"Cheapen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... each may claim the credit due to a peculiar eminence. It is only thus that you may measure conflicting talents: as it were unfair to judge a poet by a brief experiment in prose, so it would be monstrous to cheapen the accomplishments of a pickpocket, because he bungled at ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... polished, so a good, smooth surface is provided, staining does not cheapen, but, on the other hand, serves ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... reverence as he went through the town. Yea, because he was such a person of honor Beelzebub had him from street to street, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a little time, that he might, if possible, allure that Blessed One to cheapen and buy some of his vanities; but he had no mind to the merchandise, and therefore left the town without laying out so much as one farthing upon these vanities. This fair, therefore, is an ancient thing of long standing, ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... until Thursday—I'm a little pressed." Soon it became impossible for him to get more than a dollar at a time even from the women, except an occasional windfall through a weak or ignorant new acquaintance. He clung tenaciously to the fifty-cent basis—to go lower would cheapen him. But for the last two weeks his regular levies had been of twenty-five cents, with not a few descents to ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... the whole broadside of sliding or folding doors, let the two rooms thus connected be of different styles but equal richness,—different, that they shall not seem one room cut in two,—peers, that one shall not shame and cheapen the other. ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... always clean them before putting them away. Keep all the wood-work of tools well painted, and the iron and steel in a condition, by the application of oil and otherwise, to prevent rust. Good tools facilitate and cheapen cultivation, and increase the yield of crops, Money paid out for such tools is ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... through the different turnings of these alleys, regain his carriage by another passage, and resume his seat with an air of vast importance. With a view to protract the time of his supposed visits, he would, at one place, turn aside to a wall; at another, cheapen an urinal; at a third corner, read a quack advertisement, or lounge a few minutes in some bookseller's shop; and, lastly, glide into some obscure coffee-house, and treat himself with ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... people assume that the fostering of its own manufactures is a cardinal necessity, it can secure that result either by the coarse process of compulsory duties upon all foreign importations, or by developing the ingenuity and skill which will so cheapen the manufacture itself as to make up the difference ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... man, Monsieur Moreau," remarked Pierrotin, thinking of the thousand francs he wanted to get from the steward. "He is a man who makes others work, but he doesn't cheapen what they do; and he gets all he can out of the land—for his master. Honest man! He often comes to Paris and gives me a good fee: he has lots of errands for me to do in Paris; sometimes three or four packages ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... wholly set aside by ladies until 1793, when with consideration Queen Charlotte abandoned its use, swayed no doubt by her desire to cheapen, in that time of dearth, the flour of which it was made. It has been said its disuse was attributable to Sir Joshua Reynolds, Angelica Kauffmann, and other painters of their day, but it is much more likely that the ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... And you have to consider that the most open handed of us must een cheapen that which we buy every day. This lady has to make a present to a warder nigh every night ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... point were not all that had been hoped. Two bulletins seem to be an accepted number, but more than that a question. We do not desire to confuse our children, or to detract in value from a bulletin when once posted, and most certainly not to cheapen our rooms; but if the standard is held high in each case, the number would not matter. Take for instance a hero bulletin. Here is a wealth of material which overwhelms us, and even when we have selected with the utmost thought our heroes and placed them side ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... the old Lady Mary MacScrew, and those middle-aged young women her daughters; they are going to cheapen and haggle in Belgium and up the Rhine until they meet with a boarding-house where they can live upon less board-wages than her ladyship pays her footmen. But she will exact and receive considerable respect from ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a-foot. It is the synod of all pates politick, jointed and laid together in most serious posture, and they are not half so busy at the parliament. It is the antic of tails to tails, and backs to backs, and for vizards you need go no farther than faces. It is the market of young lecturers, whom you may cheapen here at all rates and sizes. It is the general mint of all famous lies, which are here like the legends of popery, first coined and stamped in the church. All inventions are emptied here, and not few pockets. The best sign of a temple in it is, that it is the thieves' sanctuary, which rob ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... to heighten its flat, pictorial, descriptive surface by the arts of drama. It is not managed by peppering the surface with animated dialogue, by making the characters break into talk when they really have nothing to contribute to the subject; the end of this is only to cheapen and discredit their talk when at length it is absolutely required. The dramatic rule is applied more fundamentally; it animates the actual elements of the picture, the description, and makes a drama of these. I have noted how ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... been only a condition of labor? To this end it would have sufficed if men having machines, valiant knights fighting with equal weapons, had not made a mystery of their secrets or withheld them from others; if barons had set to work, not to monopolize their products, but to cheapen them; and if vassals, assured that war would result only in increasing their wealth, had always shown themselves enterprising, industrious, and faithful. The chief of the workshop would then have been simply a captain putting his men through manoeuvres in their interest as well ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... that peace will create. An indemnity makes the purpose of the courage of the Grays in their assaults and of the Browns in their resistance that of the burglar and the looter. There is no money value to a human life when it is your own; and our soldiers gave their lives. Do not cheapen their service." ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... screw, That a "middle-class income" won't stand much more squeezing, And Forty or Fifty Pounds more in the year. For your bright companionship, albeit pleasing, Would come pretty stiff, my boy. That is my fear. Just cheapen yourself, in supply and in fitting, To something that fits with my limited "screw," And you will not find me shrink long from admitting A dear ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 29, 1891 • Various
... cheapen and bargain with me," said Gotzkowsky with a hoarse laugh. "You take me for a chapman, who measures out his life and services by the yard; and you wish to pay me for mine by the same measure. Go, most ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... would He but have done him reverence as He went through the town (Matt. 4:8; Luke 4:5-7). Yea, because He was such a person of honour, Beelzebub had Him from street to street, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a little time, that he might, if possible, allure the Blessed One to cheapen and buy some of his vanities; but He had no mind to the merchandise, and therefore left the town, without laying out so much as one farthing upon these vanities. This fair, therefore, is an ancient thing, of long standing, and a very great fair. Now these ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Caesarea. So this quaint historian leaves the terrible carnage to go on at Europus, and lets the pursuit, the forced armistice, the settling of outposts, shift for themselves, while he lingers far into the evening watching Malchion the Syrian cheapen big mackarel at Caesarea; if night had not come all too soon, I dare say he would have dined with him when the fish was cooked. If all this had not been accurately set down in the history, what sad ignorance we should have been ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... bells. Why, in like manner, do we not value a man for what is properly his own? He has a great train, a beautiful palace, so much credit, so many thousand pounds a year: all these are about him, but not in him. You will not buy a pig in a poke: if you cheapen a horse, you will see him stripped of his housing-cloths, you will see him naked and open to your eye; or if he be clothed, as they anciently were wont to present them to princes to sell, 'tis only on the ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... not going to cheapen herself. She felt that even in the eyes of the natives—the well-to-do part, at least—she lost a little of her distinction when she was engaged to Dr. Mitchell. The engagement had been announced in ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... her in the whole history of gallantry. At the end of her first season, her reputation was completely in tatters. Accepting the situation philosophically, she did not pretend to be better than she was, but she was clever enough not to cheapen herself by entangling herself too promiscuously. She had lovers by the score, yet none could boast of having really won her heart. A woman of superficial emotions, she was entirely without depth, yet so long as it suited her purpose, she was able to conceal this shallowness and profess ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... won't have a good and fine cloth to make a coat. How much do you sell it the ell? We thout overcharge you from a halfpenny, it cost twenty franks. Sir, I am not accustomed to cheapen: tell me the last price. I have told you, sir, it is valuable in that. It is too much dear, I give at it, eighteen franks. You shall not have what you have wished. You did beg me my last word, I told you them. Well, well, cut them ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca
... mystery which so delicately surrounded him, the very distinction of his appearance irritated her, so soon as she became conscious that she was no longer the sole object of his thoughts. She was pushed by a bad desire to force from him a more complete self-revelation, to cheapen him in some way and break ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... developments are to be proved rational or condemned as vain? If we look to the most sordid and instrumental of industries we see that their purpose is to produce a foreordained result with the minimum of effort. They serve, in a word, to cheapen commodities. But the value of such an achievement is clearly not final; it hangs on two underlying ideals, one demanding abundance in the things produced and the other diminution in the toil required to produce them. At least the latter interest may in turn be analysed further, for to diminish ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... on this. An insidious proposal; which, however, the Commons (moved thereto by seagreen Robespierre) dexterously accept as a sort of hint, or even pledge, that the Clergy will forthwith come over to them, constitute the States-General, and so cheapen grains! (Bailly, Memoires, i. 114.)—Finally, on the 27th day of May, Mirabeau, judging the time now nearly come, proposes that 'the inertia cease;' that, leaving the Noblesse to their own stiff ways, the ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... consistent character-drawing, and with a very searching analysis of the human heart, which is done so easily, and in such simple English, that the depth and truth of it only come upon reflection. He condescends to none of those scuffles and buffetings and pantomime rallies which enliven, but cheapen, many of Fielding's pages. The latter has, it may be granted, a broader view of life. He had personal acquaintance of circles far above, and also far below, any which the douce citizen, who was his rival, had ever been able or willing to explore. His pictures ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to follow him, as if, like the dead corpse, he could not stir till the bearers were all ready. "My life," says Horace, speaking to one of these magnificos, "is a great deal more easy and commodious than thine, in that I can go into the market and cheapen what I please without being wondered at; and take my horse and ride as far as Tarentum without being missed." It is an unpleasant constraint to be always under the sight and observation and censure of others; as there may be vanity in it, so, ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... and to a desire for a freer experience of life than custom has allowed him. Carmen, who showed to Margaret only her best side—she would have been wise to exhibit no other to Henderson, but women of her nature are apt to cheapen themselves with men—seemed an embodiment of that graceful gayety and fascinating worldliness which make ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... planters were of opinion that it would be advantageous to establish the trees on their islands and to encourage the consumption of the fruit by their slaves. Not only was it considered that the use of breadfruit would cheapen the cost of the slaves' living, but—a consideration that weighed both with the planters and the British Government in view of existing relations with the United States—it was also believed that it would "lessen the dependence ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... me such a fool. One woman is fair; yet I am well: another is wise; yet I am well: another virtuous; yet I am well: but till all graces be in one woman, one woman shall not come in my grace. Rich she shall be, that's certain; wise, or I'll none; virtuous, or I'll never cheapen her; fair, or I'll never look on her; mild, or come not near me; noble, or not I for an angel; of good discourse, an excellent musician, and her hair shall be of what colour it please God. Ha, the prince and monsieur Love! I will hide ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... imitated or replaced by anything just as good, and because your request for a job for Courtland Warrington naturally brings them up. You write that Court says that a man who has occupied his position in the world naturally can't cheapen himself by stepping down into any little piddling job where he'd have to do ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... woman!—she who may On her sweet self set her own price, Knowing he cannot choose but pay - How has she cheapen'd Paradise! How given for nought her priceless gift, How spoiled the bread and spill'd the wine, Which, spent with due respective thrift, Had made brutes ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... keen, grave workmen from Greece, whose trade it was to sell their own works in Italy and teach Italians to imitate them, had already found rivals of the soil with skill that could forestall their lessons and cheapen their crucifixes and addolorate, more years than is supposed before the art came at all into Florence. The pre-eminence to which Cimabue was raised at once by his contemporaries, and which he still retains to a wide extent even in the modern mind, is to be accounted for, partly by the ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... with women especially. Their dodges are extraordinary. Tayleure would cheapen a penny loaf, and run down the price of a box of lucifer matches. There's a chance for you! She would be an economical wife; but then, my dear fellow, she would spend all the savings on herself. ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... Princess Mary and her half-brother, the Duke of (p. 213) Richmond; the more insuperable the obstacle, the more its removal enhanced his power. It was all very well to dispense with canons and divine laws, but to annul papal dispensations—was that not to cheapen his own wares? Why, wrote Henry to Clement, could he not dispense with human laws, if he was able to dispense with divine at pleasure?[592] Obviously because divine authority could take care of itself, but papal prerogatives needed ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard |
