"Prodigal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... got imprisoned, escaped, outwitted the gendarmes, got retaken: his adventures sound like a legend or romance. It is because he was so romantic, that he is so interesting. He returned to France full of generous impulses. He was as prodigal of his money as he had been of his blood. In the bitter cold winters he fed and clothed the poor of Belleville, going from attic to attic with money and consolation. You remember what Victor Hugo says of the sublime ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... would be the decent thing to do as far as she was concerned, and also to hide his hurt and disappointment, which were deep. The rumour of lion was genuine and the excitement, extending far down the Nile, intense. In fact, with the aid of the Oriental's prodigal imagination the one royal beast of feminine persuasion which was reported as having been seen prowling around Deir el-Bahari had been multiplied to two pairs ravaging the ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... epoch of this story, there dwelt in one of the Middle States a man whom we shall call Fauntleroy; a man of wealth, and magnificent tastes, and prodigal expenditure. His home might almost be styled a palace; his habits, in the ordinary sense, princely. His whole being seemed to have crystallized itself into an external splendor, wherewith he glittered in the eyes of the world, and ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and ignominiously defeated! Ay, but that was a trifle now, scarcely worthy of consideration. The girl had hoodwinked him, had lied more skilfully than he, yet in the fact that she had lied he found a prodigal atonement. Whigs and Jacobites might have their uses in the cosmic scheme, he reflected, as house-flies have, but what really mattered was that at Halvergate yonder Marian awaited his coming. And in place of statecraft he fell to thinking of two hazel ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... the power of the image or picture to lead to action. Only the Father knows how many sons have come home from the far country because of the matchless story of the prodigal. Only He knows how many consecrated men and women are in Africa and China and Japan because they saw the heroes in God's Hall of Fame. Surely this is why the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to write, "Whatsoever things ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... difficulty peculiar to the translating of Dante into English. English is essentially a diffuse and prodigal language. The great English writers have written with a free hand, prolific, excursive, diffuse. Shakespeare, Sir Thomas Browne, Sir Walter Scott, Robert Browning, all the typical writers of English, have been many-worded. They have been ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... That "sir," so familiar to his ear, and yet seemingly so incongruous in the present instance, baffled him completely. In the first moment of his discovery he had intended, figuratively speaking, to fall upon the prodigal's neck, and converse with him in the old, familiar style; but now, between Valentine Fenleigh, Esq., of the ——sex, and Private Fenleigh, of the Royal Blankshire, there was a great gulf fixed, and the latter, especially, seemed determined to recognize that the former conditions ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... complex life. We have attacked the problem on one side by the promotion of cooperative marketing, and we might well inquire into the benefits of cooperative buying. Admittedly, the consumer is much to blame himself, because of his prodigal expenditure and his exaction of service, but Government might well serve to point the way of narrowing the spread of price, especially between the production ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Warren Harding • Warren Harding
... balls—at which the entire population, irrespective of age or worldly position, dressed in silks or in flannel shirts, as the case might be, still gathered almost weekly in truly democratic comradeship—the egg-shells were no longer filled with gold-dust, as sometimes happened in the prodigal Spanish days; yet time was still regarded as a thing of so little value that no one thought of abandoning the pleasures of the dance until broad daylight. Along the narrow, crooked streets of the little town, with its precarious ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... was to revive the old subjects which contained the eternal essentials of life and present them in "palpitatingly modern" form. I eloquently developed my thesis. We were sick to death, for instance, of the quasi-scriptural Prodigal Son, sitting half-naked in a desert beside a swine trough. Was it not more "palpitating" to set ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... compare his position with that of Dr. Gore we see at once the width of the gulf which separates the traditionalist from the philosopher. To Dr. Gore the creeds and the miracles are essential to Christianity. No Virgin Birth, no Sermon on the Mount! No Resurrection of the Body, no Parable of the Prodigal Son! No Descent into Hell, no revelation that the Kingdom of Heaven is within! Need we wonder that Dr. Gore cries out despairingly for more discipline? He summons reason, it is true, but to defend and explain creeds without which there ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... publication of each successive number, month by month, that the colourists could not keep pace with the printers. The alternate scenes of high life and low life, the contrasted characters, and revelations of misery side by side with prodigal waste and folly, attracted attention, while the vivacity of ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... back to the home which he had so wickedly left. Whenever he thought of this home, of the Uncle Daniel who had in charity cared for him—a motherless, fatherless boy—and of returning to it, with not even as much right as the Prodigal Son, of whom he had heard Uncle Daniel tell, his heart sank within him and he doubted whether he would be allowed to remain even if he should be so fortunate as ever ...
— Toby Tyler • James Otis
... presumption rather, in two respects. First, when yet there was only probability, not a certain and determinate place of habitation selected, neither any demonstration if commodity there in esse, to induce his followers; nevertheless, he both was too prodigal of his own patrimony and too careless of other men's expenses to employ both his and their substance upon a ground imagined good. The which falling, very like his associates were promised, and made it their best ...
— Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage to Newfoundland • Edward Hayes
... he would not force him to come. It was a piece of childish folly on the boy's part no doubt, this going away; due to his impetuous nature and his immature years; but, he had made his bed, now let him lie in it till he should come to a realization of what he had done, and, like the prodigal son of old, should come back of his own accord, and ask to be forgiven. Yet the days went by, and the weeks grew long, and no prodigal returned. There was no abatement of determination on the grandfather's ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... had once been white marble, the probable remains of the ancient tomb from which the sarcophagus was taken. Here and there a marble acanthus-leaf, or the capital of an old column, or a fragment of sculpture jutted from under the mosses, ferns, and grasses with which prodigal Nature had filled every interstice and carpeted the whole. These sculptured fragments everywhere in Italy seem to whisper from the dust, of past life and death, of a cycle of human existence forever gone, over whose tomb the life of to-day ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... deeply degraded—if the termagant and imperious Castlemaine; the lovely and intriguing Denham; the coquettish, cold, and cunning Richmond; the innately-dissipated and unrestrainable Southesk; the equivocal Middleton; the rapacious, prodigal, and insinuating Querouaille,—are rendered infamous in our national history—let us not confound the innocent with the guilty. We can point out to our daughters, for admiration and example, the patient, affectionate, and enduring ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... du Camp's authority there is a charming touch to add to his son's description of him. 'Il me semble,' said the royal old prodigal in his last illness, 'que je suis au sommet d'un monument qui tremble comme si les fondations etaient assises sur le sable.' 'Sois en paix,' replied the author of the Demi-Monde: 'le monument est bien bati, et la base est solide.' He was right, as we know. It is good ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... caused an elation that amounted to hilarity. On the other hand, the deadly blight of non-fulfilment, that annually attacked his most cherished hopes for the future development of his native town, failed in any wise to depress him, or check the prodigal casting of his optimistic daily bread on the placid social waters where, as the years multiplied, his enthusiasms scarce ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... if not, what was she to do with or for him? Was he to keep the money so vilely appropriated? And what was he to do when it was spent? If want would drive him home, the sooner he came to it the better! We pity the prodigal with his swine, but then first a ray of hope begins to break through the darkness of ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... that the state should use the instrument of taxation as a means of mitigating the inequalities of wealth. I am as desirous as any one that means should be taken to diminish those inequalities, but not so as to relieve the prodigal at the expense of the prudent. To tax the larger incomes at a higher percentage than the smaller is to lay a tax on industry and economy; to impose a penalty on people for having worked harder and saved more than their neighbors. It is not the fortunes which ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... doesn't like it. It's perfectly disgusting the way young people now speak of their elders, who are barely middle-aged, as if they were centenarians. Well, I think, and your father thinks, that Anita had a fancy for Broussard. He was a very attractive man. Your father thought him a prodigal with his money, but, of course, some fault must be found with every man who ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... justice; towns and cities will hereafter flourish where all is now desert; the waters, over which scarcely a solitary boat is yet seen to glide, will reflect the flags of all nations; and a happy, prosperous people receiving with thankfulness what prodigal Nature bestows for their use, will disperse her treasures over every part ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... posterity will do them justice; towns and cities will flourish where all is now desert; the waters over which scarcely a solitary boat is yet seen to glide will reflect the flags of all nations; and a happy, prosperous people receiving with thankfulness what prodigal nature bestows for their use will dispense her treasures over every part of ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... perjurer, a flatterer, a wanderer, pilfering and greedy; now a dead flea, a decayed dog, a vile worm, not a hermit, but a hypocrite; not a solitary, but a gad-about in mind; a devourer of alms, dainty over good things, greedy and negligent, lazy and snoring, ambitious and prodigal, one who is not worthy to serve others, and yet every day beats and scolds those who serve him: this, and worse than this, you may write of Godric." "Then he was silent as one indignant," says Reginald, "and I went off in some confusion," ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... is Liberality, the excess Prodigality, the defect Stinginess: here each of the extremes involves really an excess and defect contrary to each other: I mean, the prodigal gives out too much and takes in too little, while the stingy man takes in too much and gives out too little. (It must be understood that we are now giving merely an outline and summary, intentionally: and we will, in a later part of the treatise, ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... along with nuts and apples in a basket to sell. I bought an apple for five cents. It was regarded by my teacher, Maggie, as a prodigal expenditure! I shared it with her, and she in turn shared her half with ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... by handfuls and throwing it upon the fire. Leonnatus reproved him for this extravagance, and told him that when he became master of the countries where these costly gums were procured, he might be as prodigal of them as he pleased, but that in the mean time it would be proper for him to be more prudent and economical. Alexander remembered this reproof, and, finding vast stores of these expensive gums in Gaza, he sent the whole quantity to Leonnatus, telling him that he sent ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... "Jayme Ferrer thinks as I think, that the nearer we come to the Equator the more precious grow all things, the more gold, the more diamonds, rubies and emeralds, the more prodigal and delicious the spices! The people are burnt black, but they grow gentler and more wise, and under the line they are makers of white magic. I have not told you, Juan Lepe, but I hold that now we begin to come to where our Mother Earth ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... race and later upbraiding Jehovah because of the destruction of the gourd that for a time had protected his head from the burning sun. Jehovah's concluding remonstrance voices the message of the book. Like the New Testament parable of the Prodigal Son, the story of Jonah presents in graphic form the unbounded love of the heavenly father and contrasts it sharply with the petty jealousies and hatred of his favored people. It was a call to Israel to go forth and become a missionary ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... Gulf of California. They glided calmly down the tranquil stream, by islands choked with trees and matted with entangling grape-vines; by forests, groves, and prairies,—the parks and pleasure-grounds of a prodigal nature; by thickets and marshes and broad bare sand-bars; under the shadowing trees, between whose tops looked down from afar the bold brow of some woody bluff. At night, the bivouac,— the canoes inverted on the bank, the ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... prodigal, improvident, lavish; wild, immoderate, preposterous, inordinate, exorbitant. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... very jealous for the Church, and therefore felt deeply the conversion of my gardener. Like the elder brother of the Prodigal Son, I was grieved, and even angry, because he was restored to favour and joy. The remonstrance of the father prevailed nothing to mollify his feelings; in like manner, nothing seemed to give me any rest in this ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... he had much hope himself; he dared not hope. Hope meant a prop to his old age; hope meant joy to Jane, who would welcome the prodigal; hope meant relief to the doctor, who could then claim his own; hope meant redemption for Lucy, a clean name for Archie, and honor to himself and ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Valdez, who saw more vividly than the besieged could do, the uncertainty of his own position, now poured daily into the city, the enemy becoming more prodigal of his vows, as he felt that the ocean might yet save the victims from his grasp. The inhabitants, in their ignorance, had gradually abandoned their hopes of relief, but they spurned the summons to surrender. Leyden was sublime in its despair. ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... was a part of his ironic destiny that he, who was prodigal of light words, should find himself stricken dumb in ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... indwelling spirit. A free spirit, certainly, as of old! Through all his pantheistic flights, from horizon to horizon, it was still the thought of liberty that presented itself to the infinite relish of this "prodigal son" of Dominic. God the Spirit had made all things indifferently, with a largeness, a beneficence, impiously belied by any theory of restrictions, distinctions, absolute limitations. Touch, see, ...
— Giordano Bruno • Walter Horatio Pater
... for it to your face, and what you are now told, comes from one unknown, and it may be, from an enemy. You will allow yourself indeed to be prudent in the management of your fortune; you are not a prodigal, like Clodius[10] or Catiline, but surely that deserves not the name of avarice. I will inform you how to be convinced. Disguise your person; go among the common people in Rome; introduce discourses about yourself; inquire your own character; ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... "Wicked prodigal! What shall we do to reform him, Mr. Douglas? He has not been to see us for three years past, and during that time we have had ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... the way. Cartier had disposed of his ships, and taken up his permanent residence at Limoilou. To purchase a new vessel would cost money; and Charles, ever prodigal, had but small means that he could call his own. On Cartier he depended for help; but that shrewd seaman knew how the enterprise must end, and instead of putting his hand into his money-bag, he did his utmost to dissuade La ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... came up to the house at Walcote, the windows from within were lighted up with friendly welcome; the supper-table was spread in the oak-parlor; it seemed as if forgiveness and love were awaiting the returning prodigal. Two or three familiar faces of domestics were on the look-out at the porch—the old housekeeper was there, and young Lockwood from Castlewood in my lord's livery of tawny and blue. His dear mistress pressed his arm as they passed into ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... example and impulse to extravagance through every department of the public service; and of securing, perhaps by design, to private wealth, a monopoly of administration. A man vigilantly prudent might perhaps have lived within his income in Mr. Canning's situation, and it is known that he had no prodigal or expensive tastes; but it is also known that he had that utter carelessness of money through which fortune is not less ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... fairest regions of the world is the Malay Archipelago of the East Indies. Here nature is prodigal with her gifts to man, and the cocoa-palm, cinnamon and other trees flourish, and rice, cotton, the sugar cane and tobacco yield their increase under cultivation. But beneath these scenes of loveliness, there are terrific ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... and uncertain rivulets of Cephisus and Ilissus [3],—streams breaking into lesser brooks, deliciously pure and clear. The air is serene—the climate healthful —the seasons temperate. Along the hills yet breathe the wild thyme, and the odorous plants which, everywhere prodigal in Greece, are more especially fragrant in that lucid sky;—and still the atmosphere colours with peculiar and various taints the marble of the existent temples and the face of ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... this he was principally indebted to Sandford, who took pains to bring his works to the notice of connoisseurs. But, with all his success, the object of his ambition was as far off as at first. Imperceptibly he had acquired expensive habits. He was not prodigal, not extravagant; but, having a keen sense of the beautiful, he gradually became more fastidious in dress, and in all those nameless elegancies which seem of right to belong to the accomplished man, as to the gentleman in easy circumstances. This desire for ease and luxury did not conflict with simplicity; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... creature. For if he hated his sin, nay if he felt weary and heavy laden in the least degree because of it, he might leave it. There is a free grace, and a proffered assistance of the Holy Ghost, of which he might avail himself at any moment. Had he the feeling of the weary and penitent prodigal, the same father's house is ever open for his return; and the same father seeing him on his return, though still a great way off, would run and fall upon his neck and kiss him. But the heart is hard, and the spirit is utterly selfish, and the will is perverse and determined, and therefore ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... "Alexandre Dumas a la Maison d'Or," M. Philibert Audebrand tells the tale of this Micawber of newspapers. Everything went into it, good or bad, and the name of Dumas was expected to make all current coin. For Dumas, unluckily, was as prodigal of his name as of his gold, and no reputation could bear the drafts he made on his celebrity. His son says, in the preface to Le Fils Naturel: "Tragedy, dramas, history, romance, comedy, travel, you cast all of them in the furnace and the mould of your brain, and you peopled the world ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... in solitude in the mountains have, indeed, been precious days to me, Miss Liddiard," he continued. "I felt like the prodigal son, who had returned to his father, and the bright gleam of His smile seemed to rest on me. My only regret was, that I had not His word to apply to, but many precious verses which I had learned as a child came back to me, and afforded me comfort and consolation, and ...
— Mary Liddiard - The Missionary's Daughter • W.H.G. Kingston
... mother read the chapter instead of him, as was his wont when greatly fatigued. Whereupon that sweet saint, as I must ever have leave to call her, turned, not to the prophecy of Ezekiel, but to the gospel of Saint Luke, and read out from that chapter which contains the parable of the Prodigal Son. And when she came to the words, "For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found"—when she had come to this place, my father, who had sat and listened hitherto, cried out ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... delicious freshness of this dawning hour may be preserved even to midday, and may be brought back and restored after it has been for years a stranger. Nature, though a severe disciplinarian, is still, in many respects, most patient and easy to be entreated, and meets any repentant movement of her prodigal children with wonderful condescension. Take Bulwer's account of the first few weeks of his sojourn at Malvern, and you will read, in very elegant English, the story of an experience of pleasure which has surprised and delighted many a patient at a water-cure. The return to the ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the New Testament, the parable of the prodigal son teaches us plainly that when we repent and return to God, we shall be received, and that without any reference ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... obligations of friendship; and he refused to retain the Danubian principalities as the price for suffering a further dismemberment of Prussia. "We have made loyal war,'' he said, "we must make a loyal peace.'' It was not long before the first enthusiasm of Tilsit began to wane. Napoleon was prodigal of promises, but niggard of their fulfilment. The French remained in Prussia, the Russians on the Danube; and each accused the other of breach of faith. Meanwhile, however, the personal relations of Alexander and Napoleon were of the most cordial character; ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Major-General Rundle, chief of staff, usually acted. Personally, either gentleman was all that could be desired. Both were alike ready and courteous in the discharge of their at all times rather onerous duty, giving frequent audience to the numerous contingent of eager newsmen, garrulous and prodigal with pencil and pen. Some of the new-comers to the business felt sorely hit, because they were precluded from writing at large upon all subjects connected with the campaign. The excision of their copy grieved and hurt them as ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... sermon which he had heard that afternoon, and took up the book to look for the text,—"The sea shall give up its dead." The first words upon which his eye fell were,—"For this my son was lost and is found." The beautiful story of the Prodigal Son, as he had heard it in childhood, came full into his mind, and he remembered how often he had read it at his mother's knee. The tears rolled down his cheek, as, sitting down beside the little pine table, he read again that touching picture of God's ...
— Hurrah for New England! - The Virginia Boy's Vacation • Louisa C. Tuthill
... a dozen players round the board—four on one wing, two on the other. Of the latter, one was that very young man who had been responsible for P. Sybarite's change of mind with regard to going home. With a bored air this prodigal was frittering away five-dollar notes on the colours, the columns, and the dozens: his ill success stupendous, his apparent indifference positively magnificent. But in the course of the little while that P. Sybarite watched, he either grew weary or succeeded in emptying his ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... could not preach it into their hearts we would try and burn it in; so we put right over the pulpit in gas-jets these words—God is Love. A man going along the streets one night glanced through the door, and saw the text. He was a poor prodigal. As he passed on he thought to himself, "God is Love! No! He does not love me; for I am a poor miserable sinner." He tried to get rid of the text; but it seemed to stand out right before him in letters of ...
— The Way to God and How to Find It • Dwight Moody
... stretched out on the table asleep, when he stopped there for water. But he was a first-rate man and I didn't want to lose him, so I wrote him a sharp letter and told him that a repetition of his offense would cause him to receive his time instantly. He was as penitent as the prodigal son, and promised never to so offend again; and he kept his word—for just about ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... supply the wants of his prodigal and degenerate nephew, but they increased so enormously that he was forced to remonstrate with the young man upon the recklessness of his conduct. His remonstrances were met with a spirit of impertinence ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... until his eyes ached. Then he looked at the highly-coloured scripture pieces on the walls, in little black frames like common shaving-glasses, and saw how the Wise Men (with a strong family likeness among them) worshipped in a pink manger; and how the Prodigal Son came home in red rags to a purple father, and already feasted his imagination on a sea-green calf. Then he glanced through the window at the falling rain, coming down aslant upon the sign-post over against the house, and overflowing the horse-trough; ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... confidence in God as a real and near friend, which gave to Abraham's life such distinction, and the calm repose which made his character so impressive. Strong in the sense of God's friendship, he lived above the world, prodigal of present possessions, because sure of the future, waiting securely in the hope of the great salvation. He walked with God in sweet unaffected piety, and serene faith, letting his character ripen in the sunshine, and living ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... impoverishing, as well as enriching, men: the prodigal becomes poor by pretending to be richer than he really is, while seeming poverty is the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... the laughter of youth and maid made every dusk resonant with joy. On Poplar Hill houses sprang up like magic and weddings came. The passing stranger was stunned to find out in the wilderness such a spot; gayety, prodigal hospitality, a police force of gentlemen—nearly all of whom were college graduates—and a club, where poker flourished in the smoke of Havana cigars, and a barrel of whiskey stood in one corner with a faucet ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... six gentlemen, and seven soldiers. The narrative of the voyage is signed by Dr. Russell, Thomas Momford, gentleman, and Anas Todkill, soldier. Master Scrivener remained at the fort, where his presence was needed to keep in check the prodigal waste of the stores upon his ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... American seas, and of many a desperate battle; there was Sir Martin Frobisher, one of the earliest explorers of the Arctic seas in search of that North-West Passage which is still the darling object of England's boldest mariners. There was the high-admiral of England, Lord Howard of Effingham, prodigal of all things in his country's cause, and who had recently had the noble daring to refuse to dismantle part of the fleet, though the Queen had sent him orders to do so, in consequence of an exaggerated report ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... to the conclusion that you have but one, and a good share of that gone already, perhaps there will be some peace in the house for the time to come." My aunt always complained that her brother had one very serious fault, he was prodigal of time, and took too little thought for the future, and on this ground she replied in rather a snappish voice: "Well, at any rate, if every one was as slack and careless as you, they would hardly survive for one life time; and I can tell you one thing ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... that. You were disappointed because Uncle Ira had not left you his money, and I suppose that was your way of working it off. If you had just run away and come back again with a headache, I'd have treated you like the Prodigal Son. But there are some things which are too much, and bringing a perfect stranger back with you for an indefinite period is one of them. I'm not saying anything against Mr Chalmers personally. I haven't had time to find out much about him, except that he's an Englishman; but he looks respectable. ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... of a mother to her prodigal son that makes her pray for him. True love to souls will become in us the spirit of intercession. It is possible to do a great deal of faithful, earnest work for our fellowmen without true love to them. Just ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray
... the trio reviewing the past and exchanging news of the present. My services, it was clear, would no longer be required by the prodigal. He and his mates ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... the dying prodigal or prostitute he would sit with intense interest, pointing them to Him who casts out none. In our house to house visitation he would sit down and read of the Saviour's love, making special reference to those ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle
... Harbinger three miles distant at Whitewater. But since he had the faculty of not being bored with his own society, this did not worry him. Of local charity, especially to the fishers of the town, whose winter months were nowadays very bare of profit, he was prodigal to the verge of extravagance, for his income was not great. But in politics, beyond acting as the figure-head of certain municipal efforts, he took little or no part. His Toryism indeed was of the mild order, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... root, and often bring others down with them in their fall. Sometimes these trees are split up at the time into rails or firewood; sometimes dragged to the saw-mills to be made into lumber; but are often piled into heaps and burnt—a necessary but prodigal waste of wood, to which I never became reconciled. When the wood has been cleared off, wheat is sown among the stumps, and then grass, which appears only to last about four years. Fire is put on the tops of these unsightly stumps to burn them down ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... rigging up a crane to land the bags, boxes and crates that were piled on deck in prodigal profusion. ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... 1862 composed incidental music for "The Tempest," well received at the Crystal Palace; since then has been a prolific writer of all kinds of music, ranging from hymns and oratorios to popular songs and comic operas; his oratorios include "The Prodigal Son" (1868), "The Light of the World," "The Golden Legend," &c., but it is as a writer of light and tuneful operas (librettos by W. S. GILBERT, q. v.) that he is best known; these began with "Cox and Box" (1866), and include "Trial by Jury," ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... thought of, no doubt, more than once in his solitary and unhappy holidays. A year after he actually ran away, not from school, but from home; and appeared one morning, gaunt and hungry, at Sarah's cottage two hundred miles away from Clapham, who housed the poor prodigal, and killed her calf for him—washed him, with many tears and kisses, and put him to bed and to sleep; from which slumber he was aroused by the appearance of his father, whose sure instinct, backed by Mrs. ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... purposes, found but too much justification in the inefficiency and corruption of many both of the bishops and clergy, and in the rapacious and selfish policy of the government, forced to starve and cripple the public service, while great men and favourites built up their fortunes out of the prodigal indulgence ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... where they can. Literature and science will find patrons, and here in Massachusetts have always found them. If the legislators of the State have been sparing of their benefactions, the wealthy sons of the State have been prodigal of theirs. In no country has the private patronage of science been more liberal and prompt than in Massachusetts. Seldom, in the history of science, has there been a nobler instance of that patronage than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... experience hitherto quite strange to my young life. As I had had nothing to eat, I was obliged repeatedly to leave the gambling table owing to sickness. With this last thaler I staked my life, for my return to my home was, of course, out of the question. Already I saw myself in the grey dawn, a prodigal son, fleeing from all I held dear, through forest and field towards the unknown. My mood of despair had gained so strong a hold upon me that, when my card won, I immediately placed all the money on a fresh stake, and repeated this experiment ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... old couple bustled about the bright carpeted room, making it comfortable, and cooing over the return of their prodigal, till a heaven of homeness was made of ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... prodigal came to himself, when he found himself no longer able to endure the husks of the swine like his ancient exemplar, when he rose and returned to his father because of that distaste, he found no father watching and waiting for him at the end of the road! Upon that change the action of ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... steadily refused to turn Jim off. Many a time the old gentleman sat up half the night with the returned and noisy prodigal. A word from the Squire would calm Jim for the time and would occasionally call forth a burst of repentant tears. Jim's case, indeed, was one of the causes that led us at the old farm so bitterly ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... you catch a glimpse of the elegant seat of Francis Vivian, Esq." To judge by the date of the work, the said Francis Vivian might be the grandfather of my friend, his namesake. There could no longer be any doubt as to the parentage of this prodigal son. ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... one other who believed in the Tennessee land—Jane Clemens's favorite cousin, James Lampton, the courtliest, gentlest, most prodigal optimist of all that guileless race. To James Lampton the land always had "millions in it"—everything had. He made stupendous fortunes daily, in new ways. The bare mention of the Tennessee land sent him off into figures that ended with the purchase ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... was fifteen I was almost as tall and broad-shouldered as my father. Boy-like, I was prodigal of my bounding vigor, which had not tempered down to the strength of my mature manhood. It was well for me that a sobering responsibility fell on me early, else I might have squandered my resources of endurance, and in place of this sturdy story-teller whose sixty years sit ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... had thus gathered. Accordingly, when the herald came in to deliver his message, he found the whole city given up to feasting and revelry, and he saw stores of provisions at hand, which were in process of being distributed and consumed with the most prodigal profusion. The herald reported this state of things to Alyattes. Alyattes then gave up all hopes of reducing Miletus by famine, and made a permanent peace, binding himself to its stipulations by a very solemn treaty. To celebrate the event, too, he built two temples ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... shouts to ordinary folk on foot to get out of the way had done that already. Sheikh ben Nazir opened the door in person. His welcome to me was the sort that comes to mind when you read the Bible story of the prodigal son returning from a far-off country. I might have been his blood-relation. But perhaps I am wrong about that; bloodfeuds among blood-relations are notoriously savage. He was the host, and I the guest. Among genuine Arabs that is the most binding ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... married the sister of George III; but their daughter, the Princess Caroline, was now the reluctant choice of the Prince of Wales. The parents, both at Windsor and at Brunswick welcomed the avowal by the royal prodigal of the claims of lawful wedlock. The Duchess of Brunswick fell into raptures at the brilliant prospects thus opened out for her daughter; and it seemed that both Hymen and Mars, for once working in unison, conspired to bring from his inglorious retreat at ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... the contrary; war is recognized as the most potent method still; the prominence of military matters is greater than ever before; at no time in the past has interest in war been so keen as at the present, or the expenditure of blood and money been so prodigal; at no time before has war so thoroughly engaged the intellect and ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... in and sat down at the door. The sermon wass on the Prodigal Son, but there iss only one word I remember. 'You are not forgotten or cast off,' the preacher said; 'you are missed,' and then he will come back to it again, and it wass always 'missed, missed, missed.' Sometimes ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... civilian suit of the fashion of '72, the latter much too snug for him, our squadron leader of the Sioux campaign looked little like a trooper as he sauntered with his detective companion into the lobby of the Paxton a few minutes later, and listened to his modernized tale of the prodigal son. It was all known to the police. Lowndes had run through the purse and patience of his Eastern kindred some two years before. Lowndes had been transported to a cattle ranch near Fort Cushing in hopes of permanent benefit, but speedily ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... Messer Domeniddio of the Florentines stood rather for a mental effigy that might be played with, than for the reasoned conception of the dread Deity. If we possessed a minutely elaborated history of the Good Shepherd and His adventures, or of the Prodigal's father, or of the Good Samaritan, interspersed with all manner of ludicrous and profane incidents, and losing sight of the original purport of the figure, we should have something like a mythology. Were it not ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... agreed with her if she had not recollected, with some little alarm, the deficit which such an expense must make in their budget. The three francs spent upon this single expedition were the savings of a whole week of work. Thus the joy of the elder of the two sisters was mixed with remorse; the prodigal child now and then turned its eyes toward the back street of ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... has told us about the swine, and since then it puts us into a good humour whenever we hear even the grunt of one. Saint Anthony has taken them under his patronage, and if we think of the "prodigal son," we are at once in the midst of the sty, and it was just before such a one that our carriage stopped in Sweden. By the high road, closely adjoining his house, the peasant had his sty, and that such a one as there is probably scarcely its like ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... one of the new maids is his sister Maggie, and he'd just been callin' friendly in the hopes of sep'ratin' her from a dollar or so. It wa'n't Maggie's day for contributin' to the prodigal son fund, though, and Skeet was statin' his opinion of her reckless when the butler interfered. Come near losin' Maggie her job, that little scene did; but she promises faithful it sha'n't happen again, and was ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... which Iden had planted, flung sackfuls of bloom at his feet. They poured themselves out in abandoned, open-armed, spendthrift, wasteful—perfectly prodigal—quantities of rose-tinted petal; prodigal as a river which flows full to the brim, never questioning but what there will be plenty of water ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... and a cup of coffee almost anywhere, or we could eat a sandwich in the park, but the matter of a bed, the business of sleeping in a maelstrom like New York was something more than serious—it was dangerous. Frank, naturally of a more prodigal nature, was all for going to the Broadway Hotel. "It's only for one night," said he. He always was rather careless of ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... of forgiving love than in the terrors of retribution; hence, with tears and burning sentiments of sympathy for the erring children of men, he led his hearers as it were by the hand to the Father of the prodigal—to that Jesus who forgave and loved the ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... Proceedings (law) proceso—ado. Proceeding procedo. Procession procesio. Process procedo, rimedo. Proclaim proklami. Procrastinate prokrasti. Procure havigi. Procuration konfidatisto. Prodigal malsxpara. Prodigality malsxparemo. Prodigious mireginda. Prodigy miregindajxo. Produce produkti. Produce produktajxo. Product produktajxo. Production produkto. Productive fruktoporta. Proem antauxdramo, antauxdiro. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... at the procession till it disappeared round a bend of the road. Its bequest of dust and smoke was quickly spent by a prodigal young breeze. Landscape and seascape were reindued with their full amenities. Ruskin would have been pleased. So indeed was I; but that railway-car (in which, it romantically struck me, I myself might once, might ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... again. She read of the prodigal son, and of Him who would not condemn the woman that was a sinner. It was a solemn and terrible moment. The fathomless depths of the girl's voice, breaking once and again to a low wail, then rising to a piercing cry, went with the words themselves like ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... in a humour, played the prodigal, And bade my senses to a solemn feast; Yet more to grace the company withal, Invites my heart to be the chiefest guest. No other drink would serve this glutton's turn, But precious tears distilling from mine eyne, Which with my sighs this epicure doth burn, Quaffing carouses in this costly wine; ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... worthless weed; but the more historical associations we can link with our localities, the richer will be the daily life that feeds upon the past, and the more valuable the things that have been long established: so that our children will be less prodigal than their fathers in sacrificing good institutions to passionate impulses and impracticable theories. This herb of grace, let us hope, may be found in the old ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... knights; a multitude of noble families without titles, sixty of whom were inscribed in the Capitol by Benedict XIV.; a vast extent of signiorial domains; a thousand palaces; a hundred picture-galleries, large and small; a considerable revenue; a prodigal display of horses, carriages, servants, and armorial bearings; some almost royal entertainments in the course of every winter; the remains of feudal privileges; and the respect of the lower orders: such are the more remarkable features which distinguish the Roman nobility, and expose it to the ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... Radical who could write Tory articles in a newspaper for pay. At the same time, it is only fair to say that Meredith remains a sufficiently splendid figure in. Mr. Ellis's book even when we know the worst about him. Was his a generous genius? It was at least a prodigal one. As poet, novelist, correspondent, and conversationalist, he leaves an impression of beauty, wit, and power in ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... would be to force them into that marriage at first. Oh, my tender-hearted little one, can you not see that the bondage is more humiliating, more craven than is the idea of the veriest chattel mortgage? Yet you refuse to let the injured one go free, as you would not refuse the poorest prodigal whose one chance for home and happiness was passing ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... joy. There was music and dancing, as well as feasting, when the prodigal son came home; returned from his sins, washed from his defilement, clothed at last in "the best robe" a sinner can wear.[12] According ...
— Tired Church Members • Anne Warner
... prodigal's return one morning, observed: "Luce, when I first met you, you reminded me strongly of my Aunt Clarissa. The air of—ah—dignity and respectable disapproval with which you looked me over was much like hers. But now—now, if you wore a hat on one side ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln |
