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Spendthrift   /spˈɛndθrˌɪft/   Listen
Spendthrift

adjective
1.
Recklessly wasteful.  Synonyms: extravagant, prodigal, profligate.



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"Spendthrift" Quotes from Famous Books



... Dr. Paley. When a student at Christ's College Cambridge, he was distinguished for his shrewdness as well as his clumsiness, and he was at the same time the favourite and the butt of his companions. Though his natural abilities were great, he was thoughtless, idle, and a spendthrift; and at the commencement of his third year he had made comparatively little progress. After one of his usual night-dissipations, a friend stood by his bedside on the following morning. "Paley," said ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... in vain for a consistent scheme. The father in his banknotes lashed to a ponderous safe was an easy personification of the slavery of wealth, and the pantomime ducks and drakes were simple to understand as symbolizing the career of a spendthrift (though the father was never that); but why, you asked, did the double-faced nurse exhaust all her spare moments and our patience pirouetting about the stage? Did she represent the levity of the dual life? Not at all; her actions ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 7, 1914 • Various

... too, how it is that this copybook maxim is now for me a practical reality. For at first, with my growing perception, I was distressed at what seemed to me the lavish waste, the reckless, spendthrift beauty, not in nature merely but in human nature, that passed unrecognized and unacknowledged. The loss seemed so extravagant. Not only that a million flowers waste their sweetness on the desert air, but that such prodigal stores of human ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood

... appear at dinner, and when the servants had retired, he said, "Come now, let us make the best of it. Mother, if you don't mind, I will settle five thousand pounds upon her and her children. He is a spendthrift, I hear, and as ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... she hasn't the money to spare just now. You know it's near the end of the month, and they've all spent their allowances except Louise, and she says she'll not lend her money to such a spendthrift as I am." ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley

... matter of power, Baby, the inquisitive postmaster and keeper of the bridge, was unlike the new arrival in Bonaventure. The abilities of the Honourable Tom Ferrol lay in a splendid plausibility, a spontaneous blarney. He could no more help being spendthrift of his affections and his morals than of his money, and many a time he had wished that his money was as inexhaustible ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... however, still questioned the correctness of the figures; and on the 3rd of June he moved forty resolutions, calculated to discredit the management of the finances, and to show that he could have taken—spendthrift as he was—better care of the public money. These resolutions were all rejected; and ministers brought forward sixteen counter resolutions, which went to prove that the finances had never been so well managed before, and that there was every prospect, not only ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... of the few who descended into the cradle together, but this inversion of life would not escape the woes of mortality. And there are other considerations, unless it should turn out that a universal tax on land should absolutely change human nature. There are some who would be as idle and spendthrift going towards youth as they now are going away from it, and perhaps more, so that half the race on coming to immaturity would be in child asylums. And then others who would be stingy and greedy and avaricious, and not properly spend their allotted fortune. And we should have ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... compatible with an ostentatious religion. What is difficult to some, may prove comparatively easy to others, whose constitutional tendencies or mental prepossessions are of another description. The sacrifice, for example, of a spendthrift to religion must be of a different kind from that of a miser; otherwise the one may obtain undue credit for splendid charities, and the other for pious scrupulosity. In estimating, therefore, the characters ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox

... villain!" she screamed. "Is this, the way you play upon people: bringing me from my home to console a maniac, and, instead of that, you are only what you always were, a spendthrift and a scamp? Finely they will laugh ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... students of Bryn Mawr College with the justifiable ambition to see this great actress in all her finer roles. Those who had money spent it royally. Those who had none offered their possessions,—books, ornaments, tea-cups, for sale. "Such a chance to buy bargains," observed one young spendthrift, who had been endeavouring to dispose of all she needed most; "but unluckily everybody wants to sell. We know now the importance of the consuming classes, and how useful in their modest way some ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier

... everything. But I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease. I amused myself with being a flaneur, a dandy, a man of fashion. I surrounded myself with the smaller natures and the meaner minds. I became the spendthrift of my own genius, and to waste an eternal youth gave me a curious joy. Tired of being on the heights, I deliberately went to the depths in the search for new sensation. What the paradox was to me in the sphere ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde

... I would call them if I were a man—of the amiable girl who went abroad in the old pelisse, and who was wedded to the enthusiastic baronet? My dears, you must have observed they were abominably untrue; the baronet, weak and false, always, since the world began, marries the saucy, spendthrift girl, who is prodigal in rich stuffs, and bright colours, and becoming fits, and neat boots and shoes—who thinks him worth listening to, and laughing with, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... is not careful to return no more than he receives; but prefers that the balances upon the ledgers of benefits shall be in his favor. He who hath received pay in full for all the benefits and favors that he has conferred, is like a spendthrift who has consumed his whole estate, and laments over an empty exchequer. He who requites my favors with ingratitude adds to, instead of diminishing, my wealth; and he who cannot return a favor is equally poor, whether his inability arises from poverty of spirit, sordidness of soul, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... which refers to the man's profession of building those walls without mortar which are always tumbling down and being repaired again; or O'Sciacquariello (acqua—a leaking—one whose money leaks from his pocket—a spendthrift); or San Pietro, from his saintly appearance; O'Civile, who is so uncivilized, or Cristoforo Colombo, because he is so very wideawake. But eighty per cent of them are quite obscure even to their owners, going back, as they do, to some forgotten trick or incident during childhood or ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... dancing attendance at court-balls and paying no end of money for uniforms. And what for? At the end of the ten years—during which period of labor he never received a single shilling from the Government which employed him (rascally spendthrift of a Government, va!),—he was offered the paid attacheship to the court of H. M. the King of the Mosquito Islands, and refused that appointment a week before the Whig Ministry retired. Then he knew that there was no further chance for him, and incontinently quitted the diplomatic ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... cried Mr. Sherwood, in mock seriousness. "You are a born spendthrift, Momsey. That you have had no chance to really be one thus far will only make your case more serious when you have this legacy in your possession. Two ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr

... wholly at ease. New thoughts have occurred, other prospects have been contemplated, and my dissatisfaction has increased. You cannot but have remarked that, in the course of human life, most men undergo more than one remarkable change. The sober man becomes a drunkard, the drunkard sober, and the spendthrift sometimes a rational economist: though perhaps more frequently ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... straits to which it had reduced their hapless family, at length overcame her spirits: she grew melancholy, almost broken-hearted; and her father took her home to him, with her children, from the spendthrift who had been her ruin. Schubart's course in Ludwigsburg was verging to its close; his extravagance increased, and debts pressed heavier and heavier on him: for some scandal with a young woman of the place, he was cast into prison; and let out of it, with an ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... God-fearing, methodical man, attentive to his affairs, and meticulously exact in all his dealings; not warm-hearted, perhaps, but just. But as if the bad blood of the entire family had come to a head in one man, Richard was born a roisterer and a spendthrift. ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... those indicated for advocates. The laird had let him go his gait—the laird with Mrs. Jardine a little before him. The Jardine fortune was not a great one, but there was enough for an heir who showed no inclination to live and to travel en prince, who in certain ways was nearer the ascetic than the spendthrift.... Before Strickland's mind, strolling dreamily, came pictures of far back, of years ago, of long since. A by-wind had brought to the tutor then certain curious bits of knowledge. Alexander, a student in Edinburgh, had lived ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston

... didn't like that, not spending three years. It was spendthrift, even if a good buy. He was planning on winding up somewhere important and to do it he had to invest ...
— Measure for a Loner • James Judson Harmon

... subscription of money be made for him to pay his debts and take him out of gaol. Then follows an absurd dialogue between Pulcinello (supposed to answer from the prison) and the showman. The showman scolds him for being a spendthrift and leading a profligate life, calls him a briccone, a birbante, and Pulcinello only groans out in reply, Povero me, Povero Pulcinello, che disgrazia! sventurato di me! di non aver denari! These strokes of wit never fail to bring in ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... When the man got home he found the purse filled with dollars; and by virtue of its magical property he became the richest man in the parish. As soon as he found the purse always full, whatever he took out of it, he began to live in a spendthrift manner, and frequented the alehouse. One evening as he sat there he beheld the stranger, with a bottle in his hand, going round and gathering the drops which the guests shook from time to time out of their glasses. The rich peasant was surprised that one who had given him so much did not ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... husbands are known to be rich, and they are said to have the free use of their husbands' wealth. So his conclusion is, that they are "a region in Guiana, all gold and bounty: they shall be my East and West Indies, and I will trade to them both." In his spendthrift self-indulgence, notwithstanding all the supplies which his purse-taking habits and his late imputed service bring in, he has come to be hard-up for cash, insomuch that his rascal followers are for deserting him and turning to other resources. By driving a love-intrigue ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... string neatly, I went back to Julius, and gave him ginger-cakes. The dear boys grew from year to year. They outgrew their knickerbockers, and had trousers. They outgrew their jackets, and became men; and I felt that I had not lived in vain. I had conquered nature. Pompey, the little spendthrift, was the honored cashier of a savings-bank, till he ran away with the capital. Julius, the miser, became the chief croupier at the New Crockford's. One of those boys is now in Botany Bay, and the ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale

... speech for mere sportiveness. Hyacinth might be careless and ignorant of business, but his lordship doubtless knew the extent of his income, and was too grave and experienced a personage to be a spendthrift. He had confessed to seven and thirty, which to the girl ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... the Exchequer had said, that he did not wish to see the State become a great money lender; in reply to which Mr. Osborne expressed the opinion, that it would be much better for the State to become a great money lender than to continue a profligate spendthrift—dissipating the funds of the country on the highways of Ireland. "Had not," he asked, "the policy of the State always been to become a great money lender? Since the Union L18,000,000 of money had been lent to England and ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... made for joy, but where wretchedness buildeth its throne— O prodigal spendthrift of sorrow! and hast thou not heirs of thine own? Thus to lavish thy sons' only portion, and bring one sad claimant the more, From the sweet sunny lands of the south, to thy crowded and sorrowful shore? For this proud bark that cleaveth thy waters, she is not a corrach of thine, And the broad ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy

... I to say? He is a timid, cautious man. They have frightened him about this trumpery necklace, and he is behaving badly. But he will make a good husband. He is not a spendthrift. He has rank. All his people are respectable. As Lady Fawn, any house in England will be open to you. He is not rich, but together you ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... there should be a spendthrift for oil, a miser for vinegar, a wise man for salt, and a madcap to stir the ingredients up, and mix them ...
— Recipes Tried and True • the Ladies' Aid Society

... shillings out of his salary, so that she might attend the sales at the big drapery shops in the West End and inspect the windows containing expensive articles that she could not hope to buy. Mr. Mattingford was an exceedingly thrifty man, and his wife possessed some of the qualities of a spendthrift. Thus it came about that Mr. Mattingford kept up the fiction that he had no savings and that each week's salary must see him through till the next week. Mrs. Mattingford knew that her husband had saved money, and theoretically she would have given a great deal to know how much. She repeatedly ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson

... lawyer with my intentions. Several magnificent estates were just then in the market, but only marquisates, counties, or baronies! Nothing illustrious, nothing remarkable! Duhamel assured me that the estate of Chabrillant, belonging to a spendthrift, was ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... should not enjoy his youth would be hard; that it should not be pleasant to him to dress well, live well, and spend with open hand upon himself as well as others, no one will question. No one would ever wish it otherwise. Many a kindly spendthrift of twenty-one makes a prudent paterfamilias at forty, while a man who in his twenties showed a purposeless niggardliness, would at sixty grow into the most contemptible miser alive. There is something even in the thoughtless ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)

... at her feet. But looking at her still face, he checked himself, and just in time. Shaken by passion as he was, he was yet enough himself to understand that she would not listen to him. Why should he play the spendthrift and the wanton with his love? Why give her, for nothing, the sterile satisfaction of rejecting him, for her to prize, as he knew girls did, as merely one more notch upon ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... read the lectures which the wiser heads give to those who are meditating a change. They talk with them as we talk with a spendthrift, and with about ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler

... that the blow had fallen one morning when Phineas Everton came unannounced into my private office and asked me to send the stenographer away. The debacle had arrived, and I was no more ready to meet it than any other spendthrift of good repute ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde

... "I never saw such lickspittles as the Jews are. They are always ready to oblige others with their favors and refuse honors due to themselves. That is why the authorities favor them so much. Do you wish to know what a Jew is? A Jew is a spendthrift, a liar, a whip-kisser, a sneak. He likes to be trampled on much more than others like to trample on him. He makes a slave of himself in order to be able to enslave everybody else. I hate the Jews, especially those from whom I ever ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg

... he had been a renowned politician, or a great general, or an eminent statesman, or even an active member in the Upper House; not for any of these had the earl's name been in the mouths of men. But for the most reckless among the reckless, for the spendthrift among spendthrifts, for the gamester above all gamesters, and for a gay man outstripping the gay—by these characteristics did the world know Lord Mount Severn. It was said his faults were those of his head; that ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... was a spendthrift and a profligate; his moral reputation was of the worst, and he was chronically in debt. That, however, would not make it unthinkable that after a glass of wine he should invite Handel to come to Italy with him, but Handel may well have known enough about the Prince ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent

... is he? The tetrarch sank to rise a pettifogger, a spendthrift, ruined by his own follies. Then having got a bad name in this trade, too, by showing his speeches to the other side, he bounded on the stage of public life, where his profits out of the city were as enormous as his savings were small. Now, however, the flood ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... the orator must step backward. In the opposite state he moves forward. Let us apply this law: A spendthrift officer meets his landlord, whom he has not yet paid, and greets him with an—"Ah, good day, sir!" What will be his movement? It must be retroactive. In the joy of seeing a friend again, as also in fright, we start ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... fantastic now as the era of the red peril, its predecessor; yet vital, bizarre, throbbing, unconsciously human, as no other period has ever been, as in all probability none will ever be again. Generous, spendthrift, murderous when crossed, chivalrous, fearless, profane, yet fundamentally religious, inebriate, wilful and docile by turns, ceaselessly active, eternally discontented, seeking they knew not what, they were their own evil genius; as certainly as nature surrounded them with Heaven, they supplied ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge

... into which I do not care to enter, John Haddon was familiar with this house, and with our grounds. He was well known to my servants, and, unfortunately, popular with them, for he is an openhanded spendthrift. The estate of his elder brother, Lord Steffenham, adjoins my own to the west, and Lord Steffenham's house is three miles from where we sit. On the night of the fifth a ball was given in the mansion of Lord Steffenham, to which, of course, my niece ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr

... got them at all. The only thing he's got is a million eggs and a sense of direction. If he had a spark of intelligence he'd lay one egg a year, like a hen, and thus live for a million years. But does he? Not on your Sarony! He's a spendthrift, and turns his eggs loose—a hatful at a time. He's worse than a shotgun. And then, too, he's as clannish as a Harvard graduate, and don't associate with nobody out of his own set. No, sir! Give me ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... rarely broad enough in youth to survey the field of life with an impartial view. "The years creep slowly by, Lorena," was written in the true youthful, spendthrift spirit. ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern

... midst of such a dream as this, what chance had Lady Elizabeth of convincing the friends that their penitent, scarcely persuaded to relinquish plans of a hermitage, was a spendthrift adventurer, seeking to repair his extravagance with ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... against the thwartings and branglings29 of the devil; nor can our new sins make it invalid, but it abideth safe to us at last, notwithstanding our weaknesses; though, if we sin, we may have but little comfort of it, or but little of its present profits, while we live in this present world. A spendthrift, though he loses not his title, may yet lose the present benefit, but the principal will come again at last; for "we have an Advocate with the Father, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... was the most impecunious spendthrift in Essex. He lived by his wits, with which he was more generously endowed than anything in the shape of gold or precious jewels. His raiment was accumulative. His spending-money came to him through an allowance ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon

... is a rich man, though you may not think I live very much like a rich man's son. The fact is, he is dreadfully afraid that I will turn out a spendthrift. So he gave me only a moderate sum on which to travel on through Europe. So far I have succeeded very well. Excuse my blushes while I make the sweet confession. The Senorita whom we all admire will, some of these days, I trust, exchange ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille

... his acts that the individual in a crowd differs essentially from himself. Even before he has entirely lost his independence, his ideas and feelings have undergone a transformation, and the transformation is so profound as to change the miser into a spendthrift, the sceptic into a believer, the honest man into a criminal, and the coward into a hero. The renunciation of all its privileges which the nobility voted in a moment of enthusiasm during the celebrated night of August 4, 1789, would certainly never have been consented to by any ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... the trapper, triumphantly, "I am well convinced there is neither game nor ravenous beast in the thicket; and that I call substantial knowledge to a man who is too old to be a spendthrift of his strength, and yet who would not wish to be a meal ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... Sir John's well-known indolence and irresponsibility. Sir John was the exhausted reaction from the efforts of a self-made grandfather and of a father spendthrift in energy; he had had everything done for him ever since he was a baby, and consequently was now unable or unwilling to do anything for himself or other people. You couldn't see him taking an active part in the management ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair

... this to get us plain republicans to Albany in comfort and safety, or are we really a nation of princes in disguise? Well, I shall never be satisfied with less hereafter," he added. "I am spoiled for ordinary paint and upholstery from this hour; I am a ruinous spendthrift, and a humble three-story swell-front up at the South End is no longer ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... primogeniture and entails, it was said, were to prevent the growth of a moneyed aristocracy in this country. The propounders of this amiable theory never explained how the community received reparation for the destruction of wealth which the spendthrift sons were to carry on; but so long as the theory has failed to work in practice, that does ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker

... sure, he had no money to waste or to spend; but he might have been hail-fellow with the other boys, and joined in their luxuries, had he but been willing to borrow, as did the rest of them. But Napoleon had always a horror of debt. He had acquired this from his mother's teachings and his father's spendthrift ways. Even as a boy, however, his will was so strong, his power of self-denial was so great, that he continued in what he considered the path of duty, unmindful of the boyish charges of "mean fellow" and "pauper" that the spoiled spendthrifts ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa

... grieve for?—that Age should throw off its fardel of aches and pains, and no longer groan along its weary road, meeting cold looks and unwilling welcomes, as both host and comrade grow weary of the same face, and the spendthrift heart has no longer quip or smile wherewith to pay the reckoning? No, no: let the poor pedler shuffle off his dull pack, and fall asleep. But I am glad you are come: I would sooner have one of your kind looks at your uncle's stale saws ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... It may be that a "brandy bath" is a good thing for sore feet; and that might explain the incident. However, when I think of it, I am always reminded of how, in the days of the Second Empire, the spendthrift Due de Gramont-Caderousse entered the. Cafe Anglais in Paris, one afternoon, called for a silver soup-tureen, had two or three bottles of champagne poured into it, and then made an unrepentant Magdalen of the Boulevards, whom he had brought with him, wash his feet in the sparkling ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

... elaborate; no ristorante could have equaled it, no one but a spendthrift lover like Martel would have furnished it. But it was not until darkness came and the trees began to twinkle and glow with their myriad lights that the fun reached its highest pitch. Then there was ...
— The Net • Rex Beach

... prosperous and important life (in a business and financial way) from 1374 to the end of his life. Certainly he must have received a large amount of money in that time; we have no evidence of his having lost any; we know of nothing in his character which would lead us to suppose him a spendthrift ...
— Chaucer's Official Life • James Root Hulbert

... understanding, patience, dexterity, and an independent income." Equally judicious and equally well-expressed is the following passage upon the Penns:—"Thomas Penn was a man of business, careful, saving, and methodical. Richard Penn was a spendthrift. Both were men of slender abilities, and not of very estimable character. They had done some liberal acts for the Province, such as sending over presents to the Library of books and apparatus, and cannon for the defence ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... found to be superfluous speculation, for the good people of Quang-shi prove, at least, passively friendly; a handful of tsin divided among the youngsters, and a general spendthrift scatterment of ten cents' worth of the same base currency among the stall-keepers for chow-chow heightens their friendly interest in me to ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... movement of the head, "for which, I fear, one would have to go to a meta-physical and thrifty land like Germany. We are not in the least metaphysical or thrifty in my part of Italy. We allow the sparkling minutes to slip between our fingers, like gold between the fingers of a spendthrift. But—but we rather enjoy ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland

... to him Florence Mountjoy had been allotted as a bride. How he had himself learned first to envy and then to covet this allotted bride need not here be told. But by degrees it had come to pass that Augustus had determined that his spendthrift brother should fall under his own power, and that the bride should be the reward. How it was that two brothers, so different in character, and yet so alike in their selfishness, should have come to love the same girl with a true intensity of purpose, ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope

... worth L200 in ready money. I am also upon writing a little treatise to present to the Duke, about our privilege in the seas, as to other nations striking their flags to us. But my greatest trouble is, that I have for this last half year been a very great spendthrift in all manner of respects, that I am afeard to cast up my accounts, though I hope I am worth what I say above. But I will cast them up very shortly. I have newly taken a solemn oath about abstaining from plays and wine, which I am resolved ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... realise the calamity of her father's tragedy—a tragedy at once sublime and miserable. To the people of Douai he was not a scientific genius wrestling with Nature for her hidden mysteries, but a wicked old spendthrift, greedy like a miser for the Philosopher's Stone. Everybody in Douai, from the aristocracy to the bourgeoisie to the people, knew all about old Claes, "the alchemist." His home was called the "Devil's House." People pointed at him, shouted after him in the street. Lemulquinier said that these were ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various

... so," he said, as soon as he had partially recovered breath; "I am the proprietor of the Holmford property—bought it for fifty-six thousand pounds of that young scant-grace and spendthrift, Palliser—fifteen thousand pounds less than what it cost him, with the outlay he has made upon it. Signed, sealed, delivered, paid for yesterday. Ha! ha! ho! Leave John Linden alone for a bargain! It's worth seventy thousand pounds if it's worth a shilling. I say," continued he, after a ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren

... their bees, That wade in honey, red to the knees; Their patent-reaper, its sheaves sleep sound In doorless garners underground: We know false Glory's spendthrift race, Pawning nations for feathers and lace; It may be short, it may be long,— "'Tis reckoning-day!" sneers unpaid Wrong. Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever! In the shadow, year out, year in, The silent ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... first a miser, but after losing most of his money he became a spendthrift.—Beaumont and Fletcher, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... very lightly, on the commonplaces of stock plots and characters. The whole array of puppets is familiar to us all: the cunning slave, the fond or licentious papa, the spendthrift son and their inevitable confreres appear in play after play with relentless regularity. The close correspondence of many plots is also too familiar to need discussion.[187] The glimmering of originality ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke

... Universal Church—that the unborn worked. The sect embraced many couples of wealth and position, and, as was to be expected, at the start there had been a rush among the unborn for millionaire parents. But it was soon discovered that birth for money was a mistake, that it too often led to a spendthrift youth and a bankrupt age, and that there was not seldom a legacy duty to pay in the shape of hereditary diseases, sometimes amounting to as much as two pains in the pound; the gold rush was therefore abating. Birth for beauty had also been popular till experience demonstrated the insubstantiality ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... Ecclesiastics help the deception and keep up the illusion by calling it Miracle or "Special Providence," and so prevent man from entering his birthright, to possess it; and so we sell our birthright for a mess of pottage. It is like the dissipated, poverty-stricken spendthrift, who shuts his eyes and refuses to believe that any, by industry, economy, integrity and hard work have secured a competency. And so he cries, "Come on, boys! let's have another drink, and then rob this bond-holder, who ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck

... herself, poor child! The chill, the gloom of an unhappy future Crept on her lot already, like a mist Foreshadowing the storm; she saw, not distant, All the despair of a regretful marriage Menacing her and driving forth her children. It did not long delay. Her spendthrift lord, After a squander of his own estate, And after swindling my confiding father Of a large sum, deserted wife and children, To play the chevalier of industry At Baden, or at Homburg, and put on More of the aspect of the beast each day. Three children have his blood to strive ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent

... her mother petulantly. "It's something new every day. I never saw such a spendthrift. It's a good thing ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... delight to have as many novels as she pleased, and she thought Tom the very prince of bounty in not merely permitting her to read them, but bringing them to her, one after the other, sometimes two at once, in spendthrift profusion. The first thing that made her aware she was not quite happy was the discovery that novels were losing their charm, that they were not sufficient to make her day pass, that they were only dessert, and she had no dinner. When it came to difficulty in going on with a new one long ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... happened, old Samsonov himself confessed, laughing, that he had made a fool of the "captain." He was a cold, spiteful and sarcastic man, liable to violent antipathies. Whether it was the "captain's" excited face, or the foolish conviction of the "rake and spendthrift," that he, Samsonov, could be taken in by such a cock-and-bull story as his scheme, or his jealousy of Grushenka, in whose name this "scapegrace" had rushed in on him with such a tale to get money which worked on the old man, I can't tell. But ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... implied; it is distinctly stated. Every one has heard others confess that only by "dearly bought experience" had they been induced to give up some bad or foolish course of conduct formerly pursued. Every one has heard, in the criticism passed on the doings of this spendthrift or the other schemer, the remark that advice was useless, and that nothing but "bitter experience" would produce any effect: nothing, that is, but suffering the unavoidable consequences. And if further ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... of my daily life; of decent birth and richer than Croesus, but inflamed with a peevish penuriousness which no amount of plain speaking on my part will correct. Never a day passes that she does not permit herself some jocular observation anent my spendthrift habits. The following is an example of our ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... back of the chair she had vacated a vicious blow with his open hand. "No, you spendthrift! All there was TO your grandfather when you buried him was a basket full of distillery stock, I tell you! Old paper! Can't you hear me? Old ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington

... he meant to say. The outside world's a blunder, that is clear; The real world that Nature meant is here. Here every foundling finds its lost mamma; Each rogue, repentant, melts his stern papa; Misers relent, the spendthrift's debts are paid, The cheats are taken in the traps they laid; One after one the troubles all are past Till the fifth act comes right side up at last, When the young couple, old folks, rogues, and all, Join hands, SO happy at the curtain's fall. —Here suffering virtue ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... is. He ought not, for he has a fixed salary, besides what he gets by playing at concerts when it is not the London season. The wasting money on a spendthrift relation would be a far less evil than ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge

... gold, or hoarding sixpences, or going stealthily in the dead of night to secret places for the purpose of counting over my wealth? Have I not rather, on the contrary, got credit among my friends for being somewhat of a spendthrift? But go on, old fellow, what more have you to say against gambling—for you have not yet ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne

... husband spent the day with his friends. She grew tired of staying at home and her only amusement was making calls or going shopping. And after that came a complaint, always the same, which the father divined at her first words. Lopez de Sosa was selfish, niggardly toward her. His spendthrift habits never went beyond his own pleasures and his own person; he economized in his wife's expenses. He loved her in spite of that. Milita did not venture to deny it; no mistresses or unfaithfulness. She would be likely to stand that! ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... was an orphan. His father—the admiral's elder brother—had been a spendthrift man of fashion, with a tolerably large unentailed estate. He married a duke's daughter without a sixpence. Estates are troublesome,—Mr. Legard's was sold. On the purchase-money the happy pair lived for some years ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book IV • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... rolled by. London merchants dreamed of wealth in store for them in Virginia. A company was formed to colonize the country. Many of the merchants had spendthrift sons, who were also idle and given to bad habits. These young fellows thought it degrading to work. In those Western woods across the ocean, along the great rivers and upon the blue mountains, they saw in imagination a wild, roving, reckless life. They could hunt the wild beasts. They could live ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin

... down hill, because it gets rid of its energy that way. All things in the universe are constantly trying to get rid of energy except man, who is always trying to get more of it. Or, on second thought, we see that man is the greatest spendthrift of all, for he wants to expend so much more energy than he has that he borrows from the winds, the streams and the coal in the rocks. He robs minerals and plants of the energy which they have stored up to spend for their own purposes, ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson

... booths were lined, selling anything from a ten-cent pocket knife to a blue-barreled Colts revolver. The numerous saloons were going full blast, and were doing a profitable business. Nobody is more of a spendthrift than your true cowboy when he is out on pleasure bent, and the fakirs and saloon-keepers were taking ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield

... employs the capital that he has borrowed, more productively than the creditor would have done, the whole country is a gainer; as it is a loser, on the contrary, when a person engaged in industry advances to the idler, the frugal man to the spendthrift, the solid man to the wild speculator. In declining nations, where every new development hastens decay, the latter alternative may be the prevailing one; and, especially here, may the usurious giving of credit by the shrewd to the simple lead to ruinous debtor-slavery. Among a vigorous ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... "I was a spendthrift," she went on. "Undraped I have danced before him; and down in the garden he had a tent erected—people never could guess the purpose of those canvas walls, but there I sat to him, naked, on his dun-coloured Irish mare, Lady Godiva. And he fell weeping on his knees and worshipped me. He ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... bred up in neglect of them, and to think them impracticable, priest-ridden traitors and murderers. Yes, Lady Diana had said some of this to Harold already, It was true that they had shot Mr. Tracy, but Harold had learnt that after a wild, reckless, spendthrift youth, he had become a Protestant and a violent Orangeman in the hottest days of party strife, so that he had incurred a special hatred, which, as far as Harold could see, was not extended to the son, little as he did for his tenants but show them his careless, gracious countenance from time ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge

... to the station in Kensington High Street could not help thinking that this way of putting it was lofty. Even Mrs. Arbuthnot, spendthrift of excuses for lapses, thought Mrs. Fisher might have used other words; and Mrs. Wilkins, by the time she got to the station, and the walk and the struggle on the crowded pavement with other people's umbrellas had warmed her blood, actually ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim

... father, you know," Dick went on. "Such rot, to hold a girl responsible for her ancestors! Isn't it rot, now? Father says they're a bad stock, dissipated and arrogant and spendthrift and shiftless and weak—oh, and a lot more! He's not stingy with his adjectives, bless you! Picture to yourself Madge being dissipated and arrogant and—have you seen ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... penury incurred By endless riot, vanity, the lust Of pleasure and variety, despatch, As duly as the swallows disappear, The world of wandering knights and squires to town; London engulfs them all. The shark is there, And the shark's prey; the spendthrift, and the leech That sucks him. There the sycophant, and he That with bare-headed and obsequious bows Begs a warm office, doomed to a cold jail And groat per diem if his patron frown. The levee swarms, as if in golden pomp Were charactered on ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... needed all my Christian charity and forbearance to keep from actually twitting her on the spot. I can't help but pity the forlorn creature, though. She's married that little spendthrift, who was brought up in idleness to rely on his expectations. They don't either of them know anything about work, now they are thrown upon their own resources. That is not the worst of it. The boy has dissipated habits, that I fear will ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock

... the way of the world. In older times, when the Christian laborer was drained dry by the knightly spendthrift, and the spendthrift was drained by the Jewish usurer, Church and State, religion and law, seized on the Jew and drained him as a Christian duty. When the forces of lovelessness and greed had built up our own sordid capitalist systems, driven by invisible ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw

... accounted Aunt Ida a hard-fisted miser before, but now she began to look like a slippery-palmed spendthrift. They began almost to suspect the probity of the poor old maid. Worse yet, they feared that a later will might turn up bequeathing all her money to some abominable charity or other. She had been addicted to occasional subscriptions ...
— Mrs. Budlong's Chrismas Presents • Rupert Hughes

... might. She thought her uncle was too old. She besought dear Moses and dear Simeon not to quarrel with each other, and offend their father by pressing their suit. Ben Minories from London, she said, was too young, and Jochanan from Paris, she pointed out to Isaac of York, must be a spendthrift, or he would not wear those absurd waistcoats. As for Ben Jonah, she said, she could not bear the notion of tobacco and Dutch herrings: she wished to stay with her papa, her dear papa. In fine, she invented a thousand excuses for delay, and it was plain that marriage ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... almost laughable. Every thing was to be divided, and every one made alike: houses and lands were to be distributed by lot; and the mighty man and the beggar—the auld man and the hobble-de-hoy—the industrious man and the spendthrift—the maimed, the cripple, and the blind, the clever man of business and the haveril simpleton, made all just brethren, and alike. Save us! but to think of such nonsense!!—At one of their meetings, held at the sign of the Tappet Hen and the Tankard, there was a prime fight ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir

... sublime. Yet the perpetual scintillation of Butler's wit is too dazzling to be delightful; and we can seldom read far in "Hudibras" without feeling more fatigue than pleasure. His fancy is employed with the profusion of a spendthrift, by whose eternal round of banqueting his guests are at length rather wearied out than regaled. Dryden was destined to correct this, among other errors of his age; to show the difference between burlesque and satire; and to teach his successors in that species of assault, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... this; and it would be well for young people generally to set themselves to grow in a carrotty or turnippy manner, and lay up secret store, not caring to exhibit it until the time comes for fruitful display. But they must not, in after-life, imitate the spendthrift vegetable, and blossom only in the strength of what they learned long ago; else they soon come to contemptible end. Wise people live like laurels and cedars, and go on mining in the earth, while they ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... living moreover on a mere pittance, for the greater part of his life, this conscientious divine never contracted a debt he could not pay. What rendered this caution more worthy of remark, was the fact that he had a spendthrift son; but, even Rupert could never lure him into any weakness of this sort. I question if his actual cash receipts, independently of the profits of his little glebe, exceeded $300 in any one year; yet, he and his children were ever well-dressed, and I knew from observation ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... been devoted to agriculture, so that I am perhaps as well acquainted with that animal as is any of you great stockmen: for who of us cultivates a farm but keeps hogs, and who has not heard his father say that that man is either lazy or a spendthrift who hangs in the meat house a flitch of bacon obtained from the butcher rather ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato

... for Helene" should be common knowledge: they are (with Du Bellay's) the evident original upon which the author of Shakespeare's Sonnets modelled his work: they are the late and careful effort of Ronsard's somewhat spendthrift genius. ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc

... having, as has been seen, made good his gravest default, was reinstated in his lucrative and by no means onerous office. He regained the senseria by decree of August 28, 1539. The potent d'Avalos, Marques del Vasto, had in 1539 conferred upon Titian's eldest son Pomponio, the scapegrace and spendthrift that was to be, a canonry. Both to father and son the gift was in the future to be productive of more evil than good. At or about the same time he had commissioned of Titian a picture of himself haranguing his soldiers in the pompous Roman fashion; this was not, however, completed ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips

... soberly, "a miser like Mr. Peabody for instance is a very unpleasant person. But a spendthrift often does even more harm in the world than a miser. I don't want my ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson

... already shown by his refusal to take a province, after his praetorship and consulship, was increased by the inclination of his daughter Tullia, then a widow, to marry again.[5] During his absence she married the profligate spendthrift, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... "I recognize the portrait in that locket; I couldn't possibly mistake it seeing that years ago I knew the original well. It's a miniature of Lady Logan, who died some years ago. Her husband, Lord Logan, was a gambler, a spendthrift, and a drunkard, and he treated her with abominable cruelty. They had one child, a son. I remember the son sitting on my knee when he was quite a little chap—he couldn't at that time have been more than five or six. He went to Marlborough, I know; ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux

... superstitious, appear too big for your abilities to wield? Had you no way of using the men, but by converting monks into pensioners? Had you no way of turning the revenue to account, but through the improvident resource of a spendthrift sale? If you were thus destitute of mental funds, the proceeding is in its natural course. Your politicians do not understand their trade; and therefore they sell ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... more in undermining the fidelity of public men, than in degrading the character of the nation. But when Charles was an actual pensioner of the French King, and James a palpable dependent on the French throne, the force of example may be easily conceived, among the spendthrift and needy officials, one half of whose life was spent at the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... many are too weak or too indolent to take a comprehensive view of them, but confine their attention to each single point, by turns; and then decide, infer, and act accordingly; e.g., the imprudent spendthrift, finding that he is able to afford this, or that, or the other expense, forgets that all of them together will ruin him." The debauchee destroys his health by successive acts of intemperance, because no one of those acts would be of itself sufficient ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... tedious to pursue the conversation through all its artful windings, or to develope the gradual approaches by which the heart of Richard Swiveller was gained. It is sufficient to know that vanity, interest, poverty, and every spendthrift consideration urged him to look upon the proposal with favour, and that where all other inducements were wanting, the habitual carelessness of his disposition stepped in and still weighed down the scale on the same side. To these impulses ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... Turks. He was tall, well made; and, although he looked like a nobleman and had wit, reminded one at the same time of a country actor. He was a great liar, and a libertine in body and mind; a great spendthrift, a great and impudent swindler, with a tendency to low debauchery, that cursed him all his life. Having fluttered about a long time after his return, and found it impossible either to live with his wife—which is not ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... him there six hours, while a malignant mob was storming the tower. I need not say that our ancestor himself scorned to hide from such a rabble, for he was a grown man. The boy lived to be a sad spendthrift, and used the well for cooling his wine. He drank up ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... would leave her fortune to such a man, and I approve of the course she has taken for Francis' sake, who would have been the greatest sufferer if her aunt had not acted with so much foresight and prudence. The General is a spendthrift, or, to put it in the mildest terms, a bad financier. His affairs, the lawyer says—and the lawyer evidently knows more about them than the General does himself—are in such a state that, to use an expression of Macaulay's, "the whole wealth of the East would not suffice ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint

... his pattern. The New Yorker suited him. A wealthy man himself, Trennahan's motives could not be misconstrued. His birth and breeding were all that could be desired, even of a Yorba. He understood the value of money and its management. And he was well past the spendthrift age. ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... upon their fingers, while Johann Schmidt, the Cossack, plied his guillotine-like knife in the corner. This same Johann Schmidt, whose real name, to judge from his appearance, might have been Tarass Bulba or Danjelo Buralbash, and was probably of a similar sound, was at once the wit, the spendthrift and the humanitarian of the Fischelowitz manufactory, possessing a number of good qualities in such abundant measure as to make him a total failure in everything except the cutting of tobacco. Like many ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford

... from commenting upon this extravagant and spendthrift trait in his character, even to Uncle Amazon. Nor would she have spoken to anybody else upon ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper

... from Alabama a roistering blade by the name of McConnell. He was something of a wit. During his brief sojourn in the national capital he made a noisy record for himself as an all-round, all-night man about town, a dare-devil and a spendthrift. His first encounter with Col. John W. Dade, of Virginia, used to be one of the standard local jokes. Colonel Dade was seated in the barroom of Brown's Hotel early one morning, waiting for someone to come in and ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... glory of Caesar's recompense; for it was enough for the divine Julius to pension with a township the writer and glorifier of those conquests which he had achieved over the whole world. But now the spendthrift kindness of the populace squandered a kingdom on a churl. Nay, not even Africanus, when he rewarded the records of his deed, rose to the munificence of the Danes. For there the wage of that laborious volume was in mere ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... recipe for salad dressing?" asked Elise. "'A spendthrift for oil; a niggard for vinegar; a sane man for salt and a ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed

... Maximus, and Pliny, seem to agree. And if, as the lecturer observes in a note, the painter is made to waste expression on inferior actors at the expense of a principal one, he is an improvident spendthrift, not a wise economist. The pertness of Falconet is unworthy grave criticism and the subject, though it is quoted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. He assumes that Agamemnon is the principal figure. Undoubtedly Mr Fuseli is right—Iphigenia is the principal figure; and it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... them certainly murmured that a Drakestail would make a fine King; those who knew him replied that a knowing Drakestail was a more worthy King than a spendthrift like him who was lying on the pavement. In short, they ran and took the crown off the head of the deceased, and placed it on that of Drakestail, whom it ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various

... him, if he attempts to leave the state—that is, unless I'm prepared to pay a debt of seven hundred and fifty dollars. I," added the rector, in a broken voice, "a man without a penny in the world—a spendthrift, a muddler, a borrower, a man dependent upon ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley

... claimed by the three remaining Habsburg princes, and lower Austria was secured by Frederick, while Albert obtained upper Austria. Both princes were unpopular, and in 1462 Frederick was attacked by the inhabitants of Vienna, and was forced to surrender lower Austria to Albert, whose spendthrift habits soon made his rule disliked. A further struggle between the brothers was prevented by Albert's death in 1463, when the estates did homage to Frederick. [Sidenote: Hungarian conquest of Austria.] ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... legions were absent from Italy with Pompey in the East, a most daring conspiracy against the government was formed at Rome. Catiline, a ruined spendthrift, had gathered a large company of profligate young nobles, weighed down with debt and desperate like himself, and had deliberately planned to murder the consuls and the chief men of the state, and to plunder and burn the capital. The offices of the new government were to be divided among the conspirators. ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... Hodge boggled at for awhile; but, seeing me Resolute he gave way, and at last said that there was no need for me to trouble with going to the Goldsmith in London to get the Draft changed—"If, indeed," says he, "the unhappy young spendthrift be not proclaimed a Bankrupt before I get this slip of paper cashed;" and that having a small store of Gold by him, he would give me the Ten Pound down, together with a couple of Pieces to bear my Expenses to the Town. To this I agreed; and his Reverence handing me over the ready, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... elder lady, indignantly; "and when he recovers you mean to marry him, I daresay. You will be weak enough to throw away your fortune upon a profligate and a spendthrift, a man who is certain to make any ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon

... the character of the society in which it had to be carried out, it was unfortunate that he should have been followed on the throne by two well-meaning weaklings, of whom the first was a voluptuary, the second a fantastic spendthrift of doubtful sanity. Mahmud, as has been said, being occupied for the greater part of his reign in destroying the old order, had been able to reconstruct little more than a framework. His operations had ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... dropped into that most recherche of eating places, Fouquet's, for a snack. With only a modest balance at the bank he ordered a sardine. Then he called for a filet mignon and half-a-pint of vin rouge—he was always a reckless spendthrift sort of boy, you know. A cup of cafe noir and an apple completed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various

... this failing is part of his nature, and that no effort of his own can correct it. If one subject only has escaped the condemnation of his master, then it may be to that study alone that he returns with zest and enjoyment. Spendthrift sons are manufactured by those fathers who many times a day proclaim that the boy has no notion of the value ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron

... she whom he married, but a lady whose first name was Cecilia. Soon he had a little family of children, but one of them was destined to make Titian very unhappy. This was Pomponic who became a priest, but he was also a wicked spendthrift, and kept his father forever in trouble, trying to pay his debts and keep him out of scrapes. Another son became an artist; not great like his father, but very helpful and a comfort to him. Then his wife died, and Titian had loved her so dearly that for a long time he had ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon

... button-hole!" exclaimed Judy—and flew off to find one for him, Tim fast upon her heels like a collie after a dipping swallow. They raced down the banks where the golden king-cups grew in spendthrift patches and disappeared among the colonies of reeds. Between some hanging willow branches further down they were visible a moment, like dryad figures peering and flitting through the cataract of waving green. They searched ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood

... three who amused the company particularly; the festive mob followed them as they moved, and their bon-mots were applauded and repeated by all the best, that is to say, the most fashionable male and female judges of wit. The three distinguished characters were a spendthrift, a bailiff, and a dun. The spendthrift was supported with great spirit and truth by Colonel Pembroke, and two of his companions were great and correct in the parts of the bailiff and the dun. The happy idea of appearing ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... something, and people miles away think of the same thing. All the same wireless. Take it from me, there's a whole lot to it at that. I was out with a kind friend the other evening whose general disposition is to try and make Frank Daniels look like a spendthrift, so I knew it would be beer for mine unless I made a great mental effort, so all the way up the street in the taxicab I just held thumbs and concentrated my mind—I saw more new style hats, too—and said to myself, 'For Heaven's sake, ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey

... leaving her two daughters married, the eldest, spendthrift, and most beloved son out on his own, and Tadeusz still a cadet. With his mother's death Kosciuszko's financial troubles began. For the greater part of his life he never knew what it was to have a sufficiency of ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner

... worthies known among the Romans by the appellation of haeredipetae, who had amassed a large for-tune by a close attention to the immediate wants and weakness of raw, inexperienced heirs. This honourable usurer had sold an annuity upon the life of a young spendthrift, being thereto induced by the affirmation of his physician, who had assured him his patient's constitution was so rotten, that he could not live one year to an end. He had, nevertheless, made shift to weather eighteen months, and now seemed more vigorous and healthy than ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... nothing to record of George IV. except the irregularities of his private life, over which we need not linger. He was a dissolute spendthrift. His illegal marriage with Mrs. Fitzherbert, and his legal marriage with Caroline of Brunswick from whom he quickly freed himself, are the chief events ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele

... Shakespeare, and he comes very near the gigantic total of Shakespeare. Mass of work is of course in itself worth nothing without due quality; but there is no surer test nor any more fortunate concomitant of greatness than the union of the two. The highest genius is splendidly spendthrift; it is only the second order that needs to be niggardly. Browning's works are not a mere collection of poems, they are a literature. And his literature is the richest of modern times. If "the best poetry ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... the Danube, and the joyous Austrian was a little farther on his way to the dogs, a journey he had been negotiating with great ardour ever since coming into possession of an estate once valued at several millions. I am quite sure I have never seen a spendthrift with more energy than this fellow seems to have displayed in going through with his patrimony. He was on his uppers, so to speak, when I came to his rescue, solely because he couldn't find a purchaser or a ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... comparatively modern buildings, beneath which is a vaulted chamber communicating with the river. Within this tower, whose walls are of great thickness, Henry Marten was imprisoned. He was one of the court that tried King Charles, and his signature is upon the king's death-warrant. He was a spendthrift, and afterwards had a quarrel with Cromwell, who denounced him as an unbeliever, and even as a buffoon. When Charles II. made the proclamation of amnesty, Marten surrendered, but he was tried and condemned to death. He plead that ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... Lacedaemonian sea-snails! There was Gniphon the usurer, too, bitterly reproaching himself for having died without ever knowing the taste of wealth, leaving all his money to his nearest relation and heir-at-law, the spendthrift Rhodochares, when he might have had the enjoyment ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... their nightly debating society is human conduct, a subject ever fraught with dangerous elements of differences of opinion. They are busy discussing, with their mouths full of rice and beef, the conduct of an absent friend, who it seems is generally regarded by them as a spendthrift. "He gets plenty money, but he no have none no time." "He go frow it away—on woman, and drink." "He no buy clothes." This last is evidently a very heavy accusation, but Kefalla says, "What can a man buy with money better than them thing ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... man, "and a cowardly thief! One who sacrificed honour and truth and common honesty that he might gratify his foolish pride. But to come nearer, my friends, hear what I have done. By careless spendthrift ways I had wasted my money so that I had not sufficient to send my son to college. This galled my pride, and I stole from my son-in-law's drawer the sum of 40 pounds which I knew he had placed there. I was too proud to borrow from a Methodist preacher the money I required to ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine

... passion for efficiency, learned foreign tongues, and browsed in the musty archives, he would have discovered that there was much to unlearn. The early scribes piled fancy upon invention, believing or pretending that Rembrandt was a miser, a profligate, a spendthrift, and so on. "Houbraken's facts," we read, "are interwoven with a mass of those suspicious anecdotes which adorn the plain tale of so many artistic biographies. Campo-Weyermann, Dargenville, Descamps, ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes



Words linked to "Spendthrift" :   wasteful, squanderer, big spender, high roller



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