"Niggardly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his own genius, he most eagerly wanted to see the value of his work acknowledged. Not satisfied with the slow judgment his contemporaries might come to, or the niggardly reward they might confer; nor content with the prospects of a laurel wreath which grateful Posterity lays on the marble heads of departed eminent men, this pretentious disciple of the Muse importunately claimed his full recompense during his own life. ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... for objection, Sir Stadtholder. The Emperor commissioned me expressly to announce to you that his Imperial Majesty would gladly hold himself ready to furnish some assistance, yes, if needful, all the money required for the expenses of this journey.[15] And the Emperor would not be niggardly with his supplies of money for traveling, but give such sums that the Electoral Prince need not come merely to his Majesty at Vienna, but also make a little excursion to Innsprueck. For at Innsprueck the Archduke ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... the last time, and to bid her good-bye. Peggy Walker was somewhat of an authority in the district—a travelled woman, who had been in Australia and back again, and was now living with a family of orphan nephews and nieces, and an old man, their grandfather. Public rumour pronounced her a niggardly woman, for though she had property she worked as hard as if she had nothing, and took the bread out of other folk's mouths; but as she was really an excellent laundress, she had the best custom in the neighbourhood, and her honesty, her ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... calumniating, niggardly bigot in Le Mariage de Figaro, and again in Le Barbier de Seville, both by Beaumarchais. Basile and Tartuffe are the two French incarnations of religious hypocrisy. The former is the clerical humbug, and the latter the lay religious ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... and its forests of firs and stately cedars, the island naturally attracted a commercial and maritime people like the Phoenicians; while the abundance of its corn, its wine, and its oil must have rendered it in their eyes a Land of Promise by comparison with the niggardly nature of their own rugged coast, hemmed in between the mountains and the sea. Accordingly they settled in Cyprus at a very early date and remained there long after the Greeks had also established themselves ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... madame," said the old professor, rising; "and, if it comes to the worst, I hope you will testify before the judge that I was niggardly about a cab." ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... make the path to happiness easy and safe to all such as fear Allah, and give alms, and believe the truth proclaimed by Allah's messenger. But we will make easy the path to distress and misery for all such as are niggardly, are bent on making riches, and deny the truth when it is proclaimed to them. When these last fall headlong into Hell, their wealth will avail them nothing. In the burning furnace they shall burn ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... frail proprieties and fashions of the hour, go to make or to mar, to stint or to perfect, the union of spirits the most loving and the most intolerant of such interference. The trick of the country and the age steps in even between the mother and her child, counts out their caresses upon niggardly fingers, and says, in the voice of authority, that this one thing shall be a matter of confidence between them, and this other thing shall not. And thus it is that we must take into reckoning whatever tended to modify the social atmosphere ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... drop of moisture that falls upon its surface, from its deep bosom pours a vitalizing flood that makes fertile and has enriched an empire,—a flood without which Texas, now producing one-third of the cotton grown in the United States, would be an arid waste. Bountiful to the south and east, it is niggardly elsewhere, and only two small springs, Grierson and Mescalero, escape from its ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... safely ridden out the gale, for all that human art could do to make her safe and strong had been done without regard to expense. No niggardly owners had built her of poor and insufficient material, or sent her to sea weakly manned and with incompetent officers. The ship was heavily manned; eighteen or twenty men would have been deemed a sufficient crew to work her; and though her force consisted of boys, they would average ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... pearl-like nature about me," she continued, with a short, bitter laugh. "I am more like the cold, glittering diamond, and give me pure crystallized carbon every time in preference to any other gem. He wasn't niggardly with her on that score, either," she concluded, lifting the upper layer of cotton, and ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... counsels just then taking favour; but I went back to my father and mother, and aunt, and Preston, and others; and comfort found no lodgment with me. Then there was an extract from a Southern paper, calling Yankees "the most contemptible and detestable of God's creation" - speaking of their "mean, niggardly lives - their low, vulgar and sordid occupations" - and I thought, How can peace be? or what will it be when ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... biographies there is a story about 'Langarad of the White Legs,' who dwelt in the region of Ossory. To him Columba came as a guest, and found that the sage was hiding all his books away. Then Columba left his curse upon them; 'May that,' quoth he, 'about which thou art so niggardly be never of any profit after thee'; and this was fulfilled, 'for the books remain to this day, and no man reads them.' When Langarad died 'all the book-satchels in Ireland that night fell down'; some say, 'all the satchels and wallets in the saint's ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... future they will endow scholarships for their own sex instead of giving millions of dollars to institutions for boys, as they have done in the past. After all the bequests women have made to Harvard see how niggardly that institution, in its 'annex,' treats their daughters. I once asked a wealthy lady to give a few thousands of dollars to start a medical college and hospital for women in New York. She said before making bequests she always consulted her minister and ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... of Denton Farm. It consisted of old Christopher Denton, his three sons, Matthew, Sam, and David, and his daughter Jennie. They had the reputation of being "people well-to-do," but they were not liked among the Cumberland "states-men," who had small sympathy for their niggardly hospitality ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Folliott and Opimian is sensibly increased by the reflection that a great many worthy people, even among his own acquaintances, are, by some mysterious law of their being, debarred from any share in his pleasure. Yet surely we need not be so niggardly in this matter. There is wit enough in those two reverend gentlemen to go all around the living earth and leave plenty for generations now unborn. Each ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... the purchase of the paper when written; but as he could offer me only fifty guineas a sheet, I thought it better to let our society have it, than sacrifice it for so paltry a sum. Notwithstanding this niggardly spirit, however, the gentleman showed his consideration for me in all other respects, and indeed treated me with the greatest civility. His parting words made a deep impression upon my heart, and I hope I shall always remember ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... live-forever, not so well by the variable flower - for it is a niggardly bloomer - as by the thick leaf that they delight to hold in the mouth until, having loosened the membrane, they are able to inflate it like a paper bag. Sometimes dull, sometimes bright, the flower clusters never fail to attract many ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... rely on it, that he has chosen for the finish, the best and most ribald of the lot, in order that he may not be accused of a senile discourse. Put then more likes with your dislikes, and dislikes with your likes. Forgetting the niggardly behaviour of nature to story-tellers, of whom there are not more than seven perfect in the great ocean of human writers, others, although friendly, have been of opinion that, at a time when everyone went about dressed in black, as if in mourning for something, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... the young men halted and looked upon the elders with pity, for their clothing of skins was ragged and the weapons they strove to hold were rusted and blunt, and except for their proud bearing and the fire in their old eyes they looked more like aged and worthless slaves in the household of a niggardly lord than men who had once been the flower of the fighting ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... needless to multiply examples; the proof of the pudding is in the eating. When we came to Apemama, of so many white men who have scrambled for a place in that rich market, one remained—a silent, sober, solitary, niggardly recluse, of whom the king remarks, "I think ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the comparatively paltry sum of $12,000,000. In spite of the fact that our nation is devoting two thirds of its enormous national expenditures to war, our militarists point to our vast national wealth and sneer at the niggardly mortals who object ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... consisting of blankets, broadcloths or strouding, calicoes, guns, kettles, traps, silver-works (comprising arm-bands, bracelets, brooches; and ear-bobs), looking-glasses, combs, and various other trinkets distributed with no niggardly hand. ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... settled down to wait. Of course I cannot go my way and desert a helpless woman. But the hours wear on. A very thorough business in there, nothing niggardly about this; it is almost dawn. It occurs to me that he may be killing her, perhaps has killed her already; I am alarmed and about to get up—when the key clicks in the lock again and Solem emerges. He does ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... characters, whom in life we should dislike and avoid, by the sympathetic fineness of his interpretation of their springs of life and their warping by circumstance. The impression left on one by the studies of the Thrums community is not primarily of intellectual and spiritual narrowness, or niggardly thrift, or dour natures: all are there, but with them are souls reaching after God and often flowering into beauty, and we reverence the quenchless aspiration of maligned human nature for an ideal far above its reach. He achieves the rare feat of portraying every pettiness and prejudice, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... bought for dissection the body of a child of a poor tailor for six shillings, the price asked being six shillings and sixpence, from which they made the needy man abate the sixpence. Turning from the niggardly surgeons, he enrolled his name as a student of divinity, and was frequently in Edinburgh attending the lectures at Divinity Hall. Wonderfully cheap was the living in those days, when, at the Edinburgh ordinaries, a good dinner could be ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... last, between Pretty Willie and the Lost Soul, which are great bare heads. You get a glimpse of the Tickle from the deck of the mail-boat: this when she rounds the Cocked Hat and wallows off towards Gentleman Cove. 'Tis but a niggardly glimpse at best, and vastly unfair to the graces of the place: a white house, wee and listlessly tilted, gripping a rock, as with expiring interest; a reach of placid water, deep and shadowy, from which rise the hills, gray, rugged, splashed with ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... the Germans, who are in general blessed by nature with especial good appetites; and they spend so much money that the English officers who have not had the advantages of plunder that these Prussians have had must appear by the side of them stingy and niggardly. ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... scholarship to a great public school—a rather bitter little boy, without any particular prospects ahead of him except those his scholarship held out; and back of him a poor, stunted life, with a mother in it—a sad dehumanized creature, I gathered, who subsisted on the bounty of a niggardly brother. And this, you can understand, was the first thing that made Morton hate virtue devoid of strength. His mother, he told me, was the best woman he had ever known. The world had beaten her unmercifully. His earliest recollection was ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... among the servants of a family. Fardorougha himself remained for the most part with them, that is to say except while ascertaining from time to time the situation of his wife. His presence, however, was only a restraint upon their good-humor, and his niggardly habits raised some rather uncomplimentary epithets during his short visits of inquiry. It is customary upon such occasions, as soon as the mistress of the family is taken ill, to ask the servants to drink "an aisy bout to the misthress, sir, an' a speedy recovery, ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... the well-to-do feel that they must be niggardly I would earnestly warn them against extravagance, against the acquiring of expensive habits of wastefulness that later on may be chains of a cruel bondage. Why forge fetters upon oneself? Far better be free now and thus cultivate freedom for whatever future may come. For as sure ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... by preventing a free circulation of labour, and made it hard for a poor man to seek the best price for his only saleable commodity, was, so far, opposed to the fundamental principles common to Smith and Eden. The law, too, might be used oppressively by the niggardly and narrow-minded. The overseer, as Burn complained,[80] was often a petty tyrant: his aim was to depopulate his parish; to prevent the poor from obtaining a settlement; to make the workhouse a terror by placing it under the management of a bully; and by all kinds of ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... now spending most of her life in the past—that sad past, which had been very niggardly of joy for her; but she was so used to suffering that she was still grateful for the least tenderness shown to her, and the pale lights which had shone here and there in the drab days of her life, were still enough to make them bright. All the evil that Melchior had done her was ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... he cries, "Yes, very good pork." And so they said of all things; to which nobody made any answer, they going there not out of love or esteem of them, but to eat his victuals, knowing him to be a, niggardly fellow; and with this he is jeered now all over the country. Met Mr. Cooling, who tells me of my Lord Duke of Buckingham's being sent for last night by a Sergeant at Armes to the Tower for treasonable practices, and that the King is infinitely ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... emotion had tired him, but presently resumed: "I wouldn't use your money, but this wasn't altogether because I was too proud to let you help. I wanted to keep you safe; farming's a risky business, and I couldn't play a niggardly, cautious game. There was the land, waiting to be worked; I couldn't spare labor or money. But since both might be lost, I was afraid to use ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... strong passions, love has the power of changing a man's character for the time being. One of the speakers in Plutarch's dialogue on love ([Greek: Erotikos], 17) declares that every lover becomes generous and magnanimous, though he may have been niggardly before; but, characteristically enough, it is the love for boys, not for women, that is referred to. A modern lover is affected that way by love for women. He feels proud of being distinguished by the preference of such ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... have said, accuses Charles of AVARICE. Charles II., in exile, would not, he says, have left a friend in want. Though distressed for money, the Prince does not display a niggardly temper in these letters to Goring. He had to defray the expenses of many retainers; he intended to dismiss his Popish servants, his household at Avignon, and to part with Dumont. We shall read Goring's remonstrances. But the affair of Daniel's 'close' proves how hardly Charles ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... my apparent grossness, Mary, in venturing to bring my own larder with me. Abernethy has me under his orders, and I must eschew your rich country dainties. A little white wine and a cold bird—it is as much as the niggardly Scotchman will ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... have been the Queen's feelings towards him, there is no doubt that one powerful influence, which lasted into the reign of James, was steadily adverse to his advancement. Burghley had been strangely niggardly in what he did to help his brilliant nephew; he was going off the scene, and probably did not care to trouble himself about a younger and uncongenial aspirant to service. But his place was taken by his son, Robert Cecil; and Cecil might naturally have been expected to welcome ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... to such of the motley crowd as have a few sous, dealing it out in niggardly portions in ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... invention of explosives. It cannot be prosecuted except with a perfect willingness to risk life. No doubt this is one of the reasons why practical results seemed so long in the coming. Nor have men been niggardly in this enforced sacrifice. Though no records of assured accuracy are available, the names of forty-eight aeronauts who gave up their lives in the century following the Montgolfiers' invention are recorded. That record ended in 1890. How many have ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... purposes. The task he set before Hunter now was to steer the Inglesby ship through a perilous passage into the matrimonial harbor he had in mind. Let Hunter do that—no matter how—and the pilot's future was assured. Inglesby would be no niggardly rewarder. But let the venture come to shipwreck and Hunter must go down with it. Hunter was not left in ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... the minister's presence; so he went on talking with Ja'afar and took no notice whatever of the Fisherman. Whereupon quoth Khalifah, "O Slow o' Pay! [FN236] May Allah put to shame all churls and all who take folks's goods and are niggardly with them! I put myself under thy protection, O my lord Bran-belly, [FN237] to give me my due and let me go!" The Eunuch heard him, but was ashamed to answer him before Ja'afar; and the Minister saw the Fisherman beckoning and talking to him, though he knew not what he was saying; so he ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... feelings of the Non-conformist conscience. The attempt to force undenominationalism on the country has been an expensive failure. Recognising this, the denominational—nay, more, the Jesuit—University College has in a niggardly fashion and by a back door been subsidised by the State. The demand is for no more than a university which shall be Catholic in the sense that it shall be national, and this in a preponderatingly Catholic country implies Catholicism. The Irish Catholic bishops in 1897 declared they are prepared ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... of her humble charms in the hope of catching his eye. And the very poverty of those charms made her efforts the more pathetic. He blamed his eyes for the hard clearness with which they noted the shortcomings of the small, unformed features, the freckled skin, the insignificant and niggardly contour, and for the cruelty of the comparison they suggested between all this and Madeline's rich beauty. A boundless pity poured out of his heart to cover and transfigure these defects, and he had an ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... deserted me." Every trace of insanity had left him, and in the tender hands of his mother and his beloved, and his friends, he quickly recovered his strength again. Good fortune had in the meantime visited the house; a niggardly old uncle, from whom they had never expected to get anything, had died, and left Nathanael's mother not only a considerable fortune, but also a small estate, pleasantly situated not far from the town. There they resolved to go and live, Nathanael and his mother, and Clara, to whom he was now to ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... another occasion when he had just wired twenty-five dollars somewhere to help bury some one. (My spirit was not so niggardly as fearsome. I was constantly terrified in those days by the thought of a poverty-stricken old age for myself and him—why, I don't know. I was by no means incompetent.) "Why don't you save your money? Why should you give it to every Tom, Dick and Harry that asks ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... land, but the spring that year was a meagre starveling, niggardly of smiles. He seemed to have borrowed winter's breath, and the pale young leaves shuddered in the unfriendly blasts. The fruit blossom struggled into a nipped existence, and fell like thin snow to the ground. An eerie spring, and men said there was a spell upon the country, ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... was gone came the elm buyers, shrewd Americans who paid as much for a thousand feet of prime swamp elm as the pork buyer twenty miles away paid for a cwt. of dead hog. Mr. Drury must have known something about those friendly but niggardly Yankee dollars that saved many a bush farmer from being sold for taxes. He may have seen bolt mills go up and young men betwixt haying and harvest swagger down to the docks to get 25 cents an hour loading elm ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... to him venial by comparison, as he witnessed the misery and abasement of the glorious creature on whom he had brought such sorrow, if not shame. The remorse that a strong will and hard heart had stifled so long found voice at last in three muttered words—"God forgive me!" A very niggardly and inadequate expression of contrition—was it not?—conceded to a life whose sins outnumbered its years. Yet the slight thread of hope drawn therefrom has been able since to hold back Cecil Tresilyan from the abyss of utter desperation. She forbore to press him farther then, seeing ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... reluctantly from one of these watering-places to another, I have been more and more struck by the inconvenient and niggardly life led by the wealthy and well-fed, the dulness and feebleness of their imagination, the lack of boldness in their tastes and desires. And how much happier are those tourists, old and young, who, not having the money to stay in hotels, live where they can, admire the view of the ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... sneering irritation? Why, very often such men, though their talk would be seasoned with quotations from, and allusions to, his writings, and though they would lay aside their most favourite books to bury themselves in his new "number," had been observed by this critic to be as niggardly in their praise of him as they were lavish in their scorn. He actually heard "a very distinguished man," on one occasion, express measureless contempt for Dickens, and a few minutes afterwards admit that Dickens ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... have formed the subjects of patents which, from one reason or another, lapsed long before the expiration of the maximum terms. Nature is ever prodigal of seeds and of "seed-thoughts" but comparatively niggardly of places in which the young plant will find exactly the kind of soil, air, rain, and sunshine which the young ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... slavery. The colonel had been emancipated by the same token that had made Peter free. Peter had returned home poor and broken, not because he had been free, but because nature first, and society next, in distributing their gifts, had been niggardly with old Peter. Had he been better equipped, or had a better chance, he might have made a better showing. The colonel had prospered because, having no Peters to work for him, he had been compelled to work for himself. ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... Dodsley, by whom it was published, relate that when the copy was offered him, the price demanded for it, which was a hundred and twenty pounds, being such as he was not inclined to give precipitately, he carried the work to Pope, who, having looked into it, advised him not to make a niggardly offer; for "this was no ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... as he was usually called, was a man of business of the old school, moderate in his charges, economical and even niggardly in his expenditure, strictly honest in conducting his own affairs and those of his clients, but taught by long experience to be wary and suspicious in observing the motions of others. Punctual as the clock of Saint Giles tolled nine, the neat dapper form of ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... possession of extraordinary courage, the stomach being regarded by the Chinese as the seat of both courage and intelligence. In the absence of large stomachs provided by nature, perhaps these proud Manchus come to the correction of niggardly nature with wadding, as do various hollow-chested people in the "regions of mist and snow," the dreary, sunless land ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... an act of meanness; and this sentiment was thoroughly wrought into their minds, that, they seemed not to rid themselves of the feeling of meanness in a refusal, to feel, notwithstanding their better knowledge, that to comply was generous, liberal, and social, and to refuse reproachful and niggardly. It would be impossible to enumerate or specify the crimes which emanated from this state of affairs. Their political condition was the very genius of despotism, systematically and deliberately conducted. Kings and chiefs were extremely jealous of their succession, ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... had I to do for to marry? My wife she drinks posset and wine o' Canary; And ca's me a niggardly, thrawn-gabbit cairly. O gin my wife wad drink hooly and fairly! Hooly and fairly, hooly and fairly; O gin my wife wad drink hooly ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... cheerful Mr. Barnum's success; New Haven, girt with flat marshes that look like monstrous billiard-tables, with hay-cocks lying about for balls,—romantic with West Rock and its legends,—cursed with a detestable depot, whose niggardly arrangements crowd the track so murderously close to the wall that the peine forte et dare must be the frequent penalty of an innocent walk on its platform,—with its neat carriages, metropolitan hotels, precious old college-dormitories, its vistas of elms and its dishevelled weeping-willows; ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... were on a heroic scale: twelve sheep, eight fat swine, and two oxen, the choicest of the herd, were slaughtered, and a goodly row of casks, filled with the finest vintages, gave further token that Alcinous was no niggardly host. ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... coat-pocket.] Here lies the crown of England. [Now the left coat-pocket.] Here the crown of Scotland—and here, in my waistcoat pocket, is Ireland. What shall I take from herein exchange? [He looks about.] Is the gilding real? It looks deuced niggardly and close-fisted. There's space enough in these great halls, but I'll wager there are many mice here. It's as quiet as an English Sunday. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... she had a tidy sum saved out of the housekeeping money. She was naturally thrifty, and Orville had never been niggardly. Her meals when Orville was on the road had been those sketchy, haphazard affairs with which women content themselves when their household is manless. At noon she went into the dining car and ordered ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... lord of the host which he sent out for the defence of his country, and for him fought Olaf divers battles and proved himself to be an able captain, and himself maintained a large host of warriors on the fiefs allotted to him by the King. Of no niggardly disposition, Olaf was ever openhanded to the men that were with him and who for this self-same reason held him in affection; but as oft times happens when men who are not of the country are exalted to power, or are so greatly ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... much, but a deal more than you guess. First let us take the case for the Crown. The jeweller is travelling by coach at night over the moors. He has one postillion only, Roger Tallis by name, and by character shady. The jeweller has money (he was a niggardly fool to take only one postillion), and carries a diamond of great, or rather of an enormous and notable value (he was a bigger fool to take this). In the dark morning two horses come galloping back, frightened and streaming with sweat. A search party goes out, finds ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the estate to be incompetent; but I will give him what I have, and it is more than he expects. I have borne all this too long. See what he writes further on; read it for yourself: 'I know you are a niggardly dog.' A niggardly dog! I niggardly? Is that true, Mackellar? You think it is?" I really thought he would have struck me at that. "O, you all think so! Well, you shall see, and he shall see, and God shall see. If I ruin ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... two hearts" (dhu'kulbein) signifies to be prudent, wise. Karun is the Arabic Croesus. "Thy hand is tied up" is equivalent to calling a man niggardly.] ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... empty consolations of his great fame. From her very narrow purse she supplied the means of erecting the stone that marks the spot where he lies; and the pen of his companion, whose letter we have just given, furnished an appropriate inscription. The niggardly hands of government remained as firmly closed against the relief of Mrs. Smollett as they had been in answer to her husband's own application for himself; an application which must have cost a severe struggle to his proud spirit, and of which his most intimate literary ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... turned to and fro. This olde wife lay smiling evermo', And said, "Dear husband, benedicite, Fares every knight thus with his wife as ye? Is this the law of king Arthoures house? Is every knight of his thus dangerous?* *fastidious, niggardly I am your owen love, and eke your wife I am she, which that saved hath your life And certes yet did I you ne'er unright. Why fare ye thus with me this firste night? Ye fare like a man had lost his wit. What is my guilt? for God's ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... annuity from my estate. But while Mees Lucy is my wife, I will buy all that she needs. I will delight to dress her, to feed her well. With discretion, of course. For there are many channels into which my income must flow. But I will not be a niggardly husband to her! No, no!" cried the little man ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... shorter, and wore them without sleeves; they turned their gold snuff-boxes into rough wooden ones; and the new-fashioned portraits were now only profiles of a face, traced by a black pencil on the shadow cast by a candle on white paper! All the fashions assumed an air of niggardly economy, till poor Silhouette was driven into retirement, with all his projects of savings and reforms; but he left his name to describe the most economical sort of portrait, and one as melancholy as ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... weary of being told that they pack badly, that they are niggardly about credits, that they do not send enough or sufficiently qualified representatives, that they are careless of details, and so on. Still, before mentioning some further particular steps that should be taken, it is necessary ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... miles square meant not only police control, but it meant to make a home fit for the national seat of government, and to provide for the necessities of its representatives. Nevertheless conscientious scruples and niggardly appropriations had sufficient weight for many years to make the home of the Union a disgrace to the nation and a thing of contempt in comparison with the capitals of ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... 'tis best to weigh The enemy more mighty than he seems: So the proportions of defence are fill'd; Which of a weak and niggardly projection, Doth, like a miser, spoil his coat ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... your own great chemist, Sir Humphry Davy, allowed might be possible, but held not to be worth the cost of the process—possibly, in those attempts, some scanty grains of this substance were found by the alchemists, in the crucible, with grains of the metal as niggardly yielded by pitiful mimicry of Nature's stupendous laboratory; and from such grains enough of the essence might, perhaps, have been drawn forth, to add a few years of existence to some feeble graybeard—granting, what rests on no ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... and permit me as soon as possible to engage in a combat, either on horseback or on foot, for her sake! I did not promise Germans enough to her! To such a lady, I ought to vow as many as she has years. If the Lord Jesus will only release me from this tower, I will not be niggardly with her!" He raised his eyes, ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... remarked a moment ago that school-teachers are paid so niggardly, I didn't mean that their remuneration was insufficient, considering the quality and quantity of the goods delivered—knowledge, scholarship, education. I only had in mind the bitterness of their lot, ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... well enough," she said. "The girl was faithless, and tyrannous, and proud, and coquettish, and unworthy, and false, and inconstant. She was black as hell and dark as night in both her person and her living. You were not niggardly of vituperation." ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... who is never sordid or niggardly," added Monsieur; "and who pays in gold all the orders ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... enlightened State wanting is not considered a necessary condition to the granting of education or the extension of any privilege. Such a State confers it in order to create the desire; unenlightened States, like Turkey and Russia, hold off until revolution compels a reluctant, niggardly abdication of tyranny.... We have the conviction that that which has come in Finland and Australia, which is coming in Great Britain, will come in America, and there is a majesty in the sight of a great world-tide which has ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... agreed to and had held, but that we fear Sir W. Doyly did betray our design, which spoiled all; however, my Lady Batten invited herself to dine with him this week, and she invited us all to dine with her there, which we agreed to, only to vex him, he being the most niggardly fellow, it seems, in the world. Full of good victuals and mirth we set homeward in the evening, and very merry all the way. So to Greenwich, where when come I find my Lord Rutherford and Creed come from ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... artificial, and polished, are, in their very nature, unfit for any lofty effort of the Muse. Whatever poetical enthusiasm he actually possessed he withheld and stifled. Surely it is no narrow and niggardly encomium to say, he is the great Poet of Reason, the first of Ethical authors in verse." Warton illustrated his critical positions by quoting freely not only from Spenser and Milton, but from recent poets, like Thomson, Gray, Collins, and Dyer. He testified that the Seasons had "been very ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... steward. These tips are always given on the last day of the voyage. American tourists are criminally lavish in giving tips, with the result that one who adheres to the rules of old travelers, is apt to be regarded as niggardly. It is to be noted that the richest travelers always conform to the regular ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... or in London took up never more than half a column in a newspaper. Even the old man he was answering had adopted, to be original in everything, that selfsame conciseness: every sentence of his contained two or three ideas. But the member from Alcira would not be led astray by such niggardly parsimony. He believed that ponderousness and extension were qualities indispensable to eloquence. He must fill a whole issue of the Congressional Record, to impress his friends back home in the District. ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the arrival of the travellers in his capital, had been very niggardly in his presents, as coming from a monarch of a large and mighty kingdom. Nor in other respects was the conduct of Mansolah, such as to impart to them much pleasure, nor could they in any wise account ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... lips, and tell you why I came so promptly. My brother Robert was the wealthy member of the family, and I was the poor one—a poor devil of an Anglo-Indian with nothing on this side of the grave but a niggardly Civil Service pension! ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... asked how the inscriptions on the tombs in the church-yard were so badly spelled? "Because," answered Amen, "the people are so niggardly, that they won't ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... on my honour, Sim Summer, thou art a bad member, a dunce, a mongrel, to discredit so worshipful an art after this order. Thou hast cursed me, and I will bless thee. Never cap of Nipitaty[94] in London come near thy niggardly habitation! I beseech the gods of good fellowship thou may'st fall into a consumption with drinking small beer! Every day may'st thou eat fish, and let it stick in the midst of thy maw, for want of a cup of wine to swim away in. Venison ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... like {those} of former days,[62] but as {times are} now, very passable: nor do I in the least wonder that Clinia doats upon her. But he has a father— a certain covetous, miserable, and niggardly person— this neighbor {of ours} (pointing to the house). Do you know him? Yet, as if he was not abounding in wealth, his son ran away through want. Are you aware that it is the fact, as ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... commerce called "an apology!" If the chemists were half so careful in vending their poisons, there would be a notable diminution in the yearly average of victims to arsenic and oxalic acid. But, alas, in the matter of apology, it is not from the excess of the dose, but the timid, niggardly, miserly manner in which it is dispensed, that poor humanity is hurried off to the Styx! How many times does a life depend on the exact proportions of an apology! Is it a hairbreadth too short to cover the scratch for which you want it? Make your will—you are a dead man! A life do I say?—a ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... esteemed much higher than all that can be brought about by it in favour of any inclination, nay even of the sum total of all inclinations. Even if it should happen that, owing to special disfavour of fortune, or the niggardly provision of a step-motherly nature, this will should wholly lack power to accomplish its purpose, if with its greatest efforts it should yet achieve nothing, and there should remain only the good will (not, to be sure, a mere wish, but the summoning ...
— Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals • Immanuel Kant
... unfurnished with even decent apparel, and her new lord had to supply her forthwith with necessary clothing. In a subsequent page, when he comes to detail the purchases which he was, in consequence, obliged to make for his bride, he gives full vent to his feelings on this niggardly conduct of the father, and, in recording the costs of his own outfit, his very first words have a smack of bitterness in them, which is ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849 • Various
... abuse and maltreatment we have received, all the enmity and bitter hostility which the traitorous perfidy of England has engendered, more than one full-freighted vessel has left our ports bearing grain to those whom their own proud aristocracy is either powerless or too niggardly to sustain. Is this not evidence of a civilization considerably advanced beyond any which history has yet recorded?—a civilization based upon the golden rule of Christianity, and upon that still more precious command: ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... The advocate, released from his cold hiding-place, rolled rapturously into the warm sheets, thinking to himself, "Oh! this is good!" To tell the truth, the maid gave him his money's worth—and the good man thought of the difference between the profusion of the royal houses and the niggardly ways of the citizens' wives. The servant laughing, played her part marvellously well, regaling the knave with gentle cries, shiverings, convulsions and tossings about, like a newly-caught fish on the grass, giving little Ah! Ahs! in default of other words; and as often as the request was made ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... but two hundred and sixty thousand dollars has been raised through the agency of the labor organizations. This comparatively paltry sum is being doled out in niggardly fashion by a finance committee who feel reluctant to part with a single dollar unless assured that it will have a hundred fold its ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... niggardly instincts, Jimmy Knight, as the evening progressed, assumed the burden of entertainment. He, too, adopted a spendthrift gaiety and encouraged Wharton's libations, although ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... from the intellectual compulsions that now drive man to move higher and higher into the high heavens, it seems clear that our country can be niggardly in this field only at the risk of being completely and forever outclassed by Russia—a gamble that could have the most fearful ...
— The Practical Values of Space Exploration • Committee on Science and Astronautics
... with much wonder in my heart, and perhaps a little terror also. It had not been our way to build great fires; we were, indeed, by the captain's orders, somewhat niggardly of firewood; and I began to fear that something had gone ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to a niggardly Host, and more sparing guest: But though my cates be meane, take them in good part, Better cheere may you haue, but not with better hart. But soft, my doore is lockt; goe ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... was so niggardly and covetous, that he never allowed to his attendants, in his travels and expeditions, any salary, but their diet only. Once, indeed, he treated them liberally, at the instigation of his step-father, when, dividing them into three classes, according to their rank, he gave the ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... served up, when the Vintner and all his Servants were at their Stations, in close and diligent Attendance upon the Company. The Discourse turn'd chiefly upon the niggardly Dispositions of some, whom Fortune had favour'd in the same Manner, and the various Humours and Tempers of Mankind: what unaccountable Successes attended on some People, and the Misfortunes that others were visibly ...
— The Tricks of the Town: or, Ways and Means of getting Money • John Thomson
... London, to review the troops collected there to defend the capital. "I know," said she, "that I have but the feeble body of a woman, but I have the heart of a king, and of a king of England too." Unhappily the niggardly Queen had half starved her brave sailors, and many of them came home only to die. None the less Elizabeth went with solemn pomp to St. Paul's Cathedral to offer thanks for the great victory, which was commemorated by a medal bearing this inscription: "God blew with his winds, and they were ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... watch,—the first present he had made her during twenty years of service. Though he turned over to her his old shoes (which fitted her), it is impossible to consider that quarterly benefit as a gift, for the shoes were always thoroughly worn-out. Necessity had made the poor girl so niggardly that Grandet had grown to love her as we love a dog, and Nanon had let him fasten a spiked collar round her throat, whose spikes no longer pricked her. If Grandet cut the bread with rather too much ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... of ambition, but they were the blind gropings of Homer's Cyclops round the walls of his cave. I saw my father's situation entailed on me perpetual labour. The only two openings by which I could enter the temple of fortune were the gate of niggardly economy or the path of little chicaning bargain-making. The first is so contracted an aperture I never could squeeze myself into it; the last I always hated—there was contamination in the very entrance! Thus abandoned of aim or view in life, ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... then most liberal of eulogium when it can no longer be enjoyed. They grudge not the whiteness of the sepulchre, because by no honor they can bestow upon it can the senseless corpse be rendered an object of envy; but they are niggardly of the reputation which contributes to happiness, or advances to fortune. They are glad to obtain credit for generosity and humility by exalting those who are beyond the reach of praise, and thus to escape the more painful necessity of doing homage to a living rival. They are rejoiced ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... Cullerne fell. It stood empty ever since I can remember it, till Miss Joliffe took it fifteen years ago. She elevated it into Bellevue Lodge, a select boarding-house, and spent what little money that niggardly landlord old Blandamer would give for repairs, in painting out the Hand of God on the front. It was to be a house of resort for Americans who came to Cullerne. They say in our guide-book that Americans come to see Cullerne Church because some ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... of her kindness, not because she was niggardly, but because there was little that belonged to him and to him alone. Sometimes, in the rush and roar of the office, came the memory of her eyes and her ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... the Chamberlain party and their friends were aliens in religious matters. Had it been otherwise the results of the proposed scheme might have been very different. The "clique," when they do support a cause, do it with no niggardly hand, and if it had so chanced that they had been Churchmen instead of Unitarians, the probabilities are that by this time Birmingham would have been in possession of a full-sized Bishop all its own, and possibly a fine, bran-new, costly ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... base, have different heights and consequently unequal holding-capacities. The bottom partitions, the oldest, are farther apart; those of the front part, near the orifice, are closer together. Moreover, the provisions are plentiful in the loftier cells, whereas they are niggardly and reduced to one-half or even one-third in the cells of ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... Constitution was attacked because it provided for biennial instead of annual elections. The salaries fixed for State officers were "niggardly and insufficient." The method prescribed for amending the Constitution was altogether too tedious and too uncertain. The provisions relative to corporations were too narrow, since they restrained the General Assembly from providing for internal improvements. ...
— History of the Constitutions of Iowa • Benjamin F. Shambaugh
... poor waif you were so interested in! My dear child, you are as niggardly with your philanthropies as you are with your favours. Why not be generous with me? And, by the way, can you tell me just why that young fellow appealed to you so? I daresay other 'unknowns' drift ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... is stronger than death; it rises superior to adversity, and towers in sublime beauty above the niggardly selfishness of the world. Misfortune cannot suppress it; enmity cannot alienate it; temptation cannot enslave it. It is the guardian angel of the nursery and the sick bed; it gives an affectionate concord to the partnership of life and interest, ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... well to me! So then, I have made no will—I did not desire to do so—and then I knew what you were; you have a good heart; you are not niggardly, not too near, in any way; I said to myself that when my end approached I would tell you all about it, and that I would beg of you not to forget the girl. And then listen again! When I am gone, make your way to the place at once—and make such arrangements that ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... pleasure is, and must be, its perfect ease, its appearance of felicitous repose. This it can never have where the nature and expression of the land near it reminds us of the necessity of labor, and where the earth is niggardly of all that constitutes its beauty and our pleasure; this it can only have where the presence of man seems the natural consequence of an ample provision for his enjoyment, not the continuous struggle of suffering ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... importing that they proceed from ill principles, or tend to bad ends; so as it doth not or cannot appear. Thus when we say of him that is generously hospitable, that he is profuse; of him that is prudently frugal, that he is niggardly; of him that is cheerful and free in his conversation, that he is vain or loose; of him that is serious and resolute in a good way, that he is sullen or morose; of him that is conspicuous and brisk in ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... luckless fate of inventors and originators has become proverbial, but the ingenious individual whose nostrils rejoiced in the first pinch of snuff stood in no need of the niggardly praise of contemporaries or the lavish gratitude of posterity. That first 'pinch' was its own priceless reward, far above present appreciation or future fame. What matters it, that his great name has not been reverently handed down to us: that posterity seeks ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... loved her, and, I protest to you, bestowed much on her; followed her with a doting observance; engrossed opportunities to meet her; fee'd every slight occasion that could but niggardly give me sight of her; not only bought many presents to give her, but have given largely to 180 many to know what she would have given; briefly, I have pursued her as love hath pursued me; which hath been on the ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... brave men live best, they seldom cherish sorrow; but a base-minded man dreads everything; the niggardly is uneasy even ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... he was for his brother to make a good official showing. If a niggardly Government refused to provide decent quarters—no matter; the miners, with gold pouring in, would themselves pay for a suite "superbly carpeted," and all kept in order by "two likely contrabands"—that is to say, negroes. Samuel Clemens in those days believed in expansion and impressive surroundings. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Such a set of heavy, bloated, good-for-nothing, impudent, and happy dogs, never before fed upon a baronet's substance, contradicted him to his very face, and fought for him behind his back. The females in my establishment bear but a most niggardly proportion to the males—in the ratio of Falstaff, one pennyworth of bread to his many gallons of sack: and these few are the most hideous, pox-marked, blear-eyed damsels that the ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... 25th. On the 26th he saw again the sparkling-eyed Sheridan. Once more he began to use his whip of scorpions upon the editors and people who were bestowing all praises upon the Army of the West, with only criticism or niggardly commendation for the Armies of the Potomac and the James, with many a sneer and odious comparison. He witnessed the tremendous attack of the rebel host upon the Ninth Corps, hearing first the signal ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... than two months, and here they were rejoined by Pao-yun and his friends.(11) (At the end of that time) the people of Woo-e neglected the duties of propriety and righteousness, and treated the strangers in so niggardly a manner that Che-yen, Hwuy-keen, and Hwuy-wei went back towards Kao-ch'ang,(12) hoping to obtain there the means of continuing their journey. Fa-hien and the rest, however, through the liberality of Foo Kung-sun, ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... of the household were not backward, for even the least among them prepared to perform his special task. While some run to prepare the meal, others light the candles in profusion; still others get a towel and basins, and offer water for the hands: they are not niggardly in all this. When all had washed, they take their seats. Nothing that was done there seemed to be any trouble or burdensome. But at the first course there came a surprise in the form of a knight outside the door. As he sat on his charger, all armed ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... even were it in my power, which it is not, to attempt an exact and complete description of all the productions of the group of islands composing the Philippines, to which nature has with no niggardly hand dispensed great territorial and maritime wealth. And as the limits of this work prevent much expansion, I will confine the following observations to an outline of the principal articles produced in the country, beginning the catalogue with the most ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... disappointed at receiving no definite appointment, he concealed his chagrin, and, though evidently not desiring his services in Curia, one of Adrian's first acts upon arriving in Rome was to invest him with the archpriest's benefice of Ocana in Spain. The ever generous King was less niggardly, and, in 1523, conferred upon Martyr the German title of Pfalzgraf, with the privilege of naming imperial ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... portionable to that bulk and bigness. And do you not observe, O Chersias, continues he, many poor men,—how one while they pinch their bellies, upon what short commons they live, how sparing and niggardly and miserable they are; and another while you may observe the same men as distrustful and covetous withal, as if the plenty of the city and county, the riches of king and kingdom were not sufficient to preserve them ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... culprit and showed him this. "A thousand pounds!" said she. "Are you not ashamed? Was ever a niggardly act so embellished and exaggerated? I feel my face ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... thou the Geatmen with gracious responses! So ought one to do. Be kind to the Geatmen, 50 In gifts not niggardly; anear and afar now Peace thou enjoyest. Report hath informed me Thou'lt have for a bairn the battle-brave hero. Now ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... on their economy take it as a virtue. But what is more pitiable than a poor, pinched mind spending the rich days and years clutching a few bits of metal? What can be fine about paring the necessities of life to the very quick? We all know "economical people" who seem to be niggardly even about the amount of air they breathe and the amount of appreciation they will allow themselves to give to anything. They shrivel—body and soul. Economy is waste: it is waste of the juices of life, the sap of living. For there are two kinds of waste—that of the ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... rode last, turned towards the house where a little group of Dermotts and Namaras stood next to a more numerous group of countrymen, and cried: 'Dermott, you deserve to be as you are this hour, a lantern without a candle, a purse without a penny, a sheep without wool, for your hand was ever niggardly to piper and fiddler and story-teller and to poor travelling people.' He had not done before the three old Dermotts from the Ox Mountains had run towards their horses, and old Dermott himself had caught the bridle of a garron of the Namaras and was calling to the others to follow ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats |
