"Paltry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... river, rises as a paltry stream in the Witwaters Rand between Johannesburg and Pretoria, and flows into the Indian Ocean, 80 miles north of Delagoa Bay, covering in its course ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... proposed negotiations. The occasion seemed to them propitious. Rumania had gone down to disastrous defeat. Russia was torn by corruption and popular discontent. On the western front, if the Germans had failed at Verdun, they were aware of the deep disappointment of the Allies at the paltry results of the great Somme drive. German morale at home was weakening; but if the Allies could be pictured as refusing all terms and determined upon the destruction of Germany, the people would doubtless agree to the unrestricted use of the ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... and a stranger, seemed, as I approached her, not the least formidable of the embarrassments before me—it was then that I made a discovery which sent a cold shiver through my frame, and in a moment swept all memory of my paltry ten crowns from my head. Ten crowns! Alas! I had lost that which was worth all my crowns put together—the broken coin which the King of Navarre had entrusted to me, and which formed my sole credential, my only means of persuading Mademoiselle de la Vire ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... upon such a home as that was, and to realise that it is possible, in the midst of a busy life of work and of pleasure, to preserve an inner holy of holies around the domestic hearth, into which no jarring discord, no paltry worldly worry, can come, because love is there. Before love's clear gaze all that is selfish and petty and false dies away, while all that is true, good, and gentle makes for sweet peace and that perfect union of hearts which can alone create ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... defending the learned professions. (He thinks and argues like drawing on squared paper.) It struck me as transiently remarkable that a man who could not be induced to forget himself and his personal troubles on coming into a whole new world, who could waste our first evening in Utopia upon a paltry egotistical love story, should presently become quite heated and impersonal in the discussion of scientific professionalism. He was—absorbed. I can't attempt to explain these vivid spots and blind spots in the imaginations of ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... that are so admired, look like a collection of little hospitals. The rest is detestable, and all crammed together, and surrounded with perpendicular hills that have no beauty. The river [the Avon] is paltry enough to be the Seine or the Tiber. Oh! how ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... alarmed and stung, not at the vulgar accusation, the paltry sneer, but at the prophecy relating to Godolphin: "he had never distinguished himself in anything—he never would." Rank, wealth, power, Constance felt these she wanted not, these she could command ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... also a sorry lot. It was not rare that one or the other of them had pawned his instrument. Once a performance had to be postponed because the violinists had stayed over their time at a village dance where they were playing in order to add to their paltry income. The inspector, who was scene-shifter, promoter, ticket seller, and publicity agent all in one, and who was not equal to any of these positions, took French leave in the second year and ran off with one of the chorus girls, taking ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... accompanied them to the cloisters of the Carthusian's, where they considered the History of St. Bruno, by Le Sueur, whose name being utterly unknown to the painter, he gave judgment against the whole composition, as pitiful and paltry; though, in the opinion of all good judges, it is ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... says nothing about publication, and I enclose his letter. But as I had not intended to publish any sketch, can I do so honourably, because Wallace has sent me an outline of his doctrine? I would far rather burn my whole book, than that he or any other man should think that I had behaved in a paltry spirit. Do you not think his having sent me this sketch ties my hands?...If I could honourably publish, I would state that I was induced now to publish a sketch (and I should be very glad to be permitted to say, to follow ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... stamping her little feet, and clenching her little hands, and swearing to herself by all her gods, that this wretched, timid lordling should not get out of her net. She did, in truth, despise him because he would not clutch the jewels. She looked upon him as mean and paltry because he was willing to submit to Mr. Camperdown. But still she was prompted to demand all that could be demanded from her engagement,—because she thought that she perceived a something in him which might produce in him a desire to be relieved from it. No! he should not be relieved. He should ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... feature of the man. He and Narramore were walking one night in a very poor part of Birmingham, and for some reason they chanced to pause by a shop-window—a small window, lighted with one gas-jet, and laid out with a miserable handful of paltry wares; the shop, however, was newly opened, and showed a pathetic attempt at cleanliness and neatness. The friends asked each other how it could possibly benefit anyone to embark in such a business as that, and laughed over the display. While he was laughing, Hilliard became aware ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... nights she has been at home thinking of you? Oh, you have been a blind fool! She has told you lies about everything, over the rent, over the amount she had to pay to the hire-purchase people, over what she was spending. Do you think your paltry two pounds a week was sufficient to dress her and keep ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... during the course of each year. But even this last change of place, great as it seems in comparison with terrestrial measurements, is insufficient to show anything more than the tiniest displacements in a paltry forty-three out of the ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... say that thing in my presence,' said the paltry blusterer, with valor on his tongue and pallor on his lips, 'blood would ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... the light of after recollection, the whole thing seems absurd, even paltry. But as I heard it then, declaimed with hot, earnest fluency by an enthusiast who had spent long, clever years over his case, it appeared to prove itself up to the hilt. Of course his arguments must have been warped, and his premises utterly false; but so cleverly were they ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... days that Kynaston's sons would all grow up fools,' Lady Georgina said tartly. 'Besides which, that was before the poor dear soul took to plunging on the Stock Exchange and made his money. He had nothing to leave then but his best silk hat and a few paltry hundreds. Afterwards, when he'd feathered his nest in soap and cocoa, he discovered that Bertie—that's Lord Southminster—was a first-class idiot. Marmy never liked Southminster, nor Southminster Marmy. For after ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... can yet admire Baudin's monument, which has a degree of grandeur; that of Gautier, of Murger, on which I saw the other day a simple, paltry wreath of immortelles, yellow immortelles, brought thither by whom? Possibly by the last grisette, very old and now janitress in the neighborhood. It is a pretty little statue by Millet, but ruined by dirt and neglect. Sing of youth, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... and portion the flocks between them. Laban retains the white ones, as most numerous: Jacob has to put up with the spotted ones, as the mere refuse. But he is able here, too, to secure his own advantage: and as by a paltry mess (/of pottage/) he had procured the birthright, and, by a disguise, his father's blessing, he manages by art and sympathy to appropriate to himself the best and largest part of the herds; and on this side also he becomes the ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... counting-houses, and not of two great countries. He seemed to consider it as a contention between the sign of the Fleur-de-lis, and the sign of the Red Lion, which house should obtain the best custom. Such paltry considerations were below ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... takes the place of that higher feeling which is probably the finest emotion of which the human heart is capable. And yet there are men who grudge these sufferers their petty triumphs, their poor little emancipation, their paltry wrangler-ships, ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... found himself at daybreak in touch with the enemy. The British forces were stationed on a ridge of rising ground, at the foot of which flowed a small stream. Napoleon considers this stream to have been the Lesser Stour (now a paltry rivulet, dry in summer, but anciently much larger), and the hill to have been Barham Down, the camping-ground of so ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... from the soul men say, Along their couches holding of the cups, With faces shaded by fresh wreaths awry: "Brief is this fruit of joy to paltry man, Soon, soon departed, and thereafter, no, It may not be recalled."—As if, forsooth, It were their prime of evils in great death To parch, poor tongues, with thirst and arid drought, Or chafe ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... perilous striving with princes; therefore, I wish you somewhat to incline to the king's pleasure, for 'indignatio Principis mors est.'" "And is that all, my lord?" replied this man, so much above all paltry considerations; "then in good faith the difference between your grace and me is but this—that I may die ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... silver voices of bells chimed melodiously across the water, from the great Byzantine cathedral on the Rock. It was all beautiful and poetic. Mary would have taken the room if it had been a hundred instead of a paltry thirty francs a day. But she could not afford to stop and look at the violet sea, still haunted by the red wreckage of sunset. She had her shopping to do, for she must somehow find exactly the right hat and dress, ready to put on, or she would have to dine in her room, and that would ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Poutrincourt and the gay lawyer Marc Lescarbot fight for the life of the monopoly in Paris and point out to the clamorous merchants that the building of a French empire in the New World is of more importance than paltry profits. De Monts remains in France to stem the tide rising against him, while Poutrincourt and Lescarbot sail on the Jonas with more colonists and ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... was at the place of execution. He saw the fleering rabble, the flinching wretch produced. He looked on for a while at a certain parody of devotion, which seemed to strip the wretch of his last claim to manhood. Then followed the brutal instant of extinction, and the paltry dangling of the remains like a broken jumping-jack. He had been prepared for something terrible, not for this tragic meanness. He stood a moment silent, and then - "I denounce this God-defying murder," he shouted; and his father, if he must have disclaimed the sentiment, might ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was made," she went on. "And you, who could have demanded half a million easily for the information you had, sold out your benefactor and his friends and the decent element on the Street for a paltry hundred thousand! You sold your honor and your ...
— The Brand of Silence - A Detective Story • Harrington Strong
... years, yet, to prepare for the next step. The white smocks would have to go; Literates would have to sacrifice their paltry titles and distinctions. There would have to be a re-constitution of the Fraternities. Wilton Joyner and Harvey Graves and the other Conservative Literates would have to be convinced, emotionally as well as intellectually, of the need for change. There were a few of the older brothers who could ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... conclusion, certain facts, principles, or data, to reason from, must be established, admitted, or denied. Mr. Burke with his usual outrage, abused the Declaration of the Rights of Man, published by the National Assembly of France, as the basis on which the constitution of France is built. This he calls "paltry and blurred sheets of paper about the rights of man." Does Mr. Burke mean to deny that man has any rights? If he does, then he must mean that there are no such things as rights anywhere, and that he has none himself; for who is there in the world but man? But if Mr. Burke means to admit that man ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... possession of the civilized part of mankind. In his own day, Lessing, though widely known and greatly admired, was little understood or appreciated. He was known to be a learned antiquarian, a terrible controversialist, and an incomparable writer. He was regarded as a brilliant ornament to Germany; and a paltry Duke of Brunswick thought a few hundred thalers well spent in securing the glory of having such a man to reside at his provincial court. But the majority of Lessing's contemporaries understood him as little ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... not be found, when our Master calls us, ripping the lace off our waistcoats, but the spirit of contention from our souls and tongues! Let us all conform in outward customs, which are of no consequence, to the manners of those whom we live among, and despise such paltry distinctions. Alas, sir!" continued he, "a man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat, will not find his way thither sooner in a grey one." On an occasion of less consequence, when he turned his back on Lord Bolingbroke in the rooms at Brighthelmstone, ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... himself, he, by some extraordinary intuition, boldly asserted his belief that the will was a forgery. The three sisters declared they would not contest the will, and had Brea acted wisely by fixing it up to give the attorney a liberal fee, and Eagan a paltry thousand dollars, it would have ended there. But, feeling perfectly secure, no doubt he thought an appearance of firmness would strengthen his position still more, and he was so rash as to denounce the attorney as a ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... led this brave soldier in gray so utterly to forget himself for the sake of doing a deed of mercy to his enemies. There is more grandeur in five minutes of such self-renunciation than in a whole lifetime of self-interest and self-seeking. There is something Christly in it. How poor, paltry, and mean, alongside the records of such deeds, appear men's selfish strivings, self-interests' ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... shall leave for New York on or before June 20th; I desire to know if it be possible to secure our transportation fare from the parties to whom they shall work? Owing to conditions (here) in the south one is hardly able to eke out an existence on the paltry salaries allowed by our white friends; therefore we need help. If you can comply with our request, we shall be very grateful to you; & I wish to say in advance that you will not have cause to regret for whatever the charges may be we shall ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... hands full by the time Lord Raglan arrived. With a paltry 3,000 odd men he was confronting 25,000; but, happily, the morning was so dark and the brushwood so thick that his men were hardly conscious that they were ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... all the representatives of the various money-lending classes that thrive in London on the folly and necessity of the reckless and the needy. All had now given him up. His name had an odour in the market, where his paper was a drug. His bills of a hundred found few purchasers at a paltry five pounds, and were positively rejected by all but wine-merchant-sheriff's officers, who took them at nothing, and contrived to make a handsome profit out of them into the bargain. Few had so little reason to be proud as the man whose name had become a by-word and a joke amongst the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... Life gives us the impression that he was a firm believer, that he strove to live a Christian life, that he was very amiable, and that he was quite free from the paltry vice of jealousy at another's ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... to the University of Edinburgh, where his brother John had preceded him. He boarded with Professor Pillans, whom Byron gibbeted as "paltry"[*] in "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," and enjoyed the society of the literary circle which in those days made Edinburgh famous. The authorship of the Waverley Novels was not yet revealed, and young Russell had the pleasure of discussing with Sir Walter Scott the dramatic qualities ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... A paltry attempt was made in Parliament by Lord John Russell to represent this despatch as intended to defraud General Nott of his military trophies in the event of success, and to relieve the Governor-General ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... too—how many a system, raised Like Neva's icy domes, awhile hath blazed With lights of fancy and with forms of pride, Then, melting, mingled with the oblivious tide! Now Earth usurps the centre of the sky, Now Newton puts the paltry planet by; Now whims revive beneath Descartes's[8] pen, Which now, assailed by Locke's, expire again. And when perhaps in pride of chemic powers, We think the keys of Nature's kingdom ours, Some Davy's magic touch the dream unsettles, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... We did not hold this kind of treatment against the French people as a whole, but to individuals who are so unprincipled and so greedy that they are willing to sacrifice the fair name of their people for a paltry gain. I might add here that it was the smallness of some of the individual "Y" workers that brought the Y. M. C. A. into such disrepute among the American soldiers in France. This simply shows how important it is for an individual to ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood
... putting out of his reach the procuring of the needful sporting gear, where he does follow hunting, it is pursued with much-weakened ardor, and often bootless issue. He is moved now to its pursuit, solely with the hope of realizing a paltry gain from the sale of the few ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... Napoleon do we not see, who, after having fatigued him with their servile complaisance, have come to offer to a new power the tribute of their petty machiavelism? Now, as then, is it not upon the basis of vanity and corruption that the whole edifice of their paltry science rests, and is it not from the traditions of the imperial government that the counsels of their wisdom ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... offence given to a young lady's delicacy. Accidents of this kind we have never regarded in a comical light; nor will we scruple to say that he must have a very inadequate idea of the modesty of a beautiful young woman, who would wish to sacrifice it to so paltry a satisfaction as ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... upper class was mainly Italian in origin, and willingly threw all the responsibility for affairs on the British government. The official class, more numerous in proportion to population than in any country in Europe, scrambled for the petty salaries of paltry posts allotted by popular election. Since 1849 they had increased by twenty-five per cent., and were now one in a hundred of the inhabitants. The clergy in a passive way took part with the demagogues. Men of ability and sense were not wanting, but being ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... refusal? He could allege no business appointment or other serious engagement as an obstacle, for he himself had said that he was free for a week, and had offered Lord Blandamer to make an appointment on any day. He himself had offered an interview; to draw back now would be mean and paltry in the extreme. It was true that the more he thought of this meeting the more he shrank from it. But it could not be evaded now. It was, after all, only the easiest part of the task that he had set before him, only a prolusion to the tragedy that he ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... instalment of compensation upon Patching, that individual shrugged his shoulders, and smiled. "The paltry price of artistic degradation," said he. "Remember, I would have done this job only for a friend. The world must not know it is a Patching—though I fear that even on this hasty daub I have left marks of my style which ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... sense of duty. It is with some impatience that one finds the grand schemes of discovery and colonization interrupted by such contemptible means, and the course of the narrative checked by the necessity for recording, however briefly, the paltry dissensions of vile miscreants such as Roldan ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... he could not rest if he thought there was an aching heart in the whole parish. Every paltry cottage was in a little time converted into a pretty, snug, comfortable habitation, with a wooden porch at the door, glass casements in the windows, and a little garden behind, well stored with greens, roots, and salads. In a word, the poor's rate ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... that have passed away, from Aline to Burton; men who have suffered every privation, preaching peace and contentment to a poor and scattered population; and the whole together never created as much strife, exhibited so paltry an ambition, or descended to the mean arts of misrepresentation to such an extent, in all their long and laborious lives, as these two arrogant professors of philosophy and religion have done in the short period of ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... could have been the slave of his caprices for a word of love a year. I should have been. Who knows it better than I? You were exacting, proud, punctilious, selfish. My love would have been devoted—would have trod your paltry whimpering under foot!' ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... entered the house, which, but a little before, she had quitted in her shift, and addressed her to sweep the chambers, and arrange arras and cushions in the halls, and make ready the kitchen, and set her hand to everything, as if she had been a paltry serving-wench: nor did she rest until she had brought all into such meet and seemly trim as the occasion demanded. This done, she invited in Gualtieri's name all the ladies of those parts to be present at his nuptials, and awaited the event. The day being ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... wife or family. Chinese tradition forbade the respectable woman to leave her home, even with her husband; and China was so isolated from the world, so encrusted in her own traditions that out of her uncounted millions even the paltry thousands of peasants and workmen who filtered through the port of Canton into the great world were bound by ancient precedent as firmly as if they had remained at home. They invariably planned to return to the Celestial Empire and it was their supreme wish that, ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... the God of heaven, not a sixpence! My name not even mentioned, except for a paltry mourning ring! And yours—pray sir, what have you been about, after having such a sum left you, to forfeit your grandfather's good opinion? Heh! sir—tell me directly," continued he, turning round ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... uncle slapped the provost on the shoulder, and says he: "It's not worth while, your Worship, for you and me to waste our breath over such petty details! I have to do with numbers of peasants in the course of the year; you can understand, if I pay them a paltry farthing short, every man of them, it mounts up to thousands, and a capital thing too for me!" Think of that, sir! And the way they treat one another too, sir! They injure each other's trade all they can, and that not so much from ...
— The Storm • Aleksandr Nicolaevich Ostrovsky
... income, and this, due on St. Andrew's Day, was on several occasions a subject of dispute. In Henry VIII.'s time we find the bishopric valued at L358 4s. 9 1/2d., and later, in 1595, it is stated that the clear annual profits did not exceed L220. To supplement this paltry revenue the bishops often held other appointments in commendam. During the latter part of the seventeenth century and the greater part of the eighteenth, the deanery of Westminster was, in this way, almost continuously attached to the bishopric of Rochester. Such pluralities are, of course, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... of Advocates elected Hume their librarian, an office which, though it yielded little emolument—the salary was only forty pounds a year—was valuable as it placed the resources of a large library at his disposal. The proposal to give Hume even this paltry place caused a great outcry, on the old score of infidelity. But as Hume writes, in a jubilant letter to ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... quarters." When the Democrats were charging the Federalists with having stolen from the treasury, he wrote to a Cabinet official, "and pray, my good sir, what part of the $800.000 have come to your share? As you are high in Office, I hope you did not disgrace yourself in the acceptance of a paltry bribe—a $100.000 perhaps." He once even attempted a pun, by writing, "our enterprise will be ruined, and we shall be stopped at the Laurel Hill this winter; but not to gather laurels, (except of the kind that covers ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... King Midas that he began to doubt whether, after all, riches are the one desirable thing in the world, or even the most desirable. But this was only a passing thought. So fascinated was Midas with the glitter of the yellow metal that he would still have refused to give up the Golden Touch for so paltry a consideration as a breakfast. Just imagine what a price for one meal's victuals! It would have been the same as paying millions and millions of money (and as many millions more as would take forever to reckon up) for some fried trout, an egg, a potatoes a hot cake, and a ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... I can, if you like, lead you to what the British think you will never find. But if you are going to believe the words of this malicious boy, and consider me to be a common thief, I've done. You can have the few paltry stones I brought away to sell and pay for my bread and meat till the war is over, and let me go. I don't want to act as your guide into Kimberley! It's nothing to me! I have told you what I did; and what is more, I'd ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... me," he said, "but the attack was so violent, the blow so savage, the weapon must have been so keen, that it is almost impossible to connect it with a mere attempt to commit a paltry robbery. I thought, and the police thought, that it was a ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... it well deserved; though we have no more to do with his Grace of Canterbury[6] than you have with the Archbishop of Dublin[7]; nor can you love and reverence your prelate more than we do ours, whom you tamely suffer to be abused openly, and by name, by that paltry rascal of an Observator; and lately upon an affair wherein he had no concern; I mean the business of the missionary at Drogheda, wherein our excellent primate was engaged, and did nothing but according to law and discretion. But because the Lord Archbishop of Dublin hath been ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... twain, and all unlike—a man's and a little child's talking as pleasant as you and me. I am no great hand at a keyhole for my part, 'tis paltry work; but if so be voices were a talking in yon cave, and them that owned those voices were so near to me as those are to thee, I'd go on all fours like a fox, and I'd crawl on my belly like a serpent, ere I'd lose one word that passes ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... more honest, and a less boyish one. Who doubts that you can fight, you silly fellow? haven't I seen you? I want you to show me a much higher sort of courage: the courage to repair a wrong, not the paltry valor to defend one." ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... circumstances, would have been the field of my choice. With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion; and the passions should be held in reverence: they must not—they cannot at will be excited, with an eye to the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations, ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... think a paltry wall can save, A narrow ditch can thwart us,—these, so bold, With but a span betwixt them and the grave! Saw they not Troy, which Neptune reared of old, Sink down in ruin, as the flames uprolled? But ye, my chosen, who with me will scale Yon wall, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... Francisco. The lucky speculators had gained five or six hundred per cent. profit for their ventures of preserved and dried fruits, champagne, other wines and liquors, Madeira nuts and the most paltry stuff imaginable. In five months some of the Valparaiso merchants had cleared five hundred thousand dollars. The excitement was still unabated. Shippers were still loading and dispatching their goods daily for San Francisco. Many ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... said Warrender. "Do you think I meant any compliment? but to see you giving yourself up to this, you, who—and to remember that I had been perhaps grumbling, thinking of the schools, and other such paltry honours." ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... what you will hear. I will judge for myself what I will speak. I was not twenty years old when I defied Lucius Sylla, surrounded by the spears of legionaries and the daggers of assassins. Do you suppose that I stand in awe of his paltry successors, who have inherited a power which they never could have acquired; who would imitate his proscriptions, though they have ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... wins men to our Master, that we may clasp his hand and look into his face. Right here hangs all the discussion about evangelism. If the evangelist gets men soundly and scripturally converted and sanctified, let us bid him Godspeed! If he only amuses them and deals in paltry three-cent sensationalism, away with more of the same sort of stuff which we already have in ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... aspect of religion, or of politics, or of society! What essays could I not compose here—the mind elevated by that buoyancy which comes of the consciousness of being free for a great effort! Free from the vulgar interruptions that cling to poverty like a garment, free from the paltry cares of daily subsistence, free from the damaging incidents of a doubtful position and a station that must be continually asserted. That one disparagement, perhaps, worst of all,' cried he aloud: 'how is a man to enjoy ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... refraining from his arrival, some presuming subjects went to look him up, and after much inquiry and pedestrian exercise they found the sovereign in jail. His Majesty explained that he had been arrested for debt a few days before, and that because of a shortage in the paltry coin of a white man's state—a wretched matter of $4.15—he was doomed to remain behind the bars, perhaps forever. The messengers ran back to the square, made an excited appeal to the populace, scratched ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... happened, Janet—sich a lot o' deaths I've been in at, to be sure—all great folks, too, none o' your paltry little fellows of poachers or gamekeepers, but real quality. What do you think of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... warn my female friends against this influence. Marry for riches alone, and you will be a neglected, unhappy wife, as sure as gold is not kindness. How many of your sex have sold their honor for paltry lucre. Our cities contain awful testimonies to this fact. Beware of that path, which leads in this fearful direction. Marry only a good man. Heed the advice of Themistocles to that Athenian, who consulted ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... already been taken for the army. The contribution of France is still greater. Her military force has reached the appalling proportion of one-fifth of her entire population. But we who have thirty-five million in gainful occupations are giving a paltry one million, five hundred thousand in service with our Allies. The situation is not creditable to us, and one of the things which stands in the way of the United States reaching a more worthy position is reluctance to see its women shouldering ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... it becomes the heart's free offering, but is not worth a rush to buy or bargain for. Could he but be sure that for himself alone she would receive his hand—could he but once be satisfied of this, how paltry the return, how poor would be the best that he could offer for her virgin trust? What was his wealth compared with that? But how be sure and satisfied? Ask and be refused? Refused, and then denied the privilege to gaze upon her face, and to linger hour after ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... always wide-awake, and watching for saliences, I had gone abroad like a falcon, and roamed at home like a hungry jackal. Six fingers on my hand, one long and pointed, and ever dropping gall; the ineradicable stain upon my thumb; the widest of my circuits, with all my adventure, a paltry sheet of foolscap; and the world in which I dwelt, no place for thought, or dreaminess, or love-making,—only the fierce, fast, flippant ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... chaffing him about being taken for Meysey Hill, and suggested that he should be presented to me as the millionaire. He told me with a coarse nervous laugh. I was his wife. We were to live in some wretched London suburb. His salary was a few paltry hundreds a year. Anna, I listened to all that he had to say, and I called to him to let me get out. He laughed. I tried to jump, but he increased the speed. We were going at a mad pace. I struck him across ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... my purpose. I am unable to send you to-day the application for a subscription to my Mass to H.M. the King of Saxony, but I will do so by the next post. In any event I feel assured that you will not think I am one of those who compose for the sake of paltry gain; but how often do events occur which constrain a man to act contrary to his inclinations and his principles? My Cardinal is a benevolent Prince, but means are wanting! I hope to receive your forgiveness for my apparent importunity. If my poor abilities can in any way be employed in ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... be sufficient to satisfy men who, according to Mr Maher's sworn testimony, "desire no such improvements, even when they are paid promptly for their execution;" or that drainage will be effected, in the hope of their being allowed a paltry consideration in case they are dispossessed, "by persons who threaten with death those who are willing to give them at once the full value of their labour?" Not a bit of it. Any attempt to legislate on the subject ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... bombastical nonsense, a sad proof of the moral perversion of the age. The German character, nevertheless, betrayed itself by a sort of naive pedantry, a proof, were any wanting, that the ostentatious absurdities of the poets of Germany were but bad and paltry imitations. The French Alexandrine was also brought into vogue by this school, whose immorality was carried to the highest pitch by Guenther, the lyric poet, who, in the commencement of the eighteenth century, opposed marriage, attempted the emancipation of the female sex, and, with criminal ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... the amount and more. Then we shall have the apprehension of war always in the air, and soon another war and more destruction. Remove the danger of a European cataclysm, and any sum extorted from the Grays becomes paltry beside the wealth that peace will create. An indemnity makes the purpose of the courage of the Grays in their assaults and of the Browns in their resistance that of the burglar and the looter. There is no money value to a human life when it is your own; and our soldiers gave their ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... to which his capture of Lusigny was to be the first step. He would enjoy that greatness not a whit the less because fortune had hitherto dealt out to him more blows than caresses, and he was still at forty, after a score of years of roughest service, the governor of a paltry country town. ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... fancied that the Palatine had vanished, for he could scarcely see the dark fringe of cypresses; it was as though the dust of its ruins concealed the hill. But the Quirinal was even more obscured; the royal palace seemed to have faded away in a fog, so paltry did it look with its low flat front, so vague in the distance that he no longer distinguished it; whereas above the trees on his left the dome of St. Peter's had grown yet larger in the limpid gold of the sunshine, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... her spirit free from the raging of the tempest—I think all this worked on my brain, for I sat and looked on the babe with a stillness that seemed to last for months. I thought of her broken life—of the poverty she had felt—of that which must follow her child. I thought of that woman, so paltry, so mean, so utterly unworthy of care, pampered with wealth, comforted with love, while my sister, so much her better in everything had died of neglect, I thought of many things, not connectedly, but in a wild bitter mood that made me fierce under the wrongs that had been heaped upon us. It ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... like them ready to be bewitched; but bearing a heart that welcomed the light with glad rebound—loved the lovely, nor loved it only, but turned towards it with desire to become like it. Fergus too was a Celt in the main, but was spoiled by the paltry ambition of being distinguished. He was not in love with loveliness, but in love with praise. He saw not a little of what was good and noble, and would fain be such, but mainly that men might regard him for his goodness and nobility; ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... one lesson to be got from a visit of an hour or two to the British Museum,—namely, the fathomless abyss of our own ignorance. One is almost ashamed of his little paltry heartbeats in the presence of the rushing and roaring torrent of Niagara. So if he has published a little book or two, collected a few fossils, or coins, or vases, he is crushed by the vastness of the treasures in the library and the collections ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... talk! But, as I says to Burlacombe—"'Tes paltry," I says; and they only married eighteen months, and Mr. Strangway so devoted-like. 'Tes nothing ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... did not trouble to get up for the ceremony. We smiled pleasantly at each other, and then he took me to his house, which, according to his high rank, was surrounded by a stone wall. He rummaged about inside for a long time, and finally brought out a few paltry objects; I thought best to pay well for them, telling him that as he was a "big fellow-master," I was ready to pay extra for the honour of having a souvenir of him. This flattered him so much that he consented to ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... or two, days successively as have been spent in this trial interruptedly in the course of two years. Every cause deserves that it should be tried according to its nature and circumstances; and in the case of the Colchester Committee, in the trial of paltry briberies of odd pounds, shillings, and pence, in the corruption of a returning officer, who is but a miller, they spent nearly the same number of days that we have been inquiring into the ruin of kingdoms by the peculation and bribery of the chief governor ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... entertain, go out a good deal. You'd certainly give up these dingy quarters. My friendship for you deplores a mammoth skeleton in your cupboard, James. My study of advertising tells me that this paltry existence of yours does not adequately push your name before the ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... as accessories to the whole, should yet be worked out so carefully as to possess individual merit of their own. I see, though; I see how to remedy the defect you have suggested. I can easily bring him out by darkening the shadows of the background. Then, this fairy at his elbow is paltry, and too near him besides. I shall paint her out altogether. She takes the eye off my principal figures, and breaks that grand line of light pouring in from the morning sky. Don't ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... violent and distressing vice is jealousy, which torments us with comparisons of this nature: "He bestowed this on me, but more upon him, and he gave it him earlier." There is no kindness so complete that malignity cannot pull it to pieces, and none so paltry that a friendly interpreter may not enlarge it. You shall never fail of an excuse for grumbling if you look at benefits on their ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... vanished completely. True, one returned traveler reported having seen Rhinds at Nice, performing paltry services for American tourists in return ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... at once!" said the Captain, his voice thrilling with intensity. "This piece of property will be gone befo' night! All it takes is a paltry three thousand dolla's, and within ninety days—no man can say what its value will be. We can plat it, and within ten days we may have ouah money back. Allow me to draw ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... Joe was made an earl not long since—you may have heard of the fuss about it. Uncle Sam's only a miserable baron yet. And Uncle Cuthbert is that paltry ...
— The Title - A Comedy in Three Acts • Arnold Bennett
... run the risk of ruining many for my own paltry aggrandisement. Mother, I have decided! You won't much grieve over our leaving this house, ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... it is not jealousy," replied the queen, with dignity. "The daughter of Ferdinand of Spain and Isabella of Castile, with the best blood of Europe in her veins, would despise herself if she could entertain so paltry a feeling towards one born so much ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Pen; this is ungenerous," Laura said, flushing red. "May not our mother claim everything that belongs to us? Don't I owe her all my happiness in this world, Arthur? What matters about a few paltry guineas, if we can set her tender heart at rest, and ease her mind regarding you? I would dig in the fields, I would go out and be a servant—I would die for her. You know I would," said Miss Laura, kindling up; "and you call this paltry money an obligation? ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to the heart of poor Whang. "Here am I," said he, "toiling and moiling from morning till night for a few paltry farthings, while neighbor Thanks only goes quietly to bed, and dreams himself into thousands before morning. Oh, that I could dream like him! With what pleasure would I dig round the pan! How slyly would I carry it home! Not even my wife should see me! And then, oh the pleasure of ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... was their nominal salary was anything like all that they received is unbelievable. To suppose that a man who could fit out a fleet at his own expense and successfully campaign with it against a powerful pirate, should allow himself to be annoyed by so paltry an office is absurd. Yet the office was apparently not farmed, and so it seems likely that the income from fees was large and attractive. [Footnote: The View of W. D. Chester: Chronicles of the Custom's Dept., p. 30.] To how great an extent ...
— Chaucer's Official Life • James Root Hulbert
... casement windows with carved triangular pediments. Before the castle lies a vast green sward the trees of which had recently been cut down. On either side of the entrance bridge are two small dwellings where the gardeners live, connected across the road by a paltry iron railing without character, evidently modern. To right and left of the lawn, which is divided in two by a paved road-way, are the stables, cow-sheds, barns, wood-house, bakery, poultry-yard, and the offices, placed in what were doubtless the remains of two wings of the old ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... a coquette," said Mrs. Hungerford, "for that is common character—the hackneyed character of every play, of every novel. And whatever is common is vulgar, you know: airs and affectation are common and paltry—throw them aside, my dear Lady Angelica; disdain flattery, prove that you value your own esteem above vulgar admiration, and then, with such beauty and talents as you possess, you may be what you admire, an ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... has of late years been resorted to as the most efficacious means of lessening the expences of the government. And hence the very end and aim of this colony, the reformation of the lawless gang who are transported to its shores, have been postponed to a paltry saving, unworthy the character of the nation, and subversive in a great measure of the philanthropic intentions with which the legislature were originally actuated. The alarming increase of crime that has ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... and his solicitors would reply. He caught himself framing curt, stinging sentences to be embodied in the letter; but he drew himself up with a start. Surely there was something very wrong with Mark Bower, the millionaire, when he gloated over such paltry details. Why, his reflections were worthy of that old spitfire, ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... but, nevertheless, I shall prove, by quotations, that the whole theory of our author is based upon this paltry equivocation. ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... put in the baroness, "what are a few paltry lessons compared with the pleasure you ought to have experienced in satisfying the Contessina di Lira's curiosity. ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... thus no doubt he would have acted but for an unforeseen contingency. A miserable, paltry creditor had smoked him out in his Somerset retreat, and got a letter to him full of dark hints of a debtor's gaol. The fellow's name was Swiney, and Sir Rowland knew him for fierce and pertinacious ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... predecessor's fame for prudence and wisdomSed semel insanivimus omneseverybody has played the fool in their turn. It is said, my ancestor, during his apprenticeship with the descendant of old Faust, whom popular tradition hath sent to the devil under the name of Faustus, was attracted by a paltry slip of womankind, his master's daughter, called Berthathey broke rings, or went through some idiotical ceremony, as is usual on such idle occasions as the plighting of a true-love troth, and Aldobrand set out on his journey through Germany, as became an honest hand-werker; ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... it was not in his nature to battle and grub with his fellows for a few paltry dollars, and the call of his father's blood was strong in his veins. Bob was the kind of fellow who likes to make a heap of his winnings, when he has any, and stake it all on the turning of a card; if this metaphor may be employed to designate ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... world lay newly made under my eyes. Vastly as my mind had stretched to embrace the idea of a great country, when I exchanged Polotzk for America, it was no such enlargement as I now experienced, when in place of the measurable earth, with its paltry tale of historic centuries, I was given the illimitable universe to contemplate, with the numberless aeons of ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... spell of that dream of wealth he found it easy to pay his "debts of honour" to Carroll with mining claims, which, however valuable in themselves, were to him paltry in comparison with the wealth of the Lost River, to which every year brought him nearer, and which one day he was sure he would possess. That Carroll and his confederate robbed him he knew well enough, but finding ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... position, could be relied upon as pillars of strength. There was nothing a Scanlon brother wouldn't do, and do well, for two dollars and fifty cents a day. Mind and muscle were both yours—Scanlon mind and muscle—for this paltry and insignificant sum; and the consul, in his quandary, welcomed the stout, bristly haired pair as though they ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... called, blame poor Dorcas for her fidelity in a bad cause. For does not the general, who implicitly serves an ambitious prince in his unjust designs upon his neighbours, or upon his own oppressed subjects; and even the lawyer, who, for the sake of a paltry fee, undertakes to whiten a black cause, and to defend it against one he knows to be good, do the very same thing as Dorcas? And are they not both every whit as culpable? Yet the one shall be dubbed a hero, the other called an admirable fellow, and ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... mugs, chairs fallen, and scattered tables,— That's Oirish shindy, me bhoys, all over! "Union of Hearts" and such plisant fables, Won't greatly hamper the free-foight lover. What do you mean, Ye paltry spalpeen? True Oirish hearts from Old England to wean? Faix, not a bit of it! We'll jist have none of it! They're foighting frindly, and jist for ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... would toss the paper aside with the bill receipt. In the man to whom the bright New Orleans itself almost owed its brightness, it was a paltry act to search and pick for a debtor. Friends had betrayed and deserted him; relatives had forgotten him; merchants had failed with his money; bank presidents had stooped to deceive him; for he was an old man, and had about ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... now mentioned, or from little frivolous excuses, or idle and unfounded conjectures, unworthy of beings expected to fill a moral station in life. Yes, O man! often in these solitary journeyings have I exclaimed against the baseness of thy nature, when reflecting on the little paltry considerations which have smothered thy benevolence, and hindered thee from succouring an oppressed brother. And yet, on a further view of things, I have reasoned myself into a kinder feeling towards thee. For I have been obliged ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... me.' So she chose goods worth a thousand dinars and said, 'How much is this?' And ceased not the while to talk with him and rub the inside of her thighs with the palm of her hand. 'Shall I haggle with the like of thee about this paltry price?' answered he. 'Praised be God who hath brought me acquainted with thee!' 'The name of God be upon thee!' exclaimed she. 'I commend thy fair face to the protection of the Lord of the Daybreak! Fair face and pleasant speech! Happy the woman who lies in thy bosom and clasps thy ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... world was she going to bring herself back to the paltry things of every day? How was she ever again going to feel that ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... among simple and sincere people, who, however derided, honestly believe that they are doing their duty to themselves and their families when they move heaven and earth to rise a few steps in the world. The moment we find ambition taking a purely social form, it becomes ridiculous. The aim is so paltry in comparison with the effort, and so out of proportion with the energy- exerted to attain it, that one can only laugh and wonder! Unfortunately, signs of this puerile spirit (peculiar to the last quarter of the nineteenth century) can be seen on all ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... satisfactorily; so also is the range and variety of his reading. Examine the Christ Church Canterbury catalogue in Henry Eastry's time, and note what a remarkable variety of subjects is comprised in what we nowadays consider rather a paltry number of books. There is another point worth bearing in mind. Speaking of Bishop Shirwood's books, a writer in the English Historical Review says: "Many of the books bear his mark, Nota, scattered over the margins, or a hand with a long pointing finger. These notes occur usually at the beginnings. ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... congruity, under their different names of intention, fitness, selection, adaptation. These are what make the human soul like a conquering army, a fleet freighted with riches, a band of priests celebrating a rite. And this is what art, by no paltry formula, but by the indelible teaching of habit, of requirement, and expectation become part of our very fibre—this is what art can teach to those who will receive ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee |
