"Beggary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... servant who is betrayed by the son of her employers. Not only does the scamp desert her when she most needs his protection and acknowledgment, but he is silent when his equally vicious parents drive her forth to a life of intense hardship. She is spurned at every door and reduced to beggary. Her child is born under the most distressing circumstances, and under conditions that strike the note of horror the infant is slain before her very eyes while she gazes ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... honor of maidenhood, I may add that We-we, Caubvick, Ikewna, and Pussay were exceptions to the general rule of beggary. They asked us for nothing. Something seemed to restrain them: perhaps the attentions we had shown them. Be that as it may, they fared the better for it. Wade led off by giving Ikewna a broad, highly-colored worsted scarf, which he wrapped ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... said, and to conceal his mortification got into a towering passion, and used some very severe language which deeply wounded my mother's feelings. As he strode angrily from the room he said, "You need not expect anything else but to come to beggary if you keep a great fellow like that lazin' round in idleness, and I, for one, shall not pity you, depend on't." With these words he left the house, closing the door after him with a loud bang. It was indeed a welcome relief when he left ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... diamond; hath also ordained kings, dukes, or leaders of the people, magistrates, judges, and other degrees among men. And as honor is left to posterity, for a mark and ensign of the virtue and understanding of their ancestors: so (seeing Siracides preferreth death before beggary: and that titles, without proportionable estates, fall under the miserable succor of other men's pity) I account it foolishness to condemn such a care: provided, that worldly goods be well gotten, and that we raise not our own buildings out of other men's ruins. For, as Plato doth first ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... be merely a jest. If he has a spite against any one, he can pluck his heart out of his body with a look, just as easily as his money out of his pocket. The enemy he sets eye on will waste away and die miserably, or will sink into beggary, while he himself becomes as rich as ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... drawing-room, and some of them are no less beautiful in appearance than satisfactory in their results. It was said, by an author belonging to the last century, of alchemy, "that its beginning was deceit, its progress labour, and its end beggary." It may be said of modern chemistry, that its beginning is pleasure, its progress knowledge, and its objects truth and utility. I have spoken of the scientific attainments necessary for the chemical ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... thought as much. That is beggary, you know. Your father was a very imprudent man. And you have a fellowship? I thought you broke down in your degree." Whereupon Arthur again had to explain the ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... resorted to the Bowery lodging-house, brooding over where to look. From this it was but a step to beggary. ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... namely the Governorship of Jersey, the Patent of the Wine Office, the Wardenship of the Stannaries, the Rangership of Gillingham Forest, and the Lieutenancy of Portland Castle. He besought that he might not be reduced to utter beggary, and he did his best to retain the Duchy of Cornwall and his estates at Sherborne. The former, as he might have supposed, could not be left in the charge of a prisoner. It was given to a friend, to the ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... under Wallenstein's banner, while giving to each of his figures a fairly distinct individuality. With a little study of costume a painter could paint them all. There is the wretched Peasant, who has been reduced to beggary and is willing to retrieve his fortunes by gambling with loaded dice; the sagacious Sergeant, who always knows more than other people, and prides himself upon 'the fine touch and the right tone' that can only be acquired near the person of the commander; the ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... Springs. He came from a once wealthy clan, now reduced through opium smoking to comparative poverty. He had not yet reached the stage of positive want, but that condition is never far from the habitual heavy smoker, and should he continue a few years longer, beggary will be the ultimate fate ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... propose to bear? I would sooner be poor, in beggary,—still fighting, even without means to fight, for an empty title,—still suffering, still conscious that all around me regarded me as an impostor, than conquer only to know that she, for whom all this has been done, has degraded her name and my own. If she ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... legible from the agitation and misery which enfeebled the hand that wrote it, was folded, and directed, and again the writer left his garret lodging on the errand of beggary; he descended the narrow stairway, slowly dragged his steps through the lane, and sought the ...
— The Lumley Autograph • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... truth was one of Tom's pleasures. He knew the year of waiting had managed to fill itself with sweetness for them. Their hopes had been alternately raised and dashed to earth; one day it seemed not improbable that they were to be millionaires, the next that beggary awaited them after the dwindling of their small stock of money; but they had shared their emotions ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... augurs, to examine the entrails of the victim immediately after it had been slain as an offering to the gods. In 1911 the Ojhas numbered about 5000 persons distributed over all Districts of the Central Provinces. At present the bulk of the community subsist by beggary. The word Ojha is of Sanskrit and not of Gond origin and is applied by the Hindus to the seers or magicians of several of the primitive tribes, while there is also a class of Ojha Brahmans who practise magic and divination. The Gond Ojhas, who are the subject of this article, originally served ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... a statute of 1530, describing them as "outlandish people called Egyptians," complaining of their robberies, and requiring them to depart the realm. In the same year first appeared the celebrated Act for the punishment of beggars and vagabonds and forbidding beggary, and requiring them to labor or be whipped. Herbert Spencer states in his "Descriptive Sociology" that it punishes with loss of an ear the third conviction for joining a trades-union, which, if true, would justify ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... themselves to their old lurking-places. The new religion was banished from all the cities, every conventicle was broken up by armed men, the preachers and leading members were hanged, their disciples beaten with rods, reduced to beggary, or imprisoned, even if they sometimes escaped the scaffold. An incredible number, however, were executed for religious causes. Hardly a village so small, says the Antwerp chronicler,—[Meteren]—but ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... thine eyes and set thee a-tremble—e'en as I? Nay indeed, thou'rt a-thrill with Folly ... and I, with Roguery. Loved Folly! Sweet Roguery! O Yolande, let us fly from empty state, from this mockery of life and learn the sweet joys of ... of beggary, and, crowned ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... worst is- -the damning feature of the matter is, that he had a very strong and intelligible reason for wishing this Bianca out of the way. Remember that your marriage with her would have the effect of reducing him to beggary. Put that fact side by side with the facts that he takes her to a solitary place in the Pineta, and that she is shortly afterwards found there murdered; and I am afraid—I am dreadfully afraid that the judges will not resist the conclusion that, in truth, seems forced upon them. ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... property, starting on a journey of thirty odd miles, through a hostile country, with a possibility of being massacred on the way, and no hope or prospect but the hospitality of strangers and ultimate beggary. The disposition of the guard was confided to Captain Cox. The march was successful; no Indians were encountered. We reached Crisp's farm, which was about half way between New Ulm and Mankato, about evening. I ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... He who asked the question was run through the body; but his relations were so powerful, that the victor was obliged to fly his country, was tried and condemned in his absence; his goods were confiscated; his wife broke her heart; his children were reduced to beggary; and he himself is now starving in exile. In England we have not yet adopted all the implacability of the punctilio. A gentleman may be insulted even with a blow, and survive, after having once hazarded ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... sorrowing wife. He reached Vienna without encountering further mishap, but gained no thanks for his heroism. He was compelled to give up a small estate that he had purchased with the remains of his property, the purchase-money proving insufficient, and he must have been consigned to beggary, had not Hofer's son, who had received a fine estate from the emperor, ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... that he could take nothing of Roland's savings, having decided on giving up the whole of this money, he agreed; he resigned himself to keeping Marechal's; for if he rejected both he would find himself reduced to beggary. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... will be. You have spent every shilling of your own,— and because your mother is affectionate and weak you are now spending all that she has, and are bringing her and your sister to beggary.' ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... enemies of popular liberty. Upon this tumultuous wave of polluted democracy, now rising with resistless and crested billow, Danton and Robespierre were riding into their terrific power. Humanity shut its eyes in view of the hideous apparition of wan and haggard beggary and crime. The deep mutterings of this rising storm, which no earthly hand might stay, rolled heavily upon the ear of Europe. Christendom looked astounded upon the spectacle of a barbarian invasion bursting forth from the cellars and garrets of Paris. Oppressed and degraded ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... you'll win seven shillings of me. You've sworn to bring me to beggary and ruin. I know you swore it when my mamma sent you abroad with me. Oh, why did I come to foreign parts with a wicked, guzzling, gambling, chambering Chaplain, that's in league with the very host and the drawers of this thieving inn ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... reduced without remedy from a condition worthy the envy of princes for riches and magnificence, though not for power, to beggary without resource. I had no other way to subsist but by asking charity, which I have done till now. But to expiate my offence against God, I enjoined myself, by way of penance, a box on the ear from every charitable person who should commiserate ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... outrageous. There was no money to be got from him, and I had no other course. Your bankruptcy would have meant your downfall. That dressmaker woman was inexorable. You would have been sued by your stock-broker, and—who knows what wretchedness was awaiting us?—perhaps absolute beggary in obscure lodgings, and our daily bread purchased with money begged from our friends. You know what father is: you know how he hates both you and me, how he would rub salt into our wounds, and gloat over our humiliation. If—if Dick hadn't gone ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... age he was reduced to poverty, or rather to actual beggary; for shortly before his death, when fourscore years old, he was permitted, by royal letters patent, to become a mendicant. This curious document is printed in Mr. Bolton Corney's Curiosities of Literature Illustrated, and sets ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... invocation dear to his mistress, "Sancte Thoma adjuva me," and was miraculously rescued. In another, a merchant of Groningen, having purloined an arm of St. John the Baptist, grew rich as if by enchantment so long as he kept it concealed in his house, but was reduced to beggary so soon as, his secret being discovered, the relic was taken away from him and ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... part of our outfits were landed on the right bank of the Missouri River, our trouble with the Indians began, not in open hostilities, but in robbery under the guise of beggary. The word had been passed around in our little party that not a cent's worth of provisions would we give up to the Indians. We believed this policy to be our only safeguard from spoliation, and in that we ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... that of the people whom they represented. It was stated that the ruin of the islands would be the ruin of themselves and of the country. Its revenue would be half annihilated; its naval strength would decay. Merchants, manufacturers and others would come to beggary. But in this deplorable situation they would expect to be indemnified for their losses. Compensation, indeed, must follow: it could not be withheld. But what would be the amount of it? The country would have no less than from eighty to a hundred millions to pay the ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... clerical leaders alone had everything to lose by the downfall of the empire. Their personal interest in its prolongation was clear. With them it was a matter, if not of life and death, at least of comparative dignity and prosperity at home, or of exile and beggary abroad. ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... is the case of many a younger brother of a great family, who had rather see their children starve like gentlemen, than thrive in a trade or profession that is beneath their quality. This humour[61] fills several parts of Europe with pride and beggary. It is the happiness of a trading nation, like ours, that the younger sons, though incapable of any liberal art or profession, may be placed in such a way of life, as may perhaps enable them to vie with the best of their family: accordingly we find several citizens that were launched into the world ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... Jeanne was a bastard. Of her relatives they knew nothing. The Count had an aunt in England who was married to a rich lord; but he had not corresponded with her lately. The little one then was reduced to beggary as the estate ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... or ability to renew the contest. Then raising him on his feet, he led him bleeding and sputtering to the door, and put his staff into his hand, and bid him go use his command upon dogs and swine, but not presume himself to be lord of the guests another time, nor of the beggary! ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... know," she said in a doubtful tone. Something of old Nelson's dread of the authorities had rubbed off on the girl since she had to live with it day after day. "I don't know. Papa's afraid of being reduced to beggary, as he says, in his old days. Look here, kid, you had better clear ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... and try to help them all you can, and they turn on you like a dog for it! Very well, Aunt Isel; I'll let you alone!—and if you don't rue it one of these days, when your fine lady daughter-in-law has brought you down to beggary for want of a proper word, ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... their wretched condition. The philosophers, poets, scholars, and lawyers of Rome, sprang uniformly from the aristocratic classes. In the provinces, the poor sometimes rose, but very seldom. The whole aspect of society was a fearful inequality—disproportionate fortunes, slavery, and beggary. There was no middle class, of any influence or consideration. It was for the interest of people without means to enroll themselves in the service of the rich. Hence the immense numbers employed in the palaces in menial work. They would have been enrolled in the armies, but for their ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... which Gringoire, still roughly held by the body, formed the centre. It was a semicircle of rags, tatters, tinsel, pitchforks, axes, legs staggering with intoxication, huge, bare arms, faces sordid, dull, and stupid. In the midst of this Round Table of beggary, Clopin Trouillefou,—as the doge of this senate, as the king of this peerage, as the pope of this conclave,—dominated; first by virtue of the height of his hogshead, and next by virtue of an indescribable, haughty, fierce, and formidable air, which caused his eyes to flash, and ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... was in danger of legal punishment or of beggary: he was in danger only of seeing disclosed to the judgment of his neighbors and the mournful perception of his wife certain facts of his past life which would render him an object of scorn and an opprobrium of the religion with which he had diligently associated ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... of beggary, to say nothing of eight months of war, isn't just the thing to insure immortal youth, is it? You see, I'm ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... chief problems of Indian Society is that of beggary. India is perhaps the most beggar-beridden country to be found. Nor would it be possible under present circumstances to pass any law forbidding beggary. In the absence of a poor-law, it is the ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... neither did they well who forced me, but what was well came to me from Thee, my God. For they were regardless how I should employ what they forced me to learn, except to satiate the insatiate desires of a wealthy beggary, and a shameful glory. But Thou, by whom the very hairs of our head are numbered, didst use for my good the error of all who urged me to learn; and my own, who would not learn, Thou didst use for my punishment- a fit penalty for one, so small a boy and so great a sinner. So by those ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... now a pestilential morass. We passed through the ruins of the custom-house, now miles inland, and found a single Turkish soldier on guard. The peasants who cultivate some parts of the plain come from distant villages, and fever, filth, and beggary reign in Ephesus. ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... a body, will appear no more in this transcript. The greatness of their misfortune kept them asunder. They closed their chamber-doors, and waited in hunger and sorrow for the moment when the sky should be their shelter and beggary ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... scaffold. The main part of the family wealth, as the family mansion Gothurst—now Gayhurst—in Buckinghamshire, came from Sir Everard's wife, Mary Mulsho; and probably that is one reason why James I acceded to the doomed man's appeal that his widow and children should not be reduced to beggary. Kenelm, in fact, entered on his active career with an income of L3000 a year; but even its value in those days did not furnish a youth of such varied ambitions and such magnificent exterior over handsomely for his journey through the world. His childhood ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... while already he had lost the reputation that might have introduced him to employment. For heavy work he was altogether unfit; and had it not been for a bottle companion—a merry, hard-drinking shoemaker—he would have died of starvation or sunk into beggary. ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... If Hervey's financial enemies knew of his kidnaping and death they would hammer away at his stocks until they fell to nothing and his family, accustomed to fabulous wealth, would have been reduced to beggary. ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... was leaving the city. Possibly Mark and Luke refer to the best known of the two men and Luke may designate the older of the two towns which bore the name of Jericho. All agree, however, in picturing the pitiful condition of the helpless man who because of his blindness was reduced to beggary and was a true symbol of the misery to which one is brought by ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... reasons hast thou ordered it, that beggary and urbanity, which are at such variance in other countries, should find a way to be ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... this place by means of his wealth, and sought to rival me. My purse soon enabled me to leave the poor devil far behind. To save his credit he became bankrupt again, and fled beyond the mountains; and thus I was rid of him. Many a one in this place was reduced to beggary and ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... and "they're off" echoed almost as a sound of distant thunder, he crept closer to her as though to share the excitement of which she was mistress. The specks upon the green were nothing to him—those dots of color moving swiftly across the scene, how odd to think that they might bring riches or beggary in their train! This he knew to be the stern fact, and when men began to shout hoarsely, to press together and crane their necks, when that very torrent of sound which named the distance arose, he looked again at Anna and saw that she was smiling. "She has won," he ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... Madame, and we filed out into the dusty street, at the corner of which sat another of our visible tokens of the coming of the season of flowers; a dirty, shrivelled old Irishwoman, full of benedictions and beggary, who, all through the summer, sold "posies" to the passers-by. We school-girls were good customers to her. We were all more or less sentimental, more or less homesick, and had more or less of that susceptibility ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... John," said Lablache, with a contemptuous shrug. "You know the inevitable result of such a hasty decision. It means ruin to you—beggary to that poor child." His teeth snapped viciously. Then he smiled with his mouth. "I can only put your de—refusal down to utter, ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... who have been starved in life, levy a sort of tax on the plenty of others, in the instinctive effort to replenish their own empty treasure-house. Only that is impossible. One can gain no riches in that fashion. One can only reduce one's victim to a beggary like one's own." ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... but they all died before their mother. We had been reduced to beggary by misfortunes, and I had become too weak and ill to work. I buried my poor wife's bones by the side of the road where she died; raised the little shrine over them, planted the trees, and there have I sat ever since by her side, with our poor boy in my bosom. It is a sad place for wolves, and we ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... want in France. "I calculate that in these latter days more than a tenth part of the people," said Vauban, "are reduced to beggary, and in fact beg." Sweden had for a long time been proffering mediation: conferences began on the 9th of May, 1697, at Nieuburg, a castle belonging to William III., near the village of Ryswick. These great halls opened one into another; the French and the plenipotentiaries of the coalition of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... may ask with scorn, is this thinking nation to live? With all its wisdom, will it not be reduced to beggary and starvation? ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... yield you grace. Soon must you leave the woods you buy, Your villa, wash'd by Tiber's flow, Leave,—and your treasures, heap'd so high, Your reckless heir will level low. Whether from Argos' founder born In wealth you lived beneath the sun, Or nursed in beggary and scorn, You fall to Death, who pities none. One way all travel; the dark urn Shakes each man's lot, that soon or late Will force him, hopeless of return, On ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... asylums. And not only that, I thought, but these people who undertake this can be formed into a permanent society, which, by dividing the quarters of Moscow among its members, will be able to see to it that this poverty and beggary shall not be bred; they will incessantly annihilate it at its very inception; then they will fulfil their duty, not so much by healing as by a course of hygiene for the wretchedness of the city. I fancied that ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... kind man at heart, but has an unconquerable dislike to poverty and beggary. Beggars have heretofore been so strange to an American that he is apt to become their prey, being recognized through his national peculiarities, and beset by them in the streets. The English smile at him, and say that there are ample public ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... utter in a world so full of sin and sorrow. Goldsmith crying because The Good-natured Man had failed, inspired him with no pity. Though his own health was not good, he detested and despised valetudinarians. Pecuniary losses, unless they reduced the loser absolutely to beggary, moved him very little. People whose hearts had been softened by prosperity might weep, he said, for such events; but all that could be expected of a plain man was not to laugh. He was not much moved even ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... persecution broke out against the Jews, these merchants were oppressed and robbed, and saved themselves from destruction only by living a squalid life outside and a princely life in hidden quarters. It has been said: "You might follow an old merchant, spotted and stained with all the squalor of beggary upon him, through byways foul to the feet and offensive to every sense, and through some narrow lane enter what looks like the entrance of an ill-kept stable. Thence opens out a squalid hall of noisome odors. ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... already myself. Floating in this blue aether, what the devil is my wife to me, and her dirty Earth! My persecuting enemies seem so many pismires; and as for my debts, which have occasioned me so many brooding moments, honour and infamy, credit and beggary, ...
— Ixion In Heaven • Benjamin Disraeli
... had looked on with cool ruthlessness while grey-haired nobles were hurried to the block. The terrible bloodshed of Towton woke no pity in his heart; he turned from it only to frame a vast bill of attainder which drove twelve great nobles and a hundred knights to beggary and exile. When treachery placed his harmless rival in his power he visited him with cruel insult. His military ability had been displayed in his rapid march upon London, the fierce blow which freed him from his enemy ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... wretchedness the state of the tribes of Estremadura. It is right to state that Granada itself is the poorest city in Spain; the greatest part of the population, which exceeds sixty thousand, living in beggary and nakedness, and the Gitanos ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... charity of old Rachael Strong, the laundress—a dog-lover by profession; now winning a meal from the lightfooted and open-hearted lasses at the Rose; now standing on his hind-legs, to extort by sheer beggary a scanty morsel from some pair of 'drouthy cronies,' or solitary drover, discussing his dinner or supper on the alehouse-bench; now catching a mouthful, flung to him in pure contempt by some scornful gentleman ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... a point of some mystery to the present writer that Bernard Shaw should have been so long unrecognised and almost in beggary. I should have thought his talent was of the ringing and arresting sort; such as even editors and publishers would have sense enough to seize. Yet it is quite certain that he almost starved in London for many years, writing occasional columns for an advertisement or words for ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... action which gave the most horrible alarm to my pride, and suggested to my imagination a new and frightful idea. He passed his hand into his pocket as if feeling for cash. Great God! said I to myself, have I incurred the suspicion of beggary! the thought roused all of the man that was within me, and I replied, "No, sir, I am not afraid; nor do I want anything." He afterwards owned that the words, and still more the delivery of them, made a strong impression upon him. Well then, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... I have not yet sunk to the lowest possible depths. But that is not what I mean to enlarge on. What I wish you to understand is, that after Shank and I had gone to the dogs, and were reduced to beggary, I made up my mind to join a band of men who lived chiefly by their wits, and sometimes by their personal courage. Of course I won't say who they are, because we still hang together, and there is no need to say what ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... Parisian, and Italian also, only he is a real nigger and so is the best music-master in Cairo. Que faire? it's not catching, as Lady Morley said, and I won't present you with a young mulatto any more than with a young brave Belge. I may however find someone at Beyrout. Cairo is in such a state of beggary that all educated young men have fled. Maurice has no sort of idea why a nigger should not be as good as anyone else, but thinks perhaps you ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... tolerably. But that a victorious people should give up themselves again to the vanquished was never yet heard of, seems rather void of all reason and good policy, and will in all probability subject the subduers to the subdued,—will expose to revenge, to beggary, to ruin and perpetual bondage, the victors, under the vanquished: than which what ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... but for him would have been all powerful rose vividly before his eyes. Did he repent now that he was certain of the greatness of the sacrifice? Again from the bottom of his heart he answered, No. But even while Hardwicke read the words which doomed him to beggary it almost seemed to young Thorne as if the wrinkled waxen face and shrunken figure must suddenly become visible in the background to protest—as if a dead hand must be laid on that lying will which was itself more dead than ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... after my mother fled to England with my father, de Garcia persecuted my grandmother and his aunt with lawsuits and by other means, till at last she was reduced to beggary, in which condition the villain left her to die. So poor was she indeed, that she was buried in a public grave. After that the old woman, my informant, said she had heard that de Garcia had committed some crime ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... succeed; and I understand your father well enough to know that he will not survive its defeat. And if Maurice and your brother should both be killed, what would become of you? Oh, my God, would you not be reduced to beggary? ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... extinction, for almost a generation before emancipation. In a memorial of the planters to Parliament in 1831, three years before abolition, they declare that without Parliamentary aid they are doomed to hopeless ruin. Already, they say, hundreds of respectable persons had been reduced almost to beggary by the precarious condition of the planting interest. In this memorial they make no allusion to the anti-slavery agitations, which produced no serious effect in the colony till 1832. Indeed the West Indian interest ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the Roman conquerors were also reminded by certain symbols attached to their cars of triumph. The symbols were the whip and the crotalo, which were discovered in the Nemesis of the Vatican. The attitude of beggary made the above statue pass for that of Belisarius: and until the criticism of Winckelmann[665] had rectified the mistake, one fiction was called in to support another. It was the same fear of the sudden ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... mortified, and made up her mind to destroy his popularity with the troops. With this end in view she prevailed upon the King to withhold the soldiers' pay, which Graelent had to advance them out of his own means. In the end the unfortunate knight was reduced almost to beggary by this mean stratagem. ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... Jack. Boys are boys, and can to some extent make themselves what they like. Poor men's sons can, if they are steady and industrious and clever, rise in the world; rich men's sons can come down to beggary. But it is different with girls. And it always has been a great grief to me too when I have thought of Lily's future. For myself, I do not like taking the money—that you can well believe,—but for her sake I should be very wrong to refuse ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... doing what it can to urge you in the right way. Consider next that the afterlife has become so obscured as to justify calling it a lost light. If you find it, rejoice, O son of Hur—rejoice as I do, though in beggary of words. For then, besides the great gift which is to be saved to us, you will have found the need of a Saviour so infinitely greater than the need of a king; and he we are going to meet will not longer hold place in ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... bulwark which his enemies found stronger than they had imagined—the British courts of justice. The greatest efforts were now made to gain the day before these courts, to humiliate Colenso, and to reduce to beggary the clergy who remained faithful to him; and it is worthy of note that one of the leaders in preparing the legal plea of the com mittee ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... old precisian!" exclaimed Abou Hassan, fiercely; "cling to disgrace, and practise beggary; and yet, remember, one word can change your state, ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... shareholders. They found one-half of the pretended value of the paper in their hands annihilated in an instant; and what certainty had they with respect to the other half? The rich considered themselves ruined; those in humbler circumstances looked forward to abject beggary. ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... for a purpose that I need not tell you, as it was adoing with the right hand what the left should not know. I couldna say that I had there great pleasure, for the preacher was very cauldrife, and read every word, and then there was such a beggary of popish prelacy, that it was compassionate to a Christian ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... man can bake. And if a plumber wants a crumb, He may unto the baker come And plumb. A joker needing hats or cloaks Can go and pay for them with jokes, And so on: what a fellow's got Shall pay for things that he has not. If beggars' rags were cash, you'd see No longer any beggary; In short, there'd be no poverty." "A splendid scheme," quoth I; "but stay! What of the nation's credit, pray?" "Ha-ha! ho-ho!" he loudly roared. "We'll leave that problem to the Lord. And if He fails to keep us straight Once more we'll have to legislate, And so create, Confounding greed, ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... I am a poor man. How I came to be reduced to a position little better than beggary is not known by any of you, for I have studiously avoided airing my troubles to any one. To-day I intend to tell the story. It will cast some light on the subject that we will be called ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... clear account of himself, but evidently desired to avoid me when he recognized who I was. But, shocked to find him in so pitiable a condition, I pressed my questions, and finally told him I could not bear to see any one who had been in my service reduced to beggary; and though I had no actual need of his services, yet, rather than see him thus, he might return to his old position as servant in my house, and be paid the same wages as he had before. He hesitated, was much embarrassed, and, after a pause, said,—'A thousand thanks, your Excellency, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... steeple reared itself in lofty pride. The Palace stood in the shade of that steeple,—the real Palace, where the King sat deciding over the fate of his new subjects, taking their lands from them, when he did not take their lives, and banishing them across the sea to live and die in beggary. Her fingers tapped the glass in desperation as she realized her helplessness even to get news ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... laws which made provision for the poor, but they suffered them to fall into neglect. Beggary had become ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... to listen to her, that she has had a real bad day, not having managed to get on to a single winner, and that if it hadn't been for a fluke in backing Tantivy, one, two, three, she would have been reduced to a twopence in the pound condition of beggary. She will then forget her imaginary losses, and will listen with amusement and interest while a smooth-faced lad criticises with as much severity as he can command in the intervals of his cigarettes the dress, appearance, ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... borrow, and become the slave of somebody, for a morsel of bread. Thank God, no! Nay, of late I begin entirely to despise that whole matter, so as I never hitherto despised it: "Thou beggarliest Spectre of Beggary that hast chased me ever since I was man, come on then, in the Devil's name, let us see what is in thee! Will the Soul of a man, with Eternity within a few years of it, quail before thee?" Better, however, is my good pious Mother's version of it: "They cannot take God's Providence ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... such costly mistresses, games to such desperation, fools gold away with such idiocy as you do. You conduct yourself as if you were a millionaire, sir; and what are you? A pauper on my bounty, and on your brother Montagu's after me—a pauper with a tinsel fashion, a gilded beggary, a Queen's commission to cover a sold-out poverty, a dandy's reputation to stave off a defaulter's future! ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... Richmond troubles me more near Than Buckingham and his rash-levied strength. Come,—I have learn'd that fearful commenting Is leaden servitor to dull delay; Delay leads impotent and snail-pac'd beggary: Then fiery expedition be my wing, Jove's Mercury, and herald for a king! Go, muster men: my counsel is my shield; We must be brief when ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... night. Calm and unmoved amidst the scenes that darkness favours, the great heart of London throbs in its Giant breast. Wealth and beggary, vice and virtue, guilt and innocence, repletion and the direst hunger, all treading on each other and crowding together, are gathered round it. Draw but a little circle above the clustering housetops, and you shall have within its space everything, with ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... of the people habitually idle. Where labour is prohibited for nearly a fourth of the year by the intervention of holidays, and thus idleness is turned into a sacred merit, the nation must prepare for beggary. But Popery goes further still. The establishment of huge communities of sanctified idlers, monks and nuns by the ten thousand, in every province and almost in every town, gave a sacred sanction to idleness—gave a means of escaping work to all who preferred ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... himself and children necessaries, and not to use the bath to save three farthings, dying suddenly, left his money all hid and buried where his children could never find it, who by that means were all reduced to beggary. "The usurers answer me," says he, "then we will not lend; and what will the poor do? I bid them give, and exhort to lend, but without interest; for he that refuses to lend, and he that lends at usury, are equally criminal;" viz. ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... exclaimed Salmon, "I am ruined, undone, I shall come to beggary,—five hundred and ninty-four pounds, ten shillings and sixpence," and the teeth of the old man began to chatter, terror and dotage and cunning, seeming to be striving within him for the mastery and altogether depriving him of the power ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... that in the letter which he wrote from Patna, on the 20th of January, 1782, he there states that he was in tolerable good circumstances, and that this had arisen from his having continued long in their service. Now, he has continued two years longer in their service, and he is reduced to beggary! "This," he says, "is a single example of a life spent in the accumulation of crores for your benefit, and doomed in its close to suffer the extremity of private want, and to sink ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... fathers, that I must summon all my manhood to write to you what reason commands. God knows how hard it is for me to leave you; but if beggary were my lot I would no longer serve such a master; for that I shall never forget as long as I live,—and I beg of you, I beg of you for the sake of everything in the world, encourage me in my determination instead of trying to dissuade me. That would unfit me for what I must do. For it is my desire ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... from contemplating the exposed condition, and almost certain beggary of their younger offspring? Every aristocratical family has an appendage of family beggars hanging round it, which in a few ages, or a few generations, are shook off, and console themselves with telling their tale in almshouses, workhouses, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... bazaar. Grave merchants lolled over their priceless treasures of gold and silver work, heaped up jewels and bullion-threaded shawls for princely wear. Under the awnings lingered the familiar polyglot groups, while beggary and opulence jostled ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage |
