"Parsimonious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Oeil-de-Boeuf it remains inconceivable how, in a France of such resources, the Horn of Plenty should run dry: did it not use to flow? Nevertheless Necker, with his revenue of parsimony, has 'suppressed above six hundred places,' before the Courtiers could oust him; parsimonious finance-pedant as he was. Again, a military pedant, Saint-Germain, with his Prussian manoeuvres; with his Prussian notions, as if merit and not coat-of-arms should be the rule of promotion, has disaffected military men; the Mousquetaires, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... United States the need of legislation was far less urgent. Employers could not be so masterful in the treatment of their employees or so parsimonious in their distribution of wages, because the laborer always had the option of leaving the factory for the farm, and land was cheap. Women and children were not exploited in the mines as in England, pauper ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... [107] The parsimonious yet liberal London merchant, whose miserly habits gave Arbuthnot the materials of the story. See Professor Brown's Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, vol i. p. 244, and Martin Scriblerns, cap. xii., Pope, vol. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... to our system could not have been found. But yet there was in it something unfortunate. Had our first hero been compelled to abandon his business by old age—had he become doting over its details—parsimonious, or extravagant, or even short-sighted in his speculations—public feeling, than which nothing is more ignorant, would have risen in favour of the Fixed Period. "How true is the president's reasoning," the people would have said. ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... beauty of womanhood, the young, handsome, and now rich Sabbatai, went his lonely, parsimonious way, and a wondering band followed him, scarcely disturbing his loneliness by their reverential companionship. When he entered the sea, morning and night, summer and winter, all stood far off; by day he would pray at the fountain which the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... displeased, from the virtue he found in her; for he would not be burdensome, but would pay the hire for his entertainment, and spend his own money. To which she replied, that he guessed right as to the humanity of her parents; but complained that he should think them so parsimonious as to take money, for that he should have all on free cost. But she said she would first inform her brother Laban, and, if he gave her leave, she would conduct ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... 1596) the queen's tortuous and parsimonious policy had led to Calais falling into the hands of Spain. She had called upon the Londoners to furnish 1,000 soldiers to assist in raising the siege, but it is a question whether they ever got beyond ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... coffee-houses when it was convenient to him not to pay his reckoning, have assured me, that though the youngest and poorest, he always obtained, without exacting it, a sort of deference or even submission from the rest of the company. Though never parsimonious, he was at that period of his life extremely attentive to the details of expense, the price of provisions, and of other necessary articles, and, in short, to every branch of domestic economy. The knowledge thus early acquired in such matters, was useful ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... that it was believed by some that a modern Croesus had settled in their midst, and while, in common with the rest of humanity, they paid homage to his gold, they could not repress a feeling of contempt for the miserly actions and parsimonious dealings of its possessor. ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... learned Selden, with parsimonious phrase and copious sense, has thus compressed the result of an historical dissertation: he derives our ancient Christmas sports at once from the true, though remote, source. "Christmas succeeds the Saturnalia; the same time, the same number of holy-days; then the master waited upon the servant, like ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... of great masters," replied madame, composedly. "You reproach me with being very parsimonious, sire; I have, however, paid very ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... neighbour seemed to be expressly intended as an insult to him. On the other hand, Mr. Clare, though gentle and benevolent in his remonstrances to a degree that made the taking offence impossible, was by no means parsimonious of praise, or slow to make use of the deference that was paid him, for the purpose of procuring ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... celebration. The old gentleman was the only one in the family who took the least of the general happiness. He had got into a habit of being fretted about everything that happened, and he could not entirely divest himself of it even upon this occasion. His parsimonious turns, too, had considerably increased; and his only criterion of judging of anything was according to what it ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... of course to inspire a parsimonious spirit in regard either to goods or to energies. Life itself and all its energies must be given freely; material goods must not be evaluated too minutely. The miserly life is not what we wish to teach. Still there ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... lamentations over returning barbarism and ignorance, and the slight account made by those in power of the gifts and the arts of the writer, the poet, and the dramatist. Under what was popularly thought the crabbed and parsimonious administration of Burghley, and with the churlishness of the Puritans, whom he was supposed to foster, it seemed as if the poetry of the time was passing away in chill discouragement. The effect is described in lines which, as we now naturally suppose, ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... interest; provide for a rainy day, save for a rainy day, provide against a rainy day, save against a rainy day; feather one's nest; look after the main chance. cut costs. Adj. economical, frugal, careful, thrifty, saving, chary, spare, sparing; parsimonious &c 819. underpaid. Adv. sparingly &c adj.; ne quid nimis [Lat.]. Phr. adde parvum parvo magnus acervus erit [Lat.]; magnum est vectigal parsimonia ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... arrival, the erection of buildings for the shelter of his command, and I continued the work of constructing the post as laid out by him. In those days the Government did not provide very liberally for sheltering its soldiers; and officers and men were frequently forced to eke out parsimonious appropriations by toilsome work or go without shelter in most inhospitable regions. Of course this post was no exception to the general rule, and as all hands were occupied in its construction, and I the only officer ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... good house and a host of servants, is naturally a hospitable man. A guest is one of his daily wants. A friendly face is a necessary of life, without which the heart is apt to starve, or a luxury without which it grows parsimonious. Men who are isolated from society by distance, feel these wants by an instinct, and are grateful for an opportunity to relieve them. In Meriwether the sentiment goes beyond this. It has, besides, something dialectic in it. His house is open to everybody, as freely almost ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... while to Pope Urban and Edward III. he left splendid legacies. His funeral, as his life, was simple and economical. For his magnificent presents, his gorgeous works on the structure of his church, were made possible by his own simple, almost parsimonious manner of living. He was buried in the chapel of St. Radegunde, but the tomb was destroyed in Elizabeth's time, and his ashes ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw
... Thus we find a "New Way to pay the National Debt" (1786), "Ancient Music" (1787), "Monstrous Craws" (1787), "Frying Sprats" (1791) and "Anti-Saccharites, or John Bull and his Family leaving off the use of Sugar" (1792), are all directed against the reigning House, and allude frequently to the parsimonious habits of George III. and his Queen. The story goes that this monarch, having remarked of Gillray's drawings, "I don't understand these caricatures," the artist drew him ("A Connoisseur Examining a Cooper," 1792) studying minutely with a ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... plentiful and good, as in the Valais and even in some of the mountain districts of Italy, such as Friuli, the age of puberty for both sexes is quite as much later than in the heart of the towns, where, in order to gratify their vanity, people are often extremely parsimonious in the matter of food, and where most people, in the words of the proverb, have a velvet coat and an empty belly. It is astonishing to find in these mountainous regions big lads as strong as a man with shrill voices and smooth chins, and tall girls, well developed in other respects, ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... old, antiquated forerunner, precursor sew, embroider unload, exonerate grave, sepulcher readable, legible tell, narrate kiss, osculate nose, proboscis striking, percussion green, verdant stroke, concussion grass, verdure bowman, archer drive, propel greed, avarice book, volume stingy, parsimonious warrior, belligerent bath, ablution owner, proprietor wrong, incorrect bow, obeisance top, summit kneel, genuflection food, nutrition work, occupation seize, apprehend shut, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... as these never seem to afflict the English costermonger. So strongly did Mr. Mayhew find these characteristics marked among the Irish, that he is at times inclined to accuse them of carrying them too far, even to the display of a sordid and parsimonious spirit. According to him, they apply to the various "unions," or to the parish, even when they have money, or sometimes go with wretched food, dwelling, or clothing, in order to have a small fund laid by, in ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... same result, making of the farming-class a body of energetic, thrifty, intelligent, and aspiring people. Scotland and New England alike owe some of their best as well as their least attractive traits to bitter climate and a parsimonious soil; and the rural population of either is pushed into emigration by the scanty harvests at home. It is not a little singular that the Yankee and the canny Scot should each stand as a butt for the wit of his neighbors, while each has a shrewdness all his own. The Scotch, it is true, are said ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... with him in his piratical enterprises, nothing was allowed to stand in his way, and, generally speaking, he paralysed all resistance to his arms into submission by an inexorable will and genius. The parsimonious Elizabeth was always slyly willing to receive the proceeds of his dashing deeds, but never unduly generous in fixing his share of them. She allowed her ships to lie rotting when they should have been kept in sound and efficient condition, and her sailors to starve in the streets and ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... the work that could be done, and stood ready to do whatever she could. Prue was still aloll on a bed of ease. Even to waken her was to waken a March wind. The moment she was up she would have everybody running errands for her. She would be lavish in complaint and parsimonious of help. And yet she was a dear! She did enjoy her morning sleep so well. It would be a pity to disturb her. The rescuing thought came to Serina that Prue loved to take a long hot bath on Monday mornings, because ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... 1873, she was the only representative of a very old family. She was a widow with a little daughter of six, very rich, and equally parsimonious. When Doctor Pascal Rougon called on her to ask payment of his fees, he allowed himself to be put off, and even gave advice regarding the health of the ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... wherever the states might be able to negotiate the bills, and her liability was to cease within a year. She was likewise to be collaterally secured by pledges from certain cities in the Netherlands. This amount was certainly not colossal, while the conditions were sufficiently parsimonious. At the same time a beginning was made, and the principle of subsidy was established. The Queen, furthermore, agreed to send five thousand infantry and one thousand cavalry to the provinces, under the command of an officer of high rank, who was to have ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... are not. There are biblio-mercenaries of such sordid inclinations that they would readily part with almost any book in their possession,—even inscribed presentation copies!—if lightly tempted with money considerations. Verily, these parsimonious traders would barter their own souls, if ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... imperishable characters, and high on the scroll on which are inscribed the story of those, who, in their lives wrought for RIGHT and, passing, died for MEN! For a flag; beneath and within its folds his welcome has been measured and parsimonious;—a country; the construing and application of its laws and remedies as applied to him, has inflicted intolerable INJUSTICE: Has persecuted more often than blessed. And so and thus, its perusal finished, its pages closed and laid aside, you are shaken and swayed in your feelings, ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... the people. His expensive taste for building almost exhausted the resources of the empire. Heavy custom tolls, taxes on the food and industry of the poor, the exercise of intolerable monopolies, were not excused or compensated for by the parsimonious saving in the salaries of court officials, and even in the pay of the soldiers. His stately edifices were cemented with the blood and treasures of his people, and the rapacity and luxury of the emperor were imitated by ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... Yes—take this coat off; we'll spare no expense. They shall see that I possess wealth; they shall see that though I may be parsimonious ordinarily, still I can spend as well as any of them when an occasion offers. An occasion like this—[with an out-burst.] Eversmann, just ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... wish his name to be known had made a free gift of a large sum of money—it was in tens of thousands—to an institution of long standing and high character in the city of which he was a quiet resident. The source of such a gift could not long be kept secret. It, was our economical, not to say parsimonious Capitalist who had done this noble act, and the poor man had to skulk through back streets and keep out of sight, as if he were a show character in a travelling caravan, to avoid the acknowledgments of his liberality, ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... not such a thing as a counting house is to be seen in her streets, scarce a desk—Earthquakes swallow up this mercantile city and its gripple merchants, as Drayton hath it, "born to be the curse of this brave isle." I invoke this not on account of any parsimonious habits the mercantile interest may have, but, to confess truth, because I am ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... Guntello, always parsimonious, asked a moderate sum for the purchase of a sabre and for road-money. She gave him ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... the mountain outlines. There is drawing wherever the eye falls. Each section of the vast expanse is a picture of tossed crests and complicated undulations. And over the whole sea of stationary billows, light is shed like an ethereal raiment, with spare colour—blue and grey, and parsimonious green—in the near foreground. The detail is somewhat dry and monotonous; for these so finely moulded hills are made up of washed earth, the immemorial wrecks of earlier mountain ranges. Brown villages, not unlike those of Midland England, low houses built of stone and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... other professors in the college, lived in Calcutta wholly for himself and his family, he might have laid by for them a lakh of rupees in the thirty years he was employed by Government, and had he been very parsimonious, possibly a lakh and a half. But who that contrasts the pleasures of such a life with those Dr. Carey enjoyed in promoting with his own funds every plan likely to plant Christianity among the natives around him, without having to consult any one in thus doing, but his two brethren of one heart ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... always gentle and considerate in his dealing with others except when they had provoked him by some gross neglect or inattention to right and duty. He was generous to a fault toward others, but very frugal, even parsimonious in his home and in his personal habits. Only at Christmas or on other special occasion would he urge his household to spare nothing. He was a ceaseless and industrious worker, giving close personal attention to the multiple duties of his important ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... bankers and merchants, as well as of all owners of property, is not to be conceived but by those who witnessed it. This critical period drew forth many examples of great and confiding liberality, as well as some of a very opposite character. Men of great wealth and parsimonious habits came and placed their whole fortunes at the disposal of their bankers in order to support their credit. For many days the evil continued to augment so rapidly, and the demands upon the Bank were so great and increasing; that a Bank restriction was expected ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... not had the good fortune to be justified by any party, but is often considered, on what grounds I shall not determine, as one of the greatest mistakes, if not blemishes, of his reign. It is the sale of Dunkirk to the French. The parsimonious maxims of the parliament, and the liberal, or rather careless disposition of Charles, were ill suited to each other; and notwithstanding the supplies voted him, his treasury was still very empty and very much indebted. He had secretly received the sum of two hundred ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... in every little ripple; in the late, sunless afternoon the light lay deeply within it, and it seemed jealous of giving back the least particle. He compared it then to an opal or a sapphire, which shine with the same parsimonious radiance. ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... did not answer the questions of the Government, and left things exactly in their previous state. He then proceeded to give his opinion as to what reforms should be made in the practice of vivisection. The greatest physiologists, he remarked, such as Harvey, Asselli, Haller, were parsimonious and discreet in their use of vivisection. To-day we have before our eyes a very different spectacle. Under pretence of experimentally demonstrating physiology, the professor no longer ascends the rostrum; he places himself before ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... to prove to her that they had "plenty to go on with." The result was scarcely what he had anticipated. For a moment she seemed to be struck dumb with a strong surprise. Then, apparently recovering herself, she said decisively, "If that is all we've got, I am perfectly right to be parsimonious. And besides, it's an excellent thing for me to have to think about money. I've always been accustomed to spend far too much. I've lived much too extravagantly, too brilliantly, all my life. A change to simplicity and occasional self-denial will do me all the good in the world, whether ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... three o'clock in the afternoon and a fire in the Baxters' kitchen since six in the morning had produced a fairly temperate climate in that one room, though the entries and chambers might have been used for refrigerators, as the Deacon was as parsimonious in the use of fuel as in all other things, and if his daughters had not been hardy young creatures, trained from their very birth to discomforts and exposures of every sort, they would ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... coin with avidity, for his father was very parsimonious, and his mother no less so, and he seldom got ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... of the duchy of Lancaster. From 1880 to 1882 he was secretary for war, a post he accepted somewhat unwillingly; and in that position he had to bear the responsibility for the reforms which were introduced into the war office under the parsimonious conditions which were then part of the Liberal creed. During his term of office the Egyptian War occurred, in which Childers acted with creditable energy; and also the Boer War, in which he and his colleagues showed to less advantage. From 1882 to 1885 he was chancellor ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... phase of life, the squalor of these rooms is congenial to the marchesa. Hitherto reckless of expense, especially in law, she has all at once grown parsimonious to excess. As to the effect this change may produce on others, and whether this mode of life is in keeping with the stately palace she inhabits, the marchesa does not care in the least; it pleases her, that is enough. All her life she has been ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... Dampierre, of noble Champagnese origin, had been for five years Count of Flanders, as heir to his mother, Marguerite II. He was a prince who did not lack courage, or, on a great emergency, high-mindedness and honor; but he was ambitious, covetous, as parsimonious as his mother had been munificent, and above all concerned to get his children married in a manner conducive to his own political importance. He had by his two wives, Matilda of Bethune and Isabel of Luxembourg, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... owner of the flock will repair, by alms and good works, that which he ignorantly committed. As for the son of the hospitable soldier whom I strangled in the cradle, know, that before the boy was born he performed numerous works of charity and mercy; but afterwards grew parsimonious and covetous in order to enrich the child, of which he was inordinately fond. This was the cause of its death; and now its distressed parent is again become a devout Christian. Then for the cup which I purloined from him ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... was a man of much intelligence and great maritime knowledge. But it seems unlikely that the negotiation went very far, considering the rigid manner in which Columbus insisted upon his exact conditions being accepted by the Spanish court. No such bargain, at a distance, with a reserved and parsimonious monarch, was likely, therefore, to have been concluded. It appears, however, from a despatch from the Spanish ambassador to his sovereigns, dated the 25th July, 1498, that the English were not behind other nations ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... regard to the freeman is managed by the freeman himself. The disorders which generally prevail in the economy of the rich, naturally introduce themselves into the management of the former; the strict frugality and parsimonious attention of the poor as naturally establish themselves in that of the latter. Under such different management, the same purpose must require very different degrees of expense to execute it. It appears, accordingly, from the experience of all ages and nations, I ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... branch. The leaves are narrow, lance-shaped, acute, saw-edged, rough. From Massachusetts and Florida westward to Minnesota and Arkansas one finds the plant blooming in dry fields from June to August, after the parsimonious manner of the ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... was poor, bitter because of persecution, ill-educated, overworked, without a bright future, and shadowed by the race problem. Though their new political leaders were shrewd, narrow, conservative, honest, and parsimonious, the constant fighting of fire with fire scorched all. In the bitter discipline of reconstruction, the pleasantest side of Southern life came to an end. During the war and the consequent reconstruction there was ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... it has been admitted. Some of that few make a good use of them. But the vast majority are injured. They either become less active and industrious, or more parsimonious and miserly; and not a few become prodigals or bankrupts at once. In any of these events, they are of course unfitted for the essential purposes of human existence. It is not given to humanity to bear a sudden acquisition of wealth. The best of men are endangered by it. As ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... requirements of the case were lavish, the traditional law of the Great Supper ordaining that not fewer than seven different sweets shall be served. Mise Fougueiroun, however, was not the person to stand upon the parsimonious letter of any eating law. Here had been her opportunity, and she had run amuck through all the range ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... Seneca is reported to have had a large library; it is certain that he possessed and fully enjoyed enormous wealth; and it is amusing to find this commendation of literary moderation following on a well-known passage in praise of parsimonious living, and of the good example set by Diogenes. Modern scepticism about the practical stoicism of the ancients is surely brought to a climax by a living writer, M. Fournier, who maintains that the so-called tub of Diogenes was in reality a commodious little dwelling—neat but not gorgeous. ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... son, Charles, is also said, though upon uncertain authority, to have been a Catholic before his father, and to have contributed to his change.[6] Above all, James his master, to whose fortunes he had so closely attached himself, had now become as parsimonious of his favour as his Church is of salvation, and restricted it to those of his own sect. It is more than probable, though only a conjecture, that Dryden might be made the subject of those private exhortations, which in that reign were called closeting; and, predisposed as he was, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... that the parsimonious public should know what has been doing, and still is doing, in this connexion, I mention here that everything set forth in these pages concerning the Court of Chancery is substantially true, and within the truth. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... you would be miserable." The summer was intensely hot at Bologna, and the plague broke out. In these circumstances it seems miraculous that the four sculptors in one bed escaped contagion. Michelangelo's parsimonious habits were not occasioned by poverty or avarice. He accumulated large sums of money by his labour, spent it freely on his family, and exercised bountiful charity for the welfare of his soul. We ought rather to ascribe them to some constitutional peculiarity, affecting ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... appropriations, and to scan sharply any change in our fiscal revenue system which may reduce our income. The need of strict economy in our expenditures is emphasized by the fact that we can not afford to be parsimonious in providing for what is essential to our national well-being. Careful economy wherever possible will alone prevent our income from falling below the point required in order to ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... mismanagement of the Fording estates; and as a scholar and man of the world, had thought it weakness to shirk the expression of them. The timber was being neglected, there was no thinning and no planting. The old-fashioned farmhouses were being let fall into disrepair, and then replaced by parsimonious eaveless buildings; the very grazing in the park was let, and fallow-deer and red-deer were jostled by sheep and common mongrel cows. The question of the cows had galled him till he was driven to remonstrate ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... and Cabinet, were regarded as having something more than local interest. Sammy Craddock had been the man with twenty shillings income. He had worked hard in his youth and had been too shrewd and far-sighted to spend hard. His wife had helped him, and a lucky windfall upon the decease of a parsimonious relative had done the rest. The weekly deposit in the old stocking hidden under the mattress had become a bank deposit, and by the time he was incapacitated from active labor, a decent little income was ready. When the Illsbery Bank stopped payment, not only his daily bread but his dearly valued ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... not the capacity for loving. For the first time it seemed to him he had begun to understand that she was incapable of love—in other words, of giving herself wholly to anybody. A strange mystery it was that one who could give her body so unreservedly should be so parsimonious about her soul. To give her body and retain herself was her gift, above all other women, thereby remaining always new, always unexpected, and always desirable. In the few visits to Paris which had been allowed to him by her, and by Madame Savelli, she had repaid ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... "invest" any considerable portion of their increased wages. Mr. Gould puts this point very plainly and convincingly: "Where economic gains are small, savings mean a relatively low plane of social existence. A parsimonious people are never progressive, neither are they, as a rule, industrially efficient. It is the man with many wants—not luxurious fancies, but real legitimate wants—who works hard to satisfy his aspirations, ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... didn't have to. For the first, last, and only time on The Road, I got all I wanted. I abandoned the bumpers and managed to get out on a side-ladder; it was ticklish work, for I had never encountered car-ends that were so parsimonious of hand-holds and foot-holds as ...
— The Road • Jack London
... worse than George the First. George the Second was born at Hanover on October {274} 30, 1683, and was therefore in his forty-fourth year when he succeeded to the throne. He had still less natural capacity than his father. He was parsimonious; he was avaricious; he was easily put out of temper. His instincts, feelings, passions were all purely selfish. He had hot hatreds and but cool friendships. Personal courage was, perhaps, the only quality becoming a sovereign which George the Second possessed. He had served as a volunteer ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... in the hall, and it is put out in conformity with the rules which governed her youthful years. She dresses as her mother dressed. The house in Saumur, without sun, without warmth, always in shadow, melancholy, is an image of her life. She carefully accumulates her income, and might seem parsimonious did she not disarm criticism by a noble employment of her wealth. Pious and charitable institutions, a hospital for old age, Christian schools for children, a public library richly endowed, bear testimony against the charge of avarice which some persons lay at her door. The churches ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... seems, some parsimonious rays Collect from each far heaven a feeble blaze, Dance o'er his Europe, and again excite His numerous nations to receive the light. But faint and slow the niggard dawn expands, Diffused o'er various far dissunder'd lands, Dreading, as well it may, to prove once more ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... is an object of envy. In pursuing my investigation, I do not find that I am led to more advantageous ideas of the liberty of the savage; on the contrary, I sees in him only the slave of his wants, and of the freaks of a sterile and parsimonious nature. Food he has not at hand; rest is not at his command; he must run, weary himself, endure hunger and thirst, heat and cold, and all the inclemency of the elements and seasons; and as the ignorance in which he was born ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... it very expensive. It is money on the right hand and the left, and with a costly house and large family the income that was double his bachelor wants melts away like dew. He is not parsimonious, but his instincts and habits have been prudent. He is making inroads upon his capital, and if he should never get it back? His father, it is true, has advised against entangling his private fortune, but it cannot be helped now. To retreat with honor is impossible and would be extremely mortifying. ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... and ale to such as chose rather to live upon the folly of others, than their own labour, with such thoughtless liberality, that he left a third part of his estate mortgaged. His successor, a man of spirit, scorned to impair his dignity by parsimonious retrenchments, or to admit, by a sale of his lands, any participation of the rights of his manour; he therefore made another mortgage to pay the interest of the former, and pleased himself with the reflection, that his son would have the hereditary ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... was eventually obliged to content herself with the following tradition: It was said that on the site of No. — Forrest Road there had once stood a cottage occupied by two sisters (both nurses), and that one was suspected of poisoning the other; and that the cottage, moreover, having through their parsimonious habits got into a very bad state of repair, was blown down during a violent storm, the surviving sister perishing in the ruins. Granted that this story is correct, it was in all probability the ghost of this latter sister that appeared ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... habits and with tastes starved small, And take at once to his impoverished brain The sudden element that changes things, 130 That sets the undreamed-of rapture at his hand And puts the cheap old joy in the scorned dust? Is he not such an one as moves to mirth— Warily parsimonious, when no need, Wasteful as drunkenness at undue times? All prudent counsel as to what befits The golden mean, is lost on such an one: The man's fantastic will is the man's law. So here—we call the treasure knowledge, say, Increased beyond the fleshly faculty— 140 Heaven opened ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... fall there projected from the water a rock which had, by parsimonious saving during a long course of years, hoarded a little soil, out of which a small tuft of bushes struggled to support a decent vegetable existence. The high waters had nearly submerged it, but a few slender twigs ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... spring (April, I think), but was summarily dissolved. A small quarto volume, of not unfrequent occurrence, I believe, contains some good specimens of the eloquence then prevalent—it was rich in thought, never wordy—in fact, too parsimonious in words and illustrations; and it breathed a high tone of religious principle as well as of pure-minded patriotism; but, for the reason stated above—its narrow circuit and very limited duration—the general character of the Parliamentary ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... but his temperament, though cold at the heart, thrilled at the approach of great and perilous enterprises, amidst which he rivalled his brother in activity and resourcefulness. Accordingly, his Viceroyalty of India moved Bonaparte to envy, patriotic Britons to rapturous applause, and the parsimonious Directors of the Company to carping criticisms. Those who deny to Pitt the gift of choosing able and inspiring men, forget that he made Wellesley Governor-General of India, and supported him in his quarrels ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... sketch what they may do. No leisure except for the strong, the nimble have none.—I ought to tell you what I do, or I ought to have to tell you what I have done. But what can I? the same concession to the levity of the times, the noise of America comes again. I have even run on wrong topics for my parsimonious Muse, and waste my time from my true studies. England I see as a roaring volcano of Fate, which threatens to roast or smother the poor literary Plinys that come too near for mere purpose ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... House. In disposition as well as in intellect, he differed widely from his brother-in-law. Pitt was utterly regardless of money. He would scarcely stretch out his hand to take it; and, when it came, he threw it away with childish profusion. Grenville, though strictly upright, was grasping and parsimonious. Pitt was a man of excitable nerves, sanguine in hope, easily elated by success and popularity, keenly sensible of injury, but prompt to forgive; Grenville's character was stern, melancholy, and pertinacious. Nothing was more remarkable in him than his inclination always ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... himself, as an intimate friend of the family that Bernard's mother ventured to tell him they knew of his kind deed done in secret,—a revelation which caused him much confusion. Bernard had discovered long before that their eccentric neighbor, far from being a parsimonious hoarder of untold wealth, was, in fact, almost a poor man. He possessed a life-interest in the house in which he dwelt, and the income of a certain investment left to him by the will of a former employer in acknowledgment ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... obscurity the opinions and records of antiquity, the beauties of Arabian and Asiatic literature, &c.; but while our libraries are thus stored with the learning of various countries, we distribute with a parsimonious hand, the blessings of religious truth, to the benighted nations of the earth. The natives of Asia derive but little advantage in this respect from an intercourse with us, and even the poor Africans, whom we affect to consider as barbarians, ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... as we have seen, was from the outset full of difficulty. The king was personally parsimonious, but his many projects for the general welfare of the land involved large outlay, and the consequence was an annual average deficit of seven million florins. At first the revenue was raised by the increase of customs and ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... thus drawn, in 1749, by the Rev. W. Clarke:—"Our Bishop is a better sort of man than most of the mitred order. He is, indeed, awkward, absent, etc.; but then, he has no ambition, no desire to please, and is privately munificent when the world thinks him parsimonious. He has given more to the Church than all the bishops put together for almost ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... grand tour in 1740, wrote to his father from Florence: "The only thing the Italians shine in is their reception of strangers. At such times every thing is magnificence: the more remarkable as in their ordinary course of life they are parsimonious to a degree of nastiness. I saw in one of the vastest palaces of Rome (that of the Prince Pamfilio), the apartment which he himself inhabited, a bed that most servants in England would disdain to lie in, and furniture ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... experience of the life the young pair are but just entering on; and the lighter elements, present as carbonic-acid gas is in champagne; and the envious girls, the women absorbed in wondering if their dress is a success, the poor relations whose parsimonious "get-up" contrasts with that of the officials in uniform; and the greedy ones, thinking only of the supper; and the gamblers, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... building that seemed to stagger, or at least to shrink, under the weight of its own importance, the stranger—a man—paused to glance at one of the placards heralding the misfortune and at the same time the far from parsimonious regard of the lady who had been despoiled of a fashionable bulldog. Having perused the singularly comprehensive notice, he deliberately tore it down, folded it with some care, and stuck it into his overcoat pocket. Then he entered the Grand ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... tramp, and I noticed that he was more likely to linger and become talkative if I had a comfortable chair for him to sit in, and if he found a bottle of Benedictine and plenty of the kind of cigarettes he liked, at his elbow. He was, I had discovered, parsimonious about small expenditures—a trait absolutely inconsistent with his general character. Sometimes when he came he was silent and moody, and after a few sarcastic remarks went away again, to tramp the streets of Lincoln, which were almost as quiet and oppressively domestic as those of Black ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... shopkeeper at Newport, who, by great frugality and extraordinary application, had raised a fortune of about L160 a year in lands, and a considerable sum of ready money, all which at his death devolved upon my father, as his only child; who, being no less parsimonious than my grandfather, and living upon his own estate, had much improved it in value before his marriage with my mother; but he coming to that unhappy end, my mother, after my birth, placed all her affection upon me (her growing hope, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... at Nys/—at the time when he was working at his own statue —I entered his work-room and bade him good morning; he appeared as if he did not wish to notice me, and I stole softly away again. At breakfast he was very parsimonious in the use of words, and when somebody asked him to say something at all events, he ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... hang on the back of your chair to dry, and there you have it next morning rejuvenesced. It was the only collar he had in the world, it saved threepence a week at least, and that, to a South Kensington "science teacher in training," living on the guinea a week allowed by a parental but parsimonious government, is a sum to consider. It had come to Lewisham as a great discovery. He had seen it first in a shop window full of indiarubber goods, and it lay at the bottom of a glass bowl In which goldfish drifted discontentedly to ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... unventilated; narrow, cramped; close-mouthed, secretive, reticent, reserved, uncommunicative, taciturn; dense, solid, compact, imporous; near, adjacent, adjoining; intimate, confidential; parsimonious, stingy, penurious niggardly, miserly, illiberal, close-fisted; exact, literal, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... change his mind? That is the grand question." Captain Paget dined alone at a West-End restaurant that evening. He dined well, for he had in hand certain moneys advanced by his patron, and he was not disposed to be parsimonious. He sat for some time in meditative mood over his pint bottle of Chambertin, and the subject of his meditation was ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... damnation!" he stormed. "Is my money my own or is it to be doled out by parsimonious hirelings? Must I beg my servants' consent to ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... be forgiven, and no vengeance taken upon her, if she should confess her part of the history. This discussion lasted long, and the substance of what was then opened to Tamar and her paternal friends was this:—Mr. Salmon was, it seems, a Polish Jew, extremely rich, and evidently very parsimonious; he had had mercantile concerns in London, and had there married, when nearly fifty years of age, a beautiful young Jewess, whose mother he had greatly benefitted, when in the most deplorable circumstances. With this lady he had gone abroad, and it was ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... black leather of the Literates' guard, who swung a three-foot length of fire hose with his right hand and fired a pistol with his left, and a boy in a black-and-red jacket who was letting off a burp gun in deliberate, parsimonious, bursts. It was a second or two before Cardon recognized them as Prestonby's bodyguard, Doug Yetsko, and Claire Pelton's brother Ray. There were four Literates' guards and about a dozen boys with them, all firing ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... under the surface, and exactly contrary, the latter is often neglected. This was why the rapidly spent capital of the prodigal was supposed formerly to employ more labour than the invested savings of the parsimonious, and the purchase of native goods to encourage native industry more than ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... and his sense of the trouble they underwent, in a very affecting way. With regard to his man-servant in particular, he was very anxious that he should be rewarded by liberal presents; and he pressed me earnestly on no account to be parsimonious. Indeed Kant was nothing less than princely in his use of money; and there was no occasion on which he was known to express the passion of scorn very powerfully, but when he was commenting on mean and penurious ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... to leave their private conduct without restraint? Can it enter into a reasonable mind to imagine, that men of every other nation are not equally masters of their own time or houses with ourselves, and equally at liberty to be parsimonious or profuse, frolick or sullen, abstinent or luxurious? Liberty is certainly necessary to the full play of predominant humours; but such liberty is to be found alike under the government of the many or the few, in monarchies ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... be planned and constructed for the use of the household, with incidental accommodation for our immediate friends or guests—which can always be done without sacrifice to the comfort or convenience of the regular inmates. In this remark, a stinted and parsimonious spirit is not suggested. A liberal appropriation of rooms in every department; a spare chamber or two, or an additional room on the ground floor, looking to a possible increase of family, and the indulgence of an easy hospitality, should always govern the resident of the country in erecting his ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... Foote of an acquaintance of his, who was so avaricious as even to lament the prospect of his funeral expences, though a short time before he had been censuring one of his own relations for his parsimonious temper—"Now is it not strange," continued he, "that this man would not remove the beam from his own eye, before he attempted to take the mote out of other peoples?" "Why, so I dare say he would," cried Foote, "if he were ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... was self-respecting among the lot was old 'Eliza Countess' as they designated her. It struck Bridget that Eliza Countess and Colin McKeith had points of character in common—it was true they both came from Glasgow. She thought of the parsimonious rectitude—which had of course included linen sheets and fine porcelain and shining silver—of old Lady Gaverick's establishment, of its stuffy conventionality—though that had been soothing sometimes after a ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... road. My horse for once outstripped his mare," replied Mr. Mullen, who felt a crawling sensation in the back of his neck whenever Sarah was present, as if he were called upon to face in her single person an entire parsimonious vestry. "I had the pleasure of driving your granddaughter home, and now I must be going back to bring mother. It was a delightful occasion, Mrs. Revercomb, and you are to be congratulated on the charming ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... dangerous end; and, for some time after, the entire community of "Penguin Castle," with the exception of the penguins themselves, feasted upon bunnies ad libitum, until they could say, as did the servants of that parsimonious nobleman who fed them without change ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... impulsive and voluptuous disposition a restraint which should compel her not to overstep the bounds of custom and decency. Lady Richmond had accepted this offer of his palace because she was obliged to; inasmuch as the avaracious and parsimonious king gave his son's widow only a meagre income, and her own means she had squandered and lavishly ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... ever accomplished it, has not been transmitted to posterity. Candid, but decided in his judgment of motives and actions, if we except his invectives against Pompey, he shows little propensity to censure; but in awarding praise, he is not equally parsimonious, and, on some occasions, risks the imputation of hyperbole. The grace, however, and the apparent sincerity with which it is bestowed, reconcile us to the compliment. This author concludes his history with a prayer for the prosperity of the ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... parsimonious of our employer's time, but somehow we do hate to squander that thirty-three minutes, which is the exact chronicide involved in despoiling our skull of a ten weeks' garner. If we were to have our ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... sister,—Willoughby, after that lady had offended her father by marrying, yet she had little doubt of Helen's capability; and thought, after the energy and self reliance she had manifested, she might, for she was, though rich, a most parsimonious woman, turn it to her own account and for a few years, at least, get her children cheaply educated. It was Helen's determination, if she obtained the compassionate allowance, to keep it, as a reserve for her brother's education. ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... governed the captured territories in a liberal and imperialistic spirit, and his personality had been popular to a certain extent even among the Portuguese. His absence was severely felt, and the policy of the West India Company, in itself parsimonious and somewhat petty, undoubtedly suffered much from the want of his presence; for during the time that he was in power he had restrained the excesses of his own people, and used no little tact towards the Portuguese. ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... The day before the horse's allowance was to be reduced to pure water, and when its owner's hope appeared certain of speedy realisation, the animal died. There are men who act almost as foolishly as the parsimonious horse owner in this fable did; and who are as properly punished as he was. Such men are to be found in the farmers who overstock their sheep pastures, and whose "lean kine" are the laughing stock of their ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... my father, who was very economical by nature, was extraordinarily cautious and, I may say, even parsimonious in charitable matters. It is of course easy to understand, if one considers the unlimited confidence which he enjoyed among the subscribers and the great moral responsibility which he could not but feel toward them. So that before undertaking ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... Guido. But his object was much higher,—in the intellect and the affections; it was the human being in his endless inflections of thought and passion, in which there is little probability he will ever be approached. Yet false criticism has been as prodigal to him in the ascription of beauty, as parsimonious ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... personal friends of the unlettered son of the ship-carver, as were Horace Vernet, Walter Scott, Andersen, and Mendelssohn; his casket of decorations was the amusement of his lady visitors; and his invitations were so constant that he could not always remember the name of his host: he was at once parsimonious and charitable, cheerful and melancholy. His artistic influence was very strong, exhibiting itself in the style of Tenerani, Galli, Rauch, Drake and Bissen. The life of him by Plon is methodical and complete, and the American version is illustrated by thirty-five ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... Armande or the Marquis. More than half of the money had been spent in buying off lawsuits; the lad's extravagance had squandered the rest. Of the Marquis' income of ten thousand livres, five thousand were necessary for the housekeeping; two thousand more represented Mlle. Armande's allowance (parsimonious though she was) and the Marquis' expenses. The handsome young heir-presumptive, therefore, had not a hundred louis to spend. And what sort of figure can a man make on two thousand livres? Victurnien's tailor's bills alone absorbed his whole allowance. He ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... most precious to a young girl. For an instant the thought of confiding all to her parents entered her brain; but she rejected the idea almost as soon as she had conceived it, for she felt that her father would believe that the parsimonious Duke de Champdoce would never consent to such a marriage, and that her entire liberty would be taken from her, and that she might even be sent ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... facts concerning him, for he must have been a great man and humorist. The story is told of Hogarth that on being commissioned to paint a scriptural picture of the Red Sea for a too parsimonious patron who had beaten him down and down, he rebuked him for his meanness by producing a canvas entirely covered with red paint. "But what is this?" the patron asked. "The Red Sea—surely." "Where then are the Israelites?" "They have all crossed over." "And Pharaoh's hosts?" "They are all ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... expectation, when they came in his company, noting the gravity and sobriety of his aspect and conversation; so free from loquacity or much talkativeness, that he was sometimes difficult to be engaged in any discourse; though when he was so, it was always singular, and never trite or vulgar. Parsimonious in nothing but his time, whereof he made as much improvement, with as little loss as any man in it: when he had any to spare from his drudging practice, he was scarce patient of any diversion from his study; so impatient of sloth and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... at first, to leave the Nibelungen Hoard alone; but time tames all things except the love of gold. I went there; it was rich, but not inexhaustible. You have all had proof that I am neither poor nor parsimonious; but neither am I extravagant. I have all that I want—a cottage at Newport, a neat house in the Rue de la Paix, stocks, and real estate. The opal-mine started me; I have kept myself going very well ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... streets about the Marche Saint-Honore as usual, and I could not see that prices of food had risen abnormally in spite of complaints in the newspapers and the discussion about cold storage in the Chamber of Deputies. Restaurant portions were parsimonious and prices high as usual, but the hotels made specially low rates, "pendant la guerre," which the English took advantage of in large numbers. The Latin Quarter seemed harder hit by the war than other quarters, emptier, as at the end of a long vacation; around the Arch there was a subdued ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... the estate was encumbered when he inherited it, and he had paid off one mortgage by raising another. He might perhaps have used other means, letting his sporting rights and using economy, but this would have jarred. The only Osborn who bothered about money was his wife, and Alice was parsimonious enough for both. Money was certainly what his agent called tight; but as long as he could give his friends some shooting and a good dinner and live as an Osborn ought to live, he was satisfied. Still, ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss |
