"Stinginess" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the practical trifles for which nobody cares, such as committing a murder, or keeping a dog without a licence. My criminals were tried for the faults which really make social life impossible. They were tried before me for selfishness, or for an impossible vanity, or for scandalmongering, or for stinginess to guests or dependents. Of course these courts had no sort of real coercive powers. The fulfilment of their punishments rested entirely on the honour of the ladies and gentlemen involved, including the honour of the culprits. But you ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... his son, Frank, were large-hearted generous creatures in the article of apology, as in all things less skimpingly dealt out. And seeing that Leonard Fairfield would offer no plaister to Randal Leslie, they made amends for his stinginess by their own prodigality. The Squire accompanied his son to Rood Hall, and none of the family choosing to be at home, the Squire in his own hand, and from his own head, indited and composed an epistle which might have satisfied ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... and his wife, their long familiar intercourse exhibits a wealth of fine human affection and genuine poetry which sarcasm cannot touch. Often as he had occasion to regret Lady Eldon's peculiarities—the stinginess which made her grudge the money paid for a fish or a basket of fruit; the nervous repugnance to society, which greatly diminished his popularity; and the taste for solitude and silence which marked her painfully towards the close of her life—the ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... her soul! It was the best bargain that ever I made, or ever expect to make, too. Some men marry Temper, and some Extravagant Notions, and some Vanity, and some Jealous, Suspicious Dispositions, and some, again, Stinginess—Good gracious! there's no end to the disagreeable things men do marry! I married Nerves! and with them, the best and sweetest and, to my way of thinking, the prettiest woman in the County and State, and the Universe, and I've been thankful for it every ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... in a sort of gamebag made of osier which she had on her arm, all the while cursing du Bousquier for his stinginess; for one thousand francs was the sum she wanted. Once tempted of the devil to desire that sum, a girl will go far when she has set foot on the path of trickery. As she made her way along the rue du Bercail, it came into her head that the Maternity Society, ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... folded it, and replaced it in his pocket. He knew the Howes family by reputation, and the reputation was that of general sharpness in trade and stinginess in money matters. Betsy's personal appeal did not, therefore, touch his heart to any great extent. He surmised also that for Seth Howes and his wife to ask help for some person other than themselves premised a darky in the woodpile somewhere. But for ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... you're on the other side the fence. These Carthage women have got you on the run. You'll have to give 'em twice as good as they send or you're gone. You're gone anyway. If you gave each one of 'em a gold platter full of diamonds they'd say you'd inherited Aunt Ida's stinginess as well as ...
— Mrs. Budlong's Chrismas Presents • Rupert Hughes
... stinginess. It's my nature to be morbidly economical, though I know I needn't be. If I hadn't had L500 a year left me, I should never have been able to come and live here, and drop all my horrid relations. I enjoy appearing dependent and being a spectator, and I've absolutely ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... the king asked if he had had much difficulty, and as he replied, innocently, "No," the king declared the girl was quite worth a hundred gold crowns, and the chamberlain gave them to the judge, in order not to be taxed with stinginess, and said the starch would be a good income to La Portillone. The judge came back to La Portillone, and said, smiling, that he had raised a hundred gold crowns for her. But if she desired the balance of the thousand, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... morally sordid; and the strangest, the dreariest circumstance about them was exactly that this vacuity, this dreariness, this total want of all that can make the life of a boy and of a young man pleasant to our fancy or attractive to our sympathy, did not in the least depend upon any harshness or stinginess of fate. Indeed, perhaps, no man had ever prepared for him an easier existence; no man had ever less misfortune sent to him by Providence, or less unkindness shown towards him by mankind, than this constantly struggling, this pessimistic ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... worthy, struggling Christians whom you wish me to supply with everything to make their church beautiful and their minister comfortable—you want me to put a premium on stinginess! I shan't give you one cent under those conditions! Go to the three richest men in your church, and say to them, 'Whatever sum you will give, Mrs. Cary will double.' Appeal to your congregation as a whole, and tell it the same thing. Ask those who you know have ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... opposite—the Hippopotamus. Who so likely as he, who had his eye continually on Hans's door? But no matter—the thief was clear off; and the only comfort he got from his neighbors, was being rated for his stinginess. "Ay," said they, "this comes of living like a curmudgeon, in a great house by yourself, working your eyes out to hoard up money. What must a young man like you do with scraping up pots full of money, like ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... every day, and have no one I dare breathe a word to, oh, it is very hard! But on what a thread things turn! If any one had told me an hour ago it was you I should open my heart to! It's not economy: it's not stinginess; they are not paying off their debts. They never can. The baroness and the ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... felt bitter at my stinginess. But I knew that I could not live long and I wanted to repay you for your care of me. I did not spend an unnecessary cent nor did I let you. I have been ugly but it didn't matter to you. I knew you didn't care for me and so I didn't try to ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... ancient palace of the Amazonian queen, Medb, testify to similar events. She it was who in her "Pillow Talk" with her husband Ailill declared that she had married him only because in him did she find the "strange bride-gift" which her imperious nature demanded, "a man without stinginess, without jealousy, without fear." It was in her desire to surpass her husband in wealth that she sent the combined armies of the south and west into Ulster to carry off a famous bull, the Brown Bull of Cooley, the only match in ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... plenty of money while traveling with Celia was because I was afraid of being hurt again. And then too I remembered how she had said one evening the year before when we were playing Truth that she despised stinginess beyond any other vice. That had made an impression on me because I was just going to say the very ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... society people in St. Louis. For instance, I am told that one of the women who has recently blossomed into the society columns is the wife of a millionaire lumber man who lives in a swell place and whose stinginess is peculiar in that it applies to everything but the feeing of the reporters who write up his wife and daughter. There is another woman whose burst into society has occasioned a great deal of comment of late. ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... preach to Nellie on the vanity and vexation of the human heart," replied the invalid, who seemed to be decidedly out of humour. "I am well aware of Judith's style, Debby: that is how she covers her stinginess," and Miss Margaret gave a little sarcastic ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... Conscience had been bribed into acquiescence, and the iniquity thrived. There were those who still endeavored to escape the vigilance of the naval officers, and save the three pounds on each slave. But the diligence and liberality of the authorities were not to be outdone by the skulking stinginess of Negro-smugglers. On the 18th of June, 1723, the General Assembly passed the ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... banks go down, but gold is gold everywhere, and I have tried so hard to earn or save the interest, denying myself many things which I should have enjoyed as well as most women, and getting for myself the reputation of closeness and even stinginess, which I did not deserve. I had to be economical with myself to meet my payments, which increased as the years went on, until they are so large that sometimes I have not been able to put the whole in the box at the ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... is, we all think, much to blame in these matters. Instead of procuring strong animals, and paying a fair price for them; they buy animals that are not fit to do one good day's march. Of course, in the end this stinginess costs them more in money, and lives, than if they had provided ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... so formidable to behold. When Perseus had thus encouraged his men, and elevated them with these great hopes, as soon as a thousand gold pieces were demanded for each captain, he was so amazed and beside himself at the vastness of the amount, that out of mere stinginess he drew back and let himself lose their assistance, as if he had been some steward, not the enemy of the Romans, and would have to give an exact account of the expenses of the war, to those with whom he waged it. Nay, when he had his foes as tutors, to instruct him what ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... see? he also approves. But hear another thing in which we can serve you. If a man vows to offer a sacrifice to some god, and then procrastinates, pretending that the gods can wait, and thus does not keep his word, we shall punish his stinginess. ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... and mix the brains With the gravy it contains; While it on the spit remains, Cut the Pig in two. Chop the sage, and chop the bread Fine as very finest shred; O'er it melted butter spread— Stinginess won't do. ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... one can do nothing with the chisels, and we are now drilling a hole. I don't know that I shall succeed but, at any rate, I am going to have a try. If it fails, I must hit on some other way. The provisions are holding out all right; and Meinik calculates that, with a little stinginess, we could manage for another three weeks. We have drilled the hole in two inches today and, as we get more accustomed to the work, I dare say we could do three inches in each shift. The block is twenty inches ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... ain't it! I rather guess 'twill be Henry himself that's surprised fust. Aunt Olive never leaves sewin' circle till the last bit of supper's eat up—she's got some of her brother's stinginess in her make-up—so I cal'late Henry'll get home afore she does. I shouldn't wonder," with an exuberant chuckle, "if that settin' room' was some stirred up when he sees it. The pup had loosened the box cover afore I ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Russian roubles were plenty; and Pouchskin, pouring out nearly a quarter of a pound into the palm of his broad hand, commenced spitting upon it and working the powder into a paste. Ivan, who directed this operation, was determined his plan should not fail by any stinginess in regard to the materials required for carrying ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... is extremely fine. Two handsome halls are still preserved: one, the ceiling of which is garnished, at the crossing and combining of the arches, with the recurring heads of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn—great stinginess in Henry, for these ornaments must have been put up after Wolsey's fall. He could surely afford a diversity of this species of ornament if any man could. Formerly, when the palace was completely a fishing-house, it extended into, or rather ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... she reproached him, "you brought me here out of stinginess, pretending not to notice when we passed the waxworks, which is only tuppence, and real murderers with their chests a-rising an' fallin', as Maria's young man treated her to a last Regatta; an' a Sleepin' Beauty with a clockwork song inside like ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Penelope came down once more to chide the wooers for their insolence; she also upbraided them for their stinginess. ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... bed—a pock-marked, lantern-jawed old gaffer of sixty-five; and the most remarkable point about him was the wife he had married two years before—a young slip of a girl but just husband-high. Money did it, I reckon; but if so, 'twas a bad bargain for her. He was noted for stinginess to such a degree that they said his wife wore a brass wedding-ring, weekdays, to save the genuine article from wearing out. She was a Ruan woman, too, and therefore ought to have known all about him. But woman's ways be ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... great-coat stuffed with sausage, or there would be a tray of backbone, souse and spareribs under the buggy seat. If it was summer the wide back would be filled with fruit. One old lady on the Raburn Gap Circuit, famous for her stinginess, never varied her gift with the seasons. It was always dried peaches with the skins on them. But, as a rule, we received the very best they had to give, and with a fragrant openheartedness that ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... "Oh, stinginess may be abused like other virtues: it will not do to keep one's own pigs lean," said Mrs. Cadwallader, who had risen to look out of the window. "But talk of an independent politician and he ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... undefiled by Government interference, to the blessings of that "local government," which signifies, in plain English, the leaving the few to destroy themselves and the many, by the unchecked exercise of the virtues of pride and ignorance, stupidity and stinginess. ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... Stinginess is snobbish. Ostentation is snobbish. Too great profusion is snobbish. Tuft-hunting is snobbish. But I own there are people more snobbish than all those whose defects are above mentioned: viz., those individuals who can, and don't give dinners at all. The man without hospitality shall ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Sheriff Court, declaring that the manse was like to fall about his ears, and that the heritors had palpably admitted the danger by erecting a scaffold. The Sheriff expressed strong disapproval of the heritors' stinginess, and ordered them to get a new manse built for the minister. Now as to the site! To spite Mr. Rogers, the heritors determined to deprive him of a good view, and directed the St. Andrews builder to erect the new manse down in the valley on a broad bank by a burnside. The master-builder placed ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... something less than good, pretty, and sweet. "Lovely," "dear," "splendid," "unique," and a large number of good words have been much dulled by the ignorant use of babblers. Superlatives and all words denoting comparison should be used with stinginess. One cannot afford to part with this kind of coin frequently; the cheaper coins should be used, else he will find an empty purse when need arises. Thackeray has this: "Her voice was the sweetest, low song." How much better this, Her voice was a sweet, low song. ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... last agreed to give him a potion of gold to take; the sick man at once sat up, complaining of nothing more than a burning thirst. When informed of this scandalous piece of buffoonery, Louis contented himself with saying, "I had rather make courtiers laugh by my stinginess than my people weep by my extravagance." He was pressed to punish some insolent comedians; but, "No," said he, "amongst their ribaldries they may sometimes tell us useful truths let them amuse themselves, provided that they respect the honor of women." In the administration of justice he ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... N. parsimony, parcity^; parsimoniousness^, stinginess &c adj.; stint; illiberality, tenacity. avarice, greed &c 817.1. miser, niggard, churl, screw, skinflint, crib, codger, muckworm^, scrimp, lickpenny^, hunks, curmudgeon, Harpagon, harpy, extortioner, Jew, usurer; Hessian ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... fully by letters of Virginia planters to English merchants. They show that the wealthy Virginian of the 17th century was careful in his business dealings, sharp in a bargain, a painstaking manager, and in his private life often economical even to stinginess. Robert Carter, one of the wealthiest men of the colony, in a letter complains of the money spent upon the outfit of the Wormley boys who were at school in England, thinking it "entirely in excess of any ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... 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 ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... any others and received a corresponding commission, but, instead of being favored, they were constantly complaining of the severity of the treasury restrictions. Rothschild, the head of the great banking house in London and the chief of the syndicate, especially complained of what he called the "stinginess" of the treasury department. I can say for all the officers of the treasury that not one of them was interested in transactions growing out of resumption or refunding, or did or could derive any ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... not gained a little. It is something, Jo, to know that I am not in the power of a bad, or even an ill-tempered man. I can sit by my fire and know that no one will come home to fret at me,—that I shall encounter no cold looks, no sneers, no bursts of anger, no snarl of stinginess, no contempt of my opinion and advice. I know that now men treat me with respect and attention, such as their wives rarely, if ever, receive from them. Sensitive and fastidious as I am, I do not know whether my gain is not, to me, greater than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... was what his neighbors and townsfolk called a "hard-fisted" man; and he had earned the name by dint of persevering stinginess from boyhood up. He and his good wife Phoebe had accumulated a snug little property, besides the many-acred farm which was to be his when "grandmother" should relinquish her claim to all earthly possessions. So he was really able to live in comfort; but, instead of that, the old red farmhouse, ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... keeper boldly asserted that she could not afford better for the amount she had received, and there was truth in that, but she had no business to keep house and to become the tormentor of poor children who were thrown on her hands by stinginess, and who required to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... O'Malley," said he, in a whisper; "but, you see, I owe the Cork Insurance Company a spite for making me pay a gout premium, and that's the reason I'm here. I warned them at the time that their stinginess would come ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... of a certain village, who was noted for his avarice and stinginess, happened one day in crossing a narrow bridge to fall into the river. As he could not swim, he sank for a moment out of sight, and then coming to the surface floated down the stream, struggling and yelling for help. A passer-by ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... advised, and when we were put on the march Mr. Fakenham found means to be allowed to go into hospital, and while in hospital the matter was arranged as I had recommended. He had nearly, however, missed his freedom by his own stinginess in bargaining for it, and never showed the least gratitude towards me ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... spent little more money than he did in Chapelizod, except in his stable; and Lord Castlemallard, who admired his stinginess, as he did everything else about him, used to say: 'He's a wonder of the world! How he retains his influence over all the people he knows without ever giving one among them so much as a mutton-chop or a glass of sherry in ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Institute is undoubtedly a splendid monument of the munificence of the city. But munificence without method may arrive at results indistinguishably similar to those of stinginess. I have been blamed for saying that the Central Institute is "starved." Yet a man who has only half as much food as he needs is indubitably starved, even though his short rations consist of ortolans and are served ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... the elder branch of Philadelphia Thorleys to the Albany Chiverses (on no account to be confused with the Manson Chiverses of University Place), but could also enumerate the leading characteristics of each family: as, for instance, the fabulous stinginess of the younger lines of Leffertses (the Long Island ones); or the fatal tendency of the Rushworths to make foolish matches; or the insanity recurring in every second generation of the Albany Chiverses, with whom their New York cousins had always refused to intermarry—with the ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... to all injunctions except the last, Anna was very strict with me. But she was not very particular as to the last injunction. Out of sheer stinginess she fed me on bread and vegetables, and that in the kitchen. Once she did offer me some meat, and I refused to touch it. Then she got very angry, flew into a temper, and decided to complain to the sergeant. But Peter did not let her be ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... out of all the windows of the soul and being answerable for everything. For in the average human house there is one hole by which money comes in and a hundred by which it goes out; man has to do with the one hole, woman with the hundred. But though the very stinginess of a woman is a part of her spiritual breadth, it is none the less true that it brings her into conflict with the special kind of spiritual breadth that belongs to the males of the tribe. It brings her into conflict with that shapeless cataract of Comradeship, of chaotic feasting ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... good; and he then said that it would be all right anyhow about the dot, as he knew a way of getting something decent out of Sir Lionel for her. What he knew he firmly refused to divulge, and when I asked if he'd told you, he replied that he jolly well hadn't. Also he accused me of "stinginess," in not wanting "Pendragon to part," and wishing to keep the "whole hog" for myself; his delicate way of expressing my desire to retain the means of purchasing tiaras, etc., suitable to my rank, in case I should become the future ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... closeness, stinginess, close-fistedness—as the quality was variously called—was excused to her, partly because it had been at first caused by a genuine need of severe economy (she having been "left poorly off" by a husband ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... later the doctor happened to go to the village and was told there that the innkeeper had died that morning. Disgusted he went to the inn. The sister dressed in black stood in the corner reading a psalm book. The doctor began to upbraid her for her stinginess and cruelty. The sister went on reading the psalms, but between every two sentences she stopped to quarrel with him—"Lots of your like running about here.... The devils brought you here." She belongs to the old faith, ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... the barn, not only when he was painting, but at other times, and Wilmer missed her. He worked very fast, and made his plans for sailing, and Aunt Celia loudly bemoaned his stinginess in cutting short the summer. One day, after breakfast, he sought out Mary again in the garden. She was snipping Coreopsis for the dinner table, but she did it absently, and Jerome noted the heaviness of ...
— Different Girls • Various
... Session, 31st Congress, Vol. III, Pt. 2, Document No. 5, p. 985. The Indians desired whiskey at the councils. In order to prove that it was not refused because of stinginess, two barrels were opened at Prairie du Chien and the whiskey allowed to run on the ground. The old Indian Wakh-pa-koo-tay mourned the loss: "It was a great pity, there was enough wasted to have kept me drunk all the days of my life."—Wisconsin ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen
... from observation. He added, that persons more than usually polite are always supposed to be poor in London, and that as this supposition was the most injurious to their reception in good society, he always counselled his friends, when about to visit it, to assume a brusquerie of manner, and a stinginess with regard to money, by which means they were sure to escape the suspicion of poverty; as in England a parsimonious expenditure and bluntness are supposed to ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... her waver, and want to go back: although her honour is my honour, you know, and mine is her's. If she should, and should I be unable to prevail upon her, all your past services will avail nothing, and she will be lost to me for ever: the prey then of that cursed Solmes, whose vile stinginess will never permit him to do good to any of the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... drew nigh, and the day before they commenced I received a kind of petition from the prisoner, entreating me to aid him at this pinch, as he had not a friend in that part of the world, and would inevitably be ruined for what he considered rather a meritorious action — taking vengeance on the stinginess of the captain. Though I did not see exactly of what benefit I could be to him, I repaired to the court-house on the day of trial. It was crowded with people, as such places always are when prisoners are to be tried; and as I had met at dinner most of the magistrates on the Bench, ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... Indians went away with their canoes literally loaded with all an Indian wants, from silver to a steel trap, and a practical demonstration was given which will shut their mouths forever with regard to the oft-repeated scandal of the stinginess and injustice of the ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... for that of the 8th volume; the one, that Lambecius's heir, impatient at the slow sale of the work, sold many copies of it to the keepers of herb-stalls: the other, that, when the author was lying on his death-bed, his servant maid, at the suggestion and from the stinginess of the same heir, burnt many copies of this eighth volume [which had recently left the press] to light the fire in the chamber. This intelligence I glean from Vogt, p. 495: it had escaped Baillet and Morhof. But consult De Bure, vol. vi., Nos. 6004-5. Reimannus published a Bibliotheca ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... winter-fire, At a huge distance made them all retire; Where not a measure in the room was kept, And but one rule—they tippled till they slept - There would it see a pale old hag preside, A thing made up of stinginess and pride; Who carves the meat, as if the flesh could feel; Careless whose flesh must miss the plenteous meal; Here would the ghost a small coal-fire behold, Not fit to keep one body from the cold; Then would it flit to higher rooms, and stay ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe |
