"Miserly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sides, the Snails imprisoned in my apparatus sometimes reach the top, which is closed with a glass pane, and fix themselves to it with a speck of glair. This is a mere temporary halt, in which the Mollusc is miserly with his adhesive product, and the merest shake is enough to loosen the shell and send it to the bottom ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... before. At the same time he gave me orders, under pain of his displeasure, not to leave Ferrara without duly informing him; and commanded the treasurer to present me with a diamond up to three hundred crowns in value. The miserly official found a stone rising a trifle above sixty crowns, and let it be heard that it was worth upwards ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... A MISERLY old farmer, who had lost one of his best hands in the midst of hay-making, remarked to the sexton, as he was filling up the grave: "It's a sad thing to lose a good mower, at a time like this—but after all, poor Tom was ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... reduction of the standing army. He secured new and advantageous treaties with old and historic foes, putting Graustark's financial credit upon a high footing in the European capitals. The people smugly regarded themselves as safe in the hands of the miserly but honest old financier. If he accomplished many things by way of office to enhance his own particular fortune, no one looked askance, for he made no effort to blind or deceive his people. Of his honesty there could be no question; of his financial operations, ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Indian regarded the honey-bee as an ill omen. She was the white man's fly. In fact, she was the epitome of the white man himself. She has the white man's craftiness, his industry, his architectural skill, his neatness and love of system, his foresight; and, above all, his eager, miserly habits. The honey- bee's great ambition is to be rich, to lay up great stores, to possess the sweet of every flower that blooms. She is more than provident. Enough will not satisfy her; she must have all she can get ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... of the story begins when the miserly old miner—who, all the time unknown to Jerry, is hoarding up gold for his young ward—discovers, to his great astonishment, that gold has no fascination for this strange young man, and fears that with his lofty ideals all his toil for ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... straws for praise or blame,—leather and prunella! Praise and blame are here!" and he struck his hand upon his breast with almost passionate emphasis. "Take a specimen. These Hogtons were the bane of the place,—uneducated and miserly; their land a wilderness, their village a pig-sty. I come, with capital and intelligence; I redeem the soil, I banish pauperism, I civilize all around me: no merit in me, I am but a type of capital guided ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... grand pretensions and small brains, without the actual, daily representations of the tales of Boccaccio and La Fontaine! Without the girdles and scapularies, what would you have our women do in the future—save that money and perhaps become miserly and covetous? Without the masses, novenaries, and processions, where will you find games of panguingui to entertain them in their hours of leisure? They would then have to devote themselves to their ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... give you?" asked his companion as they rowed home again. "An immense amount!" replied Erasmus, but his friend saw the discontent on his face, and drew from him how small the sum really was. Then the disappointed scholar burst into a string of indignant questions: was Warham miserly, or was he poor, or did he really think such a present expressed the value of the book? Grocyn frankly blurted out the true reason for Warham's economy in his shrewd suspicion that this was not the first dedication that had been prefixed to the 'Hecuba,' and it is ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... eyes, and firm mouths, with lips close together. The air on this hill-top must be of excellent quality; the life up here could scarcely be so hard as in the field villages. For the women looked less worn, and less hideously old, and in the men's eyes there was not so hard and miserly a glittering. ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... When once a taste for improvement [I mean building and gardening improvement] becomes a passion, gaming itself is scarcely more ruinous. I have no doubt that Sir Arthur's fortune has suffered, and is suffering severely; and that while that miserly wretch, Abimelech, is destroying the fabric, he is purloining and carrying off the best of the materials. I doubt whether there be an acre of land in the occupation of Sir Arthur, which has not cost ten times its intrinsic ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... "Miserly, indeed!" said he; "not that: he married three rimes, and he was not a man who restricted his official business to too few hands—how ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... it all. She was alive to the atmospheric chill of the village, though in no wise understanding it. She was troubled and fretted by many things, but she went her way. The money she had earned by posing she dealt out in miserly fashion to Susan Jane; while at the same time she assumed many household cares to ease David, whom ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... and in that time several things happened. In the first place the miserly old banker, Edward Cossey's father, had died, his death being accelerated by the shock of his son's accident. On his will being opened, it was found that property and money to no less a value than 600,000 pounds passed ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... have taught some sweet, some bitter lessons— none wiser than this: To spend in all things else, but of one's friends to be most miserly. ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward
... sc. ii. In the novel the heroine is shut up by a miserly hunks of an uncle to force her into a detested mercenary match with his son. In the play the mistress is the wife of the old and ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... Normandy was generally laid to the charge of Somerset. He was charged with a miserly hoarding of supplies as well as planning in conjunction with Suffolk the fatal sack of Fougeres. His incapacity as a general added to the resentment at his recall of the Duke of York, a recall which had been marked as a disgrace by the ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... but let us see. Three, seven, twelve, fourteen, twenty-three—here is some mistake. Let us go over it again. Yes, here it is. This is not your accounting. The miserly Lombard would cozen you of your honor if he could but sell it again. Here is an error of near ten thousand livres; let me ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... I'll do," said Joe Jackson at last. "I'll put it up to some of the cowboys. They may know more about Bimbel and his outfit and about Jarley Bangs than I do. Bangs has a reputation for being a very queer and miserly man, but that's about all I can say ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... man's fly. In fact she was the epitome of the white man himself. She has the white man's craftiness, his industry, his architectural skill, his neatness and love of system, his foresight; and above all his eager, miserly habits. The honeybee's great ambition is to be rich, to lay up great stores, to possess the sweet of every flower that blooms. She is more than provident. Enough will not satisfy her, she must have all she can get by hook or by crook. She comes from the ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... Suppose this same miserly A, on awaking and searching for, and finding his treasure gone, takes it so much to heart ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... to part with his money. A couple of years later, Lady Mary had again to say to him: "Pray order me some money, for I am in great want, and must run into debt if you don't do it soon." Even in these days Montagu evidently had begun to be miserly. With all his riches, he never spent a crown when a smaller sum would suffice, and during most of his life he, as Sir Leslie Stephen put it, "devoted ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... by women when their sorrow has chained them to the rock of horror, and grief insatiable tears out their broken hearts. But in their strength they are not loved. They cannot give themselves yet, for their strength hinders them, and women think them miserly of words and of love's little coin of change. If they get love at last, it is as the pity which the unhurt weak feel for ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... standpoint of a statesman. To order expenditure of all kinds, even useless ones, does not constitute bad management. Such acts contribute to the movement of money, the stagnation of which becomes, especially in France, dangerous to the public welfare, by reason of the miserly and profoundly illogical habits of the provinces ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... that a prophet has no honor among his own people, and David was the black sheep of the miserly household of Denton Farm. It consisted of old Christopher Denton, his three sons, Matthew, Sam, and David, and his daughter Jennie. They had the reputation of being "people well-to-do," but they were not liked among the Cumberland "states-men," ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... his mission, one of the ambassadors, Dominic of Treviso, drew the following portrait of Louis XII.: "The king is in stature tall and thin, and temperate in eating, taking scarcely anything but boiled beef; he is by nature miserly and retentive; his great pleasure is hawking; from September to April he hawks. The Cardinal of Rouen [George d'Amboise] does everything; nothing, however, with-out the cognizance of the king, who has ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... should be made cardinal," said the duchess, "rather than certain great lords of my acquaintance; but as soon as we can dispose of the blue and the red, be easy, gentlemen, we shall not be miserly. Now, chevalier, you have heard what the prince said. If ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... we do not in the least advocate the formation of miserly, penurious habits; for we hate the scrub, the screw, the miser. All that we contend for is, that man should provide for the future,—that they should provide during good times for the bad times which almost invariably follow them,—that they should lay by a store of ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... Monsieur Rogron and his sister Sylvia. A hard, gloomy couple, these two; retired shopkeepers, who live in a dreary house in the back streets of a dreary country town. Their celibacy weighs heavily upon them; they are miserly, and absurdly vain; morose, and instinctively ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... indeed have been the result of self-denial, practised through filial affection. In the morning she was speechless, and while they were endeavoring to persuade her to give up her keys to the captain, died. In her pocket were found two parcels, containing forty sovereigns, sewed up with the most miserly care. It was ascertained she had a widowed mother in the north of Ireland, and judging her money could be better applied than to paying for a funeral on shore, the captain gave orders for committing the body to the waves. It rained drearily as her corpse, covered with starred ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... "How miserly you are," said her brother; "and selfish, too; for you know I can't have a military funeral till you'll let me ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... not understand this, they think that the causes of pain and pleasure are in the body. Putting the heart on one side, they earnestly strive after the comforts of the body, and launch into extravagance, the end of which is miserly parsimony. Instead of pleasure they meet with grief of the heart, and pass their lives in weeping and wailing. In one way or another, everything in this world depends upon the heart. I implore every one of you to take heed that tears fall not to ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... to know something about her fortune," he said at last. "Montevarchi is rich, but miserly. He could ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... left. He went and begged grace of the owner of the hut, a cobbler who went every Sunday night to drink his pint of wine and smoke with Baas Cogez. The cobbler would grant no mercy. He was a harsh, miserly man, and loved money. He claimed in default of his rent every stick and stone, every pot and pan, in the hut, and bade Nello and Patrasche be out of it on ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... rents he collects from this death-trap and others like it, and yet refuses through his agent to drive one nail in it to make it more fit to live in. A man who gives out as alms, with one hand, what he wrings with the other as blood-money from the victims of his miserly greed, deserves to have a trumpet sounded before him as the hypocrites do, and we shall continue to sound it until public sentiment compels him to be as humane as ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... mixed set, and among them our couple was much discussed. Something got to be known of Jamie,—that he was confidential clerk to the well-known firm of Boston's older ship-owners, and that she was his adopted daughter. Soon the rumor grew that he was miserly and rich. ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... we derived our impressions of the French people, as well as of Italian skies, from English literature. The probability was that our earliest association with the Gallic race partook largely of the ridiculous. All the extravagant anecdotes of morbid self-love, miserly epicurism, strained courtesy, and frivolous absurdity current used to boast a Frenchman as their hero. It was so in novels, plays, and after-dinner stories. Our first personal acquaintance often confirmed this prejudice; for the chance was that the one specimen of the Grand Nation familiar to our ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... his heart overflowing with joy. He worked steadily, spent little, tried to save some money that he might not be without a sou at the time of his marriage, and became as miserly as he had once been prodigal. Summer glided by; then autumn, and no one suspected the tie existing between Duroy and Mme. Forestier, for ...
— Bel Ami • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... hidden somewhere about the place. Naturally enough, every one who had since come to live at the mill had tried to find the treasure; but none had ever succeeded, and the local wiseacres said that nobody ever would, unless the ghost of the miserly miller should, one day, take a fancy to one of the tenants, and disclose to him the ...
— Told After Supper • Jerome K. Jerome
... and using shoes; the other by the manipulation of an umbrella; and the prudent mother advises her son how the candidate for bride behaves toward a groom lying on the floor, or how she eats cheese—the extravagant one cuts the rind away thick, the miserly one eats the rind, the right one cuts the rind away thin and carefully. Many people judge families, hotel guests, and inhabitants of a city, and not without reason, according to the comfort ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... pit. A strong hand striking him in the middle of his back flung him contemptuously forward into it; a gasping cry of protest and all was over. Had time been permitted him he would have stretched out a hand towards the shabby black box that, true to all miserly convention, occupied the space beneath his bed. Time was not allowed him. He might take with him into the darkness neither money ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... shouts of triumph they led the old war-horse back to his stable, knowing that for the future its miserly owner would not dare to begrudge it the comfort to which ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... as it ended, with political murder. The miserly Henry VII had made use of two tools, Empson and Dudley, who, by minute inquisition into technical offences and by nice adjustment of fines to the wealth of the offender, had made the law unpopular and the king rich. Four days after his succession, Henry VIII issued a proclamation asking all those ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... himself, and shining out in the unclouded light of his own genuine goodness—to do my utmost to help his better self against his worse, and make him what he would have been if he had not, from the beginning, had a bad, selfish, miserly father, who, to gratify his own sordid passions, restricted him in the most innocent enjoyments of childhood and youth, and so disgusted him with every kind of restraint;—and a foolish mother who indulged him to the top of his bent, deceiving her husband ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... Joseph Peabody, a little from Betty, and more from Bob, who had spoken freely to their father. They knew about his miserly nature and they were acquainted with the fact that he believed Bob had stolen something that did not belong to him. The real story of the unrecorded deed both Bob and Betty had told only to Mr. Littell. It was characteristic of Bobby's loyal nature that her first thought ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... of all things do you suppose has happened? Old man Mullin's back. Nobody can hardly believe it. He's been gone these ten years and nobody blamed him a mite when he left that miserly, nagging wife of his and went off to California. Why, they say she nearly died giving him a ten-cent piece every week for spending money and that he used to work on the sly unbeknownst to her to get money for his tobacco ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... the druggist, "but the almighty dollar has been his sole aim and ambition. He has been selfish and miserly in the pursuit of it, and money is all he has gained. Now Todd has been industrious enough, and gone about his business quite as faithfully as Ab, but instead of putting his head down like a dog on the scent of a rabbit, he has had some ...
— The Quilt that Jack Built; How He Won the Bicycle • Annie Fellows Johnston
... candles seemed to me abominably short, and I once tried to seduce Mrs. Gabbitas into allowing me two at a time; but she, good soul, wisely said that one was more than I had any right to burn in an evening, and I was too miserly to ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... wind it up and watch its performance with his everlasting, good-humoured, satisfied smile. In public she ventures only to abuse the doll. In the silent watches of the night she directs her sharp speeches at Christian himself. Not that she is altogether miserly, nor by any means an ill-disposed person. Had she been of such a disposition her husband would not have married her, for he is a very good man of business and a keen judge of other wares besides tobacco. She is a good mother and a good housewife, energetic, thrifty, ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... up the canyon together. "And now I will show you a lean and hungry thief grown monstrous and miserly, Farrell," ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... farmer with whom he and the Indians lodged. When he got off he lay two days hidden in the hold of the vessel that was to carry him away. Then the Indians came out and so frightened its officers that he was sent ashore and put under the care of a miserly old fellow who ate the most of the food that was provided for Jogues. While he was hidden in this man's garret he was within a few feet of Indians who came there to trade. Finally the Dutch satisfied the Indians by paying a large ransom and shipped Jogues down the river. He received nothing but ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... could not stand the test of frontier life. No longer sought as the belle of the soldiers' ball-rooms, she aspired to leadership among their wives and families, and was accorded that pre-eminence rather than the fierce battle which was sure to follow any revolt. She became avaricious,—some said miserly,—and Clancy miserable. Then began the downward course. He took to drink soon after his return from a long, hard summer's campaign with the Indians. He lost his sergeant's stripes and went into the ranks. There came a time when the new colonel forbade his re-enlistment in the cavalry regiment ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... experienced a gambler as yourself." Lord Bellasis did visit at Sir Richard's house during the first year of his cousin's marriage; but upon the birth of the son who is the hero of this history, he affected a quarrel with the city knight, and cursing him to the Prince and Poins for a miserly curmudgeon, who neither diced nor drank like a gentleman, departed, more desperately at war with fortune than ever, for his old haunts. The year 1827 found him a hardened, hopeless old man of sixty, ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... this!" Tidemand would often say when he gave his signature. His father had a reputation for miserly thrift which had survived him; he was one of the old-fashioned tradesmen, who went around in his shirt-sleeves and apron, and weighed out soap and flour by the pound. He had no time to dress decently; his shoes were still a byword; the toes were sticking out, and when he walked it looked as if ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... beggars are reconciled at the porringer. That cursed Observateur litteraire, I wish the devil had had both him and his sheet! It was that dog of a miserly priest who caused my disaster. He appeared on our horizon for the first time; he arrived at the hour that drives us all out of our dens, the hour for dinner. When it is bad weather, lucky the man among us who has a shilling in his pocket to pay for a hackney-coach! ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... among the Yankee clock-makers, and they all seemed to hate the one who took the lead. The next establishment of which I shall speak, is that of William L. Gilbert, of Winsted, Connecticut. He is said to be miserly in feeling, and is quite rich; not very enterprising, but has made a great deal of money by availing himself of ...
— History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, - and Life of Chauncey Jerome • Chauncey Jerome
... pretty dress!' she said to me. 'Did you notice it? Would you believe that Emmeline has had that dress five years. I can remember it. She is so careful—so orderly!' 'All right,' I thought to myself, 'a lot of miserly wretches who mean to ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... contracts and hardens down to its central, motive idea. That which becomes the dominant aim and the grand end of life, always determines the character of life; and I have known young men, even before they have approached middle age, to become mean and miserly to such a degree as to disappoint and disgust their friends, simply in consequence of a few years' absorption in business. Business is not life, nor is it life's end. It is simply a means of life; ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... affected by "Thrift", and when my uncle quoted passages from this tiresome book I astounded him by replying, in a phrase I wrongly attributed to the adorable Emerson, that if I had a quarter to spend instead of twelve cents, I would give half of it for a hyacinth! My miserly uncle said it sounded just like Mohammed, and that Emerson had doubtless found it in that dangerous book, ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... this suggestion, Van Nant told of an adventure Carboys had had in Persia some years previously. It appears that he saved the life of a miserly old Arab called Abdul ben Meerza at the risk of his own; that the old man was profuse in his expressions of gratitude, and, on their parting, had said: 'By the Prophet, thou shalt yet find the tree of this day's planting bear rich fruit for ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... the substantial farmer and the fine lady is mocked with bitter gaiety. Before the year closed Moliere, continuing to write in prose, returned to Plautus, and surpassed him in L'Avare. To be rich and miserly is in itself a form of fatuity; but Harpagon is not only miserly but amorous, as far as a ruling passion will admit one of subordinate influence. Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1670), a lesson of good sense to those who suffer from the social ambition to rise above their ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... desire, like Bishops Bernier and De Pancemont, one accepting a reward of 30,000 francs and the other the sum of 50,000 francs[51105] for the vile part they have played in the negotiations for the Concordat; a miserly, brutal cynic like Maury, archbishop of Paris, or an intriguing, mercenary skeptic like De Pradt, archbishop of Malines; or an old imbecile, falling on his knees before the civil power, like Rousseau, bishop of Orleans, who writes a pastoral letter declaring that the Pope is as free in his ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... a little miserly in this matter. Indulging in the rare, the sovereign luxury of thinking, he had suddenly become aware of time's precious fluency, and wondered why everyone else didn't think about it as passionately as he did. In the privacy of his room, weary after the day afoot, he ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... his fancies into the mouth of Alphius, a miserly money-lender. No one yearns so keenly for the country and its imagined peace as the overworked city man, when his pulse is low and his spirits weary with bad air and the reaction of over-excitement; no one, as ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... Holmes is not miserly. I've knowed him since a boy. To buy place, power, perhaps, eh? Yet not that, neither," he added, hastily. "We think a sight of him out our way, (self-made, you see,) and would have had him the best office in the State before this, only he was so ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... "Some merchants are misers" is of the right kind, since "merchants" and "misers" are Specieses of the same Genus "men"; and since the Name "merchants" conveys the idea of the Attribute "mercantile", and the name "misers" the idea of the Attribute "miserly", each of which ideas is not ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll
... your feet, but if you go first this way and then that, then you see everything. You are nearly as silly as the ants, who never see anything beautiful all their lives. Be sure you have nothing to do with the ants, Bevis; they are a mean, wretched, miserly set, quite contemptible and beneath notice. Now I go everywhere all round the field, and spend my time searching for lovely things; sometimes I find flowers, and sometimes the butterflies come down into the grass and tell me the news, and I am so fond of the sunshine, I ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... is your only child"—("Blessed Father, think of him knowin' this!")—"and as you are well to do in the world, it's both a sin and a scandal for you to urge a pretty young girl of nineteen to marry an old miserly runt of fifty. You know now how to lay the ghost, Mrs. Houlaghan—and that is what I can do for you; but if you do not marry her to Brine Oge, as I said, another ghost will certainly contrive to haunt you. ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... eccentric by his neighbors, and furnished frequent food for comment and speculation among the gossips which usually abound in country villages—and not in this case without cause. His manner of living was miserly and penurious in the extreme, and all ideas of comfort seemed to be ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... older beggar but not grey) Some evil has befallen the rich ones of this city. They take no joy any longer in benevolence, but are become sour and miserly at heart. Alas for them! I sometimes sigh for them when ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... however, had a very ample supply of wood to burn, that being an article which abounded on Shelter Island, and which the deacon had consented to lay in, in some abundance. Gardiner got this concession out of the miserly temperament of the old man, by persuading him that a sealer could not work to any advantage, unless he had the means of occasionally warming himself. The miserly propensities of the deacon were not so engrossing that he did not comprehend the wisdom of making sufficient outlay to secure the execution ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... other, the trade of crime was adopted strictly in subservience to the dictates of ill-regulated desires and emotions, suffering defeat in their hope of indulgence, and stimulating to a morbid action which became a disease. The references of Munro were always addressed to the petty gains; and the miserly nature, thus perpetually exhibiting itself, at the expense of all other emotions, was, in fact, the true influence which subjected him almost to the sole dictation of his accomplice, in whom a somewhat lofty distaste for such a peculiarity had occasioned a manner ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... this day done so much honour to my kinsfolk and to me, that I should indeed be ungrateful if I did not place myself with all that belongs to me at your service. I know, sir, that lords like yourself, who have stern and miserly fathers, are often in greater need of money than we, who, with small establishments and careful husbandry, seek only to save up wealth. Now, albeit God has given me a wife after my own heart, it has not pleased Him to give me all my ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... exclaimed one day. "It gets tiresome having everything laid ready to your hand, with nothing to do but take it. Life must be full of snap when you have to dash your will up against old Dame Fortune and wrest what you want out of her miserly clutches." ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... If I hear of any one, I will inform you. Good places are as difficult to find as good subjects;" then she added mentally, "Very likely I'd send you a poor girl to be starved to death in your hovel! Your master is too miserly and too wicked—to denounce, in one breath, poor Louise ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... mother the daughter of a mercantile man. He was acquainted with grief from the start, being born in a hospital. There were five children, and they very soon discovered the exact meaning of such words as hunger and cold. Poverty in early years sometimes makes men rather close and miserly in middle age, as it certainly did in the case of Ibsen, who seemed to think that charity began and ended at home. Not so Dostoevski: he was often victimised, he gave freely and impulsively, and was chronically in debt. He had about as much business instinct as a prize-fighter ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... add that Mr. Longmore is not one of those miserly collectors who brood over their treasures and deny the sight of them to others. On the contrary he takes the keenest pleasure in showing them to his friends, and at the present time is holding a series of informal receptions ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... antagonism; then we should have—what? the elements of a happy, contented, harmonious life? No; instead, either a speedy lawsuit for divorce, or a continual domestic broil, the nearest approach to a mundane purgatory possible. The selfish, close-fisted, miserly money-catcher must marry a woman equally sordid and stingy. Then together they could hoard up, for moths and rust to destroy, or for interested relatives to quarrel over, the pictorial greenback and the glittering dollar, each scrimping the other down to the finest point above starvation ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... King Solomon") (1585), Samsons Faengsel ("The Imprisonment of Samson"), which includes lyrical passages which have given it claims to be considered the first Danish opera, and a farce, Karrig Niding ("The Miserly Miscreant"). Beside these works Ranch wrote a famous moralizing poem, entitled "A new song, of the nature and song of certain birds, in which many vices are punished, and many virtues praised." Peder Clausen[8] (1545-1614), ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... you, Ruth!" exclaimed Kate and Jessie Seaward, gazing on the coin with intense, almost miserly satisfaction. ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... attach far too much importance to chastity. Not that I deny that chastity is a virtue, but there are degrees in virtues just as there are in vices. It seems to be absurd that a woman should be banished from society for having had a lover, while a woman who is miserly, double-faced and spiteful goes everywhere. The morality of this age is assuredly not that which is taught in the Gospel. In my opinion it is better to love too much than not enough. Nowadays dry hearts are stuck up ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... all the impressions made on him by his stay in our town, the one most sharply imprinted on his memory was the unsightly and almost abject figure of the little provincial official, the coarse and jealous family despot, the miserly money-lender who picked up the candle-ends and scraps left from dinner, and was at the same time a passionate believer in some visionary future "social harmony," who at night gloated in ecstasies over fantastic ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... rather old family. I am not proud of my descent, seeing that my ancestors were all fearful prodigals. Though that reproach cannot indeed be made against my great-grandfather, Ivan Andreevitch Lutchinov; on the contrary, he had the character of being excessively careful, even miserly—at any rate, in the latter years of his life. He spent his youth in Petersburg, and lived through the reign of Elizabeth. In Petersburg he married, and had by his wife, my great-grandmother, four children, three ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... coat. It was one of those houses which are large without being commodious; its very tall, very narrow windows, with their attenuated, rusty inside shutters, boasting to the passerby of high ceilings but betraying the miserly floor spaces. At each side of the front door was a high and cramped bay-window, one of them insanely culminating in a little six-sided tower of slate, and both of them girdled above the basement windows by a narrow porch, which ran ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... been impressed with the thought that parting with a dollar was a serious matter, and to save a dollar one of the good deeds rewarded in this life and the life to come. She and her husband were in complete harmony on this vital point. Yet not a miserly trait entered into their humble thrift. It was a necessity entailed by their meager resources; it was inspired by the wish for an honest ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... economy. My brother, who never makes up his mind whether he will be a Miser or a Spendthrift, is at all times a strange mixture of both: of this failing, the even economy of your correct brother's temper makes him an ill judge. The miserly part of Charles, at that time smarting under his recent loss, then happened to reign triumphant; and he would not write, or let me write, so often as he wished, because the postage cost two and four pence. Then came ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... are summed up in this: to arrive at seizing a morsel—the biggest possible—of that prey which the fortunate of earth consume. And to this same category, little matter what their station in life, belong the profligate, the arrogant, the miserly, the weak, the crafty. Livery counts for nothing: we must see the heart. No class has the prerogative of simplicity; no dress, however humble in appearance, is its unfailing badge. Its dwelling need not be a garret, a hut, the cell of the ascetic nor the lowliest fisherman's ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... do in life is not confined to the misery their heartless frauds inflict, for the very humblest and poorest are often their victims: they do worse, in the way they sow distrust and suspicion of really deserving objects, in the pretext they afford the miserly man to draw closer his purse-strings, and "not be imposed on;" and, worst of all, in the ill repute they spread of a nation which, not attractive by the graces of manner or the charms of a winning address, yet cherished the ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... patrons at "Malahide" were two quiet, polite little Japanese gentlemen, Mr. Den and Mr. Yabe; Madame Galli, a shrivelled old woman in a cheap wig, with sharp rat's eyes that nothing escaped, the soul of good nature, rich, miserly and incredibly mischievous. There were several boarders who were in business in the City, and Mr. Hutton, a careworn man of fifty, who spent his days working in the British Museum. Next to him at table sat ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... sighed deeply, and wondered: "Why was my father only a miller? What favours are granted to a knight like that! But I hope the kiss won't be the end of it all; for, unless she is a miserly fairy, there ought to be much more substantial pay for his services in store ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to his talents as an organizer and driver of industry. "I may make a million dollars from this reaper," said McCormick, in the full tide of enthusiasm over his invention; and these words indicate an indispensable part of his program. He had no miserly instinct but he had one overpowering ambition. It was McCormick's conviction, almost religious in its fervor, that the harvester business of the world belonged to him. As already indicated, plenty of other hardy spirits, many of them almost ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... supposed to be a miserly, wealthy, sacrilegious fellow who goes about stealing children and dogs and anything else he can lay his hands upon. He may have his faults, but to see him kneeling before the shrine of his "patronne reine Sara," ragged and travel-worn and yet burning costly candles and saying his Aves as ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... no great harm of Jacopo," continued Beroviero more familiarly. "His father is miserly. We have spent much time in the preliminary arrangements, without the knowledge of the son, and the old man is very grasping! He would take all my fortune for the dowry if he could. But he has to do with ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... better, thou miserly steward; take heed lest thou chop thy fingers, when thou'rt ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... suddenly his face hardened. He had been called a jackal by the papers—but here were two who bore a clearer title to the name! He knew them both—Jake Kisnieff, better known as Old Attic in the underworld, as crooked as his own bent and twisted form, a miserly, cunning "fence," crafty enough, if report were true, to have garnered a huge, ill-gotten harvest under the nose of the police; and the other, one self-styled Henry Thorold, alias whatever occasion might require, smooth, ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... to fear in the course of our brief pilgrimage. We emerge from eternity, we plunge into eternity; we have but a brief space to poise ourselves in the light ere we drop into the gulf of doom, and our duty is to be miserly over every moment and every faculty that is vouchsafed to us. The essentials of thought and knowledge are contained in a very few books, and the most toilsome drudge who ever preached a sermon, drove a rivet, or swept a floor may become perfectly educated by exercising a wise self-restraint, ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... "you are a wicked old fraud, a miserly skinflint, a miserable land-crab. Behold, your share for the year in all our partnership has been thousands of dollars. The head clerk has given me this paper. It says that during the year you have drawn just eighty-seven dollars ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... into harbor. And yet when something does really touch her—when something makes her feel—that curious indecision in her nature hardens into something irresistible. There was a half-witted girl in the village, ill-treated and enslaved by a miserly old aunt. Miss Coryston happened to hear of it from her maid, who was a relation of the girl. She went and bearded the aunt, and took the girl away bodily in her pony-cart. The scene in the cottage garden—Marcia with her arm round ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... right of course to inspire a parsimonious spirit in regard either to goods or to energies. Life itself and all its energies must be given freely; material goods must not be evaluated too minutely. The miserly life is not what we wish to teach. Still there is a wise attitude toward all material things and toward all values which recognizes goods as means to ends, which places true values high and demands economy ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... in exhausting your purse by lavishing money: I have never observed that money made any one beloved. You must not be miserly or unfeeling, or lament the distress you can relieve; but you will open your coffers in vain if you do not open your heart; the hearts of others will be forever closed to you. You must give your time, your care, your affection, yourself. ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... a Sunday-school festival of tea and cake in an English village; we have a crazy gypsy, in a scarlet cloak, singing snatches of romantic song, and revealing a secret on her death-bed which, with the testimony of a dwarfish miserly merchant, who salutes strangers with a curse and a devilish laugh, goes to prove that Ernest, the model young clergyman, is Kate's brother; and we have an ultra-virtuous Irish Barney, discovering that a document is forged, by comparing the date of the paper with the date of ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... requited by the joyless ownership of its millions. I would have given largely to be directed in such a way as while escaping the wastefulness of the shoals of Scylla I might in my own case steer clear of the miserly ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... tells how the hero ran away from his miserly guardian, fell in with a successful airman, and became a young ...
— The Curlytops on Star Island - or Camping out with Grandpa • Howard R. Garis
... advantage of the first vision: the mind is not then aware that there are many more such to come. When this comes to be known to that calculating organ it promptly tries to make a saving in its expenditure of attention. It is only when it believes something to be rare that the mind ceases to be miserly in assigning values. So in the streets of Calcutta I sometimes imagine myself a foreigner, and only then do I discover how much is to be seen, which is lost so long as its full value in attention is not paid. It is the hunger to really see which ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... this account that the miserly dead wander at night in the neighborhood of the treasures they conceal during their life time. They keep a strict watch over their gold; but the trouble they give themselves, far from being of service to them, turns to their disadvantage; and it is not a rare ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... from, or what he was, they did not know, except that he was a Virginian,—they believed so, for that he had a tobacco estate there, which was carried on by his eldest son. He called the captain a stingy, miserly fellow, who would sacrifice any man's life to save a shilling, and that there were odd stories about him at ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... Bower, with sordid signs on it of having been, through its long existence as Harmony Jail, in miserly holding. Bare of paint, bare of paper on the walls, bare of furniture, bare of experience of human life. Whatever is built by man for man's occupation, must, like natural creations, fulfil the intention of its existence, or ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... "You're a miserly coward," she declared. "I'm not robbing you; you will have an abundance for your needs. Why do you quarrel with Dame Fortune? Don't you realize you can pay your rent now and eat three square meals a day, and not have ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... have died rather than let the Spencervale people, among whom she had queened it in her youth, suspect how poor she was and to what straits was sometimes reduced. She much preferred to have them think her miserly and odd—a queer old recluse who never went anywhere, even to church, and who paid the smallest subscription to the minister's salary of anyone in ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... next day after Billy Jacobs's funeral, his widow left the house. She sold all the furniture, except what was absolutely necessary for a very meagre outfitting of the little cottage into which she moved. The miserly habit of her husband seemed to have suddenly fallen on her like a mantle. Her life shrank and dwindled in every possible way; she almost starved herself and her boy, although the rent of her old homestead was quite enough to make them comfortable. In a ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... of his would die away, if untrue; and if true, some way would be opened by which she might put a stop to all increase of predilection on his part, and yet retain him as a friend for Leonard—that darling for whom she was far-seeing and covetous, and miserly of every scrap ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... by the change that had come over her once kind, indulgent husband. He seemed to be entirely filled with the greed of gain, the desire to amass money—not for the sake of the good that it might enable him to enjoy, or confer, but for the mere pleasure of hoarding it. And this miserly feeling grew upon him daily, until he seemed to grudge his family the common comforts of life. And yet Mrs. Taggard knew that he was not only in receipt of a comfortable income from his business, but had laid by a surplus, yearly, ever since ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... them, with the varied and powerful means at their command, are there displayed to an attentive reader, in colors as dark and appalling as other features of the popish system are among us, by the recent exposures of the impudent arrogance of the murderer Bedini, and the ambitious and miserly spirit of his particular friend, the Romish ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... their fill without stint or measure? Who hath so nobly used his thrift, And bestowed on the world this priceless gift, Free to all, whoever may come? Was this noble work built up by the 'masses,' Or by one of the 'miserly, upper classes'?" ...
— Nothing to Say - A Slight Slap at Mobocratic Snobbery, Which Has 'Nothing - to Do' with 'Nothing to Wear' • QK Philander Doesticks
... silvery face Reflects the mansions that her margins grace. Those mansions fair are seen on every hand, (What may not wealth, in such a place, command?) And mark their owners men of wealth and taste; Not miserly, nor ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... little curiosity as to their neighbours, with whom they rarely met for any social intercourse, save at the stated times of sheep-shearing and Christmas; having a certain kind of sober pleasure in amassing money, which occasionally made them miserable (as they call miserly people up in the north) in their old age; reading no light or ephemeral literature, but the grave, solid books brought round by the pedlars (such as the "Paradise Lost" and "Regained,'" "The Death of Abel," "The Spiritual Quixote," and "The Pilgrim's Progress"), ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell |
