"Miserliness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Goelets—counting from the founder of the fortune—were incorrigibly parsimonious. They reduced miserliness to a supreme art. Likewise the third generation. Of Peter Goelet, a grandson of the original Peter, many stories were current illustrating his close-fistedness. His passion for economy was carried to such an abnormal stage that he refused ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... his grey face was marked with many lines, so fine as to be seen only at close quarters; yet on the whole forming a wrinkled and aged mask as of one far advanced in life. In addition to this singularity of aspect there was the extraordinary seclusion and sordid miserliness of his mode of existence, more in harmony with the passiveness of extreme old age, than with the energy of a man still in the prime of his days. The village mothers frightened their children with tales about Jean Merle's gigantic strength, which made him an object of ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... everything into consideration, offer him food. The wise have said that man liveth in vain in whose dwelling a Brahmana conversant with mantras doth not accept water, honey and curds, and kine from fear of being unable to appropriate them, or from miserliness and unwillingness with which the gifts are made. A physician, a maker of arrows, even one that hath given up the vow of Brahmacharya before it is complete, a thief, a crooked-minded man, a Brahmana that drinks, one that causeth miscarriage, one that liveth ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... business, like a merchant. But the thing that he has nearest his heart is his collection of postage-stamps. This is his treasure; and he always speaks of it as though he were going to get a fortune out of it. His companions accuse him of miserliness and usury. I do not know: I like him; he teaches me a great many things; he seems a man to me. Coretti, the son of the wood-merchant, says that he would not give him his postage-stamps to save his mother's life. My ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... it; the second was, that the old fool of a weaver, whose loom he heard rattling already, had a great deal of money hidden somewhere. How was it that he, Dunstan Cass, who had often heard talk of Marner's miserliness, had never thought of suggesting to Godfrey that he should frighten or persuade the old fellow into lending the money on the excellent security of the young Squire's prospects? The resource occurred ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... what I told him. He is vulnerable to reason there—always a few grains of common-sense in an ounce of miserliness. Miserliness is a capital quality to run in families; it's the safe side for madness to dip on. And there must be a little crack in the Brooke family, else we should not see what we are ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... principle or the lack of principle of a laissez faire attitude throughout life. Saving in a good cause, and with a clear conscience and determined purpose, is one of the elements of the higher life and is far removed from miserliness. It is a principle of adaptation of means to ends, and that any school which trains this power is reaching fundamental principles of the practical life needs ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge |
