"Thriftless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... room in a block of workmen's buildings in West Kensington, Pat Moloney lay dying. He and his wife had been thriftless and uncertain, they drifted into marriage, drifted in and out of work, and, having watched their children grow up with some affection and a good deal of neglect, had now seen them drift away, some back to the old country, ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... lives like their betters? Why don't they save something, when they are getting good wages? I am not going to encourage the thriftless, or help those who might help themselves, if ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... thriftless; but in Finland, in the summer, it is very hot and dry; in fact, the three or four months of summer are really summer in all its glory. It is all daylight and there is no night, so that June, July, and ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... of the United States, a country which once stretched south of the Forty-ninth Parallel from the Atlantic to the Pacific. I have been traveling extensively in what is left of Lincoln's nation. 'Dukes,' remarked Chesterton, 'don't emigrate.' This country was settled by the poor and thriftless and now few more than the poor ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... knight," said Robin. "Sir, I much wonder that your clothing is so thin. Tell me one thing, I pray. I trow you must have been made a knight by force, or else you have squandered your means by reckless or riotous living? Perhaps you have been foolish and thriftless, or else have lost all your money in brawling and strife? Or possibly you have been a usurer or a drunkard, or wasted your life ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... she had that morning presented the last of the milk to a sandy cat with a purposeful eye which had dropped in through the window to take breakfast with her, when her regrets for this thriftless hospitality were ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... about 700 pounds fell into my hands, and had I contented myself with this farm, and purchased two adjoining cleared farms containing two hundred acres of land of the finest quality which were sold far below their value by the thriftless owners, I should have done well, or at all events have invested my money profitably. But the temptation to buy wild land at 5s. an acre, which was expected to double in value in a few months, with the example of many instances of similar speculation ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... were steady-going and respectable enough; others were idle, thriftless fellows, who could not settle to farming in the colony, and even in the chase were lazy, bad hunters. The women were there for the purpose of attending to camp duties—cooking, dressing the buffalo skins, making bags from the animals' green hides, with the hair left on the outside, and filling ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... well known that the very earliest population of the Old Dominion was not of the highest, but predominantly idle and thriftless. Vagabonds and homeless children picked up in the streets of London, as well as some convicts, were sent to the colony from England to be indented as servants, permanently, or for a term of years. Persons of the better class, ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... land first, they were gradually crowded out by the competition of the large slaveholders, who bought up their lands and forced them to occupy the foothills to the north of the "black belt" in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi which were ill adapted to the plantation slave system. Next came the thriftless and impecunious whites, variously known as the "pine-landers" and "crackers" in Georgia, the "sand-hillers" of South Carolina, or the "red-necks" of Mississippi. The lowest stratum was composed of slaves with a ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... as a school-companion, a townsman, or so forth. On the other hand, two or three grave, sedate-looking persons shook their heads, and left the inn, hinting that, if Giles Gosling wished to continue to thrive, he should turn his thriftless, godless nephew adrift again, as soon as he could. Gosling demeaned himself as if he were much of the same opinion, for even the sight of the gold made less impression on the honest gentleman than it usually doth upon ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... flows southeast through Fairfax County. Just beyond the stream, as you go west from Washington, are the plains of Manassas,—level lands, which years ago waved with corn and tobacco, but the fields long since were worn out by the thriftless farming of the slaveholders, and now they are overgrown with thickets ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... while the adjoining land of his lazy neighbour—originally of equal value—yields only 20 s. to 35 s. an acre. The obvious tendency of this unjust and impolitic course on the part of landlords and agents, is to discourage improvements, to dishearten the industrious, and to fill the country with thriftless, desponding, and miserable occupiers, living from hand to mouth. There are circumstances under which even selfish men will toil hard, though others should share with them the benefit of their labours; but if they feel that this partnership in ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... tendency to forget their own tribal brothers as they scattered here and there and settled down, each family with its own little farm. There were some, naturally, who were more successful as farmers than others. And those who were unfortunate were not always the lazy or thriftless. Sickness or accident or some pest which attacked the grain or the cattle would sometimes wipe out the entire property of one of those little peasant farmers and leave him and his children face to face with starvation and death. Now, in the old days in the desert, ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... knit for folks as can pay. It's a pity for little feet to go bare because the mother was thriftless ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... one among the Seignory, Has wealth at will, and will to use his wealth, And wit to increase it. Marry, his worst folly Lies in a thriftless sort of charity, That goes a-gadding sometimes after objects, Which wise men will not see when thrust upon ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... and proper to be done, let them not hesitate to do it. Let them accomplish themselves in the art or business that to them seems most agreeable, and set up for themselves. They will be a thousand times more happy and useful than in leading listless and thriftless lives. The kind of Employment is not a matter of so much importance as the fact of being employed. Our boys choose their occupations; so should our girls. But they should always choose to do something that is useful. Our homes are full ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... Rise up, rise up, I say to thee; A soldier, I trow, Of the Cross art thou; Rise up, rise up, from thy bended knee! Ill it seems that soldier true Of Holy Church should vainly sue:— —Foot-pages they are by no means rare, A thriftless crew, I ween, be they; Well mote we spare A Page—or a pair, For the matter of that—Sir Ingoldsby Bray, But stout and true Soldiers like you, Grow scarcer and scarcer every day!— Be prayers for the dead Duly read, ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... offices and forfeited manors and abbeys. And in the native population and native interests, he saw nothing but what called forth not merely antipathy, but deep moral condemnation. It was not merely that the Irish were ignorant, thriftless, filthy, debased and loathsome in their pitiable misery and despair: it was that in his view, justice, truth, honesty had utterly perished among them, and therefore were not due to them. Of any other side to the picture, he like other good Englishmen, was entirely unconscious: he saw ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... upon the family. As it was, her life was filled up with struggles to make the ends meet; but, though she had the worst of it, she did not complain, and did all she could to comfort and encourage her thriftless husband. ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... always protested,' resumed the old man, 'that in their private and domestic life, as well as in their labouring career, the lower classes of this country are improvident, thriftless, and ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... true Christian grace, had it been properly cultivated; but her morals had been greatly neglected in her youth, and she would waste her precious time in the long winter nights, playing at the cards with her visitors; in the which thriftless and sinful pastime, she was at great pains to instruct Kate Malcolm, which I was grieved to understand. What, however, I most misliked in her ladyship, was a lightness and juvenility of behaviour altogether unbecoming ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... bumblebee makes haste, Belated, thriftless vagrant, And goldenrod is dying fast, And lanes ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... thriftless people, and can make nothing for themselves. The country abounds in grapes, yet they buy bad wines made in Boston and brought round by us, at an immense price, and retail it among themselves at a real (121/2 cents) by the small wine-glass. ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... fares my boy, Simon, my youngest born, My hope, my pride, young Woodvil, speak to me? Some grief untold weighs heavy at thy heart: I know it by thy alter'd cheer of late. Thinkest thy brother plays thy father false? It is a mad and thriftless prodigal, Grown proud upon the favors of the court; Court manners, and court fashions, he affects, And in the heat and uncheck'd blood of youth, Harbors a company of riotous men, All hot, and young, court-seekers, like himself, Most ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... men and gods,—dismissing the one extremely contemptible interest of scoundrels; sweeping that into the cesspool, tumbling that over London Bridge, in a very brief manner, if needful! Who are you, ye thriftless sweepings of Creation, that we should forever be pestered with you? Have we no work to do but drilling Devil's regiments ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... now, Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held: Then, being ask'd where all thy beauty lies, Where all the treasure of thy lusty days, To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes, Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise. ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... advised him temperately. "You always were a thriftless fellow; you must have been wasting your fire. Oh, I say, what's the ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... many much more profitable rewards that Hia might fittingly demand. As none of these appeared to entice her imagination, he went on to rebuke her want of foresight, and, still later, having unsuccessfully pointed out to her the inevitable penury and degradation in which her thriftless perversity would involve her later years, to kick the less substantial appointments across ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... that it was a surprising thing how the Doctor and Mrs. Pringle managed their matters so well. "Ay," said Mrs. Craig, "but we a' ken what a manager the mistress is—she's the bee that mak's the hincy—she does not gang bizzing aboot, like a thriftless wasp, through her neighbours' houses." "I tell you, Betty, my dear," cried Mr. Craig, "that you shouldna make comparisons—what's past is gane—and Mrs. Glibbans and you maun now be friends." "They're a' friends to me that's no faes, and am very glad to see Mrs. Glibbans ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... but seek to curry favour with the craven crowd," burst out the now thoroughly angry King, always jealous of the popularity of this brave young Prince of Wales. "And am I, sirrah, to be badgered and browbeaten in my own palace by such a thriftless ne'er-do-weel as you, ungrateful boy, who seekest to gain preference with the people in this realm before your liege lord the King? Quit my presence, sirrah, and that instanter, ere that I do send you to spend your Christmas where your great-grandfather, ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... loam and low bare hills. In Rewari the skill and industry of the Hindu Ahirs have produced wonderful results considering that many of the wells are salt and much of the land very sandy. The lazy and thriftless Meos of the southern part of the district are a great contrast to the Ahirs. They ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... never be regained. We forget that almost invariably these girls have the habit of thrift. They have never known anything else. Thrift as a principle is ingrained in them. But the American household is notoriously thriftless. As a rule it destroys the quality in the untrained immigrant girl. It is American not to care for expense—and she accepts the method—as far as her mistress' goods are concerned—if ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... will never do," she cried. "You'll have all the thriftless loons in the town bringing you their boots and ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... be his vice's bawd, And he shall spend mine honour with his shame, As thriftless sons their scraping fathers' gold. Mine honour lives when his dishonour dies, Or my sham'd life in his dishonour lies: Thou kill'st me in his life; giving him breath, The traitor lives, the true ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... plantation might be found some wretched-looking, thriftless, or lazy negroes, of the vagabond order. These miserable beings formed the lowest caste, and were despised and often persecuted by those of their fellow-slaves who were orderly and industrious, and cherished habits of self-respect. These were the "pariahs" of the plantation, constituting ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... loves her dearly; And I, poor monster, fond as much on him, And she, mistaken, seems to dote on me. What will become of this? As I am man, My state is desperate for my master's love; As I am woman— now, alas the day!— What thriftless sighs shall poor Olivia breathe! O time, thou must untangle this, not I; It is too hard a knot for me ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... said. 'The people are lazy, thriftless, and priest-ridden. The best of them are flying to America, and those that remain are dying away, drifting into lunatic asylums, hospitals, and workhouses. There is a curse upon us. In another twenty years there will be no Irish people—at least, none in Ireland. ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... papers had a bad effect. With regard to the habutae (silk goods) factories, there was a bright side, for they gave work to the girls in winter, when they were idle "and therefore poor and sometimes immoral." On the other hand, factory girls tended to become vain and thriftless and the stay-at-home girls ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... village watchmen in Nimar and the adjoining tracts of the Berar Districts. Captain Forsyth, writing in 1868, described the Bhils as follows: "The Muhammadan Bhils are with few exceptions a miserable lot, idle and thriftless, and steeped in the deadly vice of opium-eating. The unconverted Bhils are held to be tolerably reliable. When they borrow money or stock for cultivation they seldom abscond fraudulently from their creditors, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... people living at Palacaguina were half-breeds with a large infusion of Negro blood; and the weed-covered streets and plaza and dilapidated church compared unfavourably with the not far distant Indian town of Totagalpa. The Mestizos are a thriftless, careless people, but I care not here to dilate on their shortcomings. Let only the hospitality and kindness I experienced in Palacaguina live in my mind, and let regret draw a veil over their failings, and censure forget ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... long run on every property involving slavery, naturally suggests some element of decay inherent in the system; the reckless habits of extravagance and prodigality in the masters, the ruinous wastefulness and ignorant incapacity of the slaves, the deterioration of the land under the exhausting and thriftless cultivation to which it is subjected, made it evident to me that there were but two means of maintaining a prosperous ownership in Southern plantations: either the possession of considerable capital wherewith to recruit ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... as in Hell Wicked maids, with vain endeavour, Toil to fill, and toil for ever. Nine-and-forty Danaides, Wedded maids, and virgin brides, (So blind Gentiles did believe,) Toil to fill a faithless sieve; Thirsty thing, with naught content, Thriftless and incontinent. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... certain neutrals can testify. Our budgets are monuments of the nation's spirit of self-sacrifice. But we have not come scathless out of the ordeal. And besides our inevitable losses we are suffering from criminal waste. No other country is so thriftless as ours. In this respect we are a byword among the peoples of the world. But we give no thought to the consequences. Yet the yearly outlay on the one hand and the means of meeting it on the other hand are calculable, and it would be well if those who rely upon Germany's financial prostration ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... a little holiday to Glenmorven, where, as may be fancied, he was the delight of the Highlanders. One of his last pleasures was to arrange his dining- room. Many and many a room (in their wandering and thriftless existence) had he seen his wife furnish with exquisite taste, and perhaps with 'considerable luxury': now it was his turn to be the decorator. On the wall he had an engraving of Lord Rodney's action, showing the PROTHEE, ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... chasing niggers" has left a grandson who is illiterate, uncultured and thriftless. He despises manual labor, but is too poor and too ignorant to live without doing it. Unfit to be the associate of the new Southerner, and feeling himself too superior to mingle with Negroes, he ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... Thriftless yet my swain have turned, Though my sun he never showeth: Though I weep, I am not mourned; Though I want, no ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... too much of it. Suddenly we are looking down into the enchanting valley of Chimbo. This romantic and secluded spot is one of those forgotten corners of the earth which, barricaded against the march of civilization by almost impassable mountains, and inhabited by a thriftless race, has been left far behind in the progress of mankind. Distance lends enchantment to the view. We are reminded of the pastoral vales of New England. Wheat takes the place of the sugar-cane, barley of cacao, potatoes ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... members of which, both quadruped and biped, he enumerates seriatim, giving the pas to the former—a precedence perhaps well merited by steeds up to such a welter weight under the climate of India, over such a set of unredeemed and thriftless knaves as he describes his native attendants. Accordingly, he gives the names and pedigrees of the whole stud, from "the buggy mare Maiden-head and my wicked little favourite Fish-Guts," up to "my favourite brood-mare Fair Amelia, purchased at a prize sale on the frontier, and bred ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... the last words, "but I hope I have acquired some common-sense in roving about the world. The women of California are admirable in every way,—chaste, strong of character, industrious, devoted wives and mothers, born with sufficient capacity for small pleasures. But what are our men? Idle, thriftless, unambitious, too lazy to walk across the street, but with a horse for every step, sleeping all day in a hammock, gambling and drinking all night. They are the natural followers of a race of men who came here to force fortune out of an unbroken ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... of course, revolution, and revolution is being carefully and insidiously prepared after the common fashion. Not a word is left unsaid that can flatter the criminal or encourage the thriftless. Those who are too idle to work but not too idle to read the Sunday papers are told that it will be the fault of their own inaction, not of the Yellow Press, if they do not some day lay violent hands upon the country's wealth. And when they are tired of politics ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... not at home; Anther had payd his gold away; Another call'd him thriftless loon, And bade him ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... and an urbane character, and did much to temper and turn aside the thriftless ordinances of his superior. He, seeing how much our prosperity was dependent on the speed with which we could reach Edinburgh, hastened forward everything with such alacrity that we were ready on the morrow by mid-day to set out from Dumfries. But the ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... timidly, but in a few moments an admiring group was collected around him. A purchaser was soon found for Phelim, and Teddy having doubled his money, felt rich and grand, and cast rather contemptuous looks on his thriftless cousin. But before the day was over, Larry had made more money than two pigs like Phelim would bring—by playing for the dancers, and singing ballads. Among those who listened most attentively to him ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... desirable home for Chelsea pensioners, who commuted their pensions for four years' payment. Forty-six embarked in the Science, with Messrs. Backhouse and Walker, whose reports of their conduct explain their subsequent misfortunes. They were intemperate and thriftless, and passed the voyage in disorder. The women were nothing superior to their husbands.[183] On their arrival, they expended their money, and sunk into misery. To this there were some exceptions, and here and ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... cultivated, and enclosed with strong built rail or worm fences, but they often neglect to provide spacious barns and other outhouses for their grain, hay and stock. The influence of habit, is powerful. A Kentuckian would look with contempt upon the low fences of a New-Englander as indicating thriftless habits, while the latter would point at the unsheltered stacks of wheat, and dirty threshing floor of the former, as proof direct of bad ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... the American territory. Little Turtle, who led the Indians, had been in favor of peace, but was overborne by more impetuous warriors. Peace soon followed, and the settlement of the Northwest proceeded for a time without interruption. Those who regard the Indians as a lazy and thriftless race should read what General Wayne says about them: "The very extensive and highly cultivated fields and gardens show the work of many hands. The margins of these beautiful rivers appear like a continued village for a number of miles. ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... brilliant address on Lincoln, refers to him as "that strange, incomparable man, of whose parentage we neither know nor care." In some localities, particularly in Kentucky and South Carolina, the rumor is definite and persistent that the President was not the son of Thomas Lincoln, the illiterate and thriftless, but of one Colonel Hardin for whom Hardin County was named; that Nancy Hanks was herself the victim of unlegalized motherhood, the natural daughter of an aristocratic, wealthy, and well-educated Virginia planter, and that ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... important under their new masters than it was under their old ones, they had less care of selection, and their originality was weakened by diffusiveness. They indulged themselves but sparingly in the luxury of composing verse, which was too thriftless an occupation to be continued long. They used it, perhaps, as the means of attracting notice to themselves at their first entrance on the world, but not as the staple on which they were afterwards to depend. When the song had drawn ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... Bowling Allies, and such like thriftless places of resort for tradesmen and artificers, ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... Knowles evaded the question,—wished to leave the subject. Perhaps he did not regard the poor old schoolmaster as a practical judge of practical matters. All his life he had called him thriftless ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... than the farm-bailiff. The farm-bailiff was thrifty, and sensible and faithful, and Thomasina was faithful and sensible and thrifty, and they each had a tendency to claim the monopoly of those virtues. Notable people complain, very properly, of thriftless and untidy ones, but they sometimes agree better with them than with rival notabilities. And so Thomasina's broad face beamed benevolently as she bid the cowherd "draw up" to the fire, and he who (like ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... his chair after dinner. At his present mature age all these pleasures are over: and the times have passed away too. It is but a very very few years since—but the time is gone, and most of the men. Bludyer will no more bully authors or cheat landlords of their score. Shandon, the learned and thriftless, the witty and unwise, sleeps his last sleep. They buried honest Doolan the other day: never will he cringe or flatter, never pull long-bow or empty whisky-noggin ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... passions, their unreason, their contempt of inferiors, their vanity and arrogance, their ignorance, their lightness and superficiality, are all the outgrowth of its diabolical influences. They are, in fact, no more idle, thriftless, passionate, or supercilious, than Northern women would be in similar circumstances. It is too much the habit among the unreflecting, in judging of the Southern masses in their hostile attitude toward their lawful Government, to give less weight than it deserves to the necessary ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... in Brandenburg History is his recovery of the Province called the Neumark to that Electorate. In the thriftless Sigismund times, the Neumark had been pledged, had been sold; Teutsch Ritterdom, to whose dominions it lay contiguous, had purchased it with money down. The Teutsch Ritters were fallen moneyless enough ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... life. Had he contemplated marriage for some time, and been prevented from it by stress of circumstances? It was not easy to picture the suitable partner for Grail. Clearly she must be another than the thriftless, shiftless creature too common in working-class homes. Yet it was not likely that he had met with any one who could share his inner life. Had he, following the example of many a prudent man, chosen a good, quiet, modest woman, whose first and last anxiety would ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... sloop's husband, but was bound to do whatever Murray commanded, to ask no questions, and to be profoundly ignorant of the real objects of the expedition. This pliant auxiliary had, like many thrifty—or more probably thriftless—persons of that time, a double occupation. He was amphibious in his habits, and lived equally on land and water. At home he was a tailor, and abroad a seaman, frequently plying his craft as a skipper on the Bay, and sufficiently known ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... Ohio, and it appears not only more highly cultivated, but more fertile and more picturesque than either. I have rarely seen richer pastures than those of Kentucky. The forest trees, where not too crowded, are of magnificent growth, and the crops are gloriously abundant where the thriftless husbandry has not worn out the soil by an unvarying succession of exhausting crops. We were shewn ground which had borne abundant crops of wheat for twenty successive years; but a much shorter period suffices to exhaust the ground, ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... of 1200 persons have sprung from five sisters, several of whom were illegitimate, and three of whom were known to be unchaste, and who married men whose father was an idle, thriftless hunter, ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... hostility, as Otho called for his mirror in the Illyrian field. One good thing is, that this evil, in some degree, cures itself; and when a man has been nearly ruined by a herd of these sycophants, he finds them leaving him, like thriftless dependants, for some more eligible situation, carrying away with them all the tattle they can pick up, and some left-off suit of finery. The same proneness to adulation which made them lick the dust before one idol makes them ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... tenderly, and with a shrug of the shoulders to express resignation, that she might have been a cleverer housekeeper and just a thought more economical in expenditure! but considering her happy-go-lucky upbringing under the most thriftless of fathers, the darling really deserved more praise for what she accomplished than blame for ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... four thriftless youths returned home to their father, who in his just indignation had urged their disgrace upon the Pandits and Gurus, otherwise these dignitaries would never have resorted to such extreme measures with so distinguished a house. He took the opportunity ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... wis, was not at home; Another had payd his gold away; Another call'd him thriftless loone, And bade ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... great part of the south and east, at least, of England,—though never so well off, for several generations, as they are now—are growing up thriftless, shiftless; inferior, it seems to me, to their grandfathers in everything, save that they can usually read and write, and their grandfathers could not; and that they wear smart cheap cloth clothes, instead of their ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... done in those few hours in which they are obliged to labour. But, besides all that has been already said, it is to be considered that the needful arts among them are managed with less labour than anywhere else. The building or the repairing of houses among us employ many hands, because often a thriftless heir suffers a house that his father built to fall into decay, so that his successor must, at a great cost, repair that which he might have kept up with a small charge; it frequently happens that the same house which one person ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... and lame, and the diseased person that is judged to be incurable; the second are poor by casualty, as the wounded soldier, the decayed householder, and the sick person visited with grievous and painful diseases; the third consisteth of thriftless poor, as the rioter that hath consumed all, the vagabond that will abide nowhere, but runneth up and down from place to place (as it were seeking work and finding none), and finally the rogue and the strumpet, which are not possible to be divided in sunder, ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... indispensable to people of taste, and everybody has a taste now-a-days. But rejected papers are good for nothing but to light one's fire, if one can keep a fire. Look at Stamford! Stamford has done excellent work for thirty years; he has been neither idle nor thriftless, and he lives from hand to mouth still. He is one of the writers for bread, who must take the price he can get, and not refuse it, lest he get nothing. And that would be my case—is my case—for, as you know, my pen provides two-thirds of my maintenance. I cannot tax ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... man of wealth inherits ten thousand acres of real estate; it is not his duty to divide it among his poor neighbors and tenants. If he took this course, it is probable that most of them would spend all in thriftless waste and indolence, or in mere physical enjoyments. Instead, then, of thus putting his capital out of his hands, he is bound to retain and so to employ it as to raise his family and his neighbors ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... this age is the multitude of books. It is a thriftless and a thankless occupation, this writing of books: a man were better to sing in a cobbler's shop, for his pay is a penny a patch; but a book-writer, if he get sometimes a few commendations from the judicious, he shall be sure to reap a thousand ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... portraits of the prettiest women in the country. There was a great demand for copies of the engraving. And yet it was with difficulty the harebrained artist could be induced to complete the plate, and supply his patrons and subscribers with prints in return for their guineas. The thriftless, flighty fellow seemed to persist in misconceiving his situation, undervaluing his artist abilities; forgetting that but for these he would still have been peg-cutting in the Sussex woods. He would regard himself as a gentleman of independent property, ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... and Anna, just then impatient of the objections the princess made to every applicant, quickly decided to accept this one, against whom not a word had been said. So Fraeulein Kuhraeuber, who had spent her life in shirking work, who was quite thriftless and improvident, who had never felt particularly unhappy, and whose father had been a postman, found herself being welcomed with an enthusiasm that astonished her to Anna's home, being smiled upon and patted, having beautiful things said to her, things the ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... Harry Randall, had disappeared from the country under a cloud connected with the king's deer, leaving behind him the reputation of a careless, thriftless, jovial fellow, the best company in all the Forest, and capable of doing every one's work save ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... fir and the mountain pine covered the hills with their sombre green. The birds came back. The wild goose swam and screamed, and the winter wren caroled his bright song—loudest when there seemed least cause for rejoicing. The beaver cut his timber and patiently worked at his dams. The thriftless porcupine destroyed a tree for every morning meal. The gray jay, the "camp robber," followed the Indians about in hope that some forgotten piece of meat or of boiled root might fall to his share; while the buffalo, the bear, and the elk each carried on his affairs in his own ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... English town we find the same peaceful revolution in progress, services disappearing through disuse or omission, while privileges and immunities are being purchased in hard cash. The lord of the town, whether he were king, baron, or abbot, was commonly thriftless or poor, and the capture of a noble, or the campaign of a sovereign, or the building of some new minster by a prior, brought about an appeal to the thrifty burghers, who were ready to fill again their master's ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... sae fine," had somehow slipped into command of the House Farm, the only remaining portion of the wide demesne of farmlands once tributary to the House. And by the thrift which she learned from her South Country nurse in the care of her poultry and her pigs, and by her shrewd oversight of the thriftless, doddling Highland farmer and his more thriftless and more doddling womenfolk, she brought the farm to order and to a basis of profitable returns. And this, too, with so little "clash and claver" that her ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... be united!" she screamed. "Never! I have said it, and my words will come true. Think'st thou a witch like thee can bless an union, Alice Nutter? Thy blessings are curses, thy wishes disappointments and despair. Thriftless love shall be Alizon's, and the grave shall be her bridal bed. The witch's daughter shall ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... The people in the town have often and often hurt her feelings by their deridings, telling her that I had forgotten her, that if I did succeed in winning a fortune I would never return to her, but would marry some one else. They told her I was a thriftless vagrant, never would get rich, and through all this she has remained true to me, and every time I receive a letter from her she urges me to return. I don't know; if my mine turns out all right I will return, if it don't I will not return, and here I am just about to ...
— A Desperate Chance - The Wizard Tramp's Revelation, A Thrilling Narrative • Old Sleuth (Harlan P. Halsey)
... very much subordinate to the principal figure, but in their way they are no less life-like; the braggart—that inevitable foil to the hero in a saga—was never better represented than in the Gisli of our tale; the thrall Noise, with his carelessness, and thriftless, untrustworthy mirth, is the very pattern of a slave; Snorri the Godi, little though there is of him, fully sustains the prudent and crafty character which follows him in all the Sagas; Thorbiorn Oxmain is a good ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... their own party existence—into abnormal condition by the ultra radicals. The negro rapidly changed; "equality" frittered away what good instincts he had and developed all the worst, innate with him. It changed him from a careless and thriftless, but happy and innocent producer, into a mere consumer, at best; often indeed, into a besotted and criminal idler, subsisting in part upon Nature's generosity in supplying cabbage and fish, in part upon the thoughtlessness of his neighbor in ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... "You didn't think your grandmother was such a thriftless wifie as that! She mended the hole so that you could never find where it ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... set upon self throughout. I must say deliberately that the soul which loves unreasonably and unwisely, which even yields itself to the passion of others for the pleasure it gives rather than for the pleasure it receives—the thriftless, lavish, good-natured, affectionate people, who are said to make such a mess of their lives—are far higher in the scale of hope than the cautiously respectable, the prudently kind, the selfishly pure. ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... counterfeit, then toward the other portraits. "It was they who compounded our inheritances, Rudolph—all that we were to have in this world of wit and strength and desire and endurance. We know their histories. They were proud, brave and thriftless, a greedy and lecherous race, who squeezed life dry as one does an orange, and left us the dregs. I think that it is droll, but I am not sure it places us under any obligation. In fact, I rather think God ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... laugh like the gay thriftless Paris workman that he was. The little ones? Well, they grew up without his even noticing it, and, indeed, he was really fond of them, so long as they remained at home. And, besides, they worked as they grew older, and brought a little money in. However, he preferred to answer his ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... found to cost more than their yield. The miner does not grieve about that which he cannot catch. He is not careful to catch all that he could. His purpose is to draw the largest possible revenue per day from his claim. He does not intend to spend many years in mining, or if he does, he has become thriftless and improvident. In either case, he wishes to derive the utmost immediate profit from his mine. If his claim contain a dollar to the ton, and he can save five dollars by slowly washing only six tons in a day, while he might make ten dollars by rapidly washing fifteen ...
— Hittel on Gold Mines and Mining • John S. Hittell
... thriftless debtor to your loves, And run out much, in riot, from your stock; But all shall ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... of him reckless, thriftless, vain if you like—but merciful, gentle, generous, full of love and pity. He passes out of our life and goes to render his account beyond it. Think of the poor pensioners weeping at his grave; think of the noble spirits that ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... of an ancient plank-built tenement, which stood behind a sand-ridge that a far younger Atlantic than ours had piled up, and then, retreating, abandoned. In winter this rude domicile was bare and tenantless; but in the summer months it was usually occupied by some thriftless gammer or gaffer from the main-land, who, having stocked it with a few of the coarsest household goods, and whatever provisions came to hand, offered entertainment to such wreckers and 'soundsers' as happened to be in its vicinity. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... lad, who would soon be able to take care of himself. Her mother had another daughter too, but Janet knew that her sister could never supply her place to her mother. Though kind and well-intentioned, she was easy minded, not to say thriftless, and the mother of many bairns besides, and there could neither be room nor comfort for her mother at her fireside, should its shelter come to ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... advance of schools and churches, of books and money, of railroads and newspapers, of all things which are generally regarded as the comforts and even necessaries of life. His father, ignorant, needy, and thriftless, content if he could keep soul and body together for himself and his family, was ever seeking, without success, to better his unhappy condition by moving on from one such scene of dreary desolation to another. ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... the communication related. "Executor! To what? Oh! ah! Estate of Ruben Elder. Humph! What possessed him to trouble me with this business? I've no time to play executor to an estate, the whole proceeds of which would hardly fill my trousers' pocket. He was a thriftless fellow at best, and never could more than keep his head out of water. His debts will swallow up every thing, of course, saving my commissions, which I would gladly throw in to be ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... can point out a half-dozen of men riding by him splendidly, while he is on foot, courted by fashion, bowed into their carriages by tradesmen, denying themselves nothing, and living on who knows what? We see Jack Thriftless prancing in the park, or darting in his brougham down Pall Mall: we eat his dinners served on his miraculous plate. "How did this begin," we say, "or where will it end?" "My dear fellow," I heard Jack once say, "I owe money in every ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... eye, tongue, or heart else, where Else, but in dear and dogged man?—Ah, the heir To his own selfbent so bound, so tied to his turn, To thriftless reave both our rich round world bare And none reck of world after, this bids wear Earth brows of such care, care ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... a living soul looked in—not even those thriftless fellows who lived by chance jobs in the village and met in daily conclave at the store. We had often cursed their lengthy visits, but now that they had hired themselves out during the haymaking, we suddenly realized that they had often been entertaining. ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... those crimes which are committed whilst the culprit is either in a state of intoxication or else just recovering from such a state. To detect and trace its indirect influence a much closer study is required. The inconsequent, lazy and thriftless life of the criminal demands some sort of stimulant, and this is found readily at hand in alcohol. Alcohol is not the cause of the crimes of these people but it is closely associated with such cause. The man who stabs another in a saloon is not then guilty of his first crime. Under ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... underground darkness of the mine, where a system of pitiless infant slavery prevailed, side by side with the employment of women as beasts of burden, "in an atmosphere of filth and profligacy." The condition of too many toilers was rendered more hopeless by the thriftless follies born of ignorance. The educational provision made by the piety of former ages was no longer adequate to the needs of the ever-growing nation; and all the voluntary efforts made by clergy and laity, by ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... success, the consequent improvement in her father, the power to pay off his indebtedness—all these had turned that day into a day of thankfulness. The happiness that was in her rippled her face into smiles. When the door creaked on its hinges as it swung open, she laughed. It was a thriftless old door, such as bachelors kept, she murmured. Her brother's face, gloomy behind the iron screen, tickled her fancy. "You're like a caged bear, Alan," she cried, with a smile of impertinence; "I should hate to be shut up a day like this—no wonder ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... ago a tangled waste Lay sleeping on the west Atlantic's side; Their devious ways the Old World's millions traced Content, and loved, and labored, dared and died, While students still believed the charts they conned, And revelled in their thriftless ignorance, Nor dreamed of other lands that lay beyond Old Ocean's dense, ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... means. I hope not. But he is a dour man of nearly twice her years. An honest man? Well, I have never heard him accused of dishonesty. A hard man he has been called, but he suits our thriftless laird all the better for that. He has kept his place as factor at Blackhills for fifteen years and more, and has grown rich, they say—as riches are counted among folk who for the most part are poor. And he is respected—in ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... develop the good farmer wheresoever he may be; but the circumstances which make so many of our farmers at this day, coarse in speech, vulgar in manners, untidy in dress and in the arrangement of their farms and their habitations, ignorant, thoughtless, thriftless, indifferent, wasteful, lazy, are not arbitrary circumstances, but pliant and yielding, willing instruments, in the hands of good workmen, to raise, elevate, and instruct all who can be ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... raised the rates, and helped to crush the small farmers who, though they employed no labour, were forced to pay towards the maintenance of the labourers employed by their richer neighbours; it kept wages from rising, encouraged thriftless marriages and dissolute living, discouraged industry and efficient work, destroyed self-respect, and pauperised ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... So thriftless were the antiquated methods he followed that the lawyer, as he watched him, could barely repress a smile. Two hundred years ago the same crop was probably raised, cut and cured on the same soil in the same careless and primitive fashion. ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... the man who has the heartache. I knew one man—a most steady and industrious fellow, in constant work which kept him from home all day—whose wife became a sort of parasite on him in the interest of her own thriftless relatives. In his absence her brothers and sisters were at his table eating at his expense; food and coals bought with his earnings found their way to her mother's cottage; in short, he had "married ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... come into operation this year; tenants will have time to consider them; and, when introduced, we believe generally, they will see the advantage accruing to themselves. We do not expect that the idle and thriftless will admire them, but it may help them to discover that 'Idleness is the parent of want, while the hand ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... was a thoroughly honest though rather thriftless man, speaks of two classes of persons, not unlike each other—those who cannot keep their own money in their hands, and those who cannot keep their hands from other people's. The former are always ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... over to the Bennet place, and called the husband aside before mentioning his errand. He had long waited for some chance to secure an advantage over his thriftless neighbor, and now that it had come he drove it home with all the solemnity and earnestness that he could command. Bennet listened with eyes staring at the earth, and the veins throbbing in his bared neck, until the talk had reached a point where he ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... of Abraham, was migratory enough, but the course of his migrations was not determined by high moral motives, and we may safely affirm that had he ever found himself among the fleshpots of Egypt, he would have stayed there, however deep the moral darkness might have been. He was a thriftless "ne'er do weel," who had very commonplace reasons for wandering away from the miserable, solitary farm in Kentucky, on which his child first formed a sad acquaintance with life and nature, and which, as it happened, was not in the slave-owning ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... once done that thriftless man a good turn, and now was the moment when Beaucock had chosen to remember it in his own way. During his absence in town with Melbury, the lawyer's clerk had naturally heard a great deal of the timber-merchant's family scheme ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... not made for each other. He was thriftless, idle, dissolute—the small roue of the neighbourhood: she was careful, industrious, virtuous. He was good-looking—of a dark, saturnine beauty, insidiously impressive, like the dangerous charms of a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... And so, when some thriftless, distant relation, whose debts he had paid a dozen times over, gave him an overhauling on the subject of liberality, and seemed inclined to take him by the throat for further charity, he calmed himself down by a chapter or two from the New Testament and half a ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... David Cameron's reminiscences of his bonnie sister Jessie, and of the love match she had made with the great Highland chieftain, with an ill-disguised impatience. He had a Lowlander's scorn for the thriftless, fighting, freebooting traditions of the Northern clans and a Calvinist's dislike to the Stuarts and the Stuarts' faith; so that David's unusual emotion was exceedingly and, perhaps, unreasonably irritating to him. He ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... teacher, because they know that their parents are on the side of order, and, even if the children are inclined to be rebellious, they dare not defy the united authority of parents and teacher. But the child of the thief, the costermonger, the racecourse swindler, the thriftless labourer, is now practically emancipated through the action of sentimental persons. He may go to school or not, as he likes; and, while the decent and orderly poor are harried by School Board regulations, the ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... the ground, we heard several songs from one side or the other. Then royalty and its guards withdrew, and Queen Victoria's son and daughter-in- law were summoned by acclamation to the vacant throne. Our pride was perhaps a little modified when we were joined on our high places by a certain thriftless loafer of a white; and yet I was glad too, for the man had a smattering of native, and could give me some idea of the subject of the songs. One was patriotic, and dared Tembinok' of Apemama, the terror ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... So you are thriftless when you eagerly seize the first opportunity to fritter away your time over old clothes. You precipitate yourself unnecessarily against a disagreeable thing. For you are not going to put your stockings on. Perhaps you will not need your buttons for a week, and in a week you may have passed ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... and spoiled crops, were jubilant at the thought that the havoc done was only partial, not irrevocable;—a few months of incessant labour, said they, would bring back the holdings to their former state of perfection. Yet a general opinion prevails among foreigners that the Neapolitans are lazy, thriftless and helpless! They indeed rely to a certain extent upon St Januarius to protect their crops from the efforts of Nature, over which, they argue, the Saint is more likely to possess control than his human applicants, but ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... was out of the pale of polite society even in this new and isolated corner of the earth. He had had an Indian wife in his youth; being more accustomed to the ways of her people than of his own. For nearly twenty years he had lived a thriftless, bachelor existence, known among men, and by hearsay among women, as a noted story-teller, and genial, devil-may-care, old mountain man, whose heart was in the right place, but who never drew very heavily upon his brain resources, except to embellish a tale ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... dear (though tall of her age and healthy); and when I got over my thriftless fright, I longed to have more to say to her. Her voice to me was so different from all I had ever heard before, as might be a sweet silver bell intoned to the small chords of a harp. But I had no time to think about this, if I hoped ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... matter considerable thought and investigation. He said that every now and then it would occur to him that precious time was passing, but that he'd been so busy he'd not had time to go at it right. He said that most of the women on any list of the kind he'd seen was fussy and looked lazy and thriftless. Then he come right out and asked me if I happened to know a suitable candidate, and—well, Dixie, I couldn't hold in. I talked as earnest as a preacher at a ranting revival. I had his eye and I helt it clean through. I ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... these great men weaknesses which gave inferiors advantage over them? Men of letters cannot lay their hands on their hearts, and say, "No, the fault was fortune's, and the indifferent world's, not Goldsmith's nor Fielding's." There was no reason why Oliver should always be thriftless; why Fielding and Steele should sponge upon their friends; why Sterne should make love to his neighbors' wives. Swift, for a long time, was as poor as any wag that ever laughed: but he owed no penny to his neighbors: Addison, when he wore ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Massachusetts bay. One of the merchant adventurers, Thomas Weston, took it into his head in 1622 to separate from his partners and send out a colony of seventy men on his own account. These men made a settlement at Wessagusset, some twenty-five miles north of Plymouth. They were a disorderly, thriftless rabble, picked up from the London streets, and soon got into trouble with the Indians; after a year they were glad to get back to England as best they could, and in this the Plymouth settlers willingly aided them. In June of that same year 1622 there arrived ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... him with some wonder. It had never dawned upon him that this shiftless, thriftless, worthless, sponging parasite was yet, after and in spite of all, not mercenary in the issue of his thoughts; yet ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gifts, and ask a blessing. Meddle not with minor cares. Trust me, your unprepossessing Dam soon settles those affairs! Then will I, with honeyed suasion, Pinch some thriftless man of bills Of a mark of the occasion For my Lady of ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... careless about personal expenditure, and consider merely their own gratification, without regard for the comfort of others, generally find out the real uses of money when it is too late. Though by nature generous, these thriftless persons are often driven in the end to do very shabby things. They waste their money as they do their time; draw bills upon the future; anticipate their earnings; and are thus under the necessity of dragging after them a load of debts and obligations, which ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... cheerfully. It is his nature to be sanguine, and to hope loudly, vaingloriously; and he writes it honestly enough to his merchant—and draws. The labor gets worse and worse. In the indolent summer days the negro, careless, thriftless, ignorant, works only at intervals. Perhaps the June rise catches him, and there is a heavy expense in ditching and damming to save the Rottenbottom crop. Maybe the merchant hears of the army-worm and is alarmed, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... her girlish face, till it was like one of those faces which look out of Fra Angelico's pictures, and express what we are fond of talking about—adoration and beneficence: "Could I paint for the potteries, Master Locke?" For, in his noble thriftless way, he had initiated her into some of the very secrets of his tinting, and Dulcie was made bold by the feats ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... not for the French, at any rate for the silences that preceded the French, and for their own riparian architecture. The busy towns along the streams I have known have turned their faces from these streams toward the railroads. They have left the riverside to the thriftless men and the truant boys. Stables and outhouses look upon their waters, and the sewers pollute them. And if on some especially eligible bluff better buildings do stand, their owners or builders show no appreciation ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... countless demands of a vanity that enters into every fibre of that living organism called society. Love, for her, is above all things, and by its very nature, a vainglorious, brazen-fronted, ostentatious, thriftless charlatan. If at the Court of Louis XIV. there was not a woman but envied Mlle. de la Valliere the reckless devotion of passion that led the grand monarch to tear the priceless ruffles at his wrists in order to assist the entry of a Duc de Vermandois into ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... wants my poor little farm because it makes a nook in his park-wall. Ye may e'en tell him he has mair than he makes good use of; he gangs up and down drinking, roaring, and quarrelling, through all the country markets, making foolish bargains in his cups, which he repents when he is sober; like a thriftless wretch, spending the goods and gear that his forefathers won with the sweat of their brows: light come, light go, he cares not a farthing. But why should I stand surety for his contracts? The little I have is free, and I can call it my awn—hame's ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... my love! E'en at the time my spirit died With aching tenderness, my eye, Encountering thine, was cold and dry! To maim intention, fondness,—came The sudden impotence of shame. Thy happiness was thriftless wealth, For I could only hoard by stealth! Affection's brightly-glowing ray Shone with such strong, o'erpowering sway, That ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... that the thriftless, the lazy, the vicious, the incapable, ought to have the reward given to those who are far-sighted, capable, and upright, is to say what is not true and cannot be true. Let us try to level up, but let us beware of the evil of levelling down. If a man stumbles, ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... a bag which his neighbors thought to hold his crop of starveling turnips, but which was really a king's ransom in gold and jewels—the earnings of Captain Kidd in long years of honest piracy. It was in Governor Belcher's time, and cash was scarce. Merchants and professional men as well as the thriftless went to Tom for money, and, as he always had it, his business grew until he seemed to have a mortgage on half the men in Boston who were rich enough to be in debt. He even went so far as to move into a new house, to ride in his own carriage, and to eat enough ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... charities established to carry out some silly fad or to gratify some silly vanity; sectarian charities intended to further ends which, in the eyes of all but the members of one sect, are not only useless but mischievous; charities that encourage thriftless marriages, or make it easy for men to neglect obvious duties, or keep a semi-pauper population stationary in employments and on a soil where they can never prosper, or in other ways handicap, impede or divert the natural and healthy course of industry. Illustrations ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... of Mr. Kruger to Johannesburg was the famous one of 1890, when the collapse of the share market and the apparent failure of many of the mines left a thriftless and gambling community wholly ruined and half starving, unable to bear the burden which the State imposed, almost wholly unappreciative of the possibilities of the Main Reef, and ignorant of what to do to create an industry and restore prosperity. This, at least, the community did understand, ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... curl. An idler is apt to be like a sullen child, except that in a grown man the child's sulky spite becomes a dark malice, all-embracing. For the very reason that Vance knew he was receiving what he deserved, and that this was the just reward for his thriftless years of idleness, he began to hate Elizabeth with a cold, quiet hatred. There is something stimulating about any great passion. Now Vance felt his nerves soothed and calmed. His self-possession returned with a rush. He was suddenly able to smile ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... what then? Beatrice and the children in the country, and me not looking after the children. Beatrice is thriftless. She would be in endless difficulty. It would be a degradation to me. She would keep a red sore inflamed against me; I should be a shameful thing in her mouth. Besides, there would go all her strength. She would not make any efforts. "He has brought it on us," she would say; ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... of the 'poor things' thought, Miss Margery knew to her regret,—that the Charity was merely a reservoir for the wasteful and the thriftless to draw from at will. Could it ever be, she wondered, what it ought to be,—a crutch to be cast aside with regained health, a hand of brotherhood to lift the fallen and teach them to stand alone, to steady the weak and make them strong? How ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... time of public distress did Tom Walker set up as a usurer in Boston. His door was soon thronged by customers. The needy and the adventurous; the gambling speculator; the dreaming land jobber; the thriftless tradesman; the merchant with cracked credit; in short, every one driven to raise money by desperate means and desperate ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... and you saw flame, Some one man knew God called his name. For me, I think I said, "Appear! "Good were it to be ever here. "If thou wilt, let me build to thee "Service-tabernacles three, "Where, forever in thy presence, "In ecstatic acquiescence, "Far alike from thriftless learning "And ignorance's undiscerning, "I may worship and remain!" Thus at the show above me, gazing With upturned eyes, I felt my brain Glutted with the glory, blazing Throughout its whole mass, over and under Until at length it burst asunder And out of it bodily there streamed, The too-much ...
— Christmas Eve • Robert Browning
... his son, Lord Blandamer, who was drowned in Cullerne Bay, had been illegitimate, and his grandson, Lord Blandamer, who now sat on the throne of Fording, was illegitimate too. And Martin's dream had been true. Selfish, thriftless, idle Martin, whom the boys called "Old Nebuly," had not been mad after all, but had been ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... friendship thus thy judgment wronging, With praises not to me belonging, In task more meet for mightiest powers, Wouldst thou engage my thriftless hours. But say, my Erskine, hast thou weighed That secret power by all obeyed, Which warps not less the passive mind, Its source concealed, or undefined: Whether an impulse, that has birth Soon as the infant wakes on earth, One with our feelings and our powers, And rather part of us than ours; ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... Indies have diminished since emancipation,—and that the negroes, having worked, as they believed, quite long enough without wages, now refuse to work for the planters without higher pay than the latter, with the thriftless and evil habits of slavery still clinging to them, can afford to give,—the author considers himself justified in denouncing negro emancipation as one of the "shams" which he was specially sent into this world to belabor. Had he confned himself ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... idea than pressing his vengeful advantage at that time. He went out into Emmaus and engaging the unemployed of the thriftless town sent them broadcast into the hills in search of a pagan who was young, ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... was then capable of producing, they also robbed it of fertility without restoring to it what was taken from it. Thus the loss caused by wasteful methods was passed on to future generations. To continue such methods in the light of our present knowledge and with our growing population is thriftless in the extreme. Methods of preserving and restoring the fertility of the soil and of obtaining the largest returns from it are now receiving the most careful attention from both state ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... it,—Thou hast other work— But for thy petulant words do thou this penance: I do forbid thee here, to give henceforth Food, coin, or clothes, to any living soul. Thy thriftless waste doth scandalise the elect, And maim thine usefulness: thou dost elude My wise restrictions still: 'Tis great, to live Poor, among riches; when thy wealth is spent, Want is ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... houses I could name), was prouder of his post about the Court than of his ancestral honors, and valued his dignity (as Lord of the Butteries and Groom of the King's Posset) so highly, that he cheerfully ruined himself for the thankless and thriftless race who bestowed it. He pawned his plate for King Charles the First, mortgaged his property for the same cause, and lost the greater part of it by fines and sequestration: stood a siege of his castle by Ireton, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... who lived in Nuremberg, and who was named Ludovic Valcarm. The mother of this young man had been Peter's first cousin, and when she died Ludovic had in some sort fallen into the hands of his relative the town-clerk. Ludovic's father was still alive; but he was a thriftless, aimless man, who had never been of service either to his wife or children, and at this moment no one knew where he was living, or what he was doing. No one knew, unless it was his son Ludovic, who never received much encouragement in Nuremberg to talk about his father. At the present moment, ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... place to seek for a king!" he replied. "There are a few Saxons in hiding here. Some live by fishing, some chop wood; but for the most part they are an idle and thriftless lot, and methinks have fled hither rather to escape from honest work or to avoid the penalties of crimes than for ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... Oh, youth's a thriftless squanderer, It's easy come and spent, And heavy is the going now Where once the light foot went. The hawthorn bush puts on its white, The throstle whistles clear, But Spring comes once for every man Just once in ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... and common fields had been accompanied by very poor farming, very thriftless and shiftless habits. The improvement of agriculture, the application of capital to that occupation, the disappearance of the domestic system of industry, and other changes made the enclosure of common land and the accompanying changes inevitable. None the ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney |
