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More "Penury" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... laid a chill hand on the time-serving Noy, who in the consequences of his dishonest counsels left a cruel legacy to the master and the country whom he alike betrayed. A few more years—and John Finch, having lost the Great Seal, was an exile in a foreign land, destined to die in penury, without again setting foot on his native soil. The graceful Herbert, whose smooth cheek had flushed with joy at Henrietta's musical courtesies, became for a brief day the mock Lord Keeper of Charles II.'s mock court at Paris, and then, dishonored and disowned ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... the institution was to sacrifice four thousand millions of property specially protected by law. It was for the existing generation of the governing class in the South to vote themselves into bankruptcy and penury. Far beyond this, it was in their judgment to blight their land with ignorance and indolence, to be followed by crime and anarchy. Their point of view was so radically different from that held by a large number of Northern people that it left no common ground for action,—scarcely, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... and photographs were gone; the rude poverty of the bare boards and scant pallet looked up at them unrelieved by the bright face and gracious youth that had once made them tolerable. In the grim irony of that exposure, their own penury was doubly conscious. The little knapsack, the tea-cup and coffee-pot that had hung near his bed, were gone also. The most indignant protest, the most pathetic of the letters he had composed and rejected, whose torn fragments still littered the floor, could never have spoken ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... in penury; on the other hand, all who desire to travel in luxurious ease will be able to follow their bent. Even under favorable circumstances, the movement may not touch certain classes of Jews for several years to come; the intervening ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... And then consider their Christian thoughtlessness for the morrow, how superb and spiritual it is! How different from the things after which the Gentiles of the commercial classes seek! On a Bank Holiday I have known a mother and a daughter, hanging over the very abyss of penury, to spend two shillings in having their fortunes told. Could the lilies of the field or Solomon in all his glory have shown a finer indifference ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... out of all questions, the splendor and magnificence, and great retinues and hospitality, of noblemen and gentlemen, received into custom, doth much conduce unto martial greatness. Whereas, contrariwise, the close and reserved living of noblemen and gentlemen, causeth a penury of ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... quite fond of her, the small kittenish thing. An old friend of his, and of the Hoopers, had once described her as a girl "with a real talent for flirtation and an engaging penury of mind." Pryce thought the description good. She could be really engaging sometimes, when she was happy and amused, and properly dressed. But ever since the appearance of Constance Bledlow she seemed to have suffered eclipse; to have grown ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... my knee, believe me, sir, And what I speak, so help me God, is true: We scarce have meat to feed our little babes. Most of our Plate is in that Broker's hand, Which, had we money to defray our debt, O think,. we would not bide that penury. Be merciful, kind master Friskiball. My husband, children, and my self will eat But one meal a day, the other will We keep and sell As part to pay the debt we owe to you: If ever tears did pierce a tender mind, Be pitiful, let ...
— Cromwell • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... should imagine that the role of Mr Gordon at Anabanco was a reign of luxury and that waste which tendeth to penury, let him be aware that all shearers in Riverina are paid at a certain rate, usually that of ONE pound per hundred sheep shorn. They agree, on the other hand, to pay for all supplies consumed by them at ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood
... cases. You have your own establishment—at least, I suppose you have—-your own chambers, your own servant. I live with an aunt. If I broke away and set up a separate menage, I should be talked about. To be her own mistress and excite no remark, a girl must be in penury." ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... the boyhood of our Lincoln has been told in dozens of forms and in hundreds of monographs. We know of the simplicity, of the penury, of the family life in the little one-roomed log hut that formed the home for the first ten years of Abraham's life. We know of his little group of books collected with toil and self-sacrifice. The series, after some years of strenuous labour, comprised the Bible, Aesop's Fables, a tattered ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... eyes her ample page Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll; Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage, And froze the genial current ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... eyes of the little girl he saw abruptly the penury of heart, the desert-like aridity of this bourgeois class of which he formed a part. Dry and wornout earth which little by little has imbibed all the juices of life and does not renew them any more, just like those lands in Asia where the fecundating rivers, drop by drop, have disappeared ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... be that she still resented his indifference to those early struggles which, even now, she shuddered to recall. For a governess' life she had been, indeed, notably unfit. Hard she had thought it, that penury should force her back into the school-room she was scarce out of, there to champion the sums and maps and conjugations she had never tried to master. Hating her work, she had failed signally to pick up any learning from her little pupils, and had been driven from ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... loathsome sights as this abominable Brass Town. Dogs, goats, and other animals were running about the dirty streets half starved, whose hungry looks could only be exceeded by the famishing appearance of the men, women, and children, which bespoke the penury and wretchedness to which they were reduced, while the sons of many of them were covered with odious boils, and their huts were falling to the ground from ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... mother, before the feelings of nature could have time to operate. For I am willing to hope that none who had ever experienced a mother's feelings and a mother's joy would consent by any means, direct or indirect, or under any impression of fear of shame, of scorn, or biting penury, to the destruction of a new-born babe. And I may venture to say with confidence, that a British cottager, however indigent, would divide his scanty pittance among a dozen children rather than consent to let some of them perish, that he and the rest might fare the better, ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... fishery has been miserably conducted from the beginning as might be expected from my entire ignorance and the penury of my partner who was poorer than myself.... Still I have expectations that it may turn out an immense thing from the trial we have made. The shores being opposite to Maryland Point, the reach above ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... wretchedness? These were an inevitable consequence. It was by the desertion of mankind that, in each successive instance, I was made acquainted with my fate. Delay in such a moment served but to increase the evil; and when I fled, meagreness and penury were the ordinary attendants of my course. But this was a small consideration. Indignation at one time, and unconquerable perseverance at another, sustained me, where humanity, left to ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... greatest pleasure was to keep the most hospitable board in his county, and whose greatest dread was to be stigmatised with (what was to him the acme of derogation) meanness and parsimony. Though the family, through the extravagance of its head, was reduced to extreme penury, it was with the utmost difficulty the pride and prejudices of the father could be overcome, to be induced to allow his son to accept an appointment in a government office in London, which had been obtained through ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... this great city. It sometimes seems as if the angelic aspect of human nature displayed itself by preference in the house of poverty, as if those who possessed no other treasure, no other jewels with which to adorn themselves, were compensated for their penury in other ways by these priceless gems of the most unselfish virtue. Such conduct, of course, is not universal. There are abundant instances of the opposite. But the truth remains that it is the worth which those who seem ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... consequence of various causes; to what purpose should they ask one another what countrymen they are? Alas, two thirds of them had no country. Can a wretch who wanders about, who works and starves, whose life is a continual scene of sore affliction or pinching penury; can that man call England or any other kingdom his country? A country that had no bread for him, whose fields procured him no harvest, who met with nothing but the frowns of the rich, the severity of the laws, with jails and punishments; who owned not a single foot of the extensive ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... an open question whether an age which countenances the condemnation of private property in houses declared unfit for human habitation ought to hesitate at dealing in the same spirit with nurseries of chronic penury and intermittent famine? On one of these islands, known as Scull Island, Father Walker tells me great quantities of human bones are found in circular graves or trenches, very shallow, and going all around the island. There are legends ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... and shaken him mentally and physically. He died in the hour of victory, like some old faithful hound that has brought the boar to bay, and gets his death on the tusks. He died as happily as might be, seeing that he left the great House all but ruined, and the heir in penury, bored to death by an idle life, and without a hope of establishing himself. That bitter thought and his own exhaustion, no doubt, hastened the old man's end. One great comfort came to him as he lay amid the wreck of so many hopes, sinking under the burden of so many cares—the old Marquis, ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... echoing ax Taught him their homely wisdom, and their peace. A rage for knowledge drove his restless mind: He fed his spirit with the bread of books, He slaked his thirst at all the wells of thought. Hunger and hardship, penury and pain Waylaid his youth and wrestled for his life. They came to master, but he made ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... dearly bought bribes; and also the money he left hidden at Granville—jewels and notes to the value of ten thousand pounds more. The wages of sin, even death, was all he gained, and, strangely, through him, Justine will be shielded from penury; for she bears a broken heart. All that she knows is ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... have been for the destitute and sick. At the home they minister daily to the suffering and destitute sick wherever found; some requiring only temporary medical aid and nursing; others, whom God has chastened with more continuous suffering, requiring, in their penury, constant care and continual ministration." There is also under their charge a church school for vagrant children, and one also for the children of those comfortably ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... his poor unsheltered head Did Penury her sickly mildew shed; Ah! where are fled the charms of vernal grace, And joy's wild gleams ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... making some calculation concerning the domestic finance, while her face assumed a curious expression of contemptuous thrift. It was as if she was making her reckoning with scrupulous accuracy and at the same time ridiculing her own penury and promising herself that there would come a time when she should make calculations concerning the treasures of emperors. She was deluding herself with dreams of the time when she should have crowned herself queen or made herself the hidden tyrant-saviour of an industry. ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... its soft perfume! And Fancy, elfin form of gorgeous wing, [And Fancy hovering round on shadowy wing, 1794.] On every blossom hung her fostering dews, 15 That, changeful, wanton'd to the orient Day! But soon upon thy poor unshelter'd Head [Ah! soon, &c. 1794.] Did Penury her sickly mildew shed: And soon the scathing Lightning bade thee stand In frowning horror o'er the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... hundred thousand head of animals, which reduced the country to very great want, while the natives died of starvation in great numbers. Although there was more maize in Quito than can be told, this bad order of things brought such penury on the people that a measure of maize came to cost ten pesos, and a sheep the same. 7. When the said captain returned from the coast, he determined to leave Quito, to go in search of Captain Juan de Ampudia. He took more than two hundred foot and ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... roof of a London boarding-house in the neighborhood of Russell Square—one of those grim shelters, the refuge of Transatlantic curiosity and British penury. The girl—she represented the former race was leaning against the frail palisading, with gloomy expression and eyes set as though in fixed contemplation of the uninspiring panorama. The young man—unmistakably, uncompromisingly English—stood ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... extraordinary day of the club festival may be passed over very cursorily. There were a number of skirmishes with Mrs. Hall on matters of domestic discipline, but in every case until late April, when the first signs of penury began, he over-rode her by the easy expedient of an extra payment. Hall did not like him, and whenever he dared he talked of the advisability of getting rid of him; but he showed his dislike chiefly by concealing it ostentatiously, and avoiding his visitor as much as possible. "Wait till ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... people that the only trade seems to be carried on, and this is limited to amber and serpentine. They are very dirty, and excessively penurious, but industrious. Owing to their habits and extreme penury, there is no outlet for our manufactures in this direction; so that I fully agree with Hannay's statement, that 500 rupees worth of British goods would be unabsorbed for some years. Rosa is common, also a Rumex; a Sisymbroid plant also occurs. Among the trees, all which ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... "home." She very nearly turned her back upon the bed and its pretty burden. But then the mere snowy whiteness of the muslin and freshness of the ribbons, and the burning curiosity to see herself decked therein, overcame a nature which, in the midst of its penury, had been always really possessed by a more than common hunger for sensuous beauty and seemliness. Marcella wore it, was stormily happy in it, and kissed Mademoiselle Renier for it at night with an effusion, nay, some tears, which no one at Cliff ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... eyes her ample page, Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll; Chill Penury repressed their noble rage, And froze the genial current of ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... wounded to the care of their mean foes; to see the young men, that were faithful to their vows, hunted from their homes,—hunted like wild beasts; denied a refuge in every civilized land. Many of those I loved are sunk to the bottom of the sea, by Austrian cannon, or will be shot. Others are in penury, grief, and exile. May God give due recompense for all that ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... primitive Poverty, rather than give up her Innocence.} I say, it is surprising, that a young Person, so circumstanced, could, in Contempt of proffer'd Grandeur on the one side, and in Defiance of Penury on the other, so happily and prudently conduct herself thro' such a Series of Perplexities and Troubles, and withstand the alluring Baits, and almost irresistible Offers of a fine Gentleman, so universally admired and esteemed, ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... character, and although every inducement was offered, so far as wealth was concerned, she remembered the injunction of the Scriptures, "Be ye not unequally yoked to unbelievers," and like Moses, who refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, but chose rather to suffer affliction, penury, and loss with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season, she declined to enter into the proposed matrimonial connection. And then she decided to emigrate to the United States, friendless ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... known only the intangible shadow of pomp and luxury, while the substance was actual penury. But her inborn fertility of invention, her abundant resources, her tact in accommodating herself to circumstances, and her inexhaustible energy, had endowed her with the faculty of making the best of her contradictory position, and the most of the ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... Dio appears to have been mistaken in asserting that Agricola passed the latter part of his life in dishonor and penury. ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... hands and hair were old, But neither time nor penury Could quench within Llewellyn's eyes The shine ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... rough the way is, help me when I call, And take me up; or else prevent the fall. I ken my home, and it affords some ease To see far off the smoking villages. Fain would I rest, yet covet not to die For fear of future biting penury: No, no, my God, Thou know'st my wishes be To leave this life, not loving ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... sombre and mysterious figures enveloped in the gloom of the chilliest penury; these beings would dine there daily for a couple of years and then vanish, and the most inquisitive regular comer could throw no light on the disappearance of such goblins of Paris. Friendships struck ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... SIR, - This formidable paper need not alarm you; it argues nothing beyond penury of other sorts, and is not at all likely to lead me into a long letter. If I were at all grateful it would, for yours has just passed for me a considerable part of a stormy evening. And speaking of gratitude, ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... needed not. Talk for you is good discipline. You converse imperfectly. While you speak, there can be no oblivion of inferiority—no encouragement to delusion: pain, privation, penury stamp ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... colonies? Why should you presume, that, in any country, a body duly constituted for any function will neglect to perform its duty, and abdicate its trust? Such a presumption would go against all government in all modes. But, in truth, this dread of penury of supply from a free assembly has no foundation in Nature. For first, observe, that, besides the desire which all men have naturally of supporting the honor of their own government, that sense of dignity, and that security to property, which ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Association must so present its work to the churches as to "constrain" them to give; drag them by the chains of Christian duty to give; those who can of their abundance abundantly; those who must of their penury, with this ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 1, January, 1889 • Various
... man of bone and dry skin, whose greed and penury had starved his own soul. He had brought her there and put burdens upon her, with the assurance that it would be only for a little while, until somebody could be hired to take the work off her hands. Then he had advanced the plea of hard times, when the first excuse had worn out; ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... plentiful reproduction in all the chief cities, not only of Spain but of the outside Spanish dominions, though highly flattering to the author, could not have greatly helped to lighten his life of toil and penury. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... gone so far as that. The king, through his uncle, has simply made a proposal. How would you regard it, knowing what you do of the past, the years that you lived in comparative penury, amid hardships, ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... but at times, we are willing to admit, and have already admitted, improving and solemnizing the original epic portraits when brought upon the stage. But all this extent of obligation amongst later poets of Greece to Homer serves less to argue his opulence than their penury. And if, quitting the one great blazing jewel, the Urim and Thummim of the Iliad, you descend to individual passages of poetic effect; and if amongst these a fancy should seize you of asking for a specimen of the Sublime in particular, what is it that you ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... rectory, but continued to reside at Ildown, a spot which they loved, and where they were known and loved. Mr Home had insured his life for a sum, not large indeed, but sufficient to save them from absolute penury, and had besides laid by sufficient to continue Julian's education. It was determined that he should return to Harton, and there try for the Newry scholarship in time. If he should be successful in getting ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... prefer to stray to other fields and desert the pasture of our Shepherd, if we prefer a far country to our Father's home, if the world and its fleeting pleasures are more to us than God and His paternal rewards, then we must of necessity find ourselves at length in utter want and penury. It is this possibility of deserting God, of seeking happiness outside of Him, of overturning the plans which He has made for our salvation, that gives us a vision of the awful failure of human life. The gifts of this world are by nature fleeting ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... that she could not face the world with any assurance if she lost her beauty. She had charm, cleverness, rank, position, money. She knew all her advantages. But at that moment she seemed to be confronting penury. And as she continued to look into the mirror ugliness seemed to grow in the woman she saw like a spreading disease till she felt that she would be frightened to show herself to anyone, and wished she could hide from ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... oft builds the tiny mouse Her home, and plants her granary, underground, Or burrow for their bed the purblind moles, Or toad is found in hollows, and all the swarm Of earth's unsightly creatures; or a huge Corn-heap the weevil plunders, and the ant, Fearful of coming age and penury. Mark too, what time the walnut in the woods With ample bloom shall clothe her, and bow down Her odorous branches, if the fruit prevail, Like store of grain will follow, and there shall come A mighty winnowing-time with mighty heat; But if the shade with wealth of leaves ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... expense upon their persons with the spirit of benevolence which the gospel breathes, when so many millions of precious souls are perishing without any knowledge of the only way of salvation, or while so many around them are suffering from penury and want. This is certainly contrary to the spirit of Christ. He who, for our sakes, became poor; who led a life of self-denial, toil, and suffering, that he might relieve distress, and make known the way of salvation,—could never have ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... sire, With honest pride, no Attalus may sway By proffer'd wealth to tempt Myrtoan seas, The timorous captain of a Cyprian bark. The winds that make Icarian billows dark The merchant fears, and hugs the rural ease Of his own village home; but soon, ashamed Of penury, he refits his batter'd craft. There is, who thinks no scorn of Massic draught, Who robs the daylight of an hour unblamed, Now stretch'd beneath the arbute on the sward, Now by some gentle river's sacred spring; Some love the camp, the clarion's joyous ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... to put up with this. I am to submit to all this?" thought Olga Vseslavovna, writhing with wrath. "To endure all this from him, and after his death to suffer beggary? No, a thousand times no! Better death than penury and such insults." And ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... this genial flame sustained itself, or lived wholly on a bequeathed hope or a parting promise. A generous provider supplied bounteous fuel. I was spared all chill, all stint; I was not suffered to fear penury; I was not tried with suspense. By every vessel he wrote; he wrote as he gave and as he loved, in full-handed, full-hearted plenitude. He wrote because he liked to write; he did not abridge, because he cared not to abridge. He ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... branch of an English potentate. During his early youth he had to contend against the machinations of a malignant uncle, who would have robbed him of his large possessions, and left him in black despair, to have eaten the bread of penury. His courage and understanding, however, conquered this difficulty, and at the age of fourteen he was quietly admitted to an university. Here he continued peacefully to wander amid the academic bowers, until the blast of war rung in his ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... government, the revolutions of public affairs, the plenty or penury in which people live, the situation of the nation with regard to its neighbours, and such ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... rule in Canada furnish a complete field for the study of the party system under our system. In 1896 a party stale in spirit, corrupt and inefficient, went out of office and was replaced by a government which had been bred to virtue by eighteen years of political penury. It entered upon its tasks with vigor, ability and enthusiasm. It had its policies well defined and it set briskly about carrying them out. A deft, shrewd modification of the tariff helped to loosen the stream of commerce which after years ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... reside? Why, in one of those wretched buildings, ill supported by props and pillars, near the Grime Thor, but which his fellow-townsmen are at this moment prouder of than they are of the Artimshof or the Stockthurm. How did Andreas Stock live? In obscurity and penury, without one smile of good fortune to gild the darkness of existence. But do you suppose that these men were unhappy? Oh no, Marguerite, to make everything in nature beautiful there is but one element in nature essential, ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... contemplation, under present circumstances, when I see such a number of men, goaded by a thousand stings of reflection on the past and of anticipation on the future, about to be turned into the world, soured by penury and what they call the ingratitude of the public, involved in debts, without one farthing of money to carry them home after having spent the flower of their days, and many of them their patrimonies, in establishing the freedom and independence of their ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... to those irregularities of Donne's youth, by which he had wasted the fortune of L3,000—equal, I believe, to more than L30,000 of our money—bequeathed to him by his father, the ironmonger. "Mr. Donne's estate," writes Walton gently, referring to his penury at the time of his marriage, "was the greatest part spent in many and chargeable travels, books, and dear-bought experience." It is true that he quotes Donne's own confession of the irregularities of his early life. But he counts them of no significance. He also utters a sober ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... scenes of his youth, when he had periled his life in fighting for the liberties of his country; to the scenes of his manhood, when he had preached the gospel of his divine Master to the heathen of the remote wilderness; and to the scenes of riper years, when the hard hand of penury had lain heavily upon him. While thus occupied, almost forgetting himself in the multitude of his thoughts, he was suddenly disturbed, and even terrified, by loud hurrahs from behind, and by a furious pelting and clattering of balls of snow and ice upon the top of his wagon. ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... looked, she thought of the thousands beneath struggling and striving, none with all desires satisfied, some in an agony of want and penury, all straining for the elusive Enough; like Sisyphus ever rolling the rock of labour up a hill too steep ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... adopted by their children, and by this means the little substance they may gain through hard toil, for you well know their gain is small if your profit is what you desire, falls through the grated bars of drunkenness and waste, into the waiting pit of penury and pauperism. Bear with me, gentlemen, if I speak thus plainly, and believe me it is for your own comfort as well as for the cultivation of the untouched soil in the minds of your workmen, that I feel called upon to address ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... wife, come weal come woe, I will see her, and will have my say. I will not promise her a grand career for my darling: but I will pledge myself that nothing of that kind which the world calls evil—no penury, or shabbiness of surroundings—shall ever touch Mary Haselden after she is Mary Hammond. I can promise at least so ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... was a pathetic one, you must admit, worthy to take its place on the line with the well-known fancy sketch of the Clown who, after making the masses split their sides, goes home to a private life of penury and despair. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... what life await! Labour and Penury, the racks of Pain, Disease, and Sorrow's weeping train, And Death, sad refuge from the storms of Fate! The fond complaint, my Song! disprove, And justify the laws of Jove. Say, has he given in vain the heavenly Muse? Night and all her sickly dews, Her ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... poverty seemed to ask, his aid, will he demonstrated most clearly by relating shortly one example of his generosity, where the applicant had no pretensions to literary renown, and no claim whatever, except perhaps honest penury. It is delightful to attempt to delineate from various points of view a creature of infinite moral beauty,—but one instance must suffice; an ample volume might be composed of such tales, but one may be selected, because it contains a large admixture of that ingredient which is essential to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... make up almost as much as that of these three worthies put together—oh, my dear Madam, see in what hopeless penury the poor fellow lives! What tenant can look to HIS forbearance? What poor man can hope for HIS charity? 'Master's the best of men,' honest Stripes says, 'and when we was in the ridgment a more free-handed chap ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... wealthy nobles and dissolute beauties, had disappeared, and a many-headed monster, rapacious and blood-thirsty, vulgar and revolting, had emerged from mines and workshops and the cellars of vice and penury, like one of the spectres of fairy tales to fill his place. France had passed from Monarchy, not to healthy Republicanism, but to Jacobinism, to the reign of the mob. Napoleon utterly abhorred the tyranny of the king. He also utterly abhorred the despotism ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... only thing on which it was worth his while to spend money. The salaries of his gentlemen and attendants were all on the narrowest scale. Lord Malmesbury observes that even the Prince of Dessau's marriage, at which he was present, exhibited this penury. All the apartments, except those immediately used for supper or cards, were lighted with a single candle. The supper had no dessert; the wines were bad; their quantity stinted. On his asking, after dancing, for some wine and water, he was answered—"the wine is all gone, but you may have some ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... not been in existence ten days before it had gone on record as a thoroughly "first-class" establishment. No wonder, then, that an air of peculiar respectability attached itself to the "wheel" itself which revolved in a corner of the barroom night after night, whirling into opulence or penury, such as entrusted their fortunes to its revolutions. Despite its high-toned patronage, however, the terms "roulette" and "croupier" found small favor with the devotees at that particular shrine of the fickle goddess, and ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... came, with a good report of the children's progress, and talking quite enthusiastically of Lovedy's sweetness and intelligence. Perhaps she would turn out a superior artist, now that chill penury no longer repressed her noble rage, and he further brought a small demand for drawing materials and blocks for engraving, to the amount of five pounds, which Rachel defrayed from the general fund, but sighed over ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... crofters, or Irish peasants, whoever they might be, if they sought freedom though bound up with hardship, hope instead of a pauper's grave, the prospect of independence of life and station in the new world instead of penury and misery under impossible conditions of life at home. Nor is it a matter of moment to us, how the struggle began until we have brought before our minds the stalwart figure of Sir Alexander Mackenzie—Lord Selkirk's great protagonist. Like many ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... much on the transient pleasures of the table. Therefore, for totally different reasons, her food was as poor as Mrs. Archer's, and her wines did nothing to redeem it. Her relatives considered that the penury of her table discredited the Mingott name, which had always been associated with good living; but people continued to come to her in spite of the "made dishes" and flat champagne, and in reply to the remonstrances of her son Lovell (who tried to retrieve the family credit by having ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... proportion of victuall, for such a number, was landed; howses few or none to entertain them, so that being quartered in the open feilde they fell uppon that small quantitye of corne, not beinge above seaven acres, which we with great penury & sufferance had formerly planted, and in three days, at the most, ...
— Colonial Records of Virginia • Various
... concern of other times and other men. On these principles, he chooses to suppose (for he does not pretend more than to suppose) a naked possibility that he shall draw some resource out of crumbs dropped from the trenchers of penury; that something shall be laid in store from the short allowance of revenue-officers overloaded with duty and famished for want of bread,—by a reduction from officers who are at this very hour ready to batter the Treasury with what breaks through stone walls ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... people do not rebel thereby imperiling the system by which they are despoiled. From his fashionable pulpit and sumptuous home he hurls forth his anathema-maranatha at those who would presume to abridge the prescriptive rights of the plutocracy—who doubt that grinding penury in a land bursting with fatness is pleasing to the All-Father! He would by no means curtail the wealth of Dives or better the condition of Lazarus; but thinks it good policy for the former to refrain from piling his plate so high in the presence of ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... a rear room, where he found three men seated at a felt-covered card-table. They were well dressed, quiet persons—one a bookmaker whom the racing laws had reduced from affluence to comparative penury; another, a tall, pallid youth with bulging eyes. The third occupant of the room was an ex- lightweight champion of the ring, Young Sullivan, by name. His trim waist and powerful shoulders betokened his trade. His jaw was firm, and a cauliflower ear overhung ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... made no resistance. The next day, Captain Mowat commenced a furious cannonade and bombardment; and a great number of people standing on the heights were spectators of the conflagration, which reduced many of them to penury and despair; 139 dwelling-houses and 278 stores were burnt. Other seaports were threatened with conflagration, but escaped; Newport, on Rhode Island, was compelled to stipulate for a weekly supply, to avert it." (Holmes' Annals, Vol. II., pp. ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... voice, and the impression which he makes of starting from the broad bases of the universal human traits. (If Whitman was grand in his physical and perfect health, I think him far more so now (1877), cheerfully mastering paralysis, penury, and old age.) You know, on seeing the man and becoming familiar with his presence, that, if he achieve the height at all, it will be from where every man stands, and not from some special genius, or exceptional and adventitious ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... facts. The verification of this example is easy, if we do not let ourselves be misled in estimating the wealth of barbarians by the ostentatious "pearl and gold" of kings and nobles, where 99 per cent. of the people live in penury and servitude. The wealth of civilisation is not only great but diffused, and in its diffusion its greatness must ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... eyes! Though thou sing'st, art gay, thy secret bravely keeping, That I may not be sad, yet all alone thou'rt weeping— My head aches for thy misery; Yet leave her, for thine own good, my dear Pascal; She would so greatly scorn a working smith like thee, With mother old in penury; For poor we ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... Hooker), and for some time afterwards, on our further travels, we had many interesting and amusing experiences of rural life in the wilder parts of central France, its poverty, penury, and too often its inconceivable impositions and overcharges to foreigners, quite consistently with good feeling, politeness, and readiness to assist in ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... himself crucified—got the bounce; had broken his health in that sort of thing; got fired because he proved up that some smug politicians had caused the death of an old couple by jumping their homestead claim and driving them to penury. Then, there was Carrington. He was on the Desert Reclamation Project; took his bride in on their honeymoon; hundreds of miles from the railroad. She was delicate—lungs; poor fellow thought perhaps camp life would cure her. She died there in the heat. ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... will wonder, that, thus kept constantly poor, they should sometimes fall away from virtue? Their profession surrounds them with temptations sufficiently numerous and insidious; and when to these is added the crowning one of promised relief from hopeless penury, shall Pity refuse a tear ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... (fully $5,000) in these Confederate "promises to pay," brought them out at last, and kindled her morning fire with the worthless chaff. Most of the citizens who were considered wealthy at the beginning of the war were reduced to penury at its close, and were to be seen carrying their rations ...
— The Flag Replaced on Sumter - A Personal Narrative • William A. Spicer
... Dorn baby! How the years have flown since the scandal of his mother's elopement and his father's duel with Sir Charles shook two continents. What an old rake the General was. And the boy's mother after two other marriages and a sad period on the variety stage died alone in penury! And Amos says that the General was so insolent to his men in the war, that he dared not go into action with them for fear they would shoot him in the back. Yet the boy is as lovely and gentle a creature as one could ask to meet. This ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... general standard of comfortable living, as already hinted, has been greatly raised, and is still rising. What would have satisfied the ancient would seem to us like penury. We have a domestic life of which the Greek knew nothing. We live during a large part of the year in the house. Our social life goes on under the roof. Our houses are not mere places for eating and sleeping, like the houses of the ancients. It therefore ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... to penury by the Civil Wars, Hales was 'forced to sell the best part of his most admirable Library (which cost him 2500l.) to Cornelius Bee of London, Bookseller, for 700l. only'. But Wood also says that he might ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... Five Crowns, merely to get the fat and brains out of them: Thus the frequent and extraordinary Slaughter of their Sheep above a Hundred Thousand Head of Cattel were destroy'd. And upon this Account the Region was reduced to great penury and want, and at length perished with Hunger. Nay the Province of Quito, which abounded with Corn beyond Expression, by such proceedings as these, was brought to that Extremity that a Sextarie or small Measure or Wheat was sold for Ten Crowns, ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... time. The Society has always maintained all those Japanese with its alms, and with the alms given by various persons who aided them generously when this city was in its prosperous condition; but now they are living in penury. This house has been the seminary of martyrs since some of the European and Japanese fathers have gone thence to Japon, who obtained there the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... socour to the kynge of Tuscaye / whiche whan he [C.v.r] could by no menes entreat the Romains to receiue agayn theyr kyng / he cam with all his puissaunce against the citie / & there long space besieged the Romaynes / by rea[-] son wherof / great penury of whete was in the citie / & the kynge of Tuscay had great trust / that continuynge the siege / he shulde within a litle lenger space compell the Ro[-] maynes thrugh famine to ...
— The Art or Crafte of Rhetoryke • Leonard Cox
... present enlightened age. A few favourites occupy the Goshen of patronage, who at their death are not remembered, and whose works do "follow them;" and then, the works of those who have lived neglected, lived, worked, and died in penury, are eagerly sought after at any price. Such men, whilst they lived, were yet teaching a lesson in taste which the world were slow to learn; for it is in the nature of genius to be before the age, and in some ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... and the man handed him a raged shirt over the top of it, while I sat in a chair and dreamed. What I reflected, would the School say if it but knew! I felt no remorce. I was there, and beyond the screan, changing into the garments of penury, was the only member of the Other Sex I had ever felt I could truly ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... respect, and the butcher daily abating in his punctuality; whose garments were getting threadbare, and his dinners hypothetical, and whose day-dreams of fame and fortune had faded into the dull-gray of penury and disappointment. I was broken-hearted, ill, hungry; so I accepted an invitation from a friend, a rich manufacturer in Birmingham, to go down to his house for the Christmas holidays. He had a pleasant place in the midst of some ironworks, the blazing chimneys ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... I find you, wretched noble!' he exclaimed, 'and now we will settle our account! After reducing my father, who has just given you a fortune, to despair and penury, you have tried to degrade my sister. I will have my revenge! Down, we ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... perhaps are worse off than before? What if his powers of work are being impaired by debauchery and he is thus surely losing the footing which he has won on the higher round of the industrial ladder and lapsing back into penury and despair? What if instead of gaining he is really losing in manhood and real independence? I see nothing shocking in the fact that a mechanic's wages are now equal to those of a clergyman, or an officer in the army who has spent perhaps thousands of dollars on his education. Every man ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... believed with the wildest inconsistency that the preternatural dominion of the air, of earth, and of hell, was exercised from the vilest motives of malice or gain by some wrinkled hags or itinerant sorcerers who passed their obscure lives in penury and contempt. Such vain terrors disturbed the peace of society and the happiness of individuals; and the harmless flame which insensibly melted a waxen image might derive a powerful and pernicious energy ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... whose suggestions Socrates is said to have listened anything more was meant than conscience, we must infer that he laboured under that mental malady to which those are liable who, either through penury or designedly, submit to extreme abstinence, and, thereby injuring the brain, fall into hallucination. Such cases are by no means of infrequent occurrence. Mohammed was ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... necessary apparatus. But my village boasts no scientific resources: if I want an electric spark, I am reduced to rubbing a sheet of paper on my knees. My physics cupboard contains a magnet; and that is about all. When this penury was realised, another method was suggested, simpler than the first and more certain in its results, ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... marry for love are rare indeed, and but few of them fail of a bitter disappointment. I cannot hope that my arguments will convince ye of this, but counsel with your parents, and ye'll find they bear me out. On the one side stands eventual penury and perhaps violence for ye all; on the other, marriage with a man who, whatever his faults, loves ye hotly, who will give ye a title and wealth, and who will see to it that your parents want for nothing. 'T is an alternative that few women would hesitate over, but I ask no answer ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... this would flame up in Ona sometimes—at night she would suddenly clasp her big husband in her arms and break into passionate weeping, demanding to know if he really loved her. Poor Jurgis, who had in truth grown more matter-of-fact, under the endless pressure of penury, would not know what to make of these things, and could only try to recollect when he had last been cross; and so Ona would have to forgive him and sob ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... mother!" thought he; "and has a mere dream scared thee to penury and want, with all this wealth in thy possession?" Philip replaced the sacks, and locked up the cupboards, after having taken out of one, already half emptied, a few pieces for his immediate wants. His attention was next directed to the buffets above, which with one of the keys, he ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... Frequent in the Temptations of the Devil, then for our Adoption to be doubted, because of our Affliction. When our Lord was in his Penury, then says the Devil, If thou be the Son of God; he now makes an If, of it; What? the Son of God, and not be able to Command a Bit of Bread! Thus, when we are in very Afflictive Circumstances, this will ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... them bread. Besides this, though the prices of many articles keep pace with the wages of labour, yet many others do not. Thus, in a country where wages are rapidly altering, though some are bettered by it, penury is entailed on others, who have not the means of ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... could he equip his children for the fight into which he was sending them? They had begun their life in need and penury, which had, as far as possible, to be concealed; they had early learned the bitter lesson of the disparity between inward expectations and demands and outward circumstances; and from their slovenly home they would take with them the most crushing inheritance, perhaps, under ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... reviled the heartless world, whose hollow meed of applause it had formerly been the sole aim of his existence to secure. Wealth became to his disordered imagination the desideratum of existence, and he attached inordinate value to it, in proportion as he felt the bitter stings of comparative penury. To guard his only child—whom he certainly loved better than anything else in the world, save himself—from this dreaded evil, the misguided man, during his latter days, extracted from her an inviolable assurance, never to become ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... the time required for keeping abreast of the literature of the day or for cultivating an intellectual specialty. It is extraordinary what some of the busiest men achieve in this respect; but it is only managed by an economy and even penury of time for which a kind of genius is requisite. Of course there are seasons of the year when the pressure of public engagements is not so great; and ministers are allowed longer holidays than other professional men. A couple of hours a day given from ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... Morewood could not refuse; but he had in the course of the sitting greatly annoyed Claudia by mentioning incidentally that her face did not interest him and was, in fact, such a face as he would never have painted but for the pressure of penury. ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... example was made, Jaffier Ali Khan, who had been deposed to make room for the last actor, was brought from penury and exile to a station the terms of which he could not misunderstand. During his life, and in the time of his children who succeeded to him, parts of the territorial revenue were assigned to the Company; and the whole, under the name of residency at the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... clouds the domestic fireside; the ingratitude which spurns parental influence; the selfishness which would trade in principles, and bargain away public measures for private gain,—these, and such as these, are the conclusive proofs of public vice. Even the deplorable appearances which penury exhibits are counterfeited, and we hesitate to give alms lest we should encourage an impostor. The benevolent man distrusts the beggar who asks for a night's lodging, and turns him away, fearful that he might prove an assassin or a robber; or he reluctantly calls him back, lest he should revenge ...
— Reflections on the Operation of the Present System of Education, 1853 • Christopher C. Andrews
... rewarded the poet with thirty-six pieces of gold—the only money he had left, from his once exhaustless riches. He had little apprehension of what was to follow—that Yussef would leave him without support; that his future life was to be passed in penury; nay, that his daughters would be compelled to earn his subsistence and their own by the labor of their hands. Yet even in that indigent condition, says Aben Lebuna, and through the sadness which covered their countenances, there was something about ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... eleven years ago my natural son disappeared mysteriously. I have no doubt in the world but that this little bootblack is he. His mother died in Italy. He resembles his mother very much. Perhaps I ought to provide for him. Shall I disclose myself? No! no! Better he should taste the sweets of Labor. Penury ennobles the mind and kindles the Love of the Beautiful. I will act to him, not like a Father, not like a Guardian, not like a Friend—but like a Philosopher!" With these words, Sir Edward entered the Committee Room. His Secretary approached him. "Sir Edward, there are ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... have resigned much for Lord Vargrave; but his picture startled and appalled her. For difficulties in a palace she might be prepared; perhaps even for some privations in a cottage ornee,—but certainly not for penury in a lodging-house! She listened by degrees with more attention to Vargrave's description of the power and homage that would be hers if she could secure Lord Doltimore; she listened, and was in part consoled. ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... one, or even to prolong her health and life; if we have scruples, it gives us an opportunity to be honest; if we have any bright designs, here is what will smooth the way to their accomplishment. Penury is the worst slavery, and will soon lead ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not. Talk for you is good discipline. You converse imperfectly. While you speak, there can be no oblivion of inferiority—no encouragement to delusion: pain, privation, penury stamp your language...." ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... its summer greenery, and swept The bright, close, sheltering bowers, where merrily Rang out thy notes—as of a haunting sprite, There domiciled—the long blue summer through? Moulders untenanted thy trim-built nest, And do the unpropitious fates deny Food for thy little wants, and Penury, With tiny grip, drive thee to dubious walls,— Though terrors flutter at thy panting heart,— To stay the pangs which must be satisfied? Alas! the dire sway of Necessity Oft makes the darkest, most repugnant things Familiar to us; links us to the feet Of all we feared, or hated, or despised; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... sacred and aristocratic a mantle to fling around an obscure actress, of whose pedigree and antecedent life you know nothing, save that widowhood and penury goaded her to histrionic exhibitions of a beauty, that sometimes threatened to subject her to impertinence and insult? Put aside the infatuation which not unfrequently attacks men, who like you are rapidly descending the hill of life, approaching the stage of second childlike simplicity, and ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... underground, Or burrow for their bed the purblind moles, Or toad is found in hollows, and all the swarm Of earth's unsightly creatures; or a huge Corn-heap the weevil plunders, and the ant, Fearful of coming age and penury. Mark too, what time the walnut in the woods With ample bloom shall clothe her, and bow down Her odorous branches, if the fruit prevail, Like store of grain will follow, and there shall come A mighty winnowing-time with mighty heat; But if the shade with wealth of leaves abound, Vainly your ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... wicket for timely escape. The only furniture consists of mats, calabashes, and a standing bedstead of rude construction, or a bamboo cot like those built at Lagos,—in fact, the four bare walls suggest penury. But in the "small countries," as the "landward towns" are called, where the raid and the foray are not feared, the householder entrusts to some faithful slave large stores of cloth and rum, of arms ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... find you, wretched noble!' he exclaimed, 'and now we will settle our account! After reducing my father, who has just given you a fortune, to despair and penury, you have tried to degrade my sister. I will have my revenge! Down, we ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... so many crowned heads thronged the shores of the Seine, never had the French aristocracy been so rich or so splendid. The diamonds lavishly scattered over the women's dresses, and the gold and silver embroidery on the uniforms contrasted so strongly with the penury of the Republic, that the wealth of the globe seemed to be rolling through the drawing-rooms of Paris. Intoxication seemed to have turned the brains of this Empire of a day. All the military, not excepting their chief, reveled like ...
— Domestic Peace • Honore de Balzac
... all questions, the splendor and magnificence, and great retinues and hospitality, of noblemen and gentlemen, received into custom, doth much conduce unto martial greatness. Whereas, contrariwise, the close and reserved living of noblemen and gentlemen, causeth a penury of military forces. ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... thee the poor man can abide Oppression, want, the scorn of pride, The curse of penury, Companion of his lonely state, He is no longer desolate, And still can brave an adverse fate, ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... is on which the value of our gifts depend. He taught this lesson when he saw the rich casting their gifts into the treasury. Among them came "a certain poor widow, casting in two mites. And he said, Of a truth I say unto you, that this poor widow hath cast in more than they all;—for she of her penury hath cast in all the living she had," Luke xxi: 1-4. But, from among all these, we have only room for one chapter. A dozen, or twenty chapters would be needed on this part of the life of Christ. Where there ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton
... born in an aristocratic age, in the midst of a nation where the hereditary wealth of some, and the irremediable penury of others, should equally divert men from the idea of bettering their condition, and hold the soul as it were in a state of torpor fixed on the contemplation of another world, I should then wish that it were possible for me to rouse that people to a sense of their wants; I should seek ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... knock, unbidden, once at every gate! If sleeping, wake—if feasting, rise—before I turn away. It is the hour of fate, And they who follow me reach every state Mortals desire, and conquer every foe Save death; but those who doubt, or hesitate, Condemned to failure, penury, and woe, Seek me in vain and uselessly implore; I answer not, ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... (which at the first, as I think, were set up, only to represent things absent) not only ought to be covered with gold, but also ought of all faithful and christian people (yea, in this scarceness and penury of all things), to be clad with silk garments, and those also laden with precious gems and jewels; and that beside all this, they are to be lighted with wax candles, both within the church and without ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer
... pains of childhood, the hurts which the feelings of youth get, the pangs of love, the shock of loneliness coming from the departure of those we cling to, the vicissitudes of fortune, the stings of penury, the journeys into the lands of strangers, the flight of summer friends, the alienation of children, and the fevers and the wounds which human nature crosses on its way to the kind haven of a good old age. Jesus stands near. When ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... special commissions of high importance. He was to lay the ground for a treaty of commerce; he was to ascertain and report the state of the English fleets and dockyards; and he was to make some overtures to the Huguenot refugees, who, it was supposed, had been so effectually tamed by penury and exile, that they would thankfully accept almost any terms of reconciliation. The new Envoy's origin was plebeian, his stature was dwarfish, his countenance was ludicrously ugly, and his accent was that of his native Gascony: but his ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and parasites arose? Whence that unnatural line of drones, who heap Toil and unvanquishable penury On those who build their palaces, and bring Their daily bread? From vice, black, loathsome vice, From rapine, madness, treachery and wrong; From all that genders misery, and makes Of earth this thorny wilderness; from lust, Revenge ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... that, to his knowledge, in Florence, a respectable mother of a family, being reduced to great penury by the persecution of a malignant and powerful man, from whom she had protected the honor of one of her protegees, Lord Byron, to whom the lady and her persecutor were equally unknown, sent her assistance, which was powerful enough ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... of currency which shall graduate its volume to the amount needed and which shall prevent times of artificial stringency that frighten capital, stop employment, prevent the meeting of the pay roll, destroy local markets, and produce penury and want. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... shew'd, that every Man was born free, and had as much Right to what would support him, as to the Air he respired. A contrary Way of arguing would be accusing the Deity with Cruelty and Injustice, for he brought into the World no Man to pass a Life of Penury, and to miserably want a necessary Support; that the vast Difference between Man and Man, the one wallowing in Luxury, and the other in the most pinching Necessity, was owing only to Avarice and Ambition on the one Hand, and a pusillanimous Subjection on the other; ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe
... they took no thought to augment the cost of subscription. The publishers gave more and the subscribers received more for the sum of two dollars. The pecuniary embarrassments of the Liberator increased, and so the partners' "bondage to penury" increased also. This growing pressure was finally relieved by "several generous donations," made for the support of the paper. At the beginning of the fourth volume, the publishers wisely or other-wisely, again enlarged their darling, and again neglected ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... plains of living-knowledge; he had encountered through their works many of the great minds of his century, been reached by the sublime thought-movements of his time, heard the deep roar of the spirit's ocean. Amid coarse, daily labor once more, amid the penury and discord in that ruined farmhouse, one true secret of happiness with David was the recollection of all the noble things of human life which he had discovered, and to which he meant to work his way again as soon as possible. And what so helps one to believe in God as knowledge ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... bursts when Nature's feelings newly flow; Yet tenderness and time may rob the tear Of half its bitterness for one so dear: A nation's gratitude perchance may spread A thornless pillow for the widow'd head; May lighten well her heart's maternal care, And wean from penury the soldier's heir." ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... legitimacy. Financially, so low were his affairs that even the turnspits in the palace were clamouring for their unpaid wages. The unfortunate monarch had already sold his jewels and precious trinkets. Even his clothes showed signs of poverty and patching, and to such a state of penury was he reduced that his bootmaker, finding that the King was unable to pay him the price of a new pair of boots, and not trusting the royal credit, refused to leave the new boots, and Charles had to wear out his old shoe-leather. All that remained ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... had a brother in it; the ardent young Corsican would be nearer his native land, and might, perhaps, be detached for service in his home. They were both nominated in September, but the appointment was not made until the close of October. Buonaparte was reduced to utter penury by the long delay, his only resource being the two hundred livres provided by the funds of the school for each of its pupils until they reached the grade of captain. It was probably, and according to the generally received account, at his comrade's expense, and in his company, that ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... family conversation. This may arise, however, from a principle adverted to by Dr. Johnson, in speaking of the ancient languages, in which he says "nothing is familiar," and by the use of which "the writer conceals penury of thought and want of novelty, often from the reader, and often from himself." The Indian certainly has a very pompous way of expressing a common thought. He sets about it with an array of prefix and suffix, and polysyllabic ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... proportion of profit derived from it. As well poke one's fingers into a hornet's nest as into a joint family estate! Sham Babu was glad to accept an offer of Rs. 5,000 from Gopal's co-sharers, in return for a surrender of his claims. Despite his heavy loss, enough remained to preserve him from penury; and he was even able to start Susil in a small way of business. Great is ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... that a gentleman was not bound by his word of promise, nor did he inherit any verbal agreement entered into by the man from whom he inherited his property. I spoke of the hardship of a long life of toil and penury ending in the workhouse. She said when they knew they must go into the workhouse eventually why did they not go in at once without giving so much trouble. I asked her if she, who seemed to know what it was to be a mother, ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... and his mother's dowry. But here, too, the same ill-fortune that had hitherto dogged his steps attended him. The lawsuit which he instituted, though it promised well at first, proved a will-o'-the-wisp, which lured him into the bog of absolute penury. His sister was dead; his mother's relatives, formerly hostile, were now, because of the lawsuit, doubly embittered against him. In his distress he sought refuge in the Benedictine monastery of Monte Oliveto, which is now occupied by the offices of the Municipality of Naples, ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... heard that she was expected in London, and he knew now how strong had been the hope that he should meet her, and that she would do something for him. He was so tired and so ashamed of the life he led—now here, now there, now on the first floor, now on the fifth floor back, now plenty now penury and absolute want, according to Daisy's luck. For Daisy managed everything and bade him take things easy and trust to her; but he would so much rather have staid quietly at Stoneleigh with but one meal a day and know how that meal was paid for, than to live what to his sense of ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... Randal's patron—who, between ourselves, does not seem to push the young man as he might do; I judge by what Randal says. I should write, therefore, before any thing was settled, to L'Estrange, and I should say to him simply, 'I never asked you to save me from penury, but I do ask you to save a daughter of my house from humiliation. I can give to her no dowry; can her husband owe to my friend that advance in an honorable career—that opening to energy and talent—which is more than ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... only surmise something of the self-sacrificing devotion of that mother during the years in which Borrow had failed to find remunerative work. Wherever he wandered there had always been a home in the Willow Lane cottage. It is probable that much the greater part of the period of his eight years of penury was spent under her roof. Yet we may be sure that the good mother never once reproached her son. She had just that touch of idealism in her character that made for faith and hope. In any case never more was Borrow to suffer ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... heard a poor man in the grave-yard cry: "Arise, oh friend! a little hour assume My weight of cares, whilst I, Long weary, learn thy respite in the tomb." I listened that the corpse should make reply; Who, knowing sweeter death than penury, ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... ground, absolutely indispensable in these days, of property invested in the funds. But if I am not rich, neither do I have the reliefs and consolations of life in a garret, the toil uncomprehended, the fame in penury, which belong to men who are worth far ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... these punishments we must remember that they implied confiscation of property. Thus whole families were orphaned and consigned to penury. Penitence in public carried with it social infamy, loss of civil rights and honors, intolerable conditions of ecclesiastical surveillance, and heavy pecuniary fines. Penitents who had been reconciled, returned to society in a far more degraded condition than convicts released on ticket ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... very red. She had unfortunately seen many such certificates of penury, but all that was part of her private life, and she had been shocked beyond measure to be confronted with this too-familiar evidence of impecuniosity in the home of a lady who represented to her an assured income ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... dismissed also. When he came to the abolition of the pensions, he says,—"I proceeded with great pain, from the reflection that I was the instrument in depriving whole families, all at once, of their bread, and reducing them to a state of penury: convinced of the necessity of the measure, I endeavored to execute it with great impartiality." Here he states the work he was employed in, when he took this two hundred pounds a day for his own pay. "It was necessary to begin ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... travelled the same road out of his mind. At first he pined for them, sorrowed for them, longed to see them, but later, the thought of their coming some day in their rags and dirt, and betraying him with their kisses, and pulling him down from his lofty place, and dragging him back to penury and degradation and the slums, made him shudder. At last they ceased to trouble his thoughts almost wholly. And he was content, even glad: for, whenever their mournful and accusing faces did rise before him now, they made ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... thought of the thousands beneath struggling and striving, none with all desires satisfied, some in an agony of want and penury, all straining for the elusive Enough; like Sisyphus ever rolling the rock of labour up a hill too steep ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... opening of a chasm of hatred between capital and labor, though it must be admitted that the warfare of capital and labor in the States was developing in the era when Rockefeller and Carnegie were lifting themselves from penury to the ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... of the original pioneers of New England, and they had been born and reared in rude settlements. They never indulged the delusion that this region was a land flowing with milk and honey. Before they came they knew that they were to wrest their living from an uncongenial soil, to struggle with penury and to conquer only by constant toil and self-denying thrift. The forest would supply them with the materials for shelter and fuel and to some extent with food and clothing. All the rest must depend upon their own exertions. There was a pleasure in facing and overcoming the perils and difficulties ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport
... annually among a hundred people as would serve now for one mechanic. People of the highest rank slept naked to save night-clothes. If in Flanders or in Italy we find during their high prosperity some exceptions to this knightly and chivalric piggishness and penury, it is none the less true that they outbalanced it by sundry and peculiar vices. And yet, bad as life then was, it is impossible for us to guess at, or realize, all its foulness. We know it mostly from poets, and the poet and historian, like the artist, have ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and yet with a measure of disapproval. In spite of her fierce independence, a lifetime of poverty and struggle against the material odds of life had given a sordid taint to her character. She would give to the utmost out of her penury, though more from pride than benevolence; but when it came to labor without hire, ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... broad thoroughfare another mile, until Jeffers, indicating a big, old-fashioned, broad-galleried Southern house standing in the midst of grounds once trim and handsome, but now showing signs of neglect and penury, simply said, "'Ere, sir." And here ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... of the eyebrows, the purity of outline, the virginal innocence so plainly stamped on every feature of her countenance, made the girl a perfect creature. Her figure was slight and graceful, and frail in form. Her dress, though simple and neat, revealed neither wealth nor penury. ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... questions of the witnesses, who testified to the daughter's ingratitude and cruelty, ordered her to be led away to the House of Correction. The officers of justice took her by the arm, and carried her to her gloomy cell. Her lonely and sorrowing mother went weeping home to her abode of penury and desolation. Her own daughter was the viper which had stung her bosom. Her own child was the wretch who was filling her ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... could not possibly live on less than fifteen thousand florins, and that you appealed to him to assist you in maintaining the dignity of the ducal house of Savoy, and saving its representatives from absolute penury." ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... bribes; and also the money he left hidden at Granville—jewels and notes to the value of ten thousand pounds more. The wages of sin, even death, was all he gained, and, strangely, through him, Justine will be shielded from penury; for she bears a broken heart. All that she knows is of his ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... been one of the many unfortunates who are swept off by rum, and in the prime of early manhood he had gone, leaving a young wife with four children in absolute penury. ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... which reduced the country to very great want, while the natives died of starvation in great numbers. Although there was more maize in Quito than can be told, this bad order of things brought such penury on the people that a measure of maize came to cost ten pesos, and a sheep the same. 7. When the said captain returned from the coast, he determined to leave Quito, to go in search of Captain Juan de Ampudia. He took more than two hundred foot and horsemen, among whom he led many inhabitants ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... more than fifty sequins, and several billets-doux, to the great scandal of the weaker brethren. An anonymous note amongst them, the writer of which I thought I had guessed, let me into a mistake which I think better not to relate. This rich harvest, in my great penury, caused me to entertain serious thoughts of becoming a preacher, and I confided my intention to the parson, requesting his assistance to carry it into execution. This gave me the privilege of visiting at his house every day, and I improved the opportunity of conversing ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... friend, Joseph Bridau. She who is to be my wife, with an instinctive divination of my dearest wishes, has declared her intention of living far from the world in complete retirement. You, who have done so much to lighten my penury, have been left in ignorance of my love; but you will understand that absolute ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... petty thefts of jam, sugar, even coppers; and during the past year their mother was seldom able to exert herself in correcting these faults. Only by dint of struggle which cost her agonies could she discharge the simplest duties of home. She made a brave fight against disease and penury and incessant dread of the coming day, but month after month her strength failed. Now at length she tried vainly to leave her bed. The last reserve of energy was exhausted, and the ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... and one day she found herself in a fine large cottage that was her own. She became the mother of a pretty little babe, a girl, and on the day of her confinement there appeared unto her an angel, who said to her:—'Bear in mind thy marriage, and the time of penury thou didst go through. The child that has just been born unto thee will I take under my protection. When she will have grown up and be a fine lass, give her but to him who will build her up a temple, where there ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... - This formidable paper need not alarm you; it argues nothing beyond penury of other sorts, and is not at all likely to lead me into a long letter. If I were at all grateful it would, for yours has just passed for me a considerable part of a stormy evening. And speaking of gratitude, let me at once and with becoming eagerness accept your kind invitation to Bowdon. ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Chavannes never sold a picture. Millet lived his life in penury and obscurity, but thirty years of persistent ridicule having failed to destroy Degas' genius, some recognition has been extended to it. The fate of all great artists in the nineteenth century is a score years of neglect ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... happiness, gave her life to the birth of the single child of the union, Mary. Afterward, in his distress over this loss, Ray Turner seemed even more incompetent for the management of business affairs. As the years passed, the daughter grew toward maturity in an experience of ever-increasing penury. Nevertheless, there was no actual want of the necessities of life, though always a woful lack of its elegancies. The girl was in the high-school, when her father finally gave over his rather feeble effort of living. ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... death, and set himself upon the cross in Gisippus' stead? And what but friendship had left no place for suspicion in the soul of Titus, and filled it with a most fervent desire to give his sister to Gisippus, albeit he saw him to be reduced to extreme penury and destitution? But so it is that men covet hosts of acquaintance, troops of kinsfolk, offspring in plenty; and the number of their dependants increases with their wealth; and they reflect not that there is none of these, be he who he may, but will be more apprehensive of ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... natural dignity and self-respect have suffered from being driven by the fierce pressure of want into the few and crowded avenues for the exchange of their labor for bread. Is it not the highest exhibit of the moral superiority of our women that so very few consent to exchange pinching penury for gilded vice? ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... in our revolutionary struggle, and in our recent war, gave up freely at their country's call, their best beloved, regretting only that they had no more to give; knowing full well, that in giving them up they condemned themselves to penury and want, to hard, grinding toil, and privations such as they had never before experienced, and not improbably to the rending, by the rude vicissitudes of war, of those ties, dearer than life itself—those who in the presence of ruffians, capable ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... possessed a trait which made many enemies and ultimately proved his undoing. I refer to his uncontrollable desire to contradict and to antagonize. It was simply impossible to find a subject upon which he and anyone else could agree. There were, however, extenuating circumstances. "Chill penury," forced upon him by the state of his financial affairs, had much to do with his cynical and acrimonious spirit. Prosperity is certainly conducive to an amiable bearing, and I believe that Gurowski would have been more conciliatory if adversity had not so persistently ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... from the injustice and grinding tyranny of their labor servitude is to be effected mainly by the development of such personal qualities, such thrift, energy, and manliness as shall, in the first place, raise them above the dependence and the penury of their present vassalage, and next shall bring forth such manliness and dignity in the race as may command the respect of ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... who had been spoiled by early novel-reading. Her father had a small place at court, lived beyond his fortune, educated his daughter, to whom he could give no portion, as if she were to be heiress to a large estate; then died, and left his widow absolutely in penury. This widow was the old lady who lived in the cottage in the New Forest. It was just at the time of her husband's death, and of her own distress, that she heard of the elopement of her daughter from school. Mr. Hartley's parents were ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... signs which we have mentioned, another symptom which was none the less significant for not being visible. This never deceives. When the population suffers, when work is lacking, when there is no commerce, the tax-payer resists imposts through penury, he exhausts and oversteps his respite, and the state expends a great deal of money in the charges for compelling and collection. When work is abundant, when the country is rich and happy, the taxes are ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... but to spread it, and to fan it into a conflagration. The gift of faith implies the charitable obligation of weaving our belief into our every day life and, through that life and its influence, into the lives of others. The plenitude of some make up for the penury of others. If St. John, to urge the precept of alms-giving, said: "He that hath the substance of this world and shall see his brother in need, and shall shut up his bowels from him: how doth the ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... about her. 'Depend upon it, Aminta—he was not more than a boy then, and they say she aimed at her enfranchisement by plotting the collision, for his Yorkshire revenues are immense, and he is, you know, skilful in the use of arms, and Captain May has no resources whatever: penury! no one cares to speculate how they contrive!—but while that dreadful duelling—and my lord as bad as any in his day-exists, depend upon it, an unscrupulous good-looking woman has as many lives for her look of an ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the Tachytes' game-larder for itself and to visit a second and a third, when the first is too frugally furnished, it may be imagined that the hazard of the road does not favour all in the same way, but rather allots abundance to one and penury to another. The grub that does not eat its fill remains small, while the one that gluts itself grows fat. These differences of size, in themselves, betray parasitism. If a mother's pains had amassed the food, or if the family had had the industry to obtain it direct instead of robbing ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... trained to abhor the crumbs that fall from other people's tables, while all heroic aspirations and proud chivalric dreams were fed by the milk that nourished you; whereas, I grew up in the wan, sickly atmosphere of penury; glad to grasp the crust that chance offered; taught to consider the bread of dependence precious as ambrosia; willing to forget family ties that were fraught only with humiliation and wretchedness; coveting bounty that I had not sufficient ambition to merit; and eager to ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... awarded to me is at once so unexpected an honor and so welcome an aid that I could hardly believe my eyes when, with tears of relief and gratitude, I read your letter. In the presence of a savant, I need not be ashamed of my penury, since I have spent the little I had, wholly in scientific researches. I do not, therefore, hesitate to confess to you that at no time could your gift have given me greater pleasure. Generous friends have helped me to bring out ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... I know no more than your grace! I only presumed to speak about it, so as to explain the strange conduct of that poor girl, and clear her of intentional penury in your ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... stanchness and incorruptible fidelity of the dog, and his disregard of personal inconvenience and want, when employed in our service, it is impossible to entertain a doubt. We have sometimes thought that the attachment of the dog to its master was increased, or, at least, the exhibition of it, by the penury of the owner. At all events one fact is plain enough, that, while poverty drives away from us many a companion of our happier hours, it was never known to diminish the love of ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... to whose suggestions Socrates is said to have listened anything more was meant than conscience, we must infer that he laboured under that mental malady to which those are liable who, either through penury or designedly, submit to extreme abstinence, and, thereby injuring the brain, fall into hallucination. Such cases are by no means of infrequent occurrence. Mohammed was affected ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... quick and plentiful reproduction in all the chief cities, not only of Spain but of the outside Spanish dominions, though highly flattering to the author, could not have greatly helped to lighten his life of toil and penury. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... Basil. But this was not enough. He was free in his tastes, and liked to be free in his spending. He needed a horse to ride, and a boy to attend upon him. In consequence we hear a good many complaints of penury, all through his three years at ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... of war has wept over you, beloved Natchez—your fairest homes have been desolated, your lovely gardens are now only remembrances—your family circles are broken up—your bravest sons are sleeping in the dust of death, or weeping tears of bitterness in exile—your daughters, bowed down with penury and grief, are mourning beside their darkened firesides—your joyous households transferred to other and kindlier lands. The forms of my kindred faded into phantoms of the past—strangers sit now in the place that once was mine; but yet, thou art lovely, still beloved in thy ruin, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... of a London boarding-house in the neighborhood of Russell Square—one of those grim shelters, the refuge of Transatlantic curiosity and British penury. The girl—she represented the former race was leaning against the frail palisading, with gloomy expression and eyes set as though in fixed contemplation of the uninspiring panorama. The young man—unmistakably, uncompromisingly English—stood with his back ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 1873, this George Harpwood, described and photographed, married Mary Berners, who now lives at Crescentville, a suburb of Philadelphia. She bears the name of Mrs. Mary Harpwood, and has not been divorced to her knowledge. Beside deserting her, Harpwood robbed her and reduced her to penury. ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... ever and (saddest of all) his wife and children are no better off, perhaps are worse off than before? What if his powers of work are being impaired by debauchery and he is thus surely losing the footing which he has won on the higher round of the industrial ladder and lapsing back into penury and despair? What if instead of gaining he is really losing in manhood and real independence? I see nothing shocking in the fact that a mechanic's wages are now equal to those of a clergyman, or an officer in the army who has spent perhaps thousands of dollars on his education. Every ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... possessed now what I then carried about with me in my journeys—the spirit of youth. Youth is the only season for enjoyment, and the first twenty-five years of one's life are worth all the rest of the longest life of man, even though those five- and-twenty be spent in penury and contempt, and the rest in the possession of wealth, honours, respectability, ay, and many of them in strength and health, such as will enable one to ride forty miles before dinner, and over one's pint of port—for the best gentleman in the land ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... insolence of his nobles, and the ostentatious profusion of the Italian: contrasting the first with his own helplessness, the second with the insignificance to which he was condemned, and the last with the almost penury to which he was ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... congratulated myself on this sort of indifference or literary penury; an indiscreet person, sustained by zeal or talent, might have wished to mortify me in a romance combined ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... which entitled him as a commoner to a trial by his peers in the course of common law, did still more to throw public opinion on the side of the Crown. Shaftesbury's course, in fact, went wholly on a belief that the penury of the Treasury left Charles at his mercy, and that a refusal of supplies must wring from the king his assent to the Exclusion. But the gold of France had freed the king from his thraldom. He had used the Parliament simply to exhibit himself as ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... night she would suddenly clasp her big husband in her arms and break into passionate weeping, demanding to know if he really loved her. Poor Jurgis, who had in truth grown more matter-of-fact, under the endless pressure of penury, would not know what to make of these things, and could only try to recollect when he had last been cross; and so Ona would have to forgive him ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... could not bring herself to spend much on the transient pleasures of the table. Therefore, for totally different reasons, her food was as poor as Mrs. Archer's, and her wines did nothing to redeem it. Her relatives considered that the penury of her table discredited the Mingott name, which had always been associated with good living; but people continued to come to her in spite of the "made dishes" and flat champagne, and in reply to the remonstrances of her son Lovell (who tried to retrieve the family credit ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... the Ministry ended with a call to arms. 'Let us unite to put an end to a system which has been proved to be the blight of commerce, the bane of agriculture, the source of bitter divisions among classes, the cause of penury, fever, mortality, and crime among the people. The Government appear to be waiting for some excuse to give up the present Corn Law. Let the people, by petition, by address, by remonstrance, afford ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... anywhere but the deep rumble of the waves' bellow, or the chirp of the birds overhead, or, perhaps, when the wind was southerly, the church bells on Sunday morning. Never have I looked upon such lonely penury, and yet there, even there, these forlorn women kept their souls alive. "Yes," they said, "we're working when we can get the work, and trusting, ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... fiend, to the poor? Alas! is he not a daily tyrant, scourging with meanest wants—a creature that, with all its bounty to others, is to the poor and destitute more terrible than Death? Let Comfort paint a portrait of Life, and now Penury take the pencil. "Pooh! pooh!" cry the sage LAURIES of the world, looking at the two pictures—"that scoundrel Penury has drawn an infamous libel. That Life! with that withered face, sunken eye, and shrivelled lip; and what is worse, with a suicidal scar in its throat! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... with the French king, he cheerfully adjusted all the preliminaries of this interview. The nobility of both nations vied with each other in pomp and expense: many of them involved themselves in great debts, and were not able, by the penury of their whole lives, to repair the vain splendor of a few days. The duke of Buckingham, who, though very rich, was somewhat addicted to frugality, finding his preparations for this festival amount to immense sums, threw out some ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... aide and socour to the kynge of Tuscaye / whiche whan he [C.v.r] could by no menes entreat the Romains to receiue agayn theyr kyng / he cam with all his puissaunce against the citie / & there long space besieged the Romaynes / by rea[-] son wherof / great penury of whete was in the citie / & the kynge of Tuscay had great trust / that continuynge the siege / he shulde within a litle lenger space compell the Ro[-] maynes thrugh ...
— The Art or Crafte of Rhetoryke • Leonard Cox
... rectory, and the great tithes had belonged to the Leslies, but they had been long since sold. The vicarage, still in their gift, might be worth a little more than L100 a year. The present incumbent had nothing else to live upon. He was a good man, and not originally a stupid one; but penury and the anxious cares for wife and family, combined with what may be called solitary confinement for the cultivated mind, when, amidst the two legged creatures round, it sees no other cultivated mind with which ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... vices and ignorance, the nation might he saved. The author ought also to recollect, that a good man would hardly deny, even to the worst of ministers, the means of doing their duty; especially in a crisis when our being depended on supplying them with some means or other. In such a case their penury of mind, in discovering resources, would make it rather the more necessary, not to strip such poor providers of the little stock ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of the most absolute penury; unpopular with most of his messmates for his melancholy taciturnity, despised by the more brutal as one who had as little stomach for a carouse as for a bloody fight, he left the ship without receiving, or even thinking of his share of prize-money. And he had to support existence with such mean ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... a vocation for the work. Undoubtedly the position of supernumerary in a government office is precisely what the novitiate is in a religious order,—a trial. It is a rough trial. The State discovers how many of them can bear hunger, thirst, and penury without breaking down, how many can toil without revolting against it; it learns which temperaments can bear up under the horrible experience—or if you like, the disease—of government official life. From this point of view the apprenticeship of the supernumerary, instead of being an infamous ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... the least prosperous of all the communities I have visited; and I could not help feeling pity, if not for the men, yet for the women and children of the settlement, who have lived through all the penury and hardship of these many years. A gentleman who knew of my visit there writes me: "Please deal gently and cautiously with Icaria. The man who sees only the chaotic village and the wooden shoes, and only chronicles those, ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
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