"Paltry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on St. Andrew's Day, was on several occasions a subject of dispute. In Henry VIII.'s time we find the bishopric valued at L358 4s. 9 1/2d., and later, in 1595, it is stated that the clear annual profits did not exceed L220. To supplement this paltry revenue the bishops often held other appointments in commendam. During the latter part of the seventeenth century and the greater part of the eighteenth, the deanery of Westminster was, in this way, almost continuously attached to the bishopric of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... mistake in one part." "What was it?" the other asked. "Waal, you say that So-and-so 'lipped the hole for a half.'" "Yes, that is right." "Oh, go away; you don't mean to tell me that a rich man like that would be playing for a paltry fifty cents. I've altered it to 'lipped the hole for a hundred dollars.'" And I remember that once when I was playing the best ball of two amateurs, one of the reporters had been instructed by his chief to keep the best ball score. I happened to lose the match on the last ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... discouraging for them. They were now talking about their respective ways of procuring the sums of money needed, and the trifle they had managed to save, and the small amounts they earned in one way or another, to augment the original sums, seemed so paltry to Toinette, who never stopped to ask whence came the five-dollar bills so regularly sent her each week, and who, had a fancy entered her head for one, would have walked out and bought a camera very much as she would have ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... the dregs of the cup of woe I am draining. Edith, do not refuse the only aid I can offer you in your loneliness; and accept the earnest assurance that I shall be grateful for the privilege of promoting your comfort. Affection and trust I have not, and a few paltry thousands are all I am now able to bestow. By the love you once professed, and in the name of that compassion you should feel for me, I beg of you, despise not the gift; and let the consciousness that I have saved you from toil ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... highest degree that air of solidity and magnificence which distinguishes the Mexican edifices, and which, together with the width and regularity of the streets, the vastness of the public squares, the total absence of all paltry ornament, the balconies with their balustrades and window-gratings of solid iron and bronze, render Mexico, in spite of its insufficient police, one of the noblest-looking cities in the world. The object of this college is to provide for the education of the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... sort were very common, public debates were of weekly occurrence; and little did Martin Luther realize that this paltry half-sheet of paper was to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... caused him to recoil. Then she ordered her great camel, Aboufaki, to be brought, and, attended by her two hideous and one-eyed negresses, Nerkes and Cafour, set out to surprise the lovers. She burst in upon them, foaming with indignation, and said to Vathek: "Free thyself from the arms of this paltry doxy; drown her in the water before me, and instantly follow my guidance." But Vathek replied civilly, but decisively, that he was taking Nouronihar with him; and the princess, having heard her declare that she would follow him beyond the Kaf in the land of the Afrits, was appeased, and pronounced ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... he received them, but when he had left the room, and was out of sight of Kaunitz, he turned toward the door muttering, "As if I were such a fool as to sell my precious secret to you for two paltry ducats! I know of others who will pay me for my news, and ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... opposed to that of some, who, because the Florentines are merchants, hold them for neither noble nor high-spirited, but for tame and low.[1] On the contrary, I have often wondered with myself how it could be that men who have been used from their childhood upwards for a paltry profit to carry bales of wool and baskets of silk like porters, and to stand like slaves all day and great part of the night at the loom, could summon, when and where was need, such greatness of soul, such high and haughty thoughts, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... and merry was the prank which he played upon the extortionate money-lender of Warwick. Riding on an easy rein through the town, Hind heard a tumult at a street corner, and inquiring the cause, was told that an innkeeper was arrested by a thievish usurer for a paltry twenty pounds. Dismounting, this providence in jack-boots discharged the debt, cancelled the bond, and took the innkeeper's goods for his own security. And thereupon overtaking the usurer, 'My friend!' he exclaimed, 'I lent you late a sum of twenty pounds. Repay it at once, or I take ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... deserve the epithets of exigeant and extortionate which are so freely applied to them by the merchants. Haj Ibrahim, who brings some thousand dollars' worth of goods to this part, pays only the paltry sum of some twenty or thirty dollars at the most. In fact, here is free-trade with a vengeance, existing long before it has been attempted to carry it out, with such tremendous consequences, as in Great Britain. France and the Zollverein must send ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... that some of these men, tingling with the consciousness of powers of which these busy, engaged people of the streets and shops knew nothing, turned with disdain from the petty, paltry, many of them non-manly tasks that men pursued solely that they might live. Live! For these last terrible, great and glorious fifty months they had schooled themselves to the notion that the main business of life ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... will not endeavor to dissuade me from sending it. Go it MUST. It is no fiction to say that at present I cannot write this tale. The immense profits which Oliver has realized to its publisher and is still realizing; the paltry, wretched, miserable sum it brought to me (not equal to what is every day paid for a novel that sells fifteen hundred copies at most); the recollection of this, and the consciousness that I have still the slavery and drudgery of another work on the same journeyman-terms; ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... accustomed men, to use Walpole's lively phrase, to come to breakfast with the question, "What new victory is there this morning?" The brilliant letter-writer's correspondence is full of the gossip arising from these usually paltry affairs; and throughout, whether in success or disaster, the name of Howe appears frequently, and always as the subject of praise. "Howe, brother of the lord of that name, was the third on the naval list. He was undaunted ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... his first sermon before his class, in the presence of his professor of divinity! His immediate impulse was to rush from the house, and home hot-foot to his mother; and it would have been well for him to have done so indeed, confessed all, and turned his back on the church and his paltry ambition together! But he had never been open with his mother, and he feared his father, not knowing the tender righteousness of that father's heart, or the springs of love which would at once have ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... month a freshman, attending philosophical lectures and taking part in student life than the dreaded separation between us two so differently constituted friends came to pass. The provocation was trifling, in fact paltry. One day I was standing in the lecture-room with a few fellow- students before a lecture began, when a freshman hurried up to us and asked: "Is it true, what Sebastian says, that he is the person you think most of in the world?" My reply was: "Did he say that ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... are purely insignificant, and it is the sign of a weak and paltry nature to pay any attention to them whatever. Only occasionally they matter. And this is only when something threatens us from the outer mechanical, or accidental death-world. When anything threatens us from the world of death, then ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... this Preface without an expression of regret at the dark and terrible fate which overtook the high-minded, patriotic, and distinguished Irishman, Thomas D'Arcy McGee. He was a man who loved his country well; and when the contemptible squabbles and paltry dissensions of the present have passed away, his name will be a hallowed memory, like that of Emmet or Fitzgerald, to inspire men with high, ideals of patriotism ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... Saleh, if the rock-hole isn't there already there won't be time for your God to make it; besides, if you can get what you want by praying for it, let me have a fresh-water lake, or a running river, that will take us right away to Perth. What's the use of a paltry rock-hole?" Then he said solemnly, "Ah, Mr. Gile, you ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... of Browning's knaves cannot be better expressed than by Chesterton. 'They are real somewhere. We are talking to a garrulous and peevish sneak; we are watching the play of his paltry features, his evasive eyes and babbling lips. And suddenly the face begins to change and harden, the eyes glare like the eyes of a mask, the whole face of clay becomes a common mouthpiece, and the voice that comes forth is the voice of God ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... a cottage in Surrey; you'd entertain, go out a good deal. You'd certainly give up these dingy quarters. My friendship for you deplores a mammoth skeleton in your cupboard, James. My study of advertising tells me that this paltry existence of yours does not adequately push your name before the public. You're losing ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... Solons cursed the Lords, And called the malt-tax sinful, Jack heeded not their angry words, But smiled and drank his skinful. And when men wasted health and life, In search of rank and riches, Jack marched aloof the paltry strife, And ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... Carwitchet's growl. "You've not been here all this time for nothing. You've been collecting for a Kilburn cot or getting subscriptions for the distressed Irish landlords. I know you. Now I'm not going to see myself ruined for the want of a paltry hundred or so. I tell you the colt is a dead certainty. If I could have got a thousand or two on him last week, we might have ended our dog days millionaires. Hand over what you can. You've money's worth, if not money. ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... and he is of little avail in miscellaneous matters; whereas, a very indifferent cur, bred about the house, and accustomed to assist in every thing, will often put the more noble breed to disgrace in those paltry services. If one calls out, for instance, that the cows are in the corn, or the hens in the garden, the house-colley needs no other hint, but runs and turns them out. The shepherd's dog knows not what is astir; and, if he is called out in a hurry for such work, ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... to go there, and no real occasion at all—have never been there in their lives before probably—and now all of a sudden have shown the keenest desire and determination to go out there about dusk, or soon after, and with the most paltry and foolish excuses in the world. Of course," he added, "they have been prevented, but the desire, stronger than their superstitious dread, and which they cannot explain, ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... seducing spirits,' is a little superfluous. The fact that a parish-clerk has taken to petty pilfering can scarcely justify those heterodox conclusions. But when we have smiled at Crabbe's philosophy, we begin to wonder at the force of his sentiment. A blighted human soul is a pathetic object, however paltry the temptation to which it has succumbed. Jachin has the dignity of despair, though he is not quite a fallen archangel; and Crabbe's favourite scenery harmonises with ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... peevishness and ingratitude weary out his benevolence. But the pangs of wounded vanity seemed to him ridiculous: and he scarcely felt sufficient compassion even for the pangs of wounded affection. He had seen and felt so much of sharp misery, that he was not affected by paltry vexations; and he seemed to think that everybody ought to be as much hardened to those vexations as himself. He was angry with Boswell for complaining of a headache, with Mrs. Thrale for grumbling about the dust on the road, or the smell of the kitchen. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... dollars to his quota. For two months, he had carried the double load, and beaten his schedule; in early May, he was falling behind at the rate of fifty dollars a week. With twelve weeks ahead, he faced a deficit of a paltry six hundred dollars—and the Mix amendment ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... When he had leased this paltry building for the purpose of converting it into a tavern, he had found this chamber decorated in just this manner, and had purchased the furniture and obtained the orange flowers at second hand, with the idea that this would cast a ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... and citizen-deputy Heriot was preparing to go out to the small tavern round the corner where he habitually took his dejeuner. Citizen Rondeau, who for the consideration of ten sous a day looked after Heriot's paltry creature-comforts, was busy tidying up the squalid apartment which the latter occupied on the top floor of a lodging-house in the Rue Cocatrice. This apartment consisted of three rooms leading out ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... a paltry way as that! Many thanks for the good advice! You'd like me to look after a bloated aristocrat's geese and then sit on the steps and eat dry bread to the smell of the roast bird, would you? No, thank you! And even if I did—what ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... more than ever, and twisting her head round, "Even you have grown dull!" she cried. "She does, of course, indulge in expectations, but they are actuated by some underhand and paltry notion! She may go on giving way to these ideas, but I, for my part, will only care for Mr. Chia Cheng and Madame Wang. I won't care a rap for any one else. In fact, I'll be nice with such of my sisters and brothers, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... had been preparing the wood for making the cross of our Lord; all was in readiness, and the men were asleep by its side. Judas was filled with horror at the sight: he shuddered and fled when he beheld the instrument of that cruel death to which for a paltry sum of money he had delivered up his Lord and Master; he ran to and fro in perfect agonies of remorse, and finally hid himself in an adjoining cave, where he determined to await the trial which was to take ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... obtain the love of my people, not from any weak thirst for love, but from a queenly ambition. But I am set aside, and Amelia will be a queen; my fate will be that of my elder sisters, I shall wed a poor margrave, or paltry duke, and may indeed thank God if I am not an old maiden princess, with a ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... precious to me than all jewels of the earth—come, let me take thee from thy shelf and hold thee lovingly in my hands and press thee tenderly to this aged and slow-pulsing heart of mine! Dost thou remember how I found thee half a century ago all tumbled in a lot of paltry trash? Did I not joyously possess thee for a sixpence, and have I not cherished thee full sweetly all these years? My Walton, soon must we part forever; when I am gone say unto him who next shall have thee to his own that with his latest breath ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... of the building, pointing, in the pride of his heart, to the elegant marble walls, the beautifully-gilded ceiling, the well where the true worshippers drink and wash,—with which we also blessed our palates and moistened our beards,—the paltry reading-desk with the ancient Koran, the handsome columns, and the green stone with the wonderful nails. As soon as we had completed this circuit, pulling a key from his girdle, he unlocked the door of the railing ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... portion ever equal thine, When on some populous town our troops have made Successful war; in the contentious fight The larger portion of the toil is mine; But when the day of distribution comes, Thine is the richest spoil; while I, forsooth, Must be too well content to bear on board Some paltry prize for all my warlike toil. To Phthia now I go; so better far, To steer my homeward course, and leave thee here But little like, I deem, dishonouring me, To fill thy coffers with the spoils ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... was a temporary coolness between them (following violent heat) with regard to some worsted of brilliant rose-madder hue, which a forgetful draper had sold to Mrs. Plaistow, having definitely promised it to Miss Mapp ... but Miss Mapp's large-mindedness scorned to recall the sordid details of this paltry appropriation. The heat had quite subsided, and Miss Mapp was, for her part, quite prepared to let the coolness regain the normal temperature of cordiality the moment that Mrs. Plaistow returned that worsted. Outwardly ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... Life gives us the impression that he was a firm believer, that he strove to live a Christian life, that he was very amiable, and that he was quite free from the paltry vice of jealousy at another's ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... feature, an embellished representation of a small house which exists on the west side of the Sabbionera, and which had at one time perhaps that pointed style of architecture which his engraving shows, though its present decoration is paltry and unreal. But it is on the north side of the Court, and on the foundations now occupied by the Malibran theatre, that Venetian tradition and the investigations of Venetian antiquaries concur in indicating the site of the Casa Polo. At the end of the 16th century a great fire destroyed ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... expired with the Sovereign. A paper had indeed been circulated, in which the logic of a small sharp pettifogger was employed to prove that writs, issued in the joint names of William and Mary, ceased to be of force as soon as William reigned alone. But this paltry cavil had completely failed. It had not even been mentioned in the Lower House, and had been mentioned in the Upper only to be contemptuously overruled. The whole Magistracy of the City swelled the procession. The banners of England and France, Scotland and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... they act with the ferocity of true poltroons, slaying all the men, and carrying off the women and children as slaves. As to the property, it is packed upon horses which they bring with them for the purpose. They are mean and paltry as warriors, and altogether inferior in heroic qualities to the savages of the buffalo plains on the east side of ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... This dispute, seemingly paltry yet really serious, sudden in its appearance and dependent for its issue upon other considerations than its own merits, may serve to convince us of many latent and yet unforeseen dangers to the peace of the western hemisphere, attendant upon the opening of a canal through the Central American ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... calls this answer paltry, but I find his counter-objection involved. M. Bayle will have those who are for the two principles to take their stand chiefly on the assumption of the supreme freedom of God: for if he were compelled to produce all that which he can, he would ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... words could be addressed to him to whom the first had just been spoken. The Lord had praised him. Peter grew self-sufficient, even to the rebuking of him whose praise had so uplifted him. But it is ever so. A man will gain a great moral victory: glad first, then uplifted, he will fall before a paltry temptation. I have sometimes wondered, too, whether his denial of our Lord had anything to do with his satisfaction with himself for making that onslaught upon the high priest's servant. It was a brave thing and a faithful to draw a single sword against ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... desperate passion which had its hold upon her grandfather, losses and gains were to her alike. Exulting in some brief triumph, or cast down by a defeat, there he sat so wild and restless, so feverishly and intensely anxious, so terribly eager, so ravenous for the paltry stakes, that she could have almost better borne to see him dead. And yet she was the innocent cause of all this torture, and he, gambling with such a savage thirst for gain as the most insatiable gambler never felt, had not ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... it! but I'll scrawl all over the front of your tavern with scorpion-words. For my girl, who has fled from my embrace (she whom I loved as ne'er a maid shall be beloved—for whom I fought fierce fights) has seated herself here. All ye, both honest men and rich, and also, (O cursed shame) all ye paltry back-slum fornicators, are making hot love to her; and thou above all, one of the hairy-visaged sons of coney-caverned Celtiberia, Egnatius, whose quality is stamped by dense-grown beard, and teeth with Spanish ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... are always liable to break out: the animated comparisons of the degradation of philosophy by the arts to the dishonoured maiden, and of the tyrant to the parricide, who 'beats his father, having first taken away his arms': the dog, who is your only philosopher: the grotesque and rather paltry image of the argument wandering about without a head (Laws), which is repeated, not improved, from the Gorgias: the argument personified as veiling her face (Republic), as engaged in a chase, as breaking upon us in a first, second and third wave:—on these figures of speech ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... gone, only reaches a certain point. It is the power which carries the man to the margin of that consciousness which is profound peace and vital activity. It can carry him no further. But if he has reached its margin he is freed from the paltry dominion of his own self. That is the first great release. Look at the sufferings which come upon us from our narrow and limited experience and sympathy. We each stand quite alone, a solitary unit, a pygmy in the world. What good fortune can we expect? The great life of the world rushes by, and ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... other ills, Eurystheus has chosen to insult me with this insult; sending heralds whenever on earth he learns we are settled, he demands us, and drives us out of the land; alleging the city of Argos, one not paltry either to be friends with or to make an enemy, and himself too prospering as he is; but they seeing my weak state, and that these too are little, and bereaved of their sire, respecting the more powerful, drive us from the land. And I am banished, together with ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... But what did King Charles? Abusing French loyalty, he made our Francis his prisoner, would you believe it? and treated him worse than ever badger was treated at the bottom of any paltry stable-yard, putting upon his table beer and Rhenish ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... my forgiveness downright—such as I Should perish if I did not have from thee; I let the wrong go, withered up and dry, Cursed with divine forgetfulness in me. 'Tis but self-pity, pleasant, mean, and sly, Low whispering bids the paltry memory live:— What am I brother for, but ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... eminent adviser of the crown, only two years ago, declared he would not consent to do? Am I, then, to be twitted, taunted, and attacked? I dare them to attack me. I have no speech to eat up. I have no apostasy disgracefully to explain. I have no paltry subterfuge to resort to. I have not to say that a thing is black one day and white another. I have not been in one year a Protestant master of the rolls, and in the next a Catholic lord-chancellor. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... ejaculation in the astonishing first moment. A deep-sea sailor, who had come through what he had come through, to let himself be caught unawares by such a paltry mischance as this! Then, what an unspeakable ass to have been so careless—to have shown himself incapable of protecting his wife, after all his boasts! Would he ever hear the last of it as long as he ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... the paper aside with the bill receipt. In the man to whom the bright New Orleans itself almost owed its brightness, it was a paltry act to search and pick for a debtor. Friends had betrayed and deserted him; relatives had forgotten him; merchants had failed with his money; bank presidents had stooped to deceive him; for he was an old man, and had about run the gamut of human disappointments—a ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... Bavaria, in which the league still believed, while it had no quarrel with Ferdinand, who was ostensibly conciliatory. The towns, moreover, wished to keep their captain within hail, for they feared the possibility of attack either from Regensburg or from Ferdinand's paltry forces in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... here often. At least mine do. I did sympathize with this woman of one cow and a large family. Why should any one have power lawfully, to "lift" the only cow from half-starved children. The defence for this woman was that through trouble she did not know what she was doing. It was a mean, paltry defence; she did know that she wanted to keep her cow, and the law should be altered to enable her to do so. The law that enables men of means to strip these poor wretches of everything that stands between them and their little children and starvation, is a monstrous law for Christians to ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... anybody, not even the peers of the realm,—no time for pleasure or relaxation,—being devoted entirely to public interests of the greatest magnitude; for on his shoulders rested the government of the kingdom. What was the paltry dispute of a few hundred pounds in a distant colony to the Prime Minister of England! All that Franklin could secure was an interview with the great man's secretaries, and they did ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... Great Mogul has so little taste, that he has had this divan divided into two parts by a very paltry partition wall. A similar wall adjoins both sides of the saloon, for what purpose I could not learn. In this divan is a great treasure: the largest crystal in the world. It is a block of about four feet ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... away upon two paltry bits of cardboard!" chafed Miss Carlyle. "You always were a noodle in money matters, Archibald, and always will be. I wish I had the ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... was wanting to assure the success of the vast projects that the pope and his son were founding upon the friendship of Louis and an alliance with him—that is,—money. But Alexander was not the man to be troubled about a paltry worry of that kind; true, the sale of benefices was by now exhausted, the ordinary and extraordinary taxes had already been collected for the whole year, and the prospect of inheritance from cardinals and ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... because ours is a fight of men, not of children; not one of your European wars of paltry ambition, but a war of principle!' cried Cora, with that intensity of enthusiasm that has shed so much blood in the break-up of the ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sacred principles. You may not only defeat me for the Senate, but you may take me and put me to death. While pretending no indifference to earthly honors, I do claim to be actuated in this contest by something higher than an anxiety for office. I charge you to drop every paltry and insignificant thought for any man's success. It is nothing; I am nothing; Judge Douglas is nothing. But do not destroy that immortal emblem of ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... placed me, I should have faced her boldly or have fled miles away from that spot, to be forever associated in my mind with the one really discreditable experience of my career. I have always been, I think, an honorable man and such a paltry sin as eavesdropping had always been beneath me, save on the one occasion when my duty as Jerry's guardian prompted me to listen for a few moments at the cabin window last year when Una and Jerry were settling between them the affairs of the world. That was a pardonable ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... knew how to greet each moment as the manifestation of the divine will we could find in it all the heart could desire. Nor what indeed is more reasonable, more perfect, more divine, than the will of God? Can its infinite value be increased by the paltry difference of time, place, or circumstance? The present moment is always filled with infinite treasures; it contains more than one is capable of receiving. Faith is the measure of these blessings; in proportion to your faith ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... Honourable Company be swayed by so paltry a consideration in subjecting us to so grievous an inconvenience? Surely not; a body of men so respectable could neither have authorized nor sanctioned such sordid parsimony. The generous proposition originated with Mr. Simpson alone, and to ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... think what havoc you may make in the happiness of a worthy man; look at his character; see his exemplary conduct; and could you, for the paltry gratification of your vanity, condemn him to the pangs of unrequited love. He has now, I fear, the ills of poverty to struggle against; did you notice his emotion when speaking of his mother and sisters? perhaps they ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... easy matter to acquire a laboratory in the open fields, when harassed by a terrible anxiety about one's daily bread. For forty years have I fought, with steadfast courage, against the paltry plagues of life; and the long-wished-for laboratory has come at last. What it has cost me in perseverance and relentless work I will not try to say. It has come; and, with it—a more serious condition—perhaps a little leisure. I say perhaps, for my leg is still hampered with a few ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... humbug!' It is true that I continually repeated, 'but then Varia is mine! mine!' ... Yet that 'but'—alas, that but!—and then, too, the words, 'Varia is mine!' aroused in me not a deep, overwhelming rapture, but a sort of paltry, egoistic triumph.... If Varia had refused me point-blank, I should have been burning with furious passion; but having received her consent, I was like a man who has just said to a guest, 'Make yourself at home,' and sees the guest ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Allan M'Aulay," said Montrose, addressing the Highlander, who, leaning his sword-point on the ground, had regarded the ceremony of his antagonist's knighthood with a sneer of sullen scorn,—"you, who are superior to the ordinary men led by the paltry motives of plunder, and pay, and personal distinction,—you, whose deep knowledge renders you so valuable a counsellor,—is it YOU whom I find striving with a man like Dalgetty, for the privilege of trampling the remains of life out of so contemptible an enemy as lies there? Come, my friend, ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... it is even so, just so, and to such tricks, such playing upon words, do the bad habits of London conversation lead;" and Lady Davenant wondered at the courage of his candour, as he went on to speak of the petty jealousies, the paltry envy, the miserable selfish susceptibility generated by the daily competition of London society. Such dissensions, such squabbles—an ignoble but appropriate word—such deplorable, such scandalous squabbles among literary, and even among scientific ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... mean? Surely he hasn't come to Chicago with only this paltry sum!" exclaimed Coleman. "He must be more ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... Solons cursed the Lords, And called the malt-tax sinful, Jack heeded not their angry words, But smiled and drank his skinful. And when men wasted health and life, In search of rank and riches, Jack marked aloof the paltry strife, And wore ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... books. The only copy I ever saw was af an old book stall, and I have regretted that I did not purchase it, and get some stout porter to carry it home. Wm. Churchey was a friend of John Wesley. His prodigious 4to was published by subscription, and given away at the paltry sum of one guinea. I have an autograph letter of John Wesley, to his friend Churchey, in which ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... got into heaven, for I see the angels about me!" says Madam, advancing with a reverence lower than the paltry room demanded. "Forgive an intruder, Madam, and confer a benefit. For being newly come to Dublin, I've lost my way returning from Smock Alley, and while I called up courage to enter and ask it from any other than ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... of mine, in which you may trace a strong desire to heal the wounds inflicted upon me by my disgrace, though I a little while ago declared that I would not ask it, I now do earnestly ask of you: but only on condition that you shall not think my humble services paltry and insignificant, but of such a nature and importance, that many for far less signal successes have obtained the highest honours from the senate. I have, too, I think, noticed this—for you know how attentively I ever listen to you—that in granting or withholding ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... may learn not to flinch from pain, or lose their tempers, or turn cowards, when they have to fight. "And so do I," says St. Paul; "they, poor men, submit to painful and disagreeable things to make them brave in their paltry battles. I submit to painful and disagreeable things, to make me brave in the great battle which I have to fight against sin, and ignorance, and heathendom." "Therefore," he says, in another place, "I take pleasure in afflictions, in persecutions, in necessities, ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... said Fairfeather. "Here we are spending our lives in this humdrum place, and Spare making his fortune at court with two or three paltry green leaves! What would they say to our golden ones? Let us make our way to the ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... on a slave; not such as, swept along By the full tide of power, the conqueror led To crimson glory and undying fame; But base, ignoble slaves; slaves to a horde Of petty tyrants, feudal despots, lords, Rich in some dozen paltry villages; Strong in some hundred spearmen; only great In that strange ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Lissoy from the account of the inn in the poem.* Some twelve years before its publication, when he was living miserably in Green Arbour Court, Goldsmith had submitted to his brother Henry a sample of a heroi-comic poem describing a Grub Street writer in bed in 'a paltry ale-house.' In this 'the sanded floor,' the 'twelve good rules' and the broken tea-cups all played their parts as accessories, and even the double-dealing chest had its prototype in the poet's night-cap, which was 'a cap by night — a stocking all the day.' A year or two later he expanded these lines ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... have pineapple every day if she chose, but it was not quite the same pineapple. She affected to like it, she did like it, but the difference between the old pineapple and the new was the saddening difference, for Mrs. Maldon's secret heart, between the great days and the paltry, facile convenience of the ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... something final and convincing in his companion's measured words. His own protest, when at last he spoke, sounded paltry. ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the greatness to which his capture of Lusigny was to be the first step. He would enjoy that greatness not a whit the less because fortune had hitherto dealt out to him more blows than caresses, and he was still at forty, after a score of years of roughest service, the governor of a paltry ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... however, he seemed ashamed of the paltry booty his followers had obtained, and Denham seized the favourable moment to advise that the Arabs should give everything back, and have a few sheep and an ox for a feast. He gave the order, and the ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... made an earl not long since—you may have heard of the fuss about it. Uncle Sam's only a miserable baron yet. And Uncle Cuthbert is that paltry insect—a baronet. ...
— The Title - A Comedy in Three Acts • Arnold Bennett
... to his little table, wavering, deprecating, humble, and answered his brief impatient questions. And on the spot he made snap diagnoses, such as rheumatism, bronchitis, kicked by a horse, knocked down by despatch rider, dysentery, and so on—a paltry, stupid lot of ailments and minor accidents, demanding a few days' treatment. It was a dull service, this medical service, yet one had to be always on guard against contagion, so the service was a responsible one. But ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... lest our claims to attention are not fully recognized, less our worth be not observed, our proper station accorded to us. How we press our paltry little claims upon others, how we glorify our own insignificant deeds; how large loom up our small and puny acts. The whole universe centers in us; our ego is a most important thing; our work of the highest value and significance; our worth ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... taking long weary walks and giving tedious lessons for the small stipends which her employers had the conscience to offer her; they felt no compunction about bargaining and haggling as to a few pitiful shillings with a music mistress who looked so very poor, and seemed so glad to work for their paltry pay. The girl's chief sorrow was, that her father, who to her mind was calculated to shine in the highest station the world could give, should be a reprobate and ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... bleachfield—and so on. The day was bright and beautiful, and the feeling of summer came over our bosoms: the flowers blossomed and the birds sang; and, as the sun looked from the blue sky, the quiet of nature banished from our thoughts all the poor and paltry cares that embitter life, and all the pitiful considerations which are but too apt to be the only concerns of the busy and bustling, from their awaking in the morning to their lying down on the pillow of evening rest. Peter and myself felt this forcibly; he, as he confessed to me, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... believed to have been a history of England, of which, as I have said, a fragment remains. Whatever the work may have been, it was an offence to Hamilton. With an irrational stubbornness, that may well astound us when we think of the noble genius that he thus wished to confine to paltry personal duties, he persisted that Burke should bind himself to his service for life, and to the exclusion of other interests. "To circumscribe my hopes," cried Burke, "to give up even the possibility of liberty, to annihilate myself for ever!" He threw up the pension, which he had held for ...
— Burke • John Morley
... that he never met with encouragement." "But I understood that he was tolerably successful. He painted many things for me at Fonthill. You are surely mistaken." "By no means," I replied. "Latterly he seldom sold a picture, and supported himself on the paltry income of 200 pounds a year, raised by making little designs for booksellers. Yet what a noble painting is Chaucer's pilgrimage to Canterbury." "It is indeed," said Mr. Beckford. "But, sir, there is another painter, Howard, whose conceptions are most poetical. ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... from this that his artist's soul rejected the paltry fact? For "blue" the hours of New Year's Day may be in Italy, but as "long blue hours" they cannot, even there, be figured. I maintain that, whatever it may be called, it is really Midsummer's Day on which Pippa passes from Asolo through Orcana and Possagno, and back ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... am going to do; I feel like a man who has been stunned. To be told that the murderer of Arthur Mountjoy had been seen in London—to be prepared to trace him by his paltry assumed name of Carrigeen—to wait vainly for the next discovery which might bring him within reach of retribution at my hands—and then to be overwhelmed by the news of his illness, his recovery, and ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... of my friend Pecksniff, in a situation as tremendous, perhaps, as the social intercourse of the nineteenth century will readily admit of. There is actually at this instant, at the Blue Dragon in this village—an ale-house, observe; a common, paltry, low-minded, clodhopping, pipe-smoking ale-house—an individual, of whom it may be said, in the language of the Poet, that nobody but himself can in any way come up to him; who is detained there for his bill. Ha! ha! For his bill. I repeat it—for his ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... the King's approval for existing canons. These demands were granted. As usual, Henry was able to get what he wanted from the clergy; but from the Commons he could get no more than they were willing to give. They again rejected the bills of Uses and Wills, and would only concede the most paltry supplies. But they passed with alacrity the bills embodying the submission of the clergy. These were the Church's concessions to Henry, but it must bend the knee to the Commons as well, and other measures were passed reforming some of the points in their petition. Ordinaries were prohibited ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... Until the second half of the eighteenth century the British colonies were both weak and divided. They had no navy and very few fortifications to defend their coastline. They had no army except raw and unreliable militia. Even in 1750 their inhabitants numbered but a paltry 1,300,000 as compared with a population in Great Britain of more than 10,000,000; and in wealth and resources they could not dream ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... them than a highway robber has to my purse. What will be the consequence if I put them in possession of the facts. In forty-eight hours, I shall have received perhaps one hundred lashes, and be on my way to the Louisiana cotton fields. Of what service will it be to them. They will get a paltry sum of two hundred dollars. Is not my liberty worth more to me than two ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington
... decided advance on the History of Morals, and shows honest investigation in original material, much of it manuscript, and an excellent power of generalization widely different from that which exhibits itself in a paltry philosophy. These volumes are a real contribution to historical knowledge. Parts of them which I like often to recur to are the account of the ministry of Walpole, the treatment of "parliamentary corruption," ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... my eyes. Vastly as my mind had stretched to embrace the idea of a great country, when I exchanged Polotzk for America, it was no such enlargement as I now experienced, when in place of the measurable earth, with its paltry tale of historic centuries, I was given the illimitable universe to contemplate, with the ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... you that in order to deceive her, not you! But you know better, La Corriveau! It was not for the sake of paltry jewels I desired you to come to the city to see me at ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Bloomery Gap, he found the colonel and made his report. "Why, damn it all!" said the colonel. "We were backing you for the brush. Hunting weather, and a clean run and all the dogs of war to fawn upon you at the end! And here's a paltry three-foot hedge and a bad tumble! Never you mind! You'll pick yourself up. ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... Christian disciple of Plato: "therefore it is unquiet till it finds repose in God." From this unrest proceed all our miseries. Men do not always succeed in contenting themselves with a petty prosaic happiness, a dull and paltry well-being, and in stifling the while the grand instincts of our nature. If then the heart lives, and fails of its due object; if it does not meet with the supreme term of its repose, its indefinite aspirations attach themselves ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... Queen had delighted the captain, and, indeed, all of us on board, with her sailing powers, averaging over two hundred knots a day, which considering her great bilge was as fast as the most famous clippers; but now that she only logged a paltry hundred or so, going but five or six per hour instead of ten to twelve, "Old Jock" began to grumble, snapping and finding fault with ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... had said, Esther was too proud to take help unless it was most tactfully offered. He racked his brains in vain. It was a sickening thought that, with all his wealth, he could give her nothing. Even the few paltry pounds she had unconsciously taken from him would have been indignantly rejected had she known who ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... riviere, and two of the biggest ropes of pearls.... It won't do to go down looking dowdy. Dear me," she added, as she took up the pendant she had bought from Daphne twenty-four hours before, "to think of my giving so much money for this paltry thing! If I had known then what I do now, I should never have—but, of course, I don't mean that I should think ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... advice:—'Before "X.Y.Z." institutes any other reforms, we would advise him to reperuse his English Grammar.' Far from having a salutary effect, this rebuff only rankled in my soul. I determined to revenge myself on the paltry malignant who dared to despise my efforts. I therefore wrote a slashing criticism for one of the evening papers, demolishing (as I thought) the delinquent periodical, and denouncing its whole corps of writers as frivolous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... mode of being, but something intended to look much grander than nature? Surely, all these stormful agonies, this volcanic heroism, superhuman contempt, and moody desperation, with so much scowling and teeth-gnashing, and other sulphurous humor, is more like the brawling of a player in some paltry tragedy, which is to last three hours, than the bearing of a man in the business of life, which is to last threescore and ten years. To our minds, there is a taint of this sort, something which we ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... of the needful sporting gear, where he does follow hunting, it is pursued with much-weakened ardor, and often bootless issue. He is moved now to its pursuit, solely with the hope of realizing a paltry gain from the sale of the few ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... not a third full, and the audience probably not including half a dozen persons who would prefer their playing to that of the vilest strollers. In proof of this, I saw them, as managers, give place to paltry third-rate actors from London, who would immediately draw crowded houses, ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... the pleasures of Lady Mary's intended tour. "It was very distressing—she heartily wished there was no such thing as money in the world—it made people very miserable—they were a much happier couple, she contended, when they were merely Honourables, and lived upon a paltry two thousand and the expectancy—there never was any difficulty then about money transactions, and a proposition for a trip to a watering-place was always hailed with pleasure."—"True, Lady Mary; but then you forget we travelled in a stage coach, with your ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... mince my words, Mr. Narkom. I say plump and plain the thing's an outrage, a disgrace to the police, an indignity upon the community at large; and for Scotland Yard to permit itself to be defied, bamboozled, mocked at in this appalling fashion by a paltry burglar——" ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... nothing more. What times are before us, uncle; what times! My poor boy is growing very delicate in his health, and he won't be able to work—it makes him dizzy now to read a book; he gets a headache and nausea whenever he works at night! He will have to beg a paltry situation; I shall have to take in sewing, and who knows, who knows but we may ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... for action: my heart, Wither'd thing though it be, I should hardly compress 'Twixt the leaves of a treatise on Statics: life's stress Needs scope, not contraction! what rests? to wear out At some dark northern court an existence, no doubt, In wretched and paltry intrigues for a cause As hopeless as is my own life! By the laws Of a fate I can neither control nor dispute, I am ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... not a syllable, if you please; the debt is all on my side, and you do not fancy it can be paid in such a paltry fashion. I am glad you are not offended with me, that is all." And then he proceeded ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the question is have you done so? Could I say yes I would with the greatest of pleasure and have congratulated you upon your decision whatever it might have been but I am sorry to say that I cannot your letter is a paltry evasion, you say 'that it is a great pity that you (Mr. ——) should have attempted this (the quadrature of the circle) for your mathematical knowledge is not sufficient to make you know in what the problem consists,' you don't say in what it does consist according to your ideas, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... paltry gilding here, but massive golden cornice, frieze, plate, stud, and boss ornamenting the massive walls—glistening, sparkling, and flashing back the sun's light, while, as if these were not sufficient, emeralds and other precious stones were ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... unceasing complaints with which he resented what he regarded as the insults offered to him by his jailers. There was, indeed, much that was ignoble in the manner of his treatment by those who had him in charge, in the paltry indignities which he had to endure, and which he could not endure in the patient dignity of silence. The mere refusal to allow to him his title of Emperor, and to insist {13} that he should only be addressed as General Bonaparte, was as illogical as it was ungenerous; for if revolutionary ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... "Perish the paltry trash!" said Edward, with the same emotion. "No, father, it was rivalry—it was jealous rage—it was the love of Mary Avenel, that rendered me the ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... principal received twelve hundred a year. People in the village considered that a prodigious income. Horace, of course, knew better. He did not think that sum sufficient to risk matrimony. Here, too, he was hampered by another consideration. It was intolerable for him to think of Rose's wealth and his paltry twelve hundred per year. An ambition which had always slumbered within his mind awoke to full strength and activity. He began to sit up late at night and write articles for the papers and magazines. He ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... be confessed, that thou art the most pitiful, paltry, beggarly, blind—" I shall say no more. Thy whole munificence, thy whole magnanimity, thy whole generosity, to the living lights of thy sullen region of toil, trimming, and tribulation, of the dulness of dukes and the mountainous fortunes of pinmakers—is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... of economy and commercialism pervaded the entire institution. Its worst manifestation was in the employment of the meanest type of attendant—men willing to work for the paltry wage of eighteen dollars a month. Very seldom did competent attendants consent to work there, and then usually because of a scarcity of profitable employment elsewhere. Providentially for me, such an attendant came upon the scene. This young man, so ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... the Incas, and the pacific tendency, indeed, of their domestic institutions, they were constantly at war. It was by war that their paltry territory had been gradually enlarged to a powerful empire. When this was achieved, the capital, safe in its central position, was no longer shaken by these military movements, and the country enjoyed, ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... deferring the bother—he is like a man who stays in bed because he doesn't like dressing. But it isn't a solution to stay in bed—it is only suspending the solution. No, we mustn't have any regard for human consistency—it's a very paltry attribute; it's the opposite of anthropomorphism. That makes out God to be in the image of man, but consistency claims for man the privilege of God. And that isn't wholesome, you know, either for a man or ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... intellectual gifts, and these you are intending to abuse in a shameless way, like a bad crafty knave, and so putting your knife at your own mother's throat? You mean to say you are going to traffic in justice as in some cheap paltry ware in the public market, and weigh it out with false scales to the poor peasants and the oppressed burgher, who in vain utter their plaintive cries before the soft-cushioned seat of the inexorable judge, and ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... but then how often have we repeated already that on the present occasion there is no reason why brevity should be preferred to length; for who is 'at our heels?' as the saying goes, and it would be paltry and ridiculous to prefer the shorter to the better. It is a matter of no small consequence, in some way or other to prove that there are Gods, and that they are good, and regard justice more than men do. The demonstration of this would be the best and ...
— Laws • Plato
... rare occasions. Her son left home and returned with much regularity, he also seeming to desire privacy above all things. Mrs. Jarmey had at first been disposed to take this reserve somewhat ill. When she knocked at Mrs. Grail's door on some paltry excuse for seeing the inside of the room, and found that the old lady exchanged brief words with her on the threshold, she wondered who these people might be who thought themselves too good for wonted neighbourship. In time, however, her feeling changed, and she gave everybody ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... remain neutral in the great struggle impending, as a relief, however temporary, from the harassing consideration of dangers at which they shuddered. Nine men out of ten, will shrink from making up their minds upon a difficult question, and yet will accept, with joy, a determination of it, however paltry and inconclusive, from any one who has the nerve to urge it. A great many Union men, who would have earnestly opposed a concurrence of Kentucky in the action of the seceding States, if for no other reason ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... the door and attempt to stop him, she knows he is already half-way down the street. It is a mean, paltry way of going out, she ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... morning things went ill with the adventure. The savour had gone out of our play. Two were but a paltry company after all. Where was the cabin-boy with his trusty dirk, eager to bleed for the cause? Though we kept our backs rigorously turned to the window, and spoke only in whispers, neither of us could quite ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... out to interest,—and the miser cheated himself. Such portion as was in bank-notes Mrs. Boxer probably had the prudence to destroy; for those numbers which Simon could remember were never traced; the gold, who could swear to? Except the pittance in the savings bank, and whatever might be the paltry worth of the house he rented, the father who had enriched the menial to exile the son was a beggar in his dotage. This news, however, was carefully concealed from him by the advice of the doctor, whom, on his own responsibility, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... much elated by her success; the money she had received for the ring seemed to them in their present circumstances a small fortune. "Little did once I think" said the widow, as she carefully counted the bank-notes, "that a few paltry pounds would ever seem of so much value to me; but perhaps it is well that we should sometimes experience the want of money, that we may learn how to make a proper use of it, and be more helpful to those less favoured ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... indeed sad to see professors, for the sake of paltry pelf, or to escape from persecution, denying the Lord Jesus. It subjects religion to scorn and contempt, and doubles the sorrows and sufferings of real Christians. Bunyan expresses himself here in ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Scythian or wild Arab, or indeed any thing but him, to pay her her Portion. To which, however, he seemingly consented, and promis'd to take her to Town with him, and there give her all the Satisfaction she cou'd expect: And having dipp'd some paltry Acres of Land, deeper than ever Heaven dipp'd 'em in Rain, he was as good as his Word, and brought her to Town with him, where he told her he would place her with an ancient Lady, with whom he had contracted a Friendship at his first coming to London; adding, that she ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... and bulldog ants would bite him out of his sleep. I hate the man who's always whining about his mother through his nose, because, as a rule, he never cared a rap for his old mother, nor for anyone else, except his own paltry, selfish ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... pressure of the handsome Major's hand! She had hastened away to her own apartment, as a wounded tigress seeks its cave for a last stand! The concealment of the diamond bracelet was a matter of necessity, and, with a beating heart, she buried it deep under the poor harvest of paltry Delhi trinkets which she had already gathered, with a mere ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... Montmartre one can yet admire Baudin's monument, which has a degree of grandeur; that of Gautier, of Murger, on which I saw the other day a simple, paltry wreath of immortelles, yellow immortelles, brought thither by whom? Possibly by the last grisette, very old and now janitress in the neighborhood. It is a pretty little statue by Millet, but ruined by dirt and neglect. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... who think a paltry wall can save, A narrow ditch can thwart us,—these, so bold, With but a span betwixt them and the grave! Saw they not Troy, which Neptune reared of old, Sink down in ruin, as the flames uprolled? But ye, my chosen, who with me will scale Yon wall, and storm their ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... drawing me aside into the room in which we had supped, where, after rallying me on the whimsical notion of the Grand Master of the Ordnance and Governor of the Bastile being besieged in a paltry inn, he confessed that he had been wrong, and that the adventure was likely to prove serious. "Ten to one this is the very band that Bareilles ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... possession—and then where do I git off? I git off at the same place I got off over at Wunpost; he's trying to freeze me out. So if you want to do me dirt, kid, when I've always been your friend, go to it and sell him your share. Take your paltry twenty thousand and let old Wunpost rustle—serves him ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... the flagstaff at the residence of the American consul. European states had purchased immunity for their commerce by paying tribute to these rapacious pirates; and the United States had followed the custom. The Pasha of Tripoli, however, was dissatisfied with the American tribute, a paltry eighty-three thousand dollars, and demanded more. The other Barbary powers threatened to make common cause with him. Anticipating trouble, Jefferson had sent a small squadron to the Mediterranean even before the dramatic act of the Pasha at the American consulate; and hostilities began ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... it possible for him to persuade himself that so many magnificent palaces, so many splendid temples, so many rich mercantile establishments, had been forsaken by their owners, like the paltry hamlets through which he had recently passed? Daru's mission, however, was fruitless. Not a Muscovite was to be seen; not a particle of smoke arose from a single chimney; not the slightest noise issued from this vast and populous city: ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... me," he said, "but the attack was so violent, the blow so savage, the weapon must have been so keen, that it is almost impossible to connect it with a mere attempt to commit a paltry robbery. I thought, and the police thought, that it was ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... at all in Waco is one of the seven wonders of the literary world. That a magazine so located and written by one man, having but a paltry advertising patronage, no illustrations, no covers, could in three years' time rival the circulation of any magazine then published is as much a miracle as the parting of the Red Sea waters or the bountiful ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... me that you have been wasting your time and your gifts most amazingly. Here have you been absent just two years, and with the exception of a paltry marauder you do not seem to have slain a single Frenchman, till you broke ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... an old proverb, 'Shoemaker, stick to thy last;' it seems that thou shouldst stick to thy needle. Thou hast not, indeed, merited much mercy at my hands, but one has supplicated for thee, whom this day I can refuse nothing; therefore give I thee thy paltry life; but, if I may advise, haste thee to leave ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... side of our great reward. Then it looks like earthly objects after we have gazed upon the sun for a while. We are blind to them. When the Italian fruit-seller finds that he is heir to a ducal palace you cannot tempt him any more with the paltry profits of his trade or the company of his old associates. He is above it all. They who know the hope of their calling and the riches of the glory of their inheritance can well despise the world. It is the poor starving ones who go hungering for the husks of earth. We are ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... believe that they are doing their duty to themselves and their families when they move heaven and earth to rise a few steps in the world. The moment we find ambition taking a purely social form, it becomes ridiculous. The aim is so paltry in comparison with the effort, and so out of proportion with the energy- exerted to attain it, that one can only laugh and wonder! Unfortunately, signs of this puerile spirit (peculiar to the last quarter of the ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... spend in viewing The elemental strife, My soul the while subduing With the littleness of life; Of life, with all its paltry plans, Its conflicts and its cares— The feebleness of all that's man's— The ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... he would himself be good, and so make them good; that he would henceforth be their friend, and let them know it. Blessed failure ending in such a victory! Blessed purgatorial pulpit! into which he entered full of self and self-ends; and from which he came down disgusted with that paltry self as well as its deserved defeat. The gates of its evil fortress were now undefended, for Pride had left them open in scorn; and Love, in the form of flower-bearing children, rushed into the citadel. The heart of the master was forced to yield, ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... refused to alter my garb, and when one of them stammeringly referred to the Empress's tastes I asked him with plainness if he had got any definite commands on this paltry ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... paltry coffin and buried, at the expense of the arrondissement, in a nook of the burial-place beyond the Barriere de l'Etoile. They buried him at six o'clock, of a bitter winter's morning, and it was with difficulty that an English clergyman could be found ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Philip, they do purchase human life cheap, and make a rare profit of it, for without these poor fellows how could they hold their possessions in spite of native and foreign enemies? For what a paltry and cheap annuity do these men sell their lives? For what a miserable pittance do they dare all the horrors of a most deadly climate, without a chance, a hope of return to their native land, where they might haply repair their exhausted energies, and take a new lease of life! Good God! if these ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... matter of a paltry poisoned dagger at stake and a fortune that may be mythical or may be like that of Croesus, for all I care, we could play the game according to rules," he exclaimed. "But when you begin to tamper with a ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... around the sun during the course of each year. But even this last change of place, great as it seems in comparison with terrestrial measurements, is insufficient to show anything more than the tiniest displacements in a paltry forty-three out of the ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... He believed himself strong, virile, yet so often it happened that he was constrained to act in what seemed rather a feeble and undignified way. But, after all, it was temporary; the day of his emancipation from paltry necessities would surely come, and all the great qualities latent in him ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... ill-painted flesh-tints showed livid, in the candle-light, against her dark drapery and background. "This is Mrs. Margaret Searle—a sort of Beatrix Esmond—qui se passait ses fantaisies. She married a paltry Frenchman, a penniless fiddler, in the teeth of her whole family. Pretty Mrs. Margaret, you must have been a woman of courage! Upon my word, she looks like Miss Searle! But pray go on. What came ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... she seemingly acquiesces in every thing you propose. You would even fancy she was solicitous to serve you; yet, after a thousand gracious sentiments, and as many implied eulogiums on her liberality and generosity, you find her return, with unrelenting perseverance, to some paltry proposition, by which she is to gain a few livres; and all this so civilly, so sentimentally, and so determinedly, that you find yourself obliged to yield, and are ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... not love that steals the heart from love: 'Tis the hard world, and its perplexing cares; Its petrifying selfishness, its pride, its low ambition, and its paltry aims." ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... and now she wondered at her own cowardice. Even Lady Monogram, her old friend Julia Triplex, had trampled upon her. Was it not the business of her life, in these days, to do the best she could for herself, and would she allow paltry considerations as to the feelings of others to stand in her way and become bugbears to affright her? Who sent her to Melmotte's house? Was it not her own father? Then she sat herself square at the table, and wrote to her mother,—as ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... and attendant. I remember the day when I was ill after one of their rude debauches. Ill!—a sick headache—a fit of the spleen—a spoiled lapdog's illness! Well: they wanted me that night to support one of their paltry measures—their parliamentary measures. And I had a prince feeling my pulse, and a duke mixing my draught, and a dozen earls sending their doctors to me. I was of use to them then! Poor me! Read me that note, Constance—Flamborough's note. Do you ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... (now called Tutuila) some successful bargaining was done with glass beads in exchange for pork and fruits. It surprised Laperouse that the natives chose these paltry ornaments rather than hatchets and tools. "They preferred a few beads which could be of no utility, to anything we could offer ...
— Laperouse • Ernest Scott
... its forces, even going so far as to urge him to come to New York City, where he could assist and advise in all of its large operations. And, moreover, he had been obliged to pay but ten dollars membership fee, besides buying the blazing star for the paltry sum of three ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... nostrils, challenging any other to a race for Ireland; ay, a Cuchullin you were, Philip, Culann's chain-bound: but she unmanned you. She soaked the woman into you and squeezed the hero out of you. All for Adiante! or a country left to slavery! that's the tale. And what are you now? A paltry captain of hussars on the General's staff! One O'Donnell in a thousand! And what is she?—you needn't frown, Phil; I'm her relative by marriage, and she 's a lady. More than that, she shot a dart or two into my breast in those days, she did, I'll own it: I had the catch ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... offering us these paltry inducements to betray the secrets of our skill. We are—we hope we may say it without undue pride—an All-Round Angler, and we are not going to be squared by a bait of that kind. (2) We have never pretended we were a salmon. If ANDREW LANG says we have, we challenge ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 8, 1893 • Various
... best advantage the chance circumstances of each enterprise, he was led into an infinity of annoying, embarrassing, and ridiculous situations, to extricate himself from which he was obliged to descend to a series of lies and deceptions, of paltry evasions, ignoble subterfuges and equivocal expedients. All Donna Maria's goodness and faith and single mindedness were powerless to disarm him. As the foundation of his work of seduction with her he had taken ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio |
