"Retrench" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... defensive alliances with other Powers," they said. "Meantime—retrench, reduce, cut down, and give us more freedom in our race. Freedom, freedom—that's the thing; and peace ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... strictly so, Mr. Allison? I have talked with these people. I have been told by them, quiet, conservative, well-informed Pullman men, that they concede that the wages must come down, and that all hands will have to retrench awhile until better times. They are willing to do that and stand by their company. But, on the other hand, they think, and I think, the company owes something to them. Here are honest, capable, intelligent ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... this, he lay under other very great Inconveniencies. For he was neither Master of Time enough to consider, correct, and polish what he wrote, to alter it, to add to it, and to retrench from it, nor had he Friends to consult upon whose Capacity and Integrity he could depend. And tho' a Person of very good Judgment may succeed very well without consulting his Friends, if he takes time enough to correct ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... help you start housekeeping, but there have been a great many failures in the last few months, and he says he is obliged to cut down all his expenses in order to tide over the depression in the market. We are trying to retrench in every possible way, and, for this reason, I fear we shall hardly be able to go down to your wedding. This is a terrible disappointment to us both, and your father is particularly distressed because he will not be able to add to ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... strength and grow more abundantly. In this wise, you too will have such articles as will be fit for use. So that this plan will, to some extent, not constitute a breach of the high principles of propriety. And if ever we want to retrench a little more from where won't we be able to get money? But if the whole balance, if any, be put to the credit of the public fund, every one, inside as well as outside, will fill the streets with the din of murmurings! And won't this be then a slur upon the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... future plans were practically settled so far as the young people were concerned. Rowena had been right in her surmise about the boys, for, like most fathers, Mr Saxon was prepared to retrench in any and every direction rather than interfere with the education of his sons. It was a family tradition that the eldest son should go into the army; therefore, at all costs, Hereward must continue that tradition. The Saxons had for generations been Eton boys, therefore ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... be in the sixtieth year of his reign, he had resolved to proceed on such a mission on the part of the Batavian Republic, and requested that he might be furnished, without delay, with suitable credentials. To this application the Commissaries General, who had been sent out the same year to retrench the expences of the Company in their Indian settlements, and to reform abuses, returned for answer, That, "however low and inadequate their finances might be to admit of extraordinary expences, yet they deemed it expedient not to shew any backwardness in adopting similar measures ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... is a memorable one in Mr. Brougham's parliamentary life. Early in the session, upon the debate of the battle of Navarino, we find him expressing his readiness to support the ministry as long as the members who composed it showed a determination to retrench the expenditure of the country, to improve its domestic arrangements, and to adopt a truly British system of foreign policy. It was on this occasion that Mr. Brougham used the expression which has since become so familiar—"The schoolmaster is abroad." On Feb. 7, Mr. Brougham brought forward a motion ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 496 - Vol. 17, No. 496, June 27, 1831 • Various
... years after falling into the hands of some Learned men, had the good luck to be so favourably receiv'd, and advantageously spoken of by them, that having had more then ordinary Invitations given me to make it publick, I thought fit to review it, that I might retrench some things that seem'd not so fit to be shewn to every Reader, And substitute some of those other things that occurr'd to me of the trials and observations I had since made. What became of my papers, I elsewhere mention in a Preface where I complain of ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... num'rous train, Or like the bee (sweet as thy blood) design'd To be destroy'd to propagate his kind, 570 Lest thy redundant and superfluous juice, Should fading leaves instead of fruits produce, The pruner's hand, with letting blood, must quench Thy heat, and thy exub'rant parts retrench: Then from the joints of thy prolific stem A swelling knot is raised (call'd a gem), Whence, in short space, itself the cluster shows, 577 And from earth's moisture mixed with sunbeams grows. I' th'spring, like youth, it yields an acid taste, But summer doth, like age, the sourness ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... wineshop, the longest head among them declared that such depression could admit of but one construction—the Marquise was ruined. His lordship the Marquis was away in Spain with the Duc d'Angouleme (so they said in the papers), and beyond a doubt her ladyship had come to Saint-Lange to retrench after a run of ill-luck on the Bourse. The Marquis was one of the greatest gamblers on the face of the globe. Perhaps the estate would be cut up and sold in little lots. There would be some good strokes of business to be made in that ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... (compendium) 596. elision, ellipsis; conciseness &c (in style) 572. abridger, epitomist^, epitomizer^. V. be short &c adj.; render short &c adj.; shorten, curtail, abridge, abbreviate, take in, reduce; compress &c (contract) 195; epitomize &c 596. retrench, cut short, obtruncate^; scrimp, cut, chop up, hack, hew; cut down, pare down; clip, dock, lop, prune, shear, shave, mow, reap, crop; snub; truncate, pollard, stunt, nip, check the growth of; foreshorten (in drawing). Adj. short, brief, curt; compendious, compact; stubby, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... that he had been arrested merely to keep him from blowing up the cathedral this night. The arrest had an excellent effect upon his mind, for he was a young man of good sense: it made him resolve to retrench his expenses in time, to live more like a glover and less like a gentleman; and to aim more at establishing credit, and less at gaining popularity. He found, from experience, that good friends will ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... same embarrassment as myself, and thinking what we must do in this unhappy juncture, when our money fails us so unexpectedly. I do not know what your sentiments may be; but mine are, let what will happen, not to retrench our expenses in the least; and I believe you will come into my opinion. The point is, how to support them without stooping to ask the caliph or Zobeide: and I think I have fallen on the means; but we must ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... to say, in the language of current economic theory, while men are reluctant to retrench their expenditures in any direction, they are more reluctant to retrench in some directions than in others; so that while any accustomed consumption is reluctantly given up, there are certain lines of consumption which are given up with relatively extreme reluctance. The articles or ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... said Father Payne, "it is more picturesque, hang it all! The old aristocrat who feels like a prince and behaves like one, is more picturesque than the person who has sweated himself into it. Think of the old Duke who was told he must retrench, and that he need not have six still-room maids in his establishment, and said, after a brief period of reflection, 'D——n it, a man must have a biscuit!' We like insolence! That is to say, we like it in its place, because we admire power. ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... tone; "but the question that more nearly concerns you is how you are all going to live, granting even that there may be enough to pay the debts. Of course this great house cannot be kept afloat. You had better discharge some of the servants, and retrench while ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... was now comparatively settled, we went on as usual, only taking in sail and trimming the boat for the storm. But in our private affairs both families resolved to retrench. Our wives came nobly to our support, proving themselves true women; they themselves proposed to double-up—the two families to occupy one house, and in several ways to reduce our expenses one-half. Such ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... interest, it is the duty of a good citizen to be lofty, exacting, almost insolent. And, on this principle, when the ancient style and title of the kingdom fell under revision, if—as I do not deny—it was advisable to retrench all obsolete pretensions as so many memorials of a greatness that in that particular manifestation was now extinct, and therefore, pro tanto, rather presumtions of weakness than of strength as being mementoes of our losses, yet, on the other hand, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... and conform to custom; but I would take care not to venture for sums; which, if I won, I should not be the better for; but, if I lost, should be under a difficulty to pay: and when paid, would oblige me to retrench in several other articles. Not to mention the quarrels which ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... badly. He had a bad year last year. I know for a fact that he did not make five per cent on his capital. Putting these things together, I should have thought that he would have been glad to make a little money to retrench; but no! he prefers to go on in the old way. He made money in the old way, and he doesn't see why he shouldn't make money again in the old way. Odd man my ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... to the accompanying report of the Secretary for information in relation to the Navy of the United States. While every effort has been and will continue to be made to retrench all superfluities and lop off all excrescences which from time to time may have grown up, yet it has not been regarded as wise or prudent to recommend any material change in the annual appropriations. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... Reginald's brow at these words. Then his mother believed him to be all that he had thought himself, and little suspected what he really was. But then, supposing he divulged his secret, what about debts which he had contracted, and extravagant habits which he had formed? No! he would begin and save, retrench his expenses, and if possible get these debts paid off; and then he might see his way to speak of the girl in the Black Forest, if she was still to ...
— Little Frida - A Tale of the Black Forest • Anonymous
... Matt. We retrench the Superfluities of Mankind. The World is avaritious, and I hate Avarice. A covetous fellow, like a Jackdaw, steals what he was never made to enjoy, for the sake of hiding it. These are the Robbers of Mankind, ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... have been, and ever will be in Playhouses, a Set of assuming Directors, who know better than the Poet himself the Connexion and Dependance of his Scenes; where Matter is defective, or Superfluities to be retrench'd; Persons, that have the Fountain of Inspiration as peremptorily in them, as Kings have That of Honour. To these obvious Causes of Corruption it must be added, that our Author has lain under the Disadvantage ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald
... Happily you have yourself raised a bar of separation between your admirers, by advising us in the first page of your preface, that your present book is especially destined for believers. To cooperate, however, with you, sir, in this judicious design, I must observe that it is necessary to retrench two passages, seeing they afford the greatest support to ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... a hardship to the writer to be compelled to retrench the story of the early deeds for liberty of Bonivard and his boon companions. There is a rollicking swagger about them all, which by and by begins to be sobered when it is seen that on the side of the oppressor there is power. By violence, by fraudulent promises, by ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... began to retrench his household expenditure, and shortly his handsome tapestries and costly goods were all sold off, and he was reduced to the necessity of economizing most rigidly. But deeply as he felt the loss of those comforts which he had so lately ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... no! We can't afford it. Taxes are much too high as it is. We ought to retrench, and not let the city council spend another cent. Uh——Don't you think that was a grand paper Mrs. Westlake read about Tolstoy? I was so glad she pointed out how all his ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... Now all that was, if Brander's fears were realized, at an end, even if it should not turn out to be as bad as that, the sum he would be called upon to pay might be sufficient to cripple the estate and to afford him a good and legitimate excuse for shutting up or letting the house, and going away to retrench until the liabilities were all cleared off. Of course he would have to work in earnest now, but even the thought of ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... corrected the proof-sheets, saw the revises, and returned each sheet duly marked with his signature for the press. At this point the nefarious operation of Le Breton began. He and his foreman took possession of the sheets, and proceeded to retrench, cut out, and suppress every passage, line, or phrase, that appeared to them to be likely to provoke clamour or the anger of the government. They thus, of their own brute authority, reduced most of the best articles ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... The reverses of Napoleon's fortune had been so rapid, that the possessors of great places, and of great preferment, had not had time to retrench their way of living. When the Bourbons were recalled, they were obliged to come to a reckoning with their means, and all these ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... brought up short, but she dreaded the thought of his being so distressed; she didn't want him to give up the few little comforts he allowed himself, and she knew it would hurt him cruelly to have to retrench in ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... But now the great Exchange of News 'tis hight, And full of hum and buzz from noon till night. Up stairs and down you run, as for a race, And each man wears three nations in his face. So big you look, though claret you retrench, That, arm'd with bottled ale, you huff the French. But all your entertainment still is fed 30 By villains in your own dull island bred. Would you return to us, we dare engage To show you better rogues upon the stage. You know no poison but plain ratsbane here; Death's more refined, and better bred ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... Norman princes had wound up the royal power to so high a pitch, and so much beyond the usual tenour of the feudal constitutions, that it still behoved him to be debased by new affronts and disgraces, ere his barons could entertain the view of conspiring against him, in order to retrench his prerogatives. The church, which at that time declined not a contest with the most powerful and vigorous monarchs, took first advantage of John's imbecility; and, with the most aggravating circumstances of insolence and scorn, fixed ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... her desk, with an account-book, a bundle of banknotes, and a well-filled purse before her. She was looking mighty serious, but a little puzzled. She said she had been "casting an eye" over the weekly expenditure in housekeeping at the hall, trying to find out where she could retrench; that she had also just given audience to Mrs. Gill, the cook, and had sent that person away with a notion that her (Shirley's) brain was certainly crazed. "I have lectured her on the duty of being ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... got to retrench. Every superfluous expenditure must be cut off. As for the park and free library, that seems wild now, doesn't it? I don't regret abandoning the scheme. The people of this town never did appreciate public spirit ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... self-styled reformer and physical giant, Mr. Thomas Chilton, of Kentucky, who had been at one period of his life a Baptist preacher. He declared on the floor in debate that he was pledged to his constituents to endeavor to retrench the expenses of the General Government, to diminish the army and navy, to abridge the number of civil and diplomatic officials, and, above all, to cut down the pay of Congressmen. He made speeches in support of all these "reforms," but did not succeed in securing the discharge ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore |
