"Purse-proud" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... know. From Gray's Inn Road to Portland Place, and from Oxford Street to Euston Road, there is just about a square mile—a section, as they say out West—of lodging-houses. Once this part of London was given up to the homes of the great and purse-proud and all that. It is respectable yet, and if you are going to be in London a week you can get a good room in one of these old-time mansions, and pay no more for it than you would pay for a room in an American hotel ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... talks; See how the gaping crowd admire The stupid blockhead and the liar. How long shall vice triumphant reign? How long shall mortals bend to gain? How long shall virtue hide her face, And leave her votaries in disgrace? ——Let indignation fire my strains, Another villain yet remains— Let purse-proud C——n next approach, With what an air he mounts his coach! A cart would best become the knave, A dirty parasite and slave; His heart in poison deeply dipt, His tongue with oily accents tipt, A smile still ready at command, The pliant ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... there is some hope of Halliwell's great-grandsons—granting, of course, that the pusillanimous prig is not too epicene to provide himself with posterity. Day by day it becomes more evident that the purse-proud snobocracy of New York's old rat- catchers and sprat peddlers is fast getting a foothold in the West, that the social gulf between the House of Have and that of Have-Not, is steadily widening and deepening—that we have reached that ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... a little pleased with himself in almost every way. Had he not carried out his promise of two years before and thrashed the mayor's son, who was a year older than himself, and thereby taught a lesson to that stuck-up, purse-proud youngster? Could he not ride with any man? Yes, and one might add, match tongues with any woman. For his native glibness was doubly helped by the vast, unprintable vocabularies of his chosen world, as well as by ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... before sunset, all the fashionable world of Calcutta streams hitherward. The purse-proud European, the stuck-up Baboo or Nabob, the deposed Rajah, are to be beheld driving in splendid European carriages, followed by a multitude of servants, in Oriental costume, some standing behind their carriages, and some running before it. The Rajahs ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... is an opportunity! To paint the wholesale wickedness and small villanies of the Corn-laws! What a contrast of scene and character! Squalid hovels, and princely residences—purse-proud, plethoric injustice, big and bloated with, its iniquitous gains, and gaunt, famine-stricken multitudes! Then for the Debt—that hideous thing begotten by war and corruption; what a tremendous moral lesson might be learned from a nightly conning of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... English participle in 'ing,'" &c., &c. Nor did the essay on the Greek language stop here. It savagely sneered at "K. B.'s" vanity at having been educated in an English university, and made the most cutting remarks on his criticisms in general. Such flowers of rhetoric as "literary scavenger," "purse-proud fop," "half-educated boy," &c., were thrown around as thickly as though the Flower Girl of the Fejee Islands herself had crossed the path of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... dear of them all the same, however, and I would not seem ungrateful for their kind consideration. After all, how different from the purse-proud arrogance of wealth seen in our best—selling—fiction, ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... he, he, he! That purse-proud ex-linendraper, Mr. Yardley, with the yellow liveries, and the wife in red velvet? How CAN you, my dear Mr. Snob, be so satirical? The impertinence of those people is ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... months, and Evelyn must be mine. Saxingham has already lent me what he can; but he is embarrassed. This d——-d office, what a tax it is! and the rascals say we are too well paid! I, too, who could live happy in a garret, if this purse-proud England would but allow one to exist within one's income. My fellow-trustee, the banker, my uncle's old correspondent—all, well thought of! He knows the conditions of the will; he knows that, at the worst, I must have thirty thousand pounds, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... ancestors had "come over with William the Conqueror," had served in Palestine under King Richard, had compelled King John to sign the Magna Charta, had gained glory in every generation—was about to do this rude, purse-proud old tradesman the greatest honor in asking of him his granddaughter in marriage, he said, ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... are comin' along, thinkin' 'cause they can't see anything they'll never BE seen! He knows folks would never tell tales to Deacon Baxter, whatever the girls done; they hate him too bad. Lawyer Wilson lives so far away, he can't keep any watch o' Mark, an' Mis' Wilson's so cityfied an' purse-proud nobody ever goes to her with any news, bad or good; so them that's the most concerned is as blind as bats. Mark's consid'able stiddier'n he used to be, but you needn't tell me he has any notion of bringin' ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... possession of one's self and one's very soul. She would have been very glad to give them money, and had indeed wondered frequently if she might dare to offer it to them, if they would be outraged and insulted and slay her in their wrath at her purse-proud daring. She had tried to invent ways in which she could approach the subject, but had not been able to screw up her courage to any sticking point. She was so overpowered by her consciousness that they seemed continually ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... beer of oneself &c (vanity) 880. Adj. dignified; stately; proud, proud-crested; lordly, baronial; lofty- minded; highsouled, high-minded, high-mettled^, high-handed, high- plumed, high-flown, high-toned. haughty lofty, high, mighty, swollen, puffed up, flushed, blown; vainglorious; purse-proud, fine; proud as a peacock, proud as Lucifer; bloated with pride. supercilious, disdainful, bumptious, magisterial, imperious, high and mighty, overweening, consequential; arrogant &c 885; unblushing &c 880. stiff, stiff-necked; starch; perked stuck-up; in buckram, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... adventurer, knavish and money-loving to the last degree, full of absurd pride of pedigree, clannish and cold-blooded, vindictive as a Corsican, and treacherous as a modern Greek. An Englishman was to the North a bullying, arrogant coward,—purse-proud, yet cringing to rank,—without loyalty and without sentiment,—given over to mere material interests, not comprehending the idea of honor, and believing, as the fortieth of his religious articles, that any injury, even to a blow, could ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... slain the Lord was close at hand. Then, as now, the commerce of the world was in Jewish hands, and it was felt that so much wealth ought not to be in such hands. That element which still exists in the Jewish character of being purse-proud and offensively familiar in prosperity, is reported to have twitted the Christians with the worship of a Jewish ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell
... how Avice had induced her mother to let her take lessons in French of young Leverre, rendering their meetings easy. Marcia had never thought of hindering their intimacy, for in her recent years of affliction she had acquired a new interest in the name she had refused to take in her purse-proud young womanhood; and it was not until she knew how determined Mrs. Pierston was to make her daughter Jocelyn's wife that she had objected to her son's acquaintance with Avice. But it was too late ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... Greenland to the Chinese wall,—there is not a spot of earth but would feel the sensation. The factories of Europe would fall with a concussion that would shake down castles, palaces, and even thrones; while the "purse-proud, elbowing insolence" of our Northern monopolist would soon disappear forever under the smooth speech of the pedlar, scourging our frontiers for a livelihood, or the bluff vulgarity of the South Sea whaler, following the harpoon amid storms and shoals. Doubtless the abolitionists think ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... an enmity as is allotted by nature to wolves and lambs, [so great a one] have I to you, you that are galled at your back with Spanish cords, and on your legs with the hard fetter. Though, purse-proud with your riches, you strut along, yet fortune does not alter your birth. Do you not observe while you are stalking along the sacred way with a robe twice three ells long, how the most open indignation of ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... four-wheeler dragged its weary way to Charing Cross. He did notice one peculiarity about it worth remembering. London was still London. A certain style dignified its grime; heavy, clumsy, arrogant, purse-proud, but not cheap; insular but large; barely tolerant of an outside world, and absolutely self-confident. The boys in the streets made such free comments on the American clothes and figures, that the travellers ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... to have thought that this would have been the best result for the state. But the accounts of both, though they are very different writers, agree in their scorn of the leaders of the White Guelfs. They were upstarts, purse-proud, vain, and coarse-minded; and they dared to aspire to an ambition which they were too dull and too cowardly to pursue, when the game was in their hands. They wished to rule; but when they might, they were afraid. The commons were on their side, the moderate men, the party of law, the lovers of republican ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Next to that, English calico was in great demand, and so were beads; but money was of no value whatever. Gold is quite unknown; it is thought to be brass; trade is carried on by barter alone. The people know nothing of money. A purse-proud person would here feel the ground move from beneath his feet. Occasionally a large piece of copper, in the shape of a St. Andrew's cross, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... dissent from Rhoda's verdict, for Linda had few real friends among the girls of Lakeview Hall. She was purse-proud and vulgar, and, though her money gave her a certain prestige among the shallow and unthinking, she lacked the qualities of mind and heart to endear herself to ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... characters of this novel are numerous, varied, and natural, and described with great felicity and humor. None of them are interesting people; in fact, most of them are very uninteresting,—vulgar, money-loving, material, purse-proud, selfish, such as are seen among those to whom money and worldly prosperity are everything, with no perception of what is lofty and disinterested, and on whom grand sentiments are lost,—yet kind-hearted in the main, and in the case of the Dobsons redeemed by a sort ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... on my father's buying these things? You ought to have insisted. You pay us a large sum, and you had a right. Instead, you have humiliated us—because you are rich, and we are poor! It was mean—and purse-proud." ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... consideration. This is what I am afraid is spoiling some of the Torrington boys just now, and it is high time it was checked. We talked this aspect of the matter over at the Council meeting—for there are several old boys among us who are proud of our school—and we agreed that a little new blood among these purse-proud young gentlemen would do them a world of good, and I hope this boy may be what is needed among them. As for the old trouble,' went on Dr. Morrison, 'that is left behind, I hope; but you must remember that it arose from a very different cause. Your brother Dick behaved very badly ...
— That Scholarship Boy • Emma Leslie
... over you? Are you going to quarrel with me because that unfeeling, purse-proud, half-mad woman has treated you so badly? Ah, poor Fan, to have been at the mercy of such a creature! I would tear her bank-notes into shreds and send ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... variety, and were benefited by it. That as to the practice being favourable to wantonness and vice, while he admitted that idleness was productive of these effects, he could not see how one occupation encouraged them more than another. That the tailor, for example, whom he had been speaking of, though purse-proud, overbearing, and rapacious, was not more immoral or depraved than his neighbours, and had probably less of the libertine than most of them. He admitted that evil thoughts would enter the mind in ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... black, and promised no help to the poor wretch. Bad in every way, wretched, selfish, sensual, unfeeling, purse-proud, ignorant as Sir Louis Scatcherd was, still, there was left to him the power of feeling something like sincere love. It may be presumed that he did love Mary Thorne, and that he was at the time earnest in ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... A man with godlike power, Shall come when he most is wanted, Shall come at the needed hour. He shall silence the din and clamour Of clan disputing with clan, And toil's long fight with purse-proud might Shall ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... purse-proud man insults the distresses it sometimes relieves; he takes care to make you feel your own misfortunes, and the difference between your situation and his; both which he insinuates to be justly merited: yours, by your folly; his, by his wisdom. The arrogant pedant ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... bed-room, there, every last one of ye, an' show me how yer goin' ter go in't the parlor. This'll be the parlor 'n I'll be Mis' Bird." The youngsters hustled into the next room in high glee, and Mrs. Ruggles drew herself up in her chair with an infinitely haughty and purse-proud expression that much better suited a descendant of the McGrills than modest Mrs. Bird. The bed-room was small, and there presently ensued such a clatter that you would have thought a herd of wild cattle had broken ...
— The Birds' Christmas Carol • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... dignity. When a young music master in Copenhagen, he had fallen in love with a young, wealthy girl, whose affections he succeeded in winning in return, but he was turned out of the house by her harsh, purse-proud father, and in desperation had left Denmark to settle down in Rome. As his lady-love married soon after and became a contented wife and mother, he remained where he was. He succeeded ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... as the Republicans are out of power, they will betake themselves to the study of principles and begin to preach and promise. Hence I devoutly pray without ceasing for the overthrow of that purse-proud, corrupt, cowardly party; not that I expect from the Democracy anything better than their antecedents promise, but that I know such chastisement, such retirement, is the only means by which conscience and courage can be injected into ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... any rate the Doges who reigned during Titian's long life—had no sense of humour, or they could not have permitted this kind of self-glorification in paint. Both here and at the Accademia we shall see picture after picture in which these purse-proud Venetian administrators, suspecting no incongruity or absurdity, are placed, by Titian and Tintoretto, on terms of perfect intimacy with the hierarchy of heaven. Sometimes they merely fraternize; sometimes they masquerade as the Three Kings or Wise Men from ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... laboring man on the wayside would exclaim, "a purse-proud bodagh upon our hands. Why, thin, does he forget that we remimber when he kept the shebeen-house, an' sould his smuggled to-baccy in gits (* the smallest possible quantities) out of his pocket, for fraid o' the gauger! Sowl, ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... with lofty composure, "to reason with a love-sick girl, whose mind runs to the tune of her lover's name. Of all living men I abhor Count Nobili. To love him, in my eyes, is a crime—yes, a crime," she repeats, raising her voice, seeing that Enrica is about to speak. "I know him—he is a vain, purse-proud reprobate. He has come and planted himself like a mushroom within our ancient walls. Nor did this content him—he has had the presumption to lodge himself in a Guinigi palace. The blood in his veins is as mud. That he cannot help, nor do I reproach him for it; but he has forced himself into our ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... Purse-proud, adj. [pars-praud] Plutocrtico, dcese del que tiene mucho orgullo por ser rico. Palal, ...
— Dictionary English-Spanish-Tagalog • Sofronio G. Calderon
... furiously: "You purse-proud wretch, do you think I will not take my master's part? Have you not robbed him of his intended wife, by bribing her father? Do you think he has no cause for anger against you? His interests are mine; I am ready to risk my life for him, and I will pay you off. Some day you shall miss that purse, ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... had access to the library where there were books suited to all ages. Mrs. Baynard allowed us occasionally to indulge in a noisy game, when our numbers were increased by some of their schoolmates. I well remember the feeling of wounded pride and anger when I one evening chanced to hear a purse-proud gentleman say to Mr. Baynard, "I am much surprised that you should allow your children to associate with one of your clerks; I could not for a moment think of allowing mine to do such a thing." "I do not ask you to allow your children to associate with him," replied ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... to the halting-place for the night, and meet my father in time to do my part in the pageant. I was sick of the addresses, and, moreover, the purse-proud Flemings have made such a stiff little fop of my poor boy that I am ashamed to look at him, or hear his French accent. So I rode off to get a view of this notable Dom in peace, ere it be bedizened in holiday garb; and ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in the church; which being denied her, she engaged her husband into a contention for it, and at last into a law-suit with a dogged neighbour who was as rich as he, and had a wife as peevish and purse-proud as the other: and this law-suit begot higher oppositions, and actionable words, and more vexations and lawsuits; for you must remember that both were rich, and must therefore have their wills. Well! this wilful, purse-proud law-suit lasted during the life of the first husband; ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... Basil, who for weeks had been reading little else but Scottish history, Scottish fiction, and Scottish poetry, in order to get himself in the right frame of mind for writing "the book." "I haven't come across a single instance of their being purse-proud ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... it!' sneered the invalid. 'You know you HAVE thought about it, and have thought that, and think so every time you come here. Do you suppose, young man, that I don't know what little purse-proud tradesmen are, when, through some fortunate circumstances, they get the upper hand for a brief day—or think they get the ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... dead-clothes for themselves and the "gude man," that they might have a decent funeral. I once saw a set of grave-clothes nicely folded up, which consisted of a long shirt and cap of white flannel, and a shroud of fine linen made of yarn, spun by the gude wife herself. I did not like that gude wife; she was purse-proud, and took every opportunity of treating with scorn a poor neighbour who had had a misfortune, that is, a child by her husband before marriage, but who made a very good wife. Her husband worked in our garden, and took our cow to the Links to graze. The wife kept a little shop, where we bought ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... comments, these catalogues of what he had for dinner, these inane domestic confidences—all the more interesting for their inanity! The effect left upon the mind is of some grotesque character in a play, fussy, self-conscious, blustering with women, timid with men, dress-proud, purse-proud, trimming in politics and in religion, a garrulous gossip immersed always in trifles. And yet, though this was the day-by-day man, the year-by-year man was a very different person, a devoted civil servant, an ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... theology,—for Julien had proclaimed his intention of studying for the priesthood. By unexpected good luck, his Latin earned him an appointment as tutor to the children of M. de Renal, the pompous and purse-proud Mayor of Verrieres. Julien is haunted by his peculiar notions of duties which he owes it to himself to perform as steps towards his worldly advancement; for circumstances have made him a consummate hypocrite. One of these duties is to make love ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... people present; intelligence and courtesy in the one sex, and gentleness and natural grace in the other, making a society not to be ridiculed in the mass, though individual instances of folly and ignorance and purse-proud effrontery were ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... till their benefactor was glad to make his escape to Streatham, or to the Mitre Tavern. And yet he, who was generally the haughtiest and most irritable of mankind, who was but too prompt to resent anything which looked like a slight on the part of a purse-proud bookseller, or of a noble and powerful patron, bore patiently from mendicants, who, but for his bounty, must have gone to the workhouse, insults more provoking than those for which he had knocked down Osborne and bidden defiance to Chesterfield. Year ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... perhaps the poorest girl in the school; but that makes no difference, for Mrs. Ward doesn't allow the word money or rank to be spoken of—she lives above all that. She says that money is a great talent, and that people who are merely purse-proud are detestable. Oh, but I've told you ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... dry-goods store on Washington Street. None of the family cared to look back to the beginning of his career. They overlooked the fact that it was creditable to him to have risen from the ranks, though the rise was only in wealth, for Mr. Fletcher was a purse-proud parvenu, who owed all the consideration he enjoyed to his commercial position. Fitz liked to have it understood that he was of patrician lineage, and carefully ignored the little grocery, and certain country relations who occasionally ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... is known by the simplicity of its dress and the good manners of its bonne; while that of the parvenu is at once recognised by the showiness and expensiveness of its clothes, and the superciliousness of its nurse, who, accustomed to the purse-proud pretensions of her employers, values nothing so much as all the attributes that indicate ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... talking, and nodding to people, as if they felt entirely at home, and would not be embarrassed in the least, if they met the Governor, or even the President of the United States, face to face. Some of these great folks are really well-bred, some of them are only purse-proud and assuming,—but they form a class, and are named as above ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... exclaimed gleefully. "I can make him the husband of the most-run-after girl in New York—if I want to. And at the same time I can puncture the most arrogant, the most cold-blooded, selfish, purse-proud, inflated nincompoop that ever sat at the head of a director's table. O-ho! Now you're staring, Leila. I can do it; I can make good. What are you worrying about? Why, I've got a hundred ways to square that cheque, and each separate ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... who had the decency to take the cab away again: for how we should have paid the fare, I don't know, I am sure. So I have just brought her to you to know if her mother's old friend thinks it is a right thing for Kathleen Elmsdale's daughter to put herself under the feet of a parcel of ignorant, purse-proud snobs?" ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... you besieging your Government? What! you are in the season of generosity, an affectionate son, wealthy as a Magyar prince of flocks, herds, mines, and men, and you let him stand in the shade deprived of his birthright? Are you a purse-proud ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sense of the value of his professional services. He was called on one occasion to a town near Lexington to attend a patient in labor, who was the wife of a man made rich by marriage. The husband was too wise to engage a "night rider," and too purse-proud to call the village doctor. At that time most of the one hundred dollar notes in circulation in Kentucky were issued by the Northern Bank, at Lexington. On the reverse side of the bill was the letter C in Roman capital. This ...
— Pioneer Surgery in Kentucky - A Sketch • David W. Yandell
... I 'm a lad o' laigh degree, Her purse-proud daddy 's dour an' saucy; An' sair the carle wad scowl on me, For speakin' to his dawtit lassie: But were I laird o' Leven's glen, An' she a humble shepherd's daughter, I 'd kneel, an' court her for my ain, The ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... their guests remarked, as guests will, gentle reader, when our backs are turned, that Howel was insufferably purse-proud and conceited, and his wife as affected and provincial as possible; they did not hear the friendly notices, and were well content to fill the concert room with their party, all in full dress, to the admiration of the townsfolk, ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... frame of mind, Andrew Windybank strode up the high street of the town. Few of the townsfolk gave him a good-day; he was not a popular personage. For one thing, he was a Littledean man and not of the river-side; his family was purse-proud and tyrannical; worst of all in the eyes of a Pope-hating people, the Windybank family still clung to the old faith. Young Master Andrew was quite accustomed to cold looks, and, as a rule, they troubled him not at all. He was by nature reserved and uncommunicative, and ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... be an abrupt, ill-mannered, dapper business man; purse-proud, I should call him, as there was every reason he should be, for he had earned his own fortune. He was doubtless equally proud of his new title, which he was trying to live up to, assuming now and then a haughty, domineering attitude, and again relapsing into the keen, incisive manner of the man ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... than elsewhere ever since I came from London; which hath vext me the more in regard I have been detained from the desire I had of being with you before this time. Such entertainment, however, must all those have that have to do with such a purse-proud and wilful person as Sir Edward Hales. This next week being Michaelmas week, we shall end all and I be at liberty, I hope, to consider my own contentments. In the meantime I know not what excuses to make for the trouble I have put you to already, ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... bloated capitalist," said Wally, struggling. He succeeded in dislodging him, with a mighty effort. "You're just purse-proud, that's what's the matter with you. What'll you do with it, Bobby—go racing? ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... boundlessly were spilt, But what of that? the Gaul may bear the guilt; But bread was high, the farmer paid his way, And acres told upon the appointed day.[es] But where is now the goodly audit ale? 590 The purse-proud tenant, never known to fail? The farm which never yet was left on hand? The marsh reclaimed to most improving land? The impatient hope of the expiring lease? The doubling rental? What an evil's peace! In vain the prize excites the ploughman's ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... here, buying the lands over our heads, and pretends to show us how to manage our estates; old families that have been in the county this four hundred years, with the finest peasantry in the world ready to die for them, sir, till these new revolutionary doctrines came in—Pride and purse-proud conceit, just to show off his money! What do they want with better cottages than their fathers had? Only put notions into their heads, raise 'em above their station; more they have, more they'll want. —— sir, make chartists of 'em ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... her out o' the ring. An' then up comes the big man with his face as red as fire. 'Look' here!' says he to her, as if he was ready to eat her up. 'Did you draw every cent of that money?' 'Not yet, not yet,' says she. 'You did, you purse-proud cantalope,' says he. 'You know very well you did, an' now I'd like to know where my ox-money is to come from.' But Jone an' me didn't intend to wait for no sich talk as this, an' he tuk the man by the arm, and I tuk the old woman, an' we jus' walked 'em off. The boarder he told ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... Have nothing to do with this accursed trade of ink-spilling. Literary work! God save the mark!' (I wondered what particular ink 'mark' this referred to.) 'The purse-proud wretches think they buy your soul with their starveling cheques. Ten years' use of my brain; ten years wasted in slavish pot-boiling for ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... ever despised them—you must not imagine me to be so hard-hearted as that; but my feeling for them is deepened and heightened wonderfully of late. Now they are apt to say that PARVENUS are of all men the most exacting and the most purse-proud; and that a mistress who has been a servant is harsher to her female dependants than one who has been accustomed to keep domestics all her life. It is difficult for me to conceive this; but there must be truth in it, or it would not be a proverb in all languages. ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... fairly succeeded in answering his letters in a cool, matter-of-fact way. Occasionally when he referred to his heart hunger, and how hard he was studying in hopes that she might think better of him, she wished that he had no purse-proud and haughty mother to stand between him and a poor girl, and her next letter would be more chilly than ever. What perhaps was a bitter-sweet thought was the fact that the colder she answered him, the warmer ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... himself. Nevertheless, young Angleside liked Short after his own fashion, and Short did not dislike Angleside. John's father had given him to understand that as a general rule persons of wealth and good birth were a set of overbearing, purse-proud bullies, who considered men of genius to be little better than a set of learned monkeys, certainly not good enough to black their boots. For John's father in his misfortunes had imbibed sundry radical notions formerly peculiar to poor literary men, and not yet altogether ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... Ngen-hou. My second brother-in-law's name is Cheng, his style is Tzu-chou. His present post is that of a Second class Secretary in the Board of Works. He is modest and kindhearted, and has much in him of the habits of his grandfather; not one of that purse-proud and haughty kind of men. That is why I have written to him and made the request on your behalf. Were he different to what he really is, not only would he cast a slur upon your honest purpose, honourable brother, but I myself likewise ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... entertained freely, and they had given their guests well-cooked dinners and expensive wines; but there had been nothing lavish in their entertainments, nothing that could make any of them go away and say to themselves, with angry discontent, that "those Millers" were purse-proud and vulgar in their wealth. When she had gone to her neighbours' houses Mrs. Miller had been handsomely but never extravagantly dressed; she had praised their cooks, and expressed herself envious of their flowers, and had bemoaned her own inability ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... letter there all right," reiterated Mr. Hennage, "an' if I was called on to give a guess who sent it I'd bet a stack o' blue chips I could hit the bull's eye first shot. A dry, purse-proud aristocrat, with gray chin whiskers an' a pair o' bespectacled blue lamps that'd charm a Gila monster, they're that shiny, lined up at the Silver Dollar bar the other day an' bought a drink for himself. ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... you know, Mrs. Hotchkiss is like one of those magic keys in fairy stories? All doors open to her. Between you and me I have been thinking Aiken's floating population snobbish, purse-proud, and generally absurd. And instead, the place seems to exist so that kindness and hospitality may not fail on earth. Of course I'm not up to genuine sprees, such as dining out and sitting up till half-past ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... quiet evening together!'" murmured Selma as she walked away. "Wilbur is right; purse-proud, frivolous little thing! She is ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... came up as stubbornly as ever and he tried to tell him, Wunpost, he was wrong. And that because he was wrong and a law-breaker at heart he was therefore a coward and doomed to lose. It was ludicrous, the way Eells stood up for his "rights," when everyone knew he was a thief; and yet that purse-proud intolerance which is the hall-mark of his class made him think he was entirely right. He even had the nerve to preach little homilies about trying to evade the law. But that was it, his very self-sufficiency made ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... pleasing a representation of the institution of chivalry. He probably looked upon a man who spoke covetously of titles much as a Salem elder a century before would have looked upon a hard-swearing Virginia planter. In the purse-proud citizens, who, after dinner, used to talk grandly about the British Constitution, he saw a set of malignant conspirators, when in fact not one in ten had ever thought seriously upon the subject, or had enough force of character to attempt to carry out his opinions, whatever ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... Legislature, and wise Indulgence of our landed Men, who must certainly find it more conducive to the Welfare of the State, and to their own Strength, Honour, and Interest, to have their Estates farmed and inhabited by a great Number of honest, laborious improving Families, than wasted by a few Purse-proud Bullock-Brokers, who rarely allow the wretched Herd of an hundred, as much Ground for his own and poor Family's Support, as is equal to ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... used to Linda's over-bearing ways, and so were her fellow-pupils. They made the rich and purse-proud girl no more beloved by her mates. But she could always gather about her a few satellites—girls who felt proud to be counted the intimates of the daughter of a railroad president, and who ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... little while grew popular; for it was never exercised but on those whom the world loves to see humbled. Modest merit in any rank; and even insolence, if accompanied with merit, were always safe from her satire. It was the hauteur of foolish duchesses or purse-proud roturiers that she loved, and scrupled ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... instituted a thorough search for him in England, and was enabled to discover all his history, and also so gain an insight into his proceedings whilst away from her. It seems that he had married her under an assumed name, his real patronymic being Stephens, and that his people were purse-proud and overbearing. On his arrival in England his father, who had heard of the young man's escapades in Canada peremptorily ordered him to have no more correspondence with his Canadian wife, but to marry a noble lady whom he had purchased ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... John. You know what his people are, stiff-necked, conventional, purse-proud, always boasting of their lineage. Until Netty is married! ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... good-natured, purse-proud man could not see his danger. He began to apologize to me for Petralto's rudeness, and excuse "anything in a fellow whom he had cut out ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... gone. There is little credit to be got from charity; for if you conceal your good deeds it is certain that nobody will suspect you of doing them, and if you do them before the world every one will say that you are vainglorious and purse-proud, and altogether a dangerous hypocrite. On the other hand, there is undeniably much social interest attached to a man who is supposed to be bad, but who has never been caught in his wickedness; and if a thorough-going sinner is discovered, ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... ruin.' 'You will be the first of your race to soil your hands with trade.' 'Honest work,' says Jack, 'will soil no man's hands, and please God, I'll touch nothing that isn't honest.' 'You'll be falling into English ways and selling the old place as not fit for you to live in. I know the ways of your purse-proud English.' Then Jack went white all over his face, and he says, 'It's never a stone of Knock I'd sell if I could keep it with my own heart's blood, but it's time it had a master who could spend money on it instead of seeing it fall to pieces before his eyes.' Then it was ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... even than the first. They were decidedly being mystified, and were preparing in consequence to pack up and begone, furious, and swearing by all their gods that they would never again expose science to see itself disgraced by a purse-proud vulgarian's scorn; when, lo! happily, a good fairy, the special friend of learned men, came passing by that way. She raised her enchanted wand with the tip of her finger, and all at once a little girl dressed in rags appeared in ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... to say to me?" she went on at length after another pause. "You, Lord Essendine—my husband's relative and friend, one of the richest and proudest men in this purse-proud land—how chivalrous, how brave of you, to bring me here to load me with vile aspersions, to rob me of my character; my child, my little friendless orphan boy, of the inheritance which is his ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... obedient." The vulgar little purse-proud citizen made an impudent sort of distant bow, and looked for all the world like a coated Caliban sarcastically cringing to a ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... I need not say, of course," continued General Belch, "must be a good man and a faithful adherent of the party. He must be the consistent enemy of a purse-proud aristocracy." ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... some purse-proud coxcomb for a scandalous bottle, where we must not pretend to our share of the discourse, because we can't pay our club o' th' reckoning.—Damn it, I had rather sponge upon Morris, and sup upon a dish of bones scored behind ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... reside with him at the rectory, but he soon found that his disorders rendered him an intolerable inmate. And as the young men of his own rank would not endure the purse-proud insolence of the Creole, he fell into that taste for low society, which is worse than "pressing to death, whipping, or hanging." His father sent him abroad, but he only returned wilder and more desperate than before. It is true, this unhappy ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... other," answered Peabody, loftily. "She would marry me, poor as I am, but for her purse-proud, mercenary sire. It will be a happy day when, with my pockets full of gold, I enter his presence and claim ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... and her marriage to Levison, he hated to think of it. He could not endure his future stepfather; between them there existed a bottomless chasm of dislike and distrust. Levison considered Shafto a conceited young cub, "but a clever cub"; and Shafto looked on Levison as a purse-proud tradesman, ever bragging of his "finds," his ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... Billsbury for two minutes without tripping over the broken fragments of some of Sir THOMAS's pledges. It's getting quite dangerous. Sir THOMAS, they say, made himself. It's a pity he couldn't put in a little consistency when he was engaged on the job. We don't want any purse-proud Radical knights to represent us. We want a straightforward man, who says what he means; and you'll agree with me, fellow-townsmen, that we've got one in our ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 2, 1891 • Various
... rock are our slaves; We are liege to marble and steel; We go our ways through our purse-proud days, Lifting our voices in loud self-praise— Forgetting the ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... her. Was it, after all, to be put down as a simple steamer encounter? Was she deliberately snubbing him, now that they were on land? Was he, a prince of the royal blood, to be tossed aside by this purse-proud American as if he were the simplest of simpletons? And what did she mean by stationing an officious hireling before her door to order him away when he undertook to pay her a friendly visit?—to offer his own and Hobbs' services in case they were needed in Paris. Why should she lock her confounded ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... wife and four children, whom I love as tenderly as Clinton, or any other purse-proud oppressor of the poor can possibly love his wife and children. They are dependent for daily bread upon my daily labour. With the sweat of my brow, I keep hunger from my door, and ...
— Who Are Happiest? and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... in the great hall; the silence of it fell heavier and heavier on his sinking spirits; the beauty of it exasperated him, like an insult from a purse-proud man. "Curse the place!" he said, snatching up his hat and stick. "I like the bleakest hillside I ever slept on better than I ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... I want the money—bless his boots! He thinks I'm a stuck-up, grasping, purse-proud little pig, and he has every right to think so after the way I talked to him, though he ought to have realised I was in a temper about Kathleen Saumarez and have paid no attention to what I said. And he actually attempted to reason with me! If he'd ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... that is if, in due time, I hadn't become a mother, my position among the purse-proud, rapacious and narrow-minded Wettiners would have become wellnigh intolerable. But I proved myself a Holstein. I rose superior to Queen Carola, who never had a child, and to Maria, Mathilda, Isabelle and Elizabeth, who either couldn't or didn't. ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... her that the purse-proud brewer was not the only man who had done the wretched brother a service for her sake possessed him. The few pounds he had put, in order that he might find them there, in Bernard's room, had been infinitely more to him than the fifty pounds to Sir Francis Forcus. And he was one who saved his money ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... M.D. with honors, though she has lately spoiled her prospects by marrying. But socially he has become a little aristocratic, seeking an exclusive association with his wealthy neighbors. And this does not look very well in one who, when he was poor, was particularly bitter on "a purse-proud aristocracy." I suppose Hubert felt this. Certainly I did, and therefore I enjoyed the conversation that he repeated ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston |
