to aid him at this pinch, as he had not a friend in that part of the world, and would inevitably be ruined for what he considered rather a meritorious action — taking vengeance on the stinginess of the captain. Though I did not see exactly of what benefit I could be to him, I repaired to the court-house on the day of trial. It was crowded with people, as such places always are when prisoners are to be tried; and as I had met at dinner most of the magistrates on the Bench, I did ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... costly stinginess, consoles himself that he is saving. As he has saved a few dollars in letter paper, he feels justified in expending ten times that amount for some extravagance. The man thinks he is a saving man. The woman is a saving woman, she knows she is a saving ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... you are the laughing-stock of everybody; that they taunt us everywhere by a thousand jokes on your account, and that nothing delights people more than to make sport of you, and to tell stories without end about your stinginess. One says that you have special almanacks printed, where you double the ember days and vigils, so that you may profit by the fasts to which you bind all your house; another, that you always have a ready-made ...
— The Miser (L'Avare) • Moliere

... hand at whist. His manner towards ladies was deferential; towards men, dignified without a trace of patronage or self-conceit. All voted him a good fellow. At first, indeed—for he practised small economies, and his linen, though clean, was frayed—they suspected him of stinginess, until by accident the Vicar discovered that a great part of his pay went to support his dead brother's family—a widow and two girls who lived at Notting Hill, London, in far from ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... whispered in the quiet of the nursery, she will call the attention of perfect strangers to her mother's general untidiness, her want of intellectual Boston conversation, immoderate love of iced water and green corn, stinginess in the matter of candy, ignorance of the usages of the best Baltimore society, bodily ailments and the like. In fact, it may be truly said that no American child is ever blind to the deficiencies of its parents, no matter how much it ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde

... The rheumatism or snuffles you get from sleeping between their icy sheets comes from the crop of bacilli which has lurked there since they were last aired. The "no heat in a bedroom" dogma is little better than superstition, born of those fecund parents which mate so often, stinginess and puritanism. Practically, the room which will never have a window opened in it in winter is ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... 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 to ask myself if the desired object could possibly bring me as much pleasure as knowing that I don't have to get up and go to work the next morning. ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon

... sum of six oboli to be levied as a poll-tax upon every man in the city, and he only remitted the tax at the request of his son Titus. He went to Rome, carrying with him the nickname of Cybiosactes, the scullion, which the Alexandrians gave him for his stinginess and greediness, and which they had before given to Seleucus, who robbed the tomb of Alexander the Great, at Alexandria, ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... to the village and was told there that the innkeeper had died that morning. Disgusted he went to the inn. The sister dressed in black stood in the corner reading a psalm book. The doctor began to upbraid her for her stinginess and cruelty. The sister went on reading the psalms, but between every two sentences she stopped to quarrel with him—"Lots of your like running about here.... The devils brought you here." She belongs to the old faith, hates ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

... fish, sure enough," pursued Jim. "Of course, Will has made a fool of himself, and gone to the dogs and all that, but I must say it does seem a shame, when you think that old Fletcher can't take his money with him to the next world. As for pure stinginess, I don't believe he'd find his match if he scoured the country. Why, they say his granddaughter barely gets enough to eat. Look here! What are you putting in that bad leaf for. It's ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... in London, and that as this supposition was the most injurious to their reception in good society, he always counselled his friends, when about to visit it, to assume a brusquerie of manner, and a stinginess with regard to money, by which means they were sure to escape the suspicion of poverty; as in England a parsimonious expenditure and bluntness are supposed to imply ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... she reproached him, "you brought me here out of stinginess, pretending not to notice when we passed the waxworks, which is only tuppence, and real murderers with their chests a-rising an' fallin', as Maria's young man treated her to a last Regatta; an' a Sleepin' Beauty with a clockwork song inside like ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... neighbors; and that was a fact of which no proof was needed. Some men, who are good fellows enough at bottom and even capable of inspiring genuine attachment in particular cases, never become generally popular. When Mr. Pennroyal was accused of stinginess, it was not considered that he had a great many liabilities to meet, and perhaps some big debts to pay off. When it was said that he was unsocial and cynical, it was forgotten that these very remarks were enough to make him so. And when he was blamed ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne

... ashamed to walk with him in the street. Above all, his notorious meanness in his money matters, his stickling with his poor washerwoman for a halfpenny and with others for a farthing, and his uniform stinginess on all occasions rendered him notoriously disgusting to all his acquaintances, and affords, I should imagine, but a ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse

... know that I have not gained a little. It is something, Jo, to know that I am not in the power of a bad, or even an ill-tempered man. I can sit by my fire and know that no one will come home to fret at me,—that I shall encounter no cold looks, no sneers, no bursts of anger, no snarl of stinginess, no contempt of my opinion and advice. I know that now men treat me with respect and attention, such as their wives rarely, if ever, receive from them. Sensitive and fastidious as I am, I do not know whether ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... and the iniquity thrived. There were those who still endeavored to escape the vigilance of the naval officers, and save the three pounds on each slave. But the diligence and liberality of the authorities were not to be outdone by the skulking stinginess of Negro-smugglers. On the 18th of June, 1723, the General Assembly passed the ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... rights, privileges, and perquisites, it is not unfrequently either a battle or a sort of armed treaty between kitchen and parlor." Many will admit this, and will forget or ignore the cause. Listen to the servants' story, and you will find them complaining of the stinginess, or tyranny, ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton

... boldly asserted that she could not afford better for the amount she had received, and there was truth in that, but she had no business to keep house and to become the tormentor of poor children who were thrown on her hands by stinginess, and who required to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... thought it was best for your peace and happiness for you to go, I'd step out of the way at once. But he'd drag you down, Ollie, lower than any woman you ever saw, for they don't have that kind of women here. Morgan isn't as good a man as Isom is, with all his hard ways and stinginess. If he's honest and honorable, he can wait for you till Isom dies. He'll not last more than ten or fifteen years longer, and you'll be young even then, Ollie. I don't suppose anybody ever gets too old to be happy any more than they get too old to ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... been no piano when Lance gave his party, which was different. She herself meant to play, and Art Miller had brought his fiddle, and Jennie had volunteered to "chord" with him. But, Mary Hope felt much nervous apprehension lest these Pocatello and Lava people should think it was just Scotch stinginess ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower

... night, on constant guard." The merchant, having thus his doubts and fears removed, resumed his meal with freshened appetite, but gave nought to the poor nomad, and, having finished, closed his wallet. The Bedouin, seeing his stinginess, writhed with the pangs of hunger. Presently a gazelle passed rapidly by them, at which he sighed heavily, and the merchant inquiring the cause of his sorrow, he said: "The cause is this—had not thy ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... and no party which Mrs. Flanagan gave or appeared at went off without giving Biddy a chance to "settle herself in the world." This was not done without a battle now and then with old Flanagan, whose stinginess would exhibit itself upon occasion; but at last all let and hindrance to the merry lady ceased, by the sudden death of her old husband, who left her the entire of his property, so that, for the first time, his will ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover

... returning to-morrow," I cut in. "I wish you'd tell him it's ridiculous, Mr. Hilderman. Fancy coming all this way for twenty-four hours. He must have a look round, to say nothing of his stinginess in depriving me ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux

... and mix the brains With the gravy it contains; While it on the spit remains, Cut the Pig in two. Chop the sage, and chop the bread Fine as very finest shred; O'er it melted butter spread— Stinginess ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... and we are now drilling a hole. I don't know that I shall succeed but, at any rate, I am going to have a try. If it fails, I must hit on some other way. The provisions are holding out all right; and Meinik calculates that, with a little stinginess, we could manage for another three weeks. We have drilled the hole in two inches today and, as we get more accustomed to the work, I dare say we could do three inches in each shift. The block is twenty inches through on the straight, and may be two feet on the line that we follow; so that ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty

... Liberality, the excess Prodigality, the defect Stinginess: here each of the extremes involves really an excess and defect contrary to each other: I mean, the prodigal gives out too much and takes in too little, while the stingy man takes in too much and gives out too little. (It must be understood that we are ...
— Ethics • Aristotle

... and elsewhere about Duport's stinginess tallies with the contemporary newspaper accounts. No sooner had the new manager taken possession of his post than he began to economise in such a manner that he drove away men like Conradin Kreutzer, Weigl, and ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... 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 to stinginess. ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... throughout Pomerania. An old chronicler, and a Protestant, thus testifies, 1542:—"And since this time (the Reformation) a great change has come over all things. In place of piety, we have profanity; in place of reverence, sacrilege and the plundering of God's churches; in place of alms-deeds, stinginess and selfishness; in place of feasts, greed and gluttony; in place of festivals, labour; in place of obedience and humility of children, obstinacy and self-opinion; in place of honour and veneration for the priesthood, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold

... stinginess. It's my nature to be morbidly economical, though I know I needn't be. If I hadn't had L500 a year left me, I should never have been able to come and live here, and drop all my horrid relations. I enjoy appearing dependent and being a spectator, and I've absolutely ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson

... saving even to stinginess. She would do her best to provide what my father liked, but for us she thought almost anything good enough. She would, for instance, give us the thinnest of milk—we said she skimmed it three times before she thought it blue enough for us. My two younger brothers did not mind it ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald

... them laughed at Becky's last "move," they were prejudiced against her for it, and thought it another evidence of her stinginess and sharpness. They all agreed, however, that she had "got 'round' Lizzie to that extent that that young woman would stand up for her, anyway, no matter what she'd do ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry

... number. The Indians went away with their canoes literally loaded with all an Indian wants, from silver to a steel trap, and a practical demonstration was given which will shut their mouths forever with regard to the oft-repeated scandal of the stinginess and injustice of the ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... yoked pulling like one, and, in a minute or two, the ground was as brown, barren, and ridgy as a newly ploughed field. But this was rarely done, for everybody gave something, and, were it but little, the men never murmured, though they might talk of the stinginess of the giver afterwards amongst themselves, more especially if the party was what they called 'well off in the world.' We are not aware that the ploughmen were ever summoned to answer for such a breach of the law, for they believe, to use their own expressive ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton

... did—bless her soul! It was the best bargain that ever I made, or ever expect to make, too. Some men marry Temper, and some Extravagant Notions, and some Vanity, and some Jealous, Suspicious Dispositions, and some, again, Stinginess—Good gracious! there's no end to the disagreeable things men do marry! I married Nerves! and with them, the best and sweetest and, to my way of thinking, the prettiest woman in the County and State, and the Universe, and I've been thankful for it every day and every ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland

... person, and high gentleman-like bearing. It pleased the old London bachelor to see Pen walking with the young patricians of his university, and he (who was never known to entertain his friends, and whose stinginess had passed into a sort of byword among some wags at the Club, who envied his many engagements, and did not choose to consider his poverty) was charmed to give his nephew and the young lords snug little dinners at his lodgings, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... a certain village, who was noted for his avarice and stinginess, happened one day in crossing a narrow bridge to fall into the river. As he could not swim, he sank for a moment out of sight, and then coming to the surface floated down the stream, struggling and yelling for help. A passer-by ran to the bank, and stretching out ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... have fallen and evil deeds end badly sooner or later. There is not much to say about Lizaveta Prohorovna. She is still living and, as is often the case with people of her sort, is not much changed, she has not even grown much older—she only seems to have dried up a little; on the other hand, her stinginess has greatly increased though it is difficult to say for whose benefit she is saving as she has no children and no attachments. In conversation she often speaks of Akim and declares that since she ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... song, and the wit responded with, of all things in the world, the National Anthem, which he gave correctly until, arriving at the line 'Happy and glorious,' he added—as if under the influence of drink—'A pint between four of us—God save the King!' A different form of stinginess, it would seem, was shown by Brigham Young, when (if we may believe the tale) he gave as a reason for marrying a certain male-garbed lady-doctor, that he would be able to have her clothes 'made ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams

... service. He will give nothing he can help giving, do nothing he can help doing, to make the town he lives in a healthier, happier, purer, wiser, nobler place. Meanness is the sacrifice of the great social whole to the individual. It is selfishness, stinginess, and ingratitude combined. It is the disposition to receive all that society contributes to the individual, and to give nothing in return. It is a willingness to appropriate the fruits of labors in which one ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde

... saint, and preach to Nellie on the vanity and vexation of the human heart," replied the invalid, who seemed to be decidedly out of humour. "I am well aware of Judith's style, Debby: that is how she covers her stinginess," and Miss Margaret gave a little ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont



Words linked to "Stinginess" :   parsimony, minginess, parsimoniousness, illiberality, selfishness, generosity, tightfistedness, trait, tightness, closeness



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