"Subsistence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are content to keep his company at a respectful distance in the rear. One of the duties of the Commissary Department in fitting out such expeditions is, to provide a sufficient quantity of rations for the men, such as beef, bacon, beans, sugar and coffee. These form the reliable subsistence of the soldiers while absent from their posts or the settlements. The estimate is judged of by the number of days which the expedition will require to be absent, in order to perform a certain amount of work. From this ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... prevent espionage and smuggling; with regard to smuggling, indeed, no power could have entirely prevented it. The Continental system had made it a necessity, so that a great part of the population depended on it for subsistence. ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... he had expected, he found it difficult to procure another, and was under the necessity of living on the small capital which he had accumulated in the course of laborious years. Had his own subsistence been all his care, he would have had little trouble; but Rose had to be supported and educated, his sister had to be assisted, his charities had to be kept up, and now Jeff Benson had to be maintained, ...
— Jeff Benson, or the Young Coastguardsman • R.M. Ballantyne
... Notwithstanding the severity of this and other statutes, the fraternity prospered amid the distresses of the country, and received large accessions from among those whom famine, oppression, or the sword of war had deprived of the ordinary means of subsistence. They lost in a great measure by this intermixture the national character of Egyptians, and became a mingled race, having all the idleness and predatory habits of their Eastern ancestors, with a ferocity which they probably borrowed from the men of the north who joined their society. They travelled ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... These treaties, being probably the last which will ever be made with them, are characterized by great liberality on the part of the Government. They give the Indians a liberal sum in consideration of their removal, and comfortable subsistence on their arrival at their new homes. If it be their real interest to maintain a separate existence, they will there be at liberty to do so without the inconveniences and vexations to which they would unavoidably have been subject in Alabama ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... and to let people suppose that I was dead. It was for that reason that I left my bonnet by the river-side and all my apparel in the house, only taking away a few trinkets and valuables, to dispose of for my future subsistence. I obtained a passage in a transport bound to Woolwich, on the plea of my husband having arrived from abroad; and, by mere accident, I found the goodwill of the tobacconist's shop to be sold. It suited me—and there is the whole of my history ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... Owen, Mill—these were feathers on the stream. They indicated the forces that had their source at the centre of social life. That historical movement which produced mother-law probably owed its rise, as well as its fall, to demands of subsistence and property—that is, to economic causes. The decay of the subsequent family system, in which the whole power is concentrated in the male head, is being produced by similar causes. The early communism, and the modes of action ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... induce men to change the place of their abode, these must unavoidably be fleeting and mutable. If not bound to one spot by conjugal or parental ties, or by the nature of that employment to which we are indebted for subsistence, the inducements to change are far more numerous and powerful ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... enlarge on what must be generally felt as an obvious truth; still, it may not be amiss to offer a few remarks, by way of bringing it, though a truism, more distinctly before us. In all ages the majority of mankind have been more or less compelled to some kind of exertion for their mere subsistence. Like all compulsion, this has no doubt been considered a hardship. Yet we never find, when by their own industry, or any fortunate circumstance, they have been relieved from this exigency, that any one individual has been contented with doing nothing. Some, indeed, ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... existence: well-being, abundance, plenty: provision, nourishment, subsistence, food, meal, feast, delicacy, , ...
— A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary - For the Use of Students • John R. Clark Hall
... servants on all sides to institute inquiries. No news was however received of him, and she had nothing else to do but to practise resignation, and to remain dependent upon the support of her parents for her subsistence. She had fortunately still by her side, to wait upon her, two servant girls, who had been with her in days gone by; and the three of them, mistress as well as servants, occupied themselves day and night with needlework, to assist her father ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... heart;—and who was to care for the orphan child of the forgotten friendless? An old pauper who lives in that hut, scarcely distinguishable from the shielings of the charcoal-burners, was glad to take her from the parish for a weekly mite that helps to eke out her own subsistence. For two or three years the child was felt a burden by the solitary widow; but ere she had reached her fifth summer, Alice Elleray never left the hut without darkness seeming to overshadow it—never ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... word to describe the state in which the mother and daughter lived, and had lived for many years. They had no means of subsistence whatever beyond the pension accorded to the widow of Lieutenant von Sigmundskron, 'fallen on the field of honour,' as the official report had expressed it, in the murderous war with France. He had been the last of his ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... if he likes to take them. No one throws his former guilt in his face. He may not be offered a place of confidence, nor be trusted with money, as the upper labourers—carters for instance—sometimes are. But the means of subsistence are open to him, and he will not be driven by the memory of ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... idea, and persuade me that it is reasonable to sacrifice everything to the possession of it. Would it be believed, that when near nineteen, any one could be so stupid as to build his hopes of future subsistence on an ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... endeavour to prove, by facts and analogy, that, contrary to the received opinion, the country is capable of supporting not only three hundred and thirty-three millions of people, but that it might actually afford the means of subsistence to twice that number. The confirmation, indeed, of new and important facts, though very different conclusions be drawn from them, cannot be entirely unacceptable to the reader; for as different persons will generally ...
— 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
... Christ's power to provide. It had a promise wrapped in it. He who forbade them to provide for themselves thereby pledged Himself to take care of them. 'The labourer is worthy of his food.' They may be sure of subsistence, and are not ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... singular coincidence that this was exactly the sum which Johnson mentioned to Boswell as capable of affording decent subsistence in London during the early ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... for instance—if it appeals to one at all—and being a stenographer and bucking up against the things any good-looking, unprotected girl gets up against in a city? You know, if you'd be frank, that there isn't. Shucks! Herding in the mass, and struggling for a mere subsistence, like dogs over a bone, degenerates man physically, mentally, and morally—all our vaunted civilization and culture to ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... excursions which have been made inland, very few have been seen. The sea-coast, we have every reason at present to believe, is the only part of this country which is inhabited by the human race; the land seems to afford them but a very scanty subsistence. We have seen them roast and chew the fern-root. There is a small fruit here, about the size of a cherry; it is yellow when half grown, and almost black when ripe; it grows on a tree, which is not tall, but very ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... myself proceeded, was to serve a regular apprenticeship to some practical employment—he to a millwright, and I to a general house-builder. In this way we secured the means, by hard labour, of earning a subsistence; and, in time, we obtained by good conduct the confidence of our employers and the public; eventually rising into the rank of what is called Civil Engineering. This is the true way of acquiring practical skill, ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... beyond the sea; nor could he curtail his supply of food, as the granaries and magazines within Caesar's quarter of the city contained almost inexhaustible stores of corn. There was one remaining point essential to the subsistence of an army besieged, and that was an abundant supply of water. The palaces and citadels which Caesar occupied were supplied with water by means of numerous subterranean aqueducts, which conveyed the water from the Nile to vast cisterns built under ground, whence it was raised by ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... Thus only a part of his line is engaged at a time. Now it was en echellon, from necessity, that the tribes moved down. They could not follow immediately in each other's track, because two armies following each other would not have found subsistence in the same country. They had to march in parallel lines; those nearest to Italy moving first; and thus forming a vast echellon, whose advanced left rested on, and was protected by, ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... the Western Union Telegraph Company, under which active operations were commenced last spring, under surveys previously made. The grand train of four hundred men, one hundred great prairie wagons, and six or eight hundred mules or oxen,—a portion of the cattle for the subsistence of the party,—started westward from Omaha, Nebraska, in June last, and on the 4th of July commenced pushing on the construction at the point which it had already reached, some two or three hundred ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... French should depart with the honours of war; that they should cease to impose contributions; but that, in return, the French army should receive three thousand purses, equivalent at that time to three million francs, and representing the sum necessary for its subsistence during the evacuation and the passage. The forts of Katieh, Salahieh, and the Belbeys, forming the frontier of Egypt towards the desert of Syria, were to be given up ten days after the ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... population mainly engaged in subsistence agriculture and fishing note: shortages ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... poor creature's life could be preserved? Its death must be a great loss to its owner, and life is, no doubt, happiness to the creature itself. Why terminate the existence of any animal by which we are not annoyed, and which is not necessary to our subsistence? We certainly have no right to ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... have always been accustomed to think that the necessity of earning one's subsistence is not in itself an evil, but I feel it may become a heavy evil if health fails, if employment lacks, if the demand upon our efforts made by the weakness of others dependent upon us becomes greater than our strength suffices ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... charged no lower fees when she went to a case than when he did, that she did half the work while acting as his assistant, and that she had kept his practice together for him while he was ill. Fortunately, owing to the fact that she had behind her means of subsistence without her salary, she was able to refuse his unsatisfactory offer, although at considerable violence to her feelings, for she had made many friends in ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... make our proletarians free and masters of their own energies, in unison with each other and the national being, is the most pressing labor of the many before us. Unless there be economic freedom there can be no other freedom. The right of no individual to subsistence should be at the good will of any other individual. More than mere comfort depends on it. There are eternal and august rights of the soul to be safeguarded, and the economic position of men should be protected by organization and democratic law. I have already discussed some ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... that the inhabitants should be assisted by the Acadians in repairing the dykes for the preservation and recovery of the marsh lands, particularly as on the progress of this work, in which the Acadians are the most skilful people in the country, the support and subsistence of several hundred of the inhabitants will depend.' [Footnote: Nova Scotia Documents, p. 319.] It seemed almost impossible to induce settlers to come to the province; and those who did come seem to have been unable to follow the example of the former owners of the soil, for much ...
— The Acadian Exiles - A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline • Arthur G. Doughty
... turned his attention to medicine, as being in his apprehension the next easiest of the learned professions; and now that he had relinquished the healing art, because he possessed neither the industry nor the capacity for acquiring it, some other method of earning a subsistence seemed to be necessary. Should it be the law? His resolution would have deserted him at the thought of mastering even the elementary treatises of Blackstone, and the sight of an ordinary law library would have appalled ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... whole of his proceedings, from time to time, are faithfully preserved in his journal. The publication of this is an acceptable present to the world, as it draws a plain artless picture of the savage modes of life, the scanty means of subsistence, and indeed of the singular wretchedness, in every respect, of the various tribes, who, without fixed habitations, pass their miserable lives, roving throughout the dreary deserts, and over the frozen lakes of the immense tract of continent through which Mr Hearne passed, and which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... individual as fighting for his own hand, striving for dear life against every other individual, was ingrained in their minds by the inveterate bitterness of their own experience; when Emily had become a woman, and was gone forth to wrest from the adverse world her own subsistence, her right to what she earned was indefeasible, and affection itself protested against her being mulcted for their advantage. As for the slight additional expense of her presence at home during the ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... emergence in a consistent form are: (1) the community must be of a predatory habit of life (war or the hunting of large game or both); that is to say, the men, who constitute the inchoate leisure class in these cases, must be habituated to the infliction of injury by force and stratagem; (2) subsistence must be obtainable on sufficiently easy terms to admit of the exemption of a considerable portion of the community from steady application to a routine of labour. The institution of leisure class is the outgrowth of an early discrimination between employments, according ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... employers refused to give them, and sent to Wales, where they obtained workmen at the former price. The houses these laborers had occupied were all taken from them, and for eighteen weeks they had no other means of subsistence than the casual charity given them for singing the story of their wrongs. It made my blood boil to bear those tones, wrung from the heart of poverty by the hand of tyranny. The ignorance, permitted by the government, causes an unheard amount of ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... swampy patches, which have formed among the loose rocks that cover the ground, and which are kept constantly full of moisture by the rains, and by the abundance of rills which trickle down among them. This sago forms almost the whole subsistence of the inhabitants, who appear to cultivate nothing but a few small patches of maize and sweet potatoes. Hence, as before explained, the scarcity of insects. The Orang-kaya has fine clothes, handsome lamps, and other expensive European goods, yet lives every day ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... continued their search till noon without success, and hunger was now added to their thirst; they then returned to the beach to ascertain if their companions had been more successful. They had also quenched their thirst with the dew of heaven, but had found no water or means of subsistence; but some of them had eaten the leaves of the plant which had contained the dew in the morning, and had found them, although acid, full of watery sap and grateful to the palate. The plant in question ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... world which he himself had found so rough a one; through what difficulties he had reached middle age without absolutely vanishing away in his contact with more positive substances than himself; how the world had given him a subsistence, if indeed he recognized anything more dense than fragrance, like a certain people whom Pliny mentioned in Africa,—a point, in fact, which the grim Doctor denied, his performance at table being inappreciable, and confined, at least almost entirely, to a dish ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... within the harbor of Boston, in the province of Massachusetts Bay, in North America," [14 G.3.] which was passed at the last session of the British Parliament, a large and populous town, whose trade was their sole subsistence, was deprived of that trade, and involved in utter ruin. Let us for a while, suppose the question of right suspended, in order to examine this act on principles of justice. An act of Parliament had been passed, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... to move in large bodies, and we were broken up into small parties, which advanced into the hills, each under its own commander, without any fixed plans save to destroy every habitation, to capture or kill the flocks of goats, which afforded the inhabitants their chief means of subsistence, and to give ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... daring patriot force, the Susquehanna valley ceased to be the permanent abiding place of the red men. A few scattered representatives of the once proud Tuscaroras and Oneidas built their temporary wigwams where convenience suggested, and derived such subsistence as the chase and stream afforded, but they were no longer ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell
... propagate it. This permanency of the relation exhibited itself, then, to Abraham and his posterity under the form of a covenant between God and that family, whereby the contracting parties, as it were, promised and undertook to maintain certain conditions, upon which depended the subsistence of that relation. The mutual conditions established were, in substance, nothing else than the universal relations subsisting between God and every rational being, but expressed, with respect to Abraham's, family, in more special and characteristic ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... industrial efficiency of our country. I do not want to be understood as criticising that. It is all right to break them up when they are taking too great a portion of the field for themselves. It is all right and important to break them up when they are monopolizing the means of subsistence that should be spread throughout the great body of the people. But we must recognize the fact that when our government does enforce the law—a just law, wise law—against our great commercial and our great industrial organizations, ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... populous, capital shall concentrate in the hands of a limited number of persons, and labor become more and more at its mercy, until mere manual labor, that of the weaver and ironworker, and other artisans, eventually ceases to be worth more than a bare subsistence, and often, in great cities and vast extents of country, not even that, and goes or crawls about in rags, begging, and starving for want ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... little he prostrated himself flat on the ground. "Deign not an unseemly jest. Close to the person of a great lady, such as is the honoured presence, the poor artisan finds but distress. His wares have no market amid this magnificence. Dependent on him for means of life are two aged parents. A bare subsistence is secured for them. Condescend his dismissal, that he may return ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... was past his prime, the difficulty of getting jobs, the small wages he had to take; and the inevitable, abject penury of the end: she might be energetic, thrifty, industrious, it would not have saved her; in the end was the workhouse or subsistence on the charity of her children. Who could pity her because she had died when life ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... that citizen of the Polar region, withdraws to the deepest thicket of the forest, and stands there motionless as if deprived of life;' and trees burst asunder with the cold. Throughout this area roam Elks, Black Bears, Foxes, Sables, and Wolves, that afford subsistence to the Jakutian and Tungusian fur-hunters. In the northern part countless herds of Reindeer, Elks, Foxes, and Wolverines make up for the poverty of vegetation by the rich abundance of animal life. 'Enormous flights of Swans, Geese, and Ducks arrive ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... deem it reasonable to explain the motives of the present publication, and must rely for credit on the good nature of my readers. The project is not a mercenary one. Nobody relies for subsistence on its success, nor does the editor put anything but his reputation at stake. At the same time, he cannot but be desirous of an ample subscription, not merely because pecuniary profit is acceptable, but because this is the best proof which he can ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... long intimately associated with them. Twenty years ago, all of these tribes, raised annually more corn, beans and other vegetables, than were needed for their own consumption. Now they are miserable, squalid beggars, without the means of subsistence. The faithlessness of the Government, the perfidy and avarice of its agents and citizens, have brought this race of people to the horrible condition, in which they are represented ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... the duty of soldiers, or be otherwise employed than in conducting or taking care of their carriages or horses. 6. All oats, Indian corn, or other forage that waggons or horses bring to the camp, more than is necessary for the subsistence of the horses, is to be taken for the use of the army, and a reasonable price paid ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... In the lower class there were no reserves; the dependants lived from hand to mouth, and when hand failed to find food, they had to come to the upper class, first for remission of its claims on them and then for actual subsistence. But the dependence was mutual, and there were no reserves at top equal to the needs of that joint hazard. Penury was only at two removes from the "gentry houses." While the first line of defence, the tenants, held ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... and fill the bellies of many poor Miserable Hungry creatures who otherwise must have starved; for 'twas the custom of the Crown only to allow their Captives a few Kreutzers, amounting to some twopence-farthing a day English, for their subsistence. The Oldest Prisoner in the Ward, whom they called Father of the Room, would on this Bare Pittance take tithe and toll, often in a most Extortionate manner. Then these Gaol birds would fall to thieving from ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... when God and all mankind permit you to eat and to drink, to enjoy good things, not merely what is necessary for actual subsistence, but in a measure calculated to afford gratification and pleasure, and you are yet not satisfied with that privilege—when such is the case, your sordid and gluttonous tendencies are worthy one born solely to consume beer and wine. But such are the excesses now to be ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... they have reared an appalling superstructure of social and spiritual tyranny. Politicians have taught the peasantry to believe that they have been robbed of the land which is their only means of subsistence in a country that is destitute of mineral wealth, that lacks capital, and is overshadowed by the enormous commercial energy of Great Britain. The priests have adopted the theses of politicians, and have brought the terrors of their sacred calling into play in order to make themselves ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... dragon serpent, "Sucuriyu." He could tell you, moreover, of creatures of his own kind,—if they deserve the name of man,—who dwell continuously in the flooded forest, making their home on scaffolds among the tree-tops, passing from place to place in floating rafts or canoes, finding their subsistence on fish, on the flesh of the manatee, on birds, beasts, reptiles, and insects, on the stalks of huge water-plants and the fruits of undescribed trees, on monkeys, and sometimes upon man! Such Indians as ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... belonged to the class of mechanical soldiers. The fate of the Emperor never left his mind and he became indifferent to everything else. With the care of a natural daughter on his hands, he accepted the place that was now offered to him as a means of subsistence, taking it as he would have taken ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... of undisturbed leisure, is far from being the common lot; nay, it is something alien to human nature, for the ordinary man's destiny is to spend life in procuring what is necessary for the subsistence of himself and his family; he is a son of struggle and need, not a free intelligence. So people as a rule soon get tired of undisturbed leisure, and it becomes burdensome if there are no fictitious and forced aims ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... alone, one becomes possessed of cows. By living on grass one attains to the celestial regions. By foregoing all intercourse with one's wife and making ablutions three times during the day and by inhaling the air only for purposes of subsistence, one obtains the merit of a sacrifice. Heaven is attained by the practice of truth, nobility of birth by sacrifices. The Brahmana of pure practices that subsists on water only, and performs the Agnihotra ceaselessly, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... reign, and nobles a right to their estates, and that to toil all their lives, and allow their kings and nobles to take, in rent and taxes, and in other such ways, every thing that they, the people, earned, except what was barely sufficient for their subsistence, was an obligation which the God of nature had imposed upon them, and that it would be a sin in them not to submit to it; whereas nothing can be more plain than that the God of nature intends the ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... to retire, with the consent of each other. If there is a man among you, then, who apprehends the consequences of standing to his arms, and of defending this house, let him confess it frankly; he shall have leave to depart, with all that belongs to him, taking food and the means of subsistence and defence with him. I wish no man to remain with me and mine, but he who can do it cheerfully. The night is now dark, and, by quitting the Hut at an early hour, such a start might be gained over any pursuers, as to place him in comparative security before morning. ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... privations to the invaders. Here the Germans had to contend with an enemy much superior in number, and to defend themselves against continuous firing from houses, cellars, woods and thickets, while the impoverished soil yielded a miserable subsistence, and the broken railroads cut off freedom of communication ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... bought six months after our arrival in St. Petersburg. How matters were finally settled I do not know, but we found ourselves roofless, shelterless, and without a copper. My mother was grievously ill, and of means of subsistence we had none. Before us there loomed only ruin, sheer ruin. At the time I was fourteen years old. Soon afterwards Anna Thedorovna came to see us, saying that she was a lady of property and our relative; and this my mother confirmed—though, true, she added that Anna was only a very DISTANT relative. ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... lover of fruit, he does more good than injury. Insects are his natural food, and form at least two thirds of his subsistence. He devours the destructive insects that penetrate the bark and body of a tree to ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph, Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1897 • anonymous
... proclaimed by the obscurity of their ancient names—Aperopia, Tiparenus, and Psyra.] They had been colonized in the preceding century, by some poor families from Peloponnesus and Ionia. At that time they had gained a scanty subsistence as fishermen. Gradually they became merchants and seamen. Being the best sailors in the Sultan's dominions, they had obtained some valuable privileges, amongst which was that of exemption from Turkish magistrates; so that, if they could not boast of autonomy, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... he can pretend to do nothing,—except hoodwink him, entice him out, and try to get a chance on him. But for his own subsistence and otherwise, he is very lively;—snatches, by a sudden stroke, Bremen City: 'Yes truly, Bremen is a Reichstadt; nor shall YOU snatch it, as you did Frankfurt; but I will, instead; and my English proviant-ships shall have a sure haven henceforth!' ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... least, to any uniformly progressive series. And all generalizations which affirm that mankind have a tendency to grow better or worse, richer or poorer, more cultivated or more barbarous, that population increases faster than subsistence, or subsistence than population, that inequality of fortune has a tendency to increase or to break down, and the like, propositions of considerable value as empirical laws within certain (but generally rather ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... camels by the day, whereas the custom of Arabia is to bargain for the march. Thus, the pilgrims pay one dollar per stage of twelve hours; and the post-dromedary demands the same sum, besides subsistence-money and "bakhshi'sh." But our long and frequent halts rendered this proceeding unfair to the Bedawin. I began by offering seven piastres tariff, and ended by agreeing to pay five per diem while in camp, and ten when on the road.[EN19] Of course, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... feed a grown man in Massachusetts for a year. The bread and meat come to him from the far west, and I have no doubt that it will astonish you to be told, as it lately astonished me, that a single day of this man's labour, even if it be of the commonest sort, will pay for transporting his year's subsistence for a thousand miles." ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... Forward, which had just blown up before their eyes, took from them their last means of subsistence. Still, Hatteras's courage did not abandon him at this terrible crisis. The men who were left were the best of the crew; they were genuine heroes. He made an appeal to the energy and wisdom of Dr. Clawbonny, to the devotion of Johnson and Bell, to his own faith ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... line measured through the air. None of the party had more than six or seven pounds of flour left; whilst I had myself but one pound and a half, and half a pound of arrowroot; the native had nothing left and was wholly dependant on me for his subsistence. Now we had been seven days on our route, and had made but little more than seventy miles, and as the men were much weaker than when they first started it appeared to me to be extremely problematical ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... discussion of the effects produced upon Keats by the reviews in Blackwood and The Quarterly, let it be remembered, first, that having wellnigh exhausted his small patrimony, Keats was to be dependent upon literature for his future subsistence; next, that Leigh Hunt attempted no defence of Keats when the bread was being taken out of his mouth, and that Keats felt this neglect and remarked upon it in a letter in which he further cast some doubt upon the purity of Hunt's friendship. Hunt, after Keats's death, said in ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... while those of the eye, and so on, are not perceived. The work of the organs, inclusive of the manas, is to act as instruments of cognition and action, while the work of breath is to maintain the body and the organs. It is for the reason that the subsistence of the organs depends on breath, that the organs themselves are called pranas. Thus Scripture says, 'they all became the form of that (breath), and therefore they are called after him pranas' (Bri. ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... remarkable thaw. The snow nearly all disappeared, and the ground was flooded with water. This thaw was life to the Indians. It enabled them to traverse the forests freely, and to gather ground-nuts, upon which they were almost exclusively dependent for subsistence. ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... escape, on some pretext, before their commands (if they had any) should leave for the seat of war. The latter, to find profitable employment in raising companies, regiments or brigades, for Staten Island, East New York or the Red House, drawing pay and subsistence for twice or three times the number ever in camp, and coolly pocketing the difference! It is idle to talk, as exaggerating sensation-paragraphists sometimes do, of stealing the pennies off the eyes of a dead grandmother ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... greater demand for every commodity, intensifies the functional activity of each specialised person or class; and this renders the specialisation more definite where it already exists, and establishes it where it is nascent. By increasing the pressure on the means of subsistence, a larger population again augments these results; seeing that each person is forced more and more to confine himself to that which he can do best, and by which he can gain most. This industrial progress, by aiding future production, opens the way for a ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... Lieutenant-Colonel Richard B. Irwin, Assistant Adjutant-General; Lieutenant-Colonel William S. Abert, Assistant Inspector-General; Major G. Norman Lieber, Judge-Advocate; Colonel Samuel B. Holabird, Chief Quartermaster; Colonel Edward G. Beckwith, Chief Commissary of Subsistence; Surgeon Richard H. Alexander, Medical Director; Major David C. Houston, Chief Engineer; Captain Henry L. Abbot, Chief of Topographical Engineers; First-Lieutenant Richard M. Hill, Chief of Ordnance; Captain Richard Arnold, Chief of Artillery; Captain William W. Rowley, ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... implored them—little knowing the men to whom I trusted my appeal—to save me from the persecution of a man who had resolved upon my downfall. "I asked nothing from them, from him, but the liberty of gaining, by daily labour, an honourable subsistence. Would they deny ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... wanted to see you again. I should have done better to stay in exile all my days. But exile without means of subsistence would be madness; I will not add another folly to the rest. Death is better than a maimed life; I cannot think of myself in any position in which my overweening vanity would not lead me ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... English Officer, who, being well advanced in years, left her at the age of twenty-four a widow with four children. Trotter was possessed of little besides his pension, which died with him; so Mrs. T. was obliged to eke out a miserable subsistence on the receipts from a little city property left her by her father. Soon after her husband's demise Mrs. Trotter removed to Lachine (a small village on the river side about nine miles above Montreal), in order to live more economically, ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... humble order which in this kingdom are found only at the extremities of the Scotch Highlands, and tenanted by a race of paupers who gain a scanty subsistence from the limpits and other marine products which they take at low water. The frame-work of the hovel was rudely put together of undressed pine-boughs: the walls were a mixed composition of clay, turf, sea-weed, ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... forget the radiance of his twinkle when he told me he had been sacked three weeks ago from the sporting paper that had provided him with his sole visible means of subsistence. It was his blessed (only he didn't call it blessed) style that had dished him: the suicidal elan that he brought to the business. He was warned, he said. He was aware that his existence as a reporter hung by the bare thread ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... as brothers; but how did they requite our kindness? They at first asked only for a little land, on which to raise bread for their families, and pasture for their cattle, which we freely gave them. They saw the game in the woods, which the Great Spirit had given us for our subsistence, and they wanted it too. They penetrated into the woods in quest of game, they discovered spots of land they also wanted, and because we were loth to part with it, as we saw they had already more than they had need of, they took ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... power, frowns, and artifice; we shall have little reason to boast of our advantage, in this particular, over other states or kingdoms in Europe. And surely, these high proceedings, exercised in a point that so nearly concerned the life-blood of the people, their necessary subsistence, their very food and raiment, and even the public peace; will not allow any favourable appearance; because it was obvious, that so much superabundant zeal could have no other design, or produce any other effect, than to damp that spirit ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... respected and rewarded. If before, or instead of receiving his homestead, he chooses to pursue his profession or business, to work at his trade, or for daily wages, he will find them double the European rate, and subsistence cheaper. From whatever part of Europe he may come, he will meet his countrymen here, and from them and us receive a cordial welcome. A Government which gives him a farm, the right to vote, and free schools for his children, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... whole of a peculiarly rich and fertile tract of country from which, though they were relatively few in number, they resolutely refused to be dislodged; while the surrounding territory, occupied by the blacks, was comparatively poor, sterile, and ill-watered, affording an ever more scanty subsistence to the steadily growing population. Also there was a widespread belief, amounting to conviction among the blacks, that their white neighbours were wont to punish such attempts as were made from time to time to drive them out, by putting all ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... feet 8-1/2, depth 22 feet 2, and 2347 tons' measurement; and the expense of building her and sending her to sea is said to have been 156,000l. On board her at the time of capture were found thirty-six chests of money intended for the pay and subsistence of the men who were to be employed in the expedition against Jamaica; and she had on board, at the commencement of the action on the 9th, 1,300 men: in the other captured ships, the whole train ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... acts upon new principles; he must therefore entertain new ideas and form new opinions. From involuntary idleness, servile dependence, penury and useless labour he has passed to toils of a very different nature, rewarded by ample subsistence. ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... hardly enough to do to keep me awake. The members of the staff each have their separate duties to perform, which keep them more or less engaged. The quartermaster issues clothing to the troops; the commissary of subsistence issues food; the inspector looks into the condition of each regiment as to clothing, arms, and camp equipage; the adjutant makes out the detail for guard and other duties, and transmits orders received from the division commander to the regiments. All of these officers have certain reports ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... incidental to those animals; but the vast majority reject this manner of life, and traverse the country in bands, like the ancient Hamaxobioi; the immense grassy plains of Russia affording pasturage for their herds of cattle, on which, and the produce of the chase, they chiefly depend for subsistence. They are, however, not destitute of money, which they obtain by various means, but principally by curing diseases amongst the cattle of the mujiks or peasantry, and by telling fortunes, and not unfrequently by theft ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... distress was almost every where prevalent, and every day that passed was tending to increase it. A large portion of the food of the people had failed, and the remnant of the preceding year's corn crop was their only means of subsistence. That resource could not long be relied on; and the great problem was, in what manner the destitute thousands of our countrymen were to be fed till the returning harvest should visit them with its scanty and precarious bounty. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... California, in the valley of the Columbia river, and on the shores of Puget Sound. The Athabaskans of Hudson's Bay were on about the same level of savagery. They made no pottery, knew nothing of horticulture, depended for subsistence entirely upon bread-roots, fish, and game, and thus had no village life. They were mere prowlers in the upper status of savagery.[34] The Apaches of Arizona, preeminent even among red men for atrocious cruelty, are an offshoot from the Athabaskan stock. Very little better are ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... modes of feeling, thinking, and acting, and by a liberal policy, never before experienced, endeared himself to all ranks and classes. It is recollected at this day that, in times of scarcity, he ordered all the rice sent up for the subsistence of the troops to be sold, at a moderate price, to the starving multitude; and that, while more short-sighted people prophesied the worst results from this measure, it obtained for him abundant supplies, together with a name that will never ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... as all experienced men have found, that the care of a family is a never-ceasing, all-engrossing responsibility. The outside work could be very small indeed; all had to centre in that one spot, home. They cultivated small gardens, and in this way eked out their subsistence on the small salaries received from ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... danger of starvation. As it was, the meat on their frames was very scarce, and we had to use the greatest economy to make it last and waste nothing. We should now have to kill one of our oxen every few days, as our other means of subsistence had been so completely used up. The women contracted a strange dislike to this region and said they never wanted to see any ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... with the Emperor. But the Emperor had really nothing to offer worth the Ostrogoth's acceptance. A settlement on the Pantalian plain, a bleak upland among the Balkans, about forty miles south of Sardica (Sofia), and a payment of two hundred pounds' weight of gold (L8,000) as subsistence-money for the people till they should have had time to till the land and reap their first harvest, this was all that Zeno offered to the chief, who already in imagination saw the rich cities of the Adriatic lying defenceless at his feet. For during ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... distress. The next time I have business in Paris, I can ascertain the value of the jewel, and if I have given you too little, I will make it up to you.' And with, a glad and grateful heart the abbess took home the 1500 francs, thankful at having obtained the means of subsistence for ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... so many. But there is no necessity for this, and in times, in which the middle classes are so much more enlightened, it becomes still less so; we need, indeed, only contemplate the masses of people who strive for a subsistence, the crowds of neglected and uncared-for children that grow up in the world, in order to see that whatever is one-sided in the view of the destination of woman vanishes more and more, and opens to her a freer ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... me. Though I must ever acknowledge, to the honor of your Lordship, and the eternal memory of your charity, that, since this revolution, wherein I have patiently suffered the ruin of my small fortune, and the loss of that poor subsistence I had from two kings, whom I served more faithfully than profitably to myself,—then your Lordship was pleased, out of no other motive than your own nobleness, without any desert of mine, or the least solicitation from me, to make me a most bountiful present, which, in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... to help us fight the battle against poverty, ignorance, degradation, and the cold, proud scorn of society. Before our public lands are all appropriated, I want our young men and women to get homesteads, and to be willing to endure privations in order to place our means of subsistence on a less precarious basis. The land is a basis of power, and like Anteus in the myth, we will never have our full measure of material strength till we touch the earth as owners of the soil. And when we get the land we must have patience ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... preference a direction. Things could not be near or far, worse or better, unless a definite life were taken as a standard, a life lodged somewhere in space and time. Reason is a principle of order appearing in a subject-matter which in its subsistence and quantity must be an irrational datum. Reason expresses purpose, purpose expresses impulse, and impulse expresses a natural body with ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... family. I am afraid that current opinion, especially among the cultivated class, would condemn such a sacrifice as a piece of misplaced scrupulosity. No man, it would be said, is called upon to proclaim his opinions, when to do so will cost him the means of subsistence. This will depend upon the value which he sets upon the opinions that be has to proclaim. If such a proposition is true, the world must efface its habit of admiration for the martyrs and heroes of the past, who embraced violent death rather ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... and most families have sufficient for subsistence during the year. When rice is needed for food bunches of the palay, as tied up at the harvest, are brought and laid in the small pocket of the wooden mortar where they are threshed out of the fruit head. One or two mortarsful is thus threshed and put ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... blowing from the same ocean, are known to have in New-England. This high land receives the sea mist and fogs; and they settle on our skins with a deadly dampness. Here reigns, more than two thirds of the year, "the Scotch mist," which is famous to a proverb. This moor affords nothing for subsistence or pleasure. Rabbits cannot live on it. Birds fly from it; and it is inhabited, according to the belief of the most vulgar, by ghosts and daemons; to which will now doubtless be added, the troubled ghosts of the murdered American ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... Situation is remote from the Fishery, and who derive Advantages from it in its more distant Effects & not directly perceivable, are probably not so attentive to its unspeakeable Importance, as others who are immediately concernd, & depend upon it as the only Source of their Commerce & even their Subsistence? If this should be the Fact, Would not States so immediately interested in the Fishery as ours, be justly criminated by the others, if we should neglect seasonably to lay before them our own Sense of the ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... observers of the heavens were shepherds, huntsmen, and husbandmen, I am not advancing a theory on the difficult questions connected with the origin of exact astronomy. The first observations of the heavens were of necessity made by men who depended for their subsistence on a familiarity with the progress and vicissitudes of the seasons, and doubtless preceded by many ages the study of astronomy as a science. And yet the observations made by those early shepherds and hunters, unscientific though they must have been in themselves, ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... and sometimes war. Nor is it desirable that the human race should be multiplied to its utmost capacity. It is enough here to mention without discussing the teaching of Malthus, how population presses on the means of subsistence, the latter increasing in an arithmetical, the former in a geometrical ratio. Without going the whole way with Malthus, modern economical writers are commonly a little Malthusian, and shrink from giving to all and each of their species the word ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... inform us that primitive man had certain affinities to the beast of prey. By superior strength or ingenuity he slew or snared the means of subsistence. Civilized man leaves the coarsest forms of slaughter to a professional class, and, if he kills at all, elevates his pastime to the rank of sport by the refining element of skill and the excitement of uncertainty and personal risk. But civilized man is still only too prone ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole |
