"Parsimony" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sold the inhabitants of free condition by auction: that was the only money applied to public use, not without resentment on the part of the people: and for the spoil they brought home with them, they felt no obligation either to their commander, who, in his search for abettors of his own parsimony, had referred to the senate a matter within his own jurisdiction, or to the senate, but to the Licinian family, of which the son had laid the matter before the senate, and the father had been the proposer of ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... glorious Titles. Cromwell's wife was, as a matter of fact, very averse to all grandeur and state. The satires of the time laugh at her homeliness and parsimony. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... to narrowness of mind, while others thought that he carried parsimony and avarice to excess in himself in order by his example to reform and restrain others. Be this as it may, I for my own part consider that his conduct in treating his slaves like beasts of burden, and selling them when old and worn out, is the mark of an excessively harsh disposition, which disregards ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... prevailing topic of conversation in the family. She listened in silence to gossiping discussions of his desertion of his wife, his heartless indifference to her decease, his violence and bad language by her deathbed, his parsimony, his malicious opposition to the wishes of the Janseniuses, his cheap tombstone with the insulting epitaph, his association with common workmen and low demagogues, his suspected connection with a secret society ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... not touch his private income, but lived on his pay, without allowing himself the slightest luxury. Moreover, he was reserved and ambitious, and his companions rarely had an opportunity of making merry at the expense of his extreme parsimony. He had strong passions and an ardent imagination, but his firmness of disposition preserved him from the ordinary errors of young men. Thus, though a gamester at heart, he never touched a card, for he considered his position did not allow him—as he said—"to risk the ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... familiar observation and a perfectly true one that we have no record of our Lord's ever having used miraculous power for the supply of His own wants, and the reason for that, I suppose, is to be found not only in that principle of economy and parsimony of miraculous energy, so that the supernatural in His life was ever pared down to the narrowest possible limits, and inosculated immediately with the natural, but it is also to be found in this—let me put it into ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... made the body incapable of being any longer its instrument. All care for the well-being of the bodily state seems to reach but to this epoch. It appears to me that, in the formation of our physical nature, wisdom has shown such parsimony, that notwithstanding constant compensations, decline must always keep in the ascendancy, so that freedom misuses the mechanism, and death is germinated in life as out of its seed. Matter dissolves again into its last elements, which travel through the kingdom ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... really cared for the advancement of knowledge. (The key to this attitude on the part of the Admiralty is to be found in the scathing description in Briggs' "Naval Administration from 1827 to 1892" page 92, of the ruinous parsimony of either political party at this time with regard to the navy—a policy the results of which were only too apparent at the outbreak of the Crimean war. I quote a couple of sentences, "The navy estimates were framed upon the lowest scale, and reduction ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... will easily perceive that I mean to allow you whatever is necessary, not only for the figure, but for the pleasures of a gentleman, and not to supply the profusion of a rake. This, you must confess, does not savor of either the severity or parsimony of old age. I consider this agreement between us, as a subsidiary treaty on my part, for services to be performed on yours. I promise you, that I will be as punctual in the payment of the subsidies, as England has been during the last war; ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... purchase in order to sell again a few cattle, of which he had taken pains to understand the value. He speedily but cautiously turned his first gains into second advantages; retained without a single deviation his extreme parsimony; and thus advanced by degrees into larger transactions and incipient wealth. I did not hear, or have forgotten, the continued course of his life, but the final result was, that he more than recovered his ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... more and more unpopular among the people, who in any case had not expressed undue enthusiasm over his accession to their throne. He was chiefly unpopular on account of his meanness; the Bohemians, though thrifty almost to the verge of parsimony among themselves, do not like that trait in a foreigner, especially one who comes to cut some sort of figure as King or what-not amongst them. However, Rudolph died before a year of sovereignty was out, leaving that poor lady Elizabeth a widow for the second ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... years before the Revolution of 1830. He was for many years not rich, but he and the ladies of his house were very charitable. Madame Adelaide, speaking one day to a friend[1] of the reports that were circulated concerning her brother's parsimony, said,— ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... two dollars and ten cents a month. [Footnote: American State Papers, IV., 118, Report of Secy. of War, January 22, 1791.] Sergeants netted three dollars and sixty cents; while the lieutenants received twenty-two, the captains thirty, and the colonels sixty dollars. The mean parsimony of the nation in paying such low wages to men about to be sent on duties at once very arduous and very dangerous met its fit and natural reward. Men of good bodily powers, and in the prime of life, and especially men able to do the rough work of frontier ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... ball-rooms and monotonous clubs will be wearisome to one who has grown fastidious before his time. J'ai vecu beaucoup dans peu d'annees. I have drawn in youth too much upon the capital of existence to be highly delighted with the ostentatious parsimony with which our ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... very name of schoolmaster, or pedagogue, a hissing and a by-word. And why is this? I can account for it in but one way. The school teacher is subject to the same organic laws as other men; and, either on account of the ignorance or parsimony of his employers, he has been shut up with their children several hours a day, in narrow and ill-ventilated apartments, where, whatever else they may have done, their principal business has of necessity been to poison one another ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... accumulating amount of money, some other party must pay it, and to pay it must make it. In fact, the doctor looked on the increase of money by compound interest as a mere arithmetical process. The world, however, finds it to be a process of working, and the making of money by toil, parsimony, and anxiety. ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... things; he longed for barren walls, a cot of straw, parsimony, discipline. It was not the first time that his exhausted organism had sought consolation in the thought of a monastic life. This Protestant, this descendent of a long line of Protestants, had long been tired of Protestantism. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... the impression was made only on her vanity, and her heart continued unengaged; but she felt such a train of mortifications very severely, and perhaps suffered more upon the whole than if she had been strongly impressed with one passion. In time the parsimony of her old aunt became generally known, and the young lady then was left free from the tender importunity of lovers, of which nothing else could probably have deprived her; for as she never had any natural attractions, she was not subject to a decay of charms; at near ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... difficulty now was how to secure my wealth and to keep what I had got; for I had greatly added to this wealth by the generous bounty of the Prince ——, and the more by the private, retired mode of living, which he rather desired for privacy than parsimony; for he supplied me for a more magnificent way of life than I desired, ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... landed in Alexandria were dazzled by so many splendours, Antony ought to have been blinded; he entered Alexandria as King. He who was born at Rome in the small and simple house of an impoverished noble family who had been brought up with Latin parsimony to eat frugally, to drink wine only on festival occasions, to wear the same clothes a long time, to be served by a single slave—this man found himself lord of the immense palace of the Ptolemies, where the kitchens alone were a hundred times larger than ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... to 800 acres, will no more enable the mistress and the misses to play the fine lady to-day than it would two generations ago. It requires work now the same as then—steady, persevering work—and, what is more important, prudence, economy, parsimony if you like; nor do these necessarily mean the coarse manners of a former age. Manners may be good, education may be good, the intellect and even the artistic sense may be cultivated, and yet extravagance ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... an inhabitant of Oxford. She was studying physiology in London and luxuriating in the extraordinary cheapness of life in Cranham Chambers. Not that she had any special need of cheapness; but the spinster aunt who brought her up had, together with a comfortable competence, left her the habit of parsimony. If, however, she did not know how to enjoy her own income, she allowed many women poorer than herself ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... genius of the great man who infused courage into the English mind, there can be no question. Marlborough, in spite of his many faults, his selfishness and parsimony, his ambition and duplicity, will ever enjoy an enviable fame. He was not so great a moral hero as William, nor did he contend against such superior forces as the royal hero. But he was a great hero, nevertheless. His glory was reached by no ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... utterly at home. A strange architecture, parsimoniously plain on the outside, indeed carrying the Oriental scorn for merely external effect to a point only reachable by a race at once hypocritical and madly proud. The shabby plainness of Wren's church well typified all the parochial parsimony. The despairing architect had been so pinched by his employers in the matter of ornament that on the whole of the northern facade there was only one of his favourite cherub's ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... until I thought the very weight of lumber might defeat our purpose by delaying the blaze too long. But Kagig had requisitioned every drop of kerosene in Zeitoon, and the stuff was splashed on with the recklessness that comes of throwing parsimony to the winds. Then I grew afraid lest they should fire the stuff too soon, or lest some stray spark from a man's pipe or an overturned lantern should do the work. Every imaginable fear presented itself, because, having no active part in the fighting, I had nothing to distract me from ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... was less disgustful in its progress than avarice; yet, insuperably averse to both, and almost equally desirous to fly from the unjust extravagance of Mr Harrel, as from the comfortless and unnecessary parsimony of Mr Briggs, she proceeded instantly to St James's Square, convinced that her third guardian, unless exactly resembling one of the others, must ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... which point I thought the judge's eye had a cast in my direction), was almost immaculate. There had been, he admitted, a trivial blemish or so in its rate of progress, but this was exaggerated and had been entirely owing to the "parsimony of the public," which guilty public, it appeared, had been until lately bent in the most determined manner on by no means enlarging the number of Chancery judges appointed—I believe by Richard the Second, but any other king will ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... but which came to be considered a polite acknowledgement. His real name was not known in Muirtown—not because he had not given it, but because it could not be pronounced, being largely composed of x's and k's, with an irritating parsimony of vowels. We had every opportunity of learning to spell it, if we could not pronounce it, for it was one of the Count's foreign ways to carry a card-case in his ticket-pocket, and on being introduced to an ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... the Prince's house things went on more slowly, for it did not please the Doge [Footnote: Tomaso Mocenigo.] to restore it in the form in which it was before; and they could not rebuild it altogether in a better manner, so great was the parsimony of these old fathers; because it was forbidden by laws, which condemned in a penalty of a thousand ducats any one who should propose to throw down the old palace, and to rebuild it more richly and with greater expense. But the Doge, ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... second richest man in the United States," he continued, "and the first in parsimony. I shall mulct you in one hundred ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... parsimony in his personal expenses, Godefroid dined for twenty-five sous in the rue de Tournon, and was rewarded for his abnegation by finding himself in the midst of compositors and pressmen. He heard a discussion on costs of manufacturing, and learned that an edition of one thousand copies ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... should not be compressed within the limits of a short story. It should be told as are the photoplays, with frequent throw-backs and many cut-ins. To condense twenty-three years of a man's life into some five or six thousand words requires a verbal economy amounting to parsimony. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... remained in a state of barbarism under the sway of native chieftains, or even to preserve in safety and civility such districts as were already reclaimed and brought within the English pale. But the queen's parsimony, or, more truly, the narrowness of her income, caused her perpetually to repine at the great expenses to which she was put for this service, and frequently to run the risk of losing all that had been slowly gained, by a sudden withdrawment, or long ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... Gomez. He is very discreet and amiable, and possesses much authority and learning. By his agreeable manners, he goes on tampering and disguising much of the disgust which people would feel at the king's slowness and sordid parsimony. Through his hands have passed all the affairs of Italy, and also those of Flanders, ever since this country has been governed by Don Juan, who promotes his interests greatly, as do, still more, the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... illusion complete. The quondam protégé of these chiefs was too ill, too much upset, to speak. I bade him good night, and returned home, half-admiring The Giant and his troop, and abusing the foolish parsimony of the merchant, who ought to have thrown a few lumps of flesh to these hungry and wolfish sons of The Desert, and satisfied them at once. One of the party was Hateetah's brother; and Hateetah told me next day that he himself ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... not obtained even those advantages which they had expected from a policy obviously erroneous in a military point of view. They had wished to husband their resources. They now found that in enterprises like theirs, parsimony is the worst profusion. They had hoped to effect a reconciliation. The event taught them that the best way to conciliate is to bring the work of destruction to a speedy termination. By their moderation many lives and much property had been wasted. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... States-General of France, without any overt breach of the constitution. After all, the original design of the crown had been to get money out of parliament, and the main object of parliament had once been to make the king live of his own. A king content with parsimony might lawfully dispense with parliament; and the eleven years had shown the precarious basis of parliamentary institutions, given a thrifty king and an unambitious country. Events were demonstrating the truth of Hobbes's maxim that sovereignty ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... entirely. Or are the experiments begun in the stars continued mechanically, by virtue of the force acquired, without regard to their uselessness and to their pitiful consequences, according to the custom of nature, which knows nothing of our parsimony and squanders the suns in space as it does the seed on earth, knowing that nothing can be lost? Or, again, is the whole question of our peace and happiness, like that of the fate of the worlds, reduced to knowing ...
— Death • Maurice Maeterlinck
... be taken there at the expense of the British public, which is in itself a triumph, and shall, I presume, be sent back in the same way. If not, I shall have a grievance in their parsimony, which in itself will be a comfort to me; and I am sure that I shall be treated well on board. Sir Ferdinando with his eloquence will not be there, and the officers are, all of them, good fellows. I have made up ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... we really complain of is the royalty which we are under, and which is not acceptable to a French nobility; prayers and despotism, weakness and orgies, prodigality for fetes which make all Europe laugh, and parsimony for everything that regards the state and the arts. Such conduct is not weakness ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... public agents, because ignorant of what was really necessary, repeatedly changed the form of its engagements with them, and, at length, by its fluctuating policy, real wants, and imprudent parsimony, brought matters to such extremities that Washington was compelled to require the several counties of the State of New Jersey to furnish his army with certain quantities of provisions within six days in order to prevent them from being taken by force. Although the province was much exhausted, yet ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... the play there was a right Shakespearian parsimony. If all the scenery and costumes cost twenty-five pounds, I am surprised. No attempt was made to invest "lo spettro del padre del Amleto" with supernatural graces. He merely walked on sideways, a burly, very living Italian, and with a nervous quick glance, to see if he was clearing the ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... From the moment when the finances of Egypt were for the first time used to develop what is naturally the richest soil in the world, progress towards betterment grew rapidly into the remarkable prosperity of to-day. For a time, however, the government was obliged to use extreme parsimony in order to keep the country from further falling under the control of the irresponsible bondholders. Finally, in the year 1888, Sir Evelyn Baring wrote to the home government that the situation was so far improved that in his judgment "it would ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... instituted a private road amongst the hardy shrubs, choking up the gates, to the great distress of pedestrians, who are looked upon by the "lanthorns" as "shabby gents,"—paying nothing for the privilege of walking;—they (the "lanthorns") viewing the immunity, in the light of parsimony. However, we think walking home, after a party, under the influence of champagne, a dangerous experiment:—the clear free streets seeming to court a "lark," and the very bells to invite pulling—"Visitors'," and "Night," "Knock and ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... which she roused herself to say, "You'd better let me bargain for the office and the furniture,—and the big sign." She knew—but could not or would not teach me—how to get a dollar's worth for a dollar; would not, I suspect, for she despised parsimony, declaring it to be another virtue which is becoming only ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... for the narrow escape of his vessel off Caphereus, and those of us whom he had invited attended the banquet in Piraeus. After the libations you went your several ways. I myself, as it was not very late, walked up to town for an afternoon stroll in Ceramicus, reflecting as I went on the parsimony of Mnesitheus. When the ship was driving against the cliff, and already inside the circle of reef, he had vowed whole hecatombs: what he offered in fact, with sixteen Gods to entertain, was a single cock—an old bird afflicted with catarrh—and ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... fines to herself; and this was pronounced by the Council as utterly against both her husband's will and the 23rd Elizabeth, to which she had been privy. She complained querulously that the City did not act well. The City then began to complain with more justice of Lady Gresham's parsimony. The Bourse, badly and hastily built, began to fall out of repair, gratings by the south door gave way in 1582, and the clock was always out of order. Considering Lady Gresham had been left L2,388 a year, these neglects were unworthy of her, but they nevertheless continued till her death, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... the nobility; and the loyalty and zeal of the host were usually displayed in the reception given to the royal guest. It happened that in one of these excursions the prince's servants complained that they had been obliged to go to bed supperless, through the pinching parsimony of the house, which the little prince at the time of hearing seemed to take no great notice of. The next morning the lady of the house coming to pay her respects to him, she found him turning over a volume that had many pictures in it; ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... inherit as a birthright all the evils it engrafts upon the character. If they lived on our rocky soil, and under our inclement skies, their shrewdness would sometimes border upon knavery, and their frugality sometimes degenerate into parsimony. We both have our virtues and our faults, induced by the influences under which we live, and, of course, totally different in their character. Our defects are bad enough; but they cannot, like slavery, affect the ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... of the Alemanni had been offended by the harsh and haughty behavior of Ursacius, master of the offices; who by an act of unseasonable parsimony, had diminished the value, as well as the quantity, of the presents to which they were entitled, either from custom or treaty, on the accession of a new emperor. They expressed, and they communicated to their countrymen, their strong sense of the national ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... respectfully to the people there, endeavor to obtain the general esteem, and avoid lampooning and libeling, to which he thought I had too much inclination; telling me, that by steady industry and a prudent parsimony I might save enough by the time I was one-and-twenty to set me up; and that, if I came near the matter, he would help me out with the rest. This was all I could obtain, except some small gifts as tokens of his and my mother's love, when I embark'd again ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... Miss Beasley said in the Scripture lesson," declared Raymonde. "Economy over-done turns into parsimony, liberality into extravagance, self-respect into pride. Gibbie's over-stepping the mark, and ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... personal appearance, the minutia of behavior, politeness of speech? How may perfect politeness be combined with perfect sincerity? Ways of inculcating integrity. How to teach self-reliance, without fostering self-conceit. How to encourage prudence and economy, and at the same time discourage parsimony. How to combine firmness with kindness. Implicit obedience a good basis to work on. How to enter into a child's life, and make it a happy one. How not to become a slave to a child's whims. The different amounts of indulgence and of assistance which different temperaments will bear. How ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... independence in the uncertain vocation of a journalist would not allow him, while he was earning nothing, to spend a sou more than was absolutely necessary. He had decided to join forces with a widowed sister, who was accustomed to parsimony as parsimony is understood in France, and who was living on hoarded ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... situation calling for absolute parsimony in the economy of time it would have meant moments salvaged for the trio of men, who must act as commanders of the rest, to have gone at once into a discussion of the results of their several investigations. Yet that was impossible, since for Halloway to ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... however, of whom it was presently observed, that they could be well content to live on bread or potatoes, to drink water, to make the stones of the street their bed, and to sleep in their clothes, with no covering but the canopy of heaven." "How vast," says Cicero, "is the revenue of Parsimony!" and, by a thousand degrees more striking, how celestial is the strength that descends upon the ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... the lead, and would not bring the fleet into danger. This was done, Hood leading all the fleet except the "Goliath," Captain Foley, which kept ahead, but outside, of the "Zealous." No close shaving was done, however, at this critical turn; and it is that steady deliberation, combined with such parsimony of time in other moments, which is most impressive in Nelson. So few realize that five minutes are at once the most important and the least important of considerations. Thus the British passed so much beyond the island and ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... dreary exile of uneventful years, in which the ex- Emperor conducted paper campaigns of great fierceness against the English government, which with unprecedented parsimony allowed him no more than $60,000 ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... the intricacies of Kant, Kreis reminded him that all good little German philosophies when they died went to Oxford. A little later Norton reminded them of Hamilton's Law of Parsimony, the application of which they immediately claimed for every reasoning process of theirs. And Martin hugged his knees and exulted in it all. But Norton was no Spencerian, and he, too, strove for Martin's philosophic ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... She lays down a large and generous plan, and erects a building worthy of her ancient fame, worthy to increase the love and honor in which she is held,—a building that adds a new beauty to her old beauties of hall and chapel, of quadrangle and cloister. She does not mistake parsimony for economy; she does not neglect to regard the duty that lies upon her, as the guardian and instructress of youth, to set before their eyes models of fair proportion, noble structures which shall exercise at once an ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... arisen from making special appropriations for incorporated villages. Such appropriations, the superintendent had observed, excited prejudice and parsimony; for the trustees of some villages had learned to expend only the special appropriations for the education of the colored pupils, and to use the public money in establishing and maintaining schools ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... Parliamentary parlamenta. Parlour parolejo. Parochial parohxa. Parody parodio. Parole parolo je la honoro. Paroxysm frenezo, frenezado. Parricide patromortiginto. Parroquet papageto. Parrot papago. Parry lerte eviti, skermi. Parsimony parcimonio. Parsley petroselo. Parsnip pastinako. Parson pastro. Parsonage pastra domo. Part parto, porcio. Part, on my part miaflanke. Part, to depart foriri. Part, to separate disigxi, malkunigxi. Partake partopreni. Parterre florbedo. Parterre (theatre) partero. Partial ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... about the imperial cities is mere boasting. I am famous, admired and loved here, it is true, but the people are worse than the Viennese in their parsimony." ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... not high enough for want of money? But was it want of money that made you put that blunt, overloaded, laborious ogee door into the side of it? Was it for lack of funds that you sunk the tracery of the parapet in its clumsy zigzags? Was it in parsimony that you buried its paltry pinnacles in that eruption of diseased crockets? or in pecuniary embarrassment that you set up the belfry foolscaps, with the mimicry of dormer windows, which nobody can ever reach nor look out of? Not so, but in ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... quarter of the city.[59] 'The Court of Rome,' says the Venetian envoy in the year 1565, 'is no longer what it used to be either in the quality or the numbers of the courtiers. This is principally due to the poverty of the Cardinals and the parsimony of the Popes. In the old days, when they gave away more liberally, men of ability flocked from all quarters. This reduction of the Court dates from the Council; for the bishops and beneficed clergy being ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... cheer his melancholy fireside. Why has the poetic spirit of England folded its wings, and been content to abandon its brilliant region to the butterflies of albums, but that the spirit of England has suffered itself to be fettered by the red tape of a peddling parsimony? Should we have had a Shakspeare without the smiles of an Elizabeth, and the generosity of a Southampton? No. He would have split his pen after his first tragedy; have thrown his ink-stand into the Thames; have taken the carrier's cart to Stratford, and there finished his days in writing epitaphs ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... Prince therefore not being able to use this vertue of liberality, without his own damage, in such a sort, that it may be taken notice of, ought, if he be wise, not to regard the name of Miserable; for in time he shall alwaies be esteemed the more liberal, seeing that by his parsimony his own revenues are sufficient for him; as also he can defend himself against whoever makes war against him, and can do some exploits without grieving his subjects: so that he comes to use his liberality to all those, from whom he takes nothing, who are infinite in number; ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... without the least intermixture of narrowness. She knew how to distinguish between frugality, a necessary virtue, and niggardliness, an odious vice; and used to say, 'That to define generosity, it must be called the happy medium betwixt parsimony and profusion.' ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... the children. The superintendent may go farther than to suggest in Wisconsin, however, for if a school building becomes dilapidated he may condemn it, and then state aid to local education is refused until suitable buildings are provided. The law has proved an excellent deterrent to educational parsimony. ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... la Creuse and la Haute Vienne occupy houses let out in furnished rooms exclusively to themselves, in the quarters of the Hotel de Ville, the Arsenal, Saint Marcel, and in other parts of Paris. The rigid parsimony of these men is disappointed terribly when any crisis happens. They are forced to eat their savings, to turn their clothing and their tools into food, and, by the revolution of eighteen hundred and forty-eight, were reduced to ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... made money hand over hand; became a rich and mighty man, and exalted his cocked hat upon 'change. He built himself, as usual, a vast house, out of ostentation; but left the greater part of it unfinished and unfurnished out of parsimony. He even set up a carriage in the fullness of his vain-glory, though he nearly starved the horses which drew it; and as the ungreased wheels groaned and screeched on the axle trees, you would have thought you heard the souls of the poor debtors ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... application of this system of religious faith, they inculcate a celibate life; "honesty and integrity in all words and dealings;" "humanity and kindness to friend and foe;" diligence in business; prudence, temperance, economy, frugality, "but not parsimony;" "to keep clear of debt;" "suitable education of children;" a "united interest in all things," which means community of goods; suitable employment for all; and a provision for all in ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... sensible that they had been humiliated before the whole world. The situation in Egypt was scarcely more pleasing. The reforms initiated by the British Administrators had as yet only caused unpopularity. Baring's interference galled the Khedive and his Ministers. Vincent's parsimony excited contempt. Moncrieff's energy had convulsed the Irrigation Department. Wood's army was the laughing-stock of Europe. Among and beneath the rotten weeds and garbage of old systems and abuses the new ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... February 1869; and this long hesitation seems to have been followed by an even longer repentance, for the piece was never included in any one of his volumes of essays. But the ten years of his professorship are, according to the wise parsimony of the chair, amply represented by the two famous little books—On Translating Homer, which, with its supplementary "Last Words," appeared in 1861-62, and On the Study of Celtic Literature, which appeared at the termination of his tenure in 1867. It may be questioned whether ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... wanton destruction. But on the other hand it does also check and cripple generosity and frank truthfulness, any disinterested creative passion, the love of beauty, the passion for truth and research, and it stimulates avarice, parsimony, overreaching, usury, falsehood and secrecy, by making money-getting its criterion ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... on the subject of the White House and its precincts, because we took occasion, in a former work, to berate the narrow-minded parsimony which left the grounds of the White House in a condition that was discreditable to the republic. How far our philippic may have hastened the improvements which have been made, is more than we shall pretend to say; ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... in an Ecclesiastical Court, he had been a quarrelsome disputant rather than a statesman. His parsimony went to the extreme of meanness; his avarice was insatiable and restless. So long as he connived at smuggling, he reaped a harvest in that way; when Grenville's sternness inspired alarm, it was his study to make the most money out of forfeitures and penalties. Professing ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... infirm as he had thought, nor the Marchioness quite so full of fears. He must give it up, and take his pittance. But in doing so he continued to assure himself that he was greatly injured, and did not cease to accuse Lord Kingsbury of sordid parsimony in refusing to reward adequately one whose services to the family had been ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... certainly a curious mingling of grandeur and poverty, this life in the half-ruined Castle, with its magnificent tapestries and carvings, its evidences of bygone splendour, and, alas! present-day parsimony. The little house at Passy could have been put down inside the great entrance hall, but it was a trim little habitation, where on a minute scale all the refinements and niceties of life were observed, and income and expenditure were so well balanced that there was always a margin ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... destinies;" in other words, that every desire predicts its own satisfaction. Yet, all experience exhibits the reverse of this; the incompetency of power is the universal grief of young and ardent minds. They accuse the divine Providence of a certain parsimony. It has shown the heaven and earth to every child, and filled him with a desire for the whole; a desire raging, infinite; a hunger, as of space to be filled with planets; a cry of famine, as of devils for souls. Then for the satisfaction,—to each man is administered a single drop, a bead of dew ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... naturally induced a favourable disposition towards his benefactors, their laws, and their institutions. Though the Padre was extremely liberal in his political opinions, his management of his worldly affairs bore the stamp of the most sordid parsimony. He worshipped the golden calf, and his adoration of the image was manifest in everything around him. He wore a cassock of cloth which had in former times been of a black colour, but was now of a dusky grey, the woollen material being so completely incorporated with ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... one may be as avaricious with a small fortune as with a great one; and if we are to measure M. Ramon's wealth by his parsimony, he must be a triple millionaire—such a wretched old miser!" continued Louis, contemptuously, biting into his bread with a sort ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... economy, at least, they are worthy of all praise. No other community spends less in proportion to its income. From the emperor down, each person seems to count his pence. This self-denial, which borders at times on parsimony, is the result of training and circumstances. The soil in the eastern part of the kingdom, and especially around Berlin, is not fertile. It yields its crops only to the most careful tillage. Moreover, prolonged struggles for political existence and supremacy, with the necessity ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... the comfort. Those little necessaries which add so much to the negro's comfort, and of which he is so fond, must be purchased with the result of his extra energy. Even this allowance may serve the boasted hospitality; but the impression that there is a pennyworth of generosity for every pound of parsimony, forces itself upon us. On his little spot, by moonlight or starlight, the negro must cultivate for himself, that his family may enjoy a few of those fruits of which master has many. How miserable is the man without a spark of generosity in his soul; and how much more miserable the man who ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... not only so, but the greater the necessity that our gifts be commensurate with our means; for otherwise, although we may give frequently, and perhaps congratulate ourselves on our generous liberality, the curse of God may be hanging over us for our parsimony. ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... circumstances, the mystery would soon have been swept aside by the putting of a single interrogation; but men on the Last Chance River get out of the habit of asking leading questions; in their parsimony over words, they prefer to watch and to wait the reading of the minds of their fellows, and the secreting of their own motives, is almost their only pastime. So ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... impress of Cromwell's iron hand upon her military institutions; but that impress was growing weaker. Before the next Dutch war Monk was dead, and was poorly replaced by the cavalier Rupert. Court extravagance cut down the equipment of the navy as did the burgomaster's parsimony, and court corruption undermined discipline as surely as commercial indifference. The effect was evident when the fleets of the two countries ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... Archie's attitude, since we are all grown up and have forgotten the days of our youth, it is more difficult to convey. He made no attempt whatsoever to understand the man with whom he dined and breakfasted. Parsimony of pain, glut of pleasure, these are the two alternating ends of youth; and Archie was of the parsimonious. The wind blew cold out of a certain quarter - he turned his back upon it; stayed as little as was possible in his father's presence; and when ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... children." He practises this wise economy constantly when it is a question, not of his personal property, but of the funds of his seminary. He finds that his successor, whom the ten years which he had passed at court as king's almoner could not have trained in parsimony, allows himself to be carried away, by his zeal and his desire to do good, to a somewhat excessive expense. With what tact and delicacy he indulges in a discreet reproach! "Magna est fides tua," he writes to him, "and much greater than mine. We see that all our priests have responded to it with ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... our manager was baffled how the pirates were to ascend a ladder to their sleeping loft. They had no place to go. They would crack their ugly heads upon the ceiling. The costumer was positive (parsimony!) that a hole—even a little hole—should not be cut in the plaster overhead for their disappearance. If the chandelier had been an honest piece of metal they might have perched on it until the act ran out. Or perhaps the candles could be extinguished when their legs were still climbing ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... the Directors were with these demands, you may conceive, Sir, that they did not find themselves very much disembarrassed by being made acquainted that they must again exert their influence for a new reserve of the happy parsimony of their servants, collected into a second debt from the Nabob of Arcot, amounting to two millions four hundred thousand pounds, settled at an interest of twelve per cent. This is known by the name of the Consolidation of 1777, as the former of the Nabob's debts was by the title ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... reported that Field was kept on very short allowance by his master, and was obliged to pay for the good fortune of having his instruction by many privations. I myself experienced a little sample of Clementi's truly Italian parsimony, for one day I found teacher and pupil with upturned sleeves, engaged at the wash-tub, washing their stockings and other linen. They did not suffer themselves to be disturbed, and Clementi advised me to ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... way he made money hand over hand, became a rich and mighty man, and exalted his cocked hat upon "Change." He built himself, as usual, a vast house, out of ostentation, but left the greater part of it unfinished and unfurnished, out of parsimony. He even set up a carriage in the fulness of his vain-glory, though he nearly starved the horses which drew it; and, as the ungreased wheels groaned and screeched on the axle-trees, you would have thought you heard the souls of the poor debtors ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... in his estimate of the danger, and of the immediate evils which produced it. He was right in thinking that want of method, want of control, want of confidence, and an untimely parsimony, prevented severity from having a fair chance of preparing a platform for reform and conciliation. He was right in his conviction of the inveterate treachery of the Irish Chiefs, partly the result of ages of mismanagement, ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... 1762 a miser, of the name of Foscue, in France, having amassed enormous wealth by habits of extortion and the most sordid parsimony, was requested by the government to advance a sum of money as a loan. The miser demurred, pretending that he was poor. In order to hide his gold effectually, he dug a deep cave in his cellar, the descent to which was by a ladder, and ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... conduct, with an oblique reference to the financial pursuits of Cosimo's mother, Maria Salviati, and concluded with a mendicant whine about the bad times and so forth. When Cosimo pensioned him, which he did liberally, considering his habitual parsimony—to the extent, at least, of 160 ducats a year—he had doubtless an eye to Aretino's dangerous character as Spanish agent. Aretino could ridicule and revile Cosimo, and in the same breath threaten the Florentine ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... the number of things you get, not on the quantity you use. You must feel free in your use of material. There is nothing which hampers you more than parsimony in the use of things needful to your painting. If it is worth your while to paint at all, it is worth your while to be generous enough with yourself to insure ordinary freedom of ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... writing; likewise an estimate of the supposed amount of each item of expense. Those who are early accustomed to calculations of this kind, will acquire so accurate a knowledge of what their establishment demands, as will suggest the happy medium between prodigality and parsimony, without in the least subjecting themselves ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... city as a conqueror, without much trouble, but on account of his parsimony and austerity he soon became unpopular, and was murdered by his mutinous soldiers fifteen days after he reached Rome. He belonged to an old patrician family, and his overthrow was sincerely regretted by the better ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... cause of loss to their owners and death to their crews. Men scarcely competent to take the responsibility of an ordinary day's work, or, if competent, of notoriously intemperate habits, were placed in command of sea-going ships through the parsimony or nepotism of the owners. The result of the educational clauses in the Mercantile Marine Bill of last session, will no doubt be to provide a much larger body of well-trained men, from among whom our shipowners can select the ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... capable and worthy maturity; but both unintelligently interfered with the sound development of the childish souls. The mother was so tactless as to make the children, even at a tender age, the confidants of her annoyances and intrigues. The undignified parsimony of the king, the blows which he distributed so freely in his rooms, and the monotonous daily routine which he forced upon her, were the subject of no end of complaining, sulking, and ridicule in ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... half-eaten, without sauce Of sav'ry cheese, or butter costlier still, Sleep seems their only refuge. For alas, Where penury is felt the thought is chained, And sweet colloquial pleasures are but few. With all this thrift they thrive not. All the care Ingenious parsimony takes, but just Saves the small inventory, bed and stool, Skillet and old carved chest, from public sale. They live, and live without extorted alms From grudging hands, but other boast have none To soothe their honest pride that scorns to beg, Nor comfort else, but in their mutual ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... before his extravagance had impaired his great property, had nineteen thousand six hundred a year. [55] George Monk, Duke of Albemarle, who had been rewarded for his eminent services with immense grants of crown land, and who had been notorious both for covetousness and for parsimony, left fifteen thousand a year of real estate, and sixty thousand pounds in money which probably yielded seven per cent. [56] These three Dukes were supposed to be three of the very richest subjects in England. The Archbishop of Canterbury can hardly have had five ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Regained Milton has carried simplicity of dress to the verge of nakedness. It is probably the most unadorned poem extant in any language. He has pushed severe abstinence to the extreme point, possibly beyond the point, where a reader's power is stimulated by the poet's parsimony. ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... be possessed of a power of reply which was peculiarly disagreeable to the old man. This had the effect of cutting down the intended allowance of L250 to L220 per annum, for which sum the father had been told that his son could live like a gentleman at the University. This parsimony so disgusted uncle Babington, who lived on the other side of the county, within the borders of Suffolk, that he insisted on giving his nephew a hunter, and an undertaking to bear the expense of the animal as long as John should remain at the University. No arrangement ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... was alone, entirely alone in this dark, empty room, and its comfortless silence filled him with anxiety. He sank into his arm-chair, and looked with a sad glance around this large room, which, because of his parsimony, was but badly lighted with four tallow candles. Nothing broke the silence but from time to time the gay music of the dance, which was heard from the other wing of the castle. Mirth still reigned in the saloons of the queen. The king sighed; ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... expenses are enormous. Our appearance and retinue was too splendid for the narrow mind of Pippi, who was always crying out at my extravagance, though obliged to own that his own meanness and parsimony would never have achieved the great victories which my generosity had won. With all our success, our capital was not very great. That speech to the Duke of Courland, for instance, was a mere boast as far as the two hundred thousand florins ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... though doubtless he will have them soon. Neither have any rents been paid to you from your own estates, and when they come they are promised up in London, while the Abbot's razor has shaved my own poor parsimony bare as a churchyard skull. Also Mother Matilda and her nuns must be kept till we can endow them with their lands again. One day we, or our boy yonder, may be rich, but till it comes there are hard times ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... an early maturity of character. He has made a wise use of his father's wealth. The honour which other men often acquire by prodigality he has acquired by saving. Cassiodorus evidently has a little fear that the new Consul may carry his parsimony too far, and tells him that this office of the Consulship is one in which liberality, almost extravagance, earns praise[249]; in which it is a kind of virtue not to love one's own possessions; and in which one gains in good ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... desires, and passions, in mutual check and limitation. It consists in shunning extremes. Thus courage stands midway between cowardice and rashness; temperance, between excess and self-denial; generosity, between prodigality and parsimony; meekness, between irascibility and pusillanimity. Happiness is regarded as the supreme good; but while this is not to be attained without virtue, virtue alone will not secure it. Happiness requires, in addition, certain outward advantages, such as health, ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... capable of forgetting that he has not had his dinner, and who can live apparently content amid the grossest domestic neglect. He had once spoilt a hundred and fifty pounds' worth of ware by firing it in a new kiln of his own contrivance; it cost him three years of atrocious parsimony to pay for the ware and the building of the kiln. He was impulsively and recklessly charitable, and his Saturday afternoons and Sundays were chiefly devoted to the passionate propagandism of the theories of ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... headlong to a sea represented by one wavy line; each and all priceless. In the third drawer lay an unset emerald, worth a king's ransom, a clasp of two amethysts, and a necklace of black pearls graduated to a hair's-breadth. By this time I could see—I read it even in the exquisite parsimony of the collection—that I had to deal with an artist, and sighed that in this world artists should prey upon one another. The fourth drawer was reserved for miniatures, the most of them circleted with diamonds: the fifth for snuff-boxes-gold ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Erewhile the grass had appeared dry and parched; a few solitary and leafless trees had been scattered up and down; there was no gaiety of colours to relieve the eye; and not one drop of water to give freshness to the prospect. But with the operations of magic Rodogune had delighted to supersede the parsimony of nature. She caused the tree and the shrub to spring forth in the richest abundance; the sturdiness of whose trunks, or the deepness of their verdure, cheated the eye with the semblance of the ripening hand of time. She sprinkled ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... taels, it would never be the proper thing; should this involve a breach of the main principles of decorum. With this course duly put into practice, outside, the accountancy will issue in one year four or five hundred taels less, without even the semblance of any parsimony; while, inside, the matrons will obtain, on the other hand, some little thing to supply their wants with; the nurses, who have no means of subsistence, will likewise be placed in easy circumstances; and the plants ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... applying to foreign sources. Elizabeth never spent a penny of public money without good reason; sometimes—as in Ireland habitually, and to some degree at the time of the Armada though not so seriously as is commonly reputed—her parsimony amounted to false economy; often it took on a pettifogging character in her dealings with the Dutch, with the Huguenots, and with the Scots, though in the last case at least it must be admitted that either party was equally ready ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... waste lands, a most important function of colonial governors, has been a source of incessant perplexity and discontent. Sometimes they have been granted with ridiculous parsimony, and at others with scandalous profusion. Every minister has proposed some novelty: the regulations of one year have been abandoned the next, and the emigrant who loitered on his way found the system changed, which had induced him to ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... Many a father has gone with his family in a fine carriage drawn by a spanking team till he came up to his grave; then he lay down, and his children have got out of the carriage, and not only been compelled to walk, but to go barefoot. Against parsimony and niggardliness I proclaim war; but with the same sentence I condemn those who make a grand splash while they live, leaving their families in destitution ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... was compelled to arrange its meetings with reference to the appearance of the great actress." How one would have enjoyed hearing that Scotsman say, after one of her most splendid flights of tragic passion, "That's no bad!" We have read of her dismay at this ludicrous parsimony of praise, but her self-respect must have been restored when the Edinburgh ladies fainted by dozens during her impersonation of Isabella ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... most rigid parsimony with the most gentlemanly sentiments, received a present of some very fine wine from a wine merchant, who knew that nothing could so win his heart as small gifts. It had the effect to obtain from him the loan of several hundred pounds. Mr. Elwes, who could never ask a gentleman for money, and ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... fluttering with sympathy. Mrs. Robinson leaned over and whispered significantly, "The missionaries always used to be entertained at the brick house; your grandfather never would let 'em sleep anywheres else when he was alive." She meant this for a stab at Miss Miranda's parsimony, remembering the four spare chambers, closed from January to December; but Rebecca thought it was intended as a suggestion. If it had been a former custom, perhaps her aunts would want her to do the right thing; for what else was she representing ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... operation of lower ones is sufficient to explain the observed phenomena, and all our science and all our philosophy are scattered to the winds. For the law of logic which Sir William Hamilton called the law of parsimony—or the law which forbids us to assume the operation of higher causes when lower ones are found sufficient to explain the observed effects—this law constitutes the only logical barrier between science and superstition. For it is manifest that it is always possible to give ...
— The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution • George John Romanes
... steady hand upon. It especially concerns them. What are they there for but to do that which individuals cannot do? It concerns them, too, as it tells upon the health, morals, education, and refined pleasures of the people they govern. In doing it, they should avoid pedantry, parsimony, and favouritism; and their mode of action should be large, considerate, and foreseeing. Large; inasmuch as they must not easily be contented with the second best in any of their projects. Considerate; inasmuch as they have to think what their people need most, not what ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps |
