"Stingy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... some more," he muttered. "This won't do. We shall eat some, but there will be a lot to spare, and if they come and find the basket like this they will grow stingy; and I can use ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... lived a patient, homely, hard-working life. Her husband an honest, decent man enough, was a brewer, and somewhat given to over drinking, and so he was often surly and stingy and unpleasant. ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... is rarely they hoard their gains. There are few who do not live up to the full measure of their incomes, and most of them very far beyond. Whether they spend their means for good or for evil, they are at least free from the groveling sin of stinginess. I never met more than one stingy Russian to my knowledge; but let him go. He reaped his reward in the dislike of all who knew him. Toward each other, even the beggars are liberal. There is nothing little or contemptible in the Russian character. Overbearing and despotic they may be; deficient in the ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... account touching a card; why, with his strongly pronounced good-luck he had all the more inducement to play; and they were unanimous in coming to the conclusion that the Baron, notwithstanding all his other conspicuous good qualities, was a miserly fellow, far too careful and far too stingy to expose himself to the smallest possible loss. That the Baron's conduct was in every particular the direct contrary of that of an avaricious man had no weight with them; and as is so often the case, when the majority have set their hearts ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... political economy have as yet become popularized. There is an almost invincible prejudice that a man who gives a dollar to a beggar is generous and kind-hearted, but that a man who refuses the beggar and puts the dollar in a savings-bank is stingy and mean. The former is putting capital where it is very sure to be wasted, and where it will be a kind of seed for a long succession of future dollars, which must be wasted to ward off a greater strain on the sympathies than would have been occasioned by a refusal in the first place. ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... prudently preferred to be on bad terms with one rather than with four. But she always offered her Saturday bonbons to Anne as to the other girls; she couldn't enjoy them herself if she were so mean and stingy as not to ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... not good to give most for least, not good to be a scab. The word has gained universal opprobrium. On the other hand, to be a non-scab, to give least for most, is universally branded as stingy, selfish, and unchristian-like. So all the world, like the British workman, is 'twixt the devil and the deep sea. It is treason to one's fellows to scab, it is unchristian-like not ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... whom all the merchants desire us to poke fun at is Mail-Order Petrie. Mail-Order Petrie is a miserly old codger who buys everything out of town that he can buy a penny cheaper than the home merchants sell it. He is a hard-working man, so far as that goes, and so stingy that he has been accused of going barefooted in the summer time to save shoes. When he is sick he sends out of town for patent medicines, and for ten years he worked in his truck-garden, fighting floods and droughts, bugs and blight, to save something like a hundred ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... corners, under the tables and chairs, the shadows tried not to be black, and glowed into a soft maroon; even the pale walls flushed, cordial and friendly. Dode was glad of it; she hated dead, ungrateful colors: grays and browns belonged to thin, stingy duty-lives, to people who are patient under life, as a perpetual imposition, and, as Bone says, "gets into heben by the skin o' their teeth." Dode's color was dark blue: you know that means in an earthly life stern truth, and a tenderness as true: ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... age, of medium size and substantial appearance. He fled from James Waters, Esq., a lawyer, living in Cambridge. He was "wealthy, close, and stingy," and owned nine head of slaves and a farm, on which William served. He was used very hard, which was the cause of his escape, though the idea that he was entitled to his freedom had been entertained for the previous twelve years. On preparing ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... and she is a girl to do as she says, is Inez. That's why I'm here to-night, my dear. I can't go to Sir Victor, you understand—motives of delicacy, and all that—so I waited my chance, and have come to you. You may be fickle, but I don't think you're stingy. And something is due to my outraged feelings, blighted affections, and all that. Give me five hundred pounds, Ethel, and ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... works fearfully hard; he's upright, and plucky. He's not stingy. But he's smothered his animal nature-and that's done it. I don't want to see you ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Dab Kinzer's old suit, after all, had lain mainly in its size rather than its materials; for Mrs. Kinzer was too good a manager to be really stingy. ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... least then, father dear! What is time to you and me that we should be stingy of the only thing ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... you think," she resumed presently, "that I'm a mean, stingy old creetur not to give Janie the counterpane now, instead o' hoardin' it up, and all these quilts too, and keepin' folks waitin' for 'em till I die. But, honey, it ain't all selfishness. I'd give away ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... about it; and the fact is I am commonly believed to be much richer than I am. I have the face of an old miser. It is certainly a lying face; but its untruthfulness has often won for me a great deal of consideration. There is nobody so much respected in this world as a stingy rich man. ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... enter a stingy man's abode, he immediately digs me deep in the earth and denies he has ever seen me. If I enter a crazy man's home, given to dicing and fast living, I ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... necessary to purchase an entirely different size of hat, more commodious clothes, and newly fitting gloves and shoes. At the same time, his family, relatives and friends, discover that the erstwhile generous, frank, neat and punctual and liked, has become stingy and suspicious and slovenly and hated. And all because a gland has begun to undersecrete or to oversecrete. The transformation will be slight or marked, depending entirely upon the extent of impairment, positive or negative, of ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... no bar in it), listening to the conversation of the men who had gathered there. At length, beginning to grow sleepy, he retired to his chamber, taking with him a queer little lamp the landlord gave him, which appeared to hold only about a thimblefull of oil. Oscar thought it was a stingy contrivance, and had some notion of sitting up to see how long it would burn; but his eyelids grew heavy, and he gave up the idea. Throwing off his clothing, he extinguished his diminutive lamp, and took possession of one of the beds in the room, of which there were two. As he composed ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... me," Peppery Polly Bumblebee said to Freddie Firefly through the darkness. "If you'd been a little less stingy with that light of yours I wouldn't have made the mistake of thinking this thistle ...
— The Tale of Freddie Firefly • Arthur Scott Bailey
... that it was on this account that Jowler married Mrs. J., a creature who had not, I do believe, a Christian name, or a single Christian quality: she was a hideous, bloated, yellow creature, with a beard, black teeth, and red eyes: she was fat, lying, ugly, and stingy—she hated and was hated by all the world, and by her jolly husband as devoutly as by any other. She did not pass a month in the year with him, but spent most of her time with her native friends. ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... record of such a thing, but my private opinion is that the draining was done by some stingy owner who had little use for a lake and thought he saw an opportunity to secure twenty acres of good bottom land. Probably he thought he was a great economist. But as a matter of fact he did a very foolish thing. This prairie ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... dishes of tin. If one were ever penurious, might it not be of these handsome loaves of hers? The little housewife will be very gentle to the persecuted man of Scripture who was so reluctant to get up at midnight and give away his bread. She will even be charitable to the stingy merchant scorned by Saadi, of whom it was written, that, "if, instead of his loaf of bread, the orb of the sun had been in his wallet, nobody had seen daylight in the world ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... such thing as madness. If I set a house on fire, it is quite true that I may illuminate many other people's weaknesses as well as my own. It may be that the master of the house was burned because he was drunk; it may be that the mistress of the house was burned because she was stingy, and perished arguing about the expense of the fire-escape. It is, nevertheless, broadly true that they both were burned because I set fire to their house. That is the story of the thing. The mere facts of the story ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton
... be Christmas-day, I am sure," said she, "on which one drinks the health of such an odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling man as Mr. Scrooge. You know he is, Robert! Nobody knows it better than you ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... see, the Clifford crest is a lion holding a shell, and the motto is a Latin one which means, 'Do not touch!' Doris said the lion was holding a purse, and the motto meant, 'What I've got I'll keep'. It was a good hit at Vera, because she's very stingy, although she has plenty of pocket money. She only gave twopence to the Waifs and Strays Fund—it was less than anybody else in the class; and she'll hardly ever lend her things, either, though she often borrows ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... Frank did not say to the contrary; but, from what I hear, he is not the person I took him for. Many people told Frank that he is much changed since he came into his fortune—is grown very stingy, quite miserly indeed; declines even a seat in Parliament because of the expense. It is astonishing how ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... groaned for days whenever she received one, because it had to be answered. But when Joyce went away she said, 'Now, Lloyd, I know I shall be homesick for Locust, and I want to hear every single thing that happens. Don't you dare send me a stingy two-page letter, half of it apologising for not writing sooner, and half of it promising to do ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... fascinated, conquered. Burr knew the private history, the income, of every man he purposed to convert, and made dexterous use of his information. He terrified some with his knowledge, fawned upon others, exempted the stingy from contributions provided he would work, and the lazy from work provided he would pay. It is even asserted that he blackmailed the women who had trusted him on paper, and forced them to wring votes from their men. He ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... guess," Sonia broke out angrily, "if you'd ever stood behind a counter from eight in the morning to six at night, you'd know how nice that is! You earn enough. I think it's real mean and stingy of you to grudge a share of it to this poor sick baby—and me. ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... right. I can wait. Kiss me, Betty." But she was silent, with face turned from him. Again he lifted her face to his. "I say, kiss me, Betty. Just one? That was a stingy little kiss. You know I'm going away, and that is why I spoke to you now. I didn't dare go without telling you this first. You're so sweet, Betty, some one might find you out and love you—just as I have—only not so deeply in love with you—no one could—but some one might ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... that you have seen him," added Barkspear, in that peculiar whining tone which always indicates a mean, stingy man. ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... sometimes, though she takes it just like a cat that isn't used to being stroked, and calls me a silly girl; but I know she is getting to like it. What is the use of people's loving each other in this horridly cold, stingy, silent way? If one of them were dangerously ill now, or met with any serious accident, I know there would be no end to what the others would do for her; if one of them were to die, the others would be perfectly crushed: but it would all go inward,—drop silently down into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... into competition with them. Women don't want it. Women shouldn't have it, for they don't know how to use it. Grace Greenwood (who was one of the seventy-two women who tried to vote) said men were like the stingy boy at school with a cake. "Now," said he, "all you that don't ask for it don't want it, and all you that do ask for it sha'n't ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... subjects together and explaining to them how much he regrets that their conduct has compelled him to afflict them with unfavourable weather, but that it is their own fault. If they are so greedy and so stingy that they will not supply him properly, how can they expect him to think of their interests? He must have goats and corn. "No goats, no rain; that's our contract, my friends," says Katchiba. "Do as you like. I can wait; I hope you can." Should his ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... said, "I reckon that feller was jest about as stingy as the feller you 've been tellin' about, and mebby stingier, 'cause he 'd take more risks. Anyway, he was as ornery stingy as he could be an' live. If he 'd been any wuss he 'd of died to save grub an' shoe leather. W'y, him and me was out huntin' together oncet, over toward Mono. But I oughter ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... to dun the publishers when they don't send in a sufficient number of reviewers' copies; Finot, as editor, appropriates two and sells them, and I must have two to sell. If a book of capital importance comes out, and the publisher is stingy with copies, his life is made a burden to him. The craft is vile, but I live by it, and so do scores of others. Do not imagine that things are any better in public life. There is corruption everywhere in both ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... stingy avaricious crab!" was the outcry beginning; but Miss Fosbrook stopped it before Elizabeth had time to make the angry answer that was rising ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "They're all well enough in their way; they've given up their lives to it, and it's a matter of business with them, like any other. But what I'm talking about now is Coonrod. I don't object to his doin' all the charity he wants to, and the Lord knows I've never been stingy with him about it. He might have all the money he wants, to give ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... 'Oh, Jessie Bain, don't you do it; you will perish; and all because that Rosamond Lee was too stingy to give you your car-fare. I wish to Heaven that I had the money with me, I'd give it to you in a minute. But hold on, wait a second— I'll go and tell the servants about it, and I reckon that some of them can raise enough money ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... age," . . . he would begin saying—but Julio would suddenly bring the dialogue to a close. He had heard his father's story too many times. Ah, the stingy old miser! What he had been giving him all these months was no more than the interest on his grandfather's legacy. . . . And by the advice of Argensola he ventured to get control of the field. He was planning to hand over the management of his land to Celedonio, ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... became him to be more sparing in his offerings, and not be so profuse till he was master of the countries which those sweet gums and spices came from. So Alexander now wrote to him, saying, "We have sent you abundance of myrrh and frankincense, that for the future you may not be stingy to the gods." Among the treasures and other booty that was taken from Darius, there was a very precious casket, which being brought to Alexander for a great rarity, he asked those about him what they thought fittest to be laid up in it; and when they had delivered their various opinions, he told ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... ashamed of yourself, ma'am, to abuse a poor dumb animal, ma'am, as knows no better than to take food when he sees it, ma'am? He only follows the nature which God has given, ma'am; and it's a pity your nature, ma'am, which I've heard, is of the stingy saving species, does not make you shut your cupboard-door a little closer. There is such a thing as law for brute animals. I'll ask Mr. Jenkins, but I don't think them Radicals has done away with that law yet, for all their Reform Bill, ma'am. My poor precious love of a Tommy, ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... his younger years in poring upon books, and trudging after learning, in the pursuit whereof he squanders away the pleasantest time of his life in watching, sweat, and fasting; and in his latter days he never tastes one mouthful of delight, but is always stingy, poor, dejected, melancholy, burthensome to himself, and unwelcome to others, pale, lean, thin-jawed, sickly, contracting by his sedentariness such hurtful distempers as bring him to an untimely death, like roses plucked before they shatter. Thus ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... political grounds. Xanthippus too, the eldest of his legitimate sons, who was a spendthrift by nature and married to a woman of expensive habits, a daughter of Tisander, the son of Epilykus, could not bear with his father's stingy ways and the small amount of money which he allowed him. He consequently sent to one of his friends and borrowed money from him as if Perikles had authorised him to do so. When the friend asked for his money back again, Perikles prosecuted him, at which proceeding young Xanthippus was ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... circumstances! Look here, Bob, I dont want you to introduce me to your swell relations; it is not worth my while to waste time on people who cant earn their own living. And never mind your governor: we can get on without him. If you are hard up for money, and he is stingy, you had better get it from me ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... never offered] to convey a letter [which she never wrote] to Miss Howe; he believes, with one enclosed (perhaps to me): but he declined it: and he begged they would take notice of it to her. This brought him a stingy shilling; great applause; and an injunction followed it to all the servants, for the strictest look-out, lest she should contrive some way to send it—and, above an hour after, an order was given him to throw himself in her ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... fortune. Even three years means making something, with my 'stingy' habits. Only I must go at once. Nor is there any time left me for my decision; it must be yes or no. Which ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Now, the idea of a woman that gets $2 or $3 a day, for all I know, coming out there before 2,000 total strangers, wearing a pair of Indian war clubs and a red ribbon in her hair. I tell you, pardner, them acrobat prima donnars are mighty stingy with their money, or else they're mighty ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... same," said Tom, after he had kissed her again and again,—"all the same, I shall find out, after church, where the snake is staying. I shall go to the hotel and take a cigar. I shall offer him one, and he is so mean and stingy that he will take it. Perhaps this may be one of his fool days. Perhaps somebody else will treat him to the whiskey. No, Matty! honor bright, I will not, though that ten cents might give us all a Merry Christmas. Honor bright, I will ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... circumstances where they had imagined nothing but bankruptcies and failures would follow. But at the present day I am arranging my accounts with the state, with the king, with myself; and I must now become a mean, stingy man; I shall be able to prove to the world that I can act or operate with my deniers as I used to do with my bags of pistoles; and from to-morrow my equipages shall be sold, my mansions mortgaged, my ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... know that. I don't believe you're scared of work; you're only sort of shy about it. I never saw you really afraid of more'n three things—bein' a spoil-sport, or out of style, or havin' a waiter think you're stingy. No, you ain't afraid of work, but you never been properly introduced, so you're kind of standoffish about it. I've always kind of hoped you'd take a tip from Bob Standish—there's one of your own breed that knows where ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... you must delight in your work. Your heart and body must be in it and not tugging to be away at something else. You do not then deal out to each bit of work its stingy bit of your attention. You delight in the thing. You hover and brood over it like a lover and lavish upon it the wealth ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... government attorney is generally a single man, and an enviable match. The superior officer of the gens-d'armes is a 'good fellow.' The nobility-marshal a great sportsman. Besides the government and the local officers, there live in a government town stingy landowners, or those who have squandered away their property; they gamble from evening to morning, nay, from morning to evening too, without getting the least ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... the Inglesi, we went to the hotel, a clean, comfortable well-fitted house, with a good cook and good wines. It was very laughable to hear the landlord execrating the Russians. "They never," said he, "spend a penny; stingy close fellows, who would eat a tallow candle down to the very end, and leave not a drop for the waiter!" He wished to God they were at the bottom of the Black Sea, with the English fleet anchored above them. "Then," said he, "we should see the porter corks fly, the tables swim with grog, ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... these poor slave-girls were subjected—enough in themselves to crush the spirit of men—they were, really, kept nearly half starved; they seldom knew{117} what it was to eat a full meal, except when they got it in the kitchens of neighbors, less mean and stingy than the psalm-singing Mrs. Hamilton. I have seen poor Mary contending for the offal, with the pigs in the street. So much was the poor girl pinched, kicked, cut and pecked to pieces, that the boys in the street knew her only by the name of "pecked," a name derived from the scars and blotches ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... people hot-tempered," she went on, very much pleased at having found out a new kind of rule, "and vinegar that makes them sour—and camomile that makes them bitter—and—and barley-sugar and such things that make children sweet-tempered. I only wish people knew that: then they wouldn't be so stingy about it, ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... are allowed by the rest of the world, and I believe with some degree of justice, to be a generous, charitable people; but the Otaheiteans could not help bestowing the most contemptuous word in their language upon us, which is, Peery Peery, or Stingy. ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... satisfied with the work of his hands, and with the conduct of the mice who had been promoted to a residence in its elegant and spacious quarters. If there was not five dollars in that establishment, then the rich men of Boston were stingy and ungrateful. If they could not appreciate that superb palace, and those supple little beauties who held court within its ample walls, why, they were not worthy to be citizens ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... kind of you," said Philip, uncomfortably; "but you mustn't think because my father is rich I have plenty of money. The fact is, he is very stingy with me, and if it wasn't for my mother I would only have ...
— The Tin Box - and What it Contained • Horatio Alger
... "Ten tousan' tuyfels—as the stingy old thief himself says—he might have held his infernal croak. I hate to make sail with a croak astern; 'tis as bad ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... figure like that, you mean," she amended. "It's plain stingy to keep it under cover. Think of the thousands who are panting to pass over three-fifty per, just to sit out front and give ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... on your guard in case you might have— Here, what does the old proverb say? 'Listeners never hear any good of themselves.' Of course you might have said—you, Mark, boy, I mean— said that I was a stingy old fellow and didn't ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... giving of the things that make us tired, and he's often pretty stingy with the things that are desired; he might bring a ray of sunlight to a life that's sad and drear, if he'd give the absent treatment to ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... anything you may suggest is right; so had you, now that your maternal uncle is dead, granted twenty or thirty taels in excess, is it likely that Madame Wang would not have given you her consent? It's evident that our Madame Wang is a good woman and that it's you people who are mean and stingy. Unfortunately, however, her ladyship has with all her bounty no opportunity of exercising it. You could, my dear girl, well set your mind at ease. You wouldn't, in this instance, have had to spend any of your own money; ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... be happy here. We slide along in the same old groove, that our fathers traveled, from Vergennes to Paradise. We work and play and go to meetin' and put a shin plaster in the box and grow old and narrow and stingy and mean and go up to glory and are turned into saints and angels. Maybe that's the best thing that could happen to us, but Sarah and I kind o' thought we'd try a new starting place and another route ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... grew too lazy in her arms; neglecting glory, arms, and power, for the more real joys of life; while she even rifles him with extravagancy; and grows so bold and hardy, that regarding not the humours of the stingy censorious nation, his interest, or her own fame, she is seen every day in his coaches, going to take the air out of town; puts him upon balls, and vast expensive treats; devises new projects and ways ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... think I'm stingy about the wine,' he said; 'he might drink it all for anything I should ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... right," said the little boy. "If she hadn't been so stingy with her meat, she wouldn't have lost it. And Sun-ka would have stayed with her to help ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... you know very well she's just as good as I am; better, probably, for she's got no pies nor starch in her pedigree. Her father's a Major and her mother was of quite good family—and she's got lots of rich, stingy relations ... and she doesn't sponge on 'em. What's the ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... in my mind, whether that sailor was really as green as he pretended, and whether he did not know very well what he was taking. It would have been just like a reckless seaman's trick to eat up the old miser's twelve hundred dollar root, to teach him not to give such stingy ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... "You little, stingy thing, I will have some," cried Mittie, plunging her hand in the midst of them, while the sweet wild flowers which Arthur's hand had scattered over them, and the shining leaves with which he had bordered them, all fell on the steps. Helen felt as if scalding water ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... this legend than anything I could quote to demonstrate his horror of what he calls "the white man's unkindness." In a very wide and varied experience with many tribes, I have yet to find even one instance of avarice, and I have encountered but one single case of a "stingy Indian," and this man was so marked amongst his fellows that at mention of his name his tribes-people jeered and would remark contemptuously that he was like a white man—hated to share his money and his possessions. All red races are born Socialists, and most tribes carry out their ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... his fingers began to smoke, but to have lighted all the jets at both ends of his long room was a triumph that made this brief inconvenience of small account. I have also seen him spend more time, and even money, utilizing some worn-out appliance than a new one would cost. He was not a stingy man, either, not by any means, but those things were ingrained and vital. They helped to provide his life with interest ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... which gives it a rough look when laundered, and there is generally a shortage in width—which suggests the advisability of measuring the table top before buying, for cloths come in different widths, and one which is too narrow looks out-grown and awkward and—stingy! The average table is about 4 feet across, and requires a cloth 2 yards square, though in buying by the yard it is safe to allow an extra quarter for straightening the edges and hemming. The cloth should hang at ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... and Montana trail crossing on Beaver to the headwaters of the same, including all its tributaries, by virtue of possession and occupancy vested in the claimants, Wells Brothers. "How does that sound?" inquired Forrest, its author, giving a literal reading of the notice. "Nothing small or stingy about that, eh? When you're getting, ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... fifty Mr. Wilkinses, as you call him. The great thing is to have lots of love about. I don't see," she went on, "at least I don't see here, though I did at home, that it matters who loves as long as somebody does. I was a stingy beast at home, and used to measure and count. I had a queer obsession about justice. As though justice mattered. As though justice can really be distinguished from vengeance. It's only love that's any good. At home I wouldn't love Mellersh unless he loved ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... and just the best mother in the world. I made up my mind, when she said that, that if I did get my way, I'd just like to be the one to fix Uncle Si. Stingy old fellow! I'd make him pay mother what he owes her. Guess he knows it, an' that's why he looks at me so sour, and tells father to 'keep him at the plough; he'll never come to nuthin' moonin' over them ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... de Nailles was occupied by financial speculations—operations that were no doubt made necessary by the style of living commented on by his cousin, Madame de Monredon, who was as stingy as she was bitter of tongue. The elegance that she found fault with was, however, very far from being great when compared with the luxury of the present day. Of course, the Baronne had to have her horses, her opera-box, her fashionable frocks. To supply these very moderate needs, which, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and also our time for labor!" murmured they in angry astonishment; "how can even the land be got tilled in that way?" "We cannot work if we don't get food," said the hand laborers and slaves. "It lies in King Hakon's blood," remarked others; "his father and all his kindred were apt to be stingy about food, though liberal enough with money." At length, one Osbjorn (or Bear of the Asen or Gods, what we now call Osborne), one Osbjorn of Medalhusin Gulathal, stept forward, and said, in a ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... what I asked for. Sometimes I spent quite a bit on dress and treating my friends, 'cause there ain't a stingy bone in my body. I've no use for stingy folk, ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... dinner. Having secured a piece of meat, formally presented to him on the end of a lodge-pole, he offered himself to the view of his own people, alarming them by his glaring eyes and sunken cheeks, and told them that he had come back to haunt them for a stingy, inconsiderate lot, because the gate-keeper of heaven had refused to admit him on so ill-conditioned a mount. The camp broke up in dismay. Wichitas and Comanches journeyed, en masse, to Fort Sill for protection, and since then they have ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... means of payment and reward. In doing this, although they are exceedingly avaricious, yet in behalf of their vices, unchastity, and abominations, and for their wishes and desires, for the sake of gain and profit, they do not stop at trifles; nor are they stingy and careless, but open-handed and generous, and endeavor and negotiate in a thousand ways to procure what they purpose and desire. The Spaniards themselves favor, intercede and negotiate for them for the sake of their own private interest and their gain in doing so. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... course. In her eyes I must have appeared stingy and mean and—and goodness knows what. The money I had refused to pay she did consider hers, of course. It was not hers, and some day she would know that it was not, but the town square at Wrayton was not the place in which to impart ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... narrow street with dwellings on each side. Some of the houses were shuttered and silent. Others were open to the street with a completeness of detail denied by our stingy window-casements—women sitting up late over their needlework, men talking round the firebox, shopkeepers adding up their accounts, fishermen mending ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... plates, they swiftly set each one on a fresh crepe-paper napkin. Sylvia professed an undying hatred for paper napkins. "I don't see why," said Judith. "They're so much less bother than the other kind when you're only going to use them once, this way." "That's it," asserted Sylvia; "that's the very stingy, economical thing about them I hate, their not being a bother! I'd like to use big, fine-damask ones, all shiny, that somebody had ironed twenty minutes, every one, like those we had at Eleanor Hubert's birthday party. And then I'd scrunch them up and throw them in the laundry if there ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... stingy old skin!" said a runner to a competitor, before a whole depot full of bystanders: "I knew you when you used to hire your children to go to bed without their suppers, and after they got to sleep you'd go up and steal their pennies to hire 'em ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... do without me," muttered the old man, feeling as though a weight of anger were being lifted from his heart. "Let somebody else look after you now! I am stingy and ill-tempered. . . . It's nasty living with me, so you try living with other people . . . . Yes. ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... not understand at all what yes and no mean? I tell you short and plain that I cannot afford to do it. My back is too weak to lift such a burden. A man can stretch out his feet in bed only as far as the covers reach. Isn't that true? Am I stingy? And would I be stingy toward ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... Saltbush Bill, with his travelling sheep, was making his way to town; He crossed them over the Hard Times Run, and he came to the Take 'Em Down; He counted through at the boundary gate, and camped at the drafting yard: For Stingy Smith, of the Hard Times Run, had hunted him rather hard. He bore no malice to Stingy Smith — 'twas simply the hand of fate That caused his waggon to swerve aside and shatter old Stingy's gate; And, being only the hand ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... of his intelligence and his bravery. He lodged at a woman's, who was, they said, a Druidess, and had the prophetic faculty. One day when he was settling his account with her, she complained of his extreme parsimony: "Thou'rt too stingy, Diocletian," said she; and he answered laughing, "I'll be prodigal when I'm emperor." "Laugh not," rejoined she: "thou'lt be emperor when thou hast slain a wild boar" (aper). The conversation got about amongst Diocletian's comrades. He made his way in the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... to have been brought about (27th of Jamada al-Akhirah April 16, 744) by his cousin and successor Yazid (No. iii.) surnamed the Retrencher. The tale in the text speaks well for him; but generosity amongst the Arabs covers a multitude of sins, and people say, "Better a liberal sinner than a stingy saint." ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... awful big bank-account that needs exercise," she offered. "Now, look here, Johnny, don't yell like I'd hit you with a brick. You told me to help myself once when I needed it, and I did. You ought to let me get even. All right, then; be stingy! Where's Sammy?" She had been feeling in both sleeves with a trace of annoyance, and now she turned to discover Sammy a few paces back, idly watching a policeman putting an inebriated man off the track. "Sammy!" she called him sharply. He came, running and frightened. ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... it, Emily," she told her cousin, who was awaiting her in her bedroom. "I presume likely it'll do more harm than good, but it did ME good while I was sayin' it. The mean, stingy old hypocrite! Now let's go downstairs and fill ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... pathological in origin. In his instructive work, la Tristesse et la Joie,[162] M. Georges Dumas compares together the melancholy and the joyous phase of circular insanity, and shows that, while selfishness characterizes the one, the other is marked by altruistic impulses. No human being so stingy and useless as was Marie in her melancholy period! But the moment the happy period begins, "sympathy and kindness become her characteristic sentiments. She displays a universal goodwill, not only of intention, but in act.... She becomes solicitous of the health ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... for stamps," he said. "There don't seem to be any here. Darlington's getting stingy in his old age. Hello," he called, but without removing the receiver from the hook. "Hello—send me up a dollar's worth of ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... Jim's eyes beheld the misery that groaned out its days and nights within the stingy cells, his great heart melted with pity. For the first moments, his disposition to jest passed away, and all his soul rose up in indignation. If profane words came to his lips, they came from genuine commiseration, and a sense of the outrage that had been committed ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... abolition; the duty was unchanged. That duty implied not only resistance to evil, but hatred of it. Boys naturally look on all force as an enemy, and generally find it so, but the New Englander, whether boy or man, in his long struggle with a stingy or hostile universe, had learned also to love the pleasure of hating; ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... cannot tell the story of the months That followed this. I toiled and toiled for bread, And for the shelter of one stingy room. Temptation, which the hand of poverty Bears oft seductively to woman's lips, To me came not. I hated men like beasts; Their flattering words, and wicked, wanton leers, Sickened me with ineffable disgust. At length there ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... Allison. It is not my nature to be mean or stingy. Bob gave the old beggar with the red shawl a ...
— Halsey & Co. - or, The Young Bankers and Speculators • H. K. Shackleford
... something vague, something unsympathetic, something possibly antagonistic, which it comforted itself by snubbing when it dared and tricking when it could, something that projected members of Parliament towards it and was stingy about money. Directly one grasped how apart the army lived from the ordinary life of the community, from industrialism or from economic necessities, directly one understood that the great mass of Englishmen were ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... in the days of the fairies and other little folk, there lived a housewife who was very stingy indeed. She thought only of her own cupboard and meals, and never of the needs of her neighbors. When she did give alms it was a dry loaf or a scraped bone for which she had no use, and she looked for great reward because ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... drunk, which accounted for the unprofessional noise they had been making. They talked in rather a low tone, but Hoskins could hear everything they said, and it was not particularly encouraging to a gagged and bound philanthropist. They agreed that he was a fool, and a stingy fool, or else he would have kept money in the house, and would have set out lemons and sugar as well as plain whiskey. They said that any man who treated poor working men in that way wasn't fit to live, and that Hoskins would have to be killed, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... skulking round the back way, to look over the parson's garden wall, to see if there was any thing worth climbing over for on the ensuing night. He spied Dick, and began to scold him for working for the stingy old parson; for Giles had a natural antipathy to whatever belonged ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... exclaimed, as soon as he could speak; "I should like to know what you call being well fed! Since I have come to this hateful country, not once have I had an opportunity of filling my cheeks with grain. Man, stingy man, thinks it enough to give me a wretched pittance from day to day,— to me who have had a hundred pounds of corn packed up in my own deep hole,— to me whose delight it was to carry three ounces weight of it at once in these bags with which ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... fact that one of them had been absolutely beautiful, despite her strange mufflings. She had offered to pay him for his trouble. When he refused she had thanked him eloquently with her fine eyes and thrown him a kiss as he turned to go. She had thrown that kiss with two hands! There was nothing stingy ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... rifle she had used so successfully in the show. But her pony, West Wind, was stabled in the Red Mill barn. Indeed, Uncle Jabez had begun to hint that the animal was "eating its head off." The miller could not help showing what Aunt Alvirah called "his stingy streak" in spite of the fact that he truly was interested in the Indian maid and ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson |
