"Purse-proud" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... He answered furiously: "You purse-proud wretch, do you think I will not take my master's part? Have you not robbed him of his intended wife, by bribing her father? Do you think he has no cause for anger against you? His interests are mine; I am ready to risk ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... railed or maundered till their benefactor was glad to make his escape to Streatham, or to the Mitre Tavern. And yet he, who was generally the haughtiest and most irritable of mankind, who was but too prompt to resent anything which looked like a slight on the part of a purse-proud bookseller, or of a noble and powerful patron, bore patiently from mendicants, who, but for his bounty, must have gone to the workhouse, insults more provoking than those for which he had knocked down Osborne and bidden defiance to Chesterfield. Year after year ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... railroads and burros? Who but the honest sons of honest toil? Who, when these labours are accomplished, lolls in the luxurious lap of the voluptuous East, reaping the sweat of your brows, gathering in the harvest of hands toiling for three dollars a day or less? Who, but the purse-proud plutocrat who sits on his cushioned chair in Wall Street, sending out his ruthless minions to rob the labourer of his toil and to express his hard-won gold to the stanchless maw of the ghoulish East. Rise, noble sons of toil, ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... that the P. D. A.'s be recognized as the organization the soldiers favored, and showed her a petition he had drawn up and was getting signatures to by the hundreds. That paper would have insured their being recognized by the government instead of those purse-proud Red Cross people, and then he had wickedly deserted, after—after—and Stuyvesant could scarcely keep a straight face—getting fifty dollars from her and a ring that he was going to wear always until he came back from Manila—an officer. Oh, he was a smart one, a smooth one! All that inside ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... not thought about it!' sneered the invalid. 'You know you HAVE thought about it, and have thought that, and think so every time you come here. Do you suppose, young man, that I don't know what little purse-proud tradesmen are, when, through some fortunate circumstances, they get the upper hand for a brief day—or think they get the ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... remarked, as guests will, gentle reader, when our backs are turned, that Howel was insufferably purse-proud and conceited, and his wife as affected and provincial as possible; they did not hear the friendly notices, and were well content to fill the concert room with their party, all in full dress, to the admiration of the townsfolk, and of Mrs Griffey ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... steerage are a thousand emigrants. The easy-going, purse-proud cabin passengers do not know it; they do not visit them or give much thought to them: but there are the men and women whose children will one day sway the empire that will wear the crown of ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... to want it!" shrieked Checkleigh. "Oh, bloated plutocrat, purse-proud millionaire, I always happen to want it!" He waved an eloquent hand to the circumambient air. "He has five-franc pieces in his waistcoat pocket—and no Rabbits in his family!" cried Checkleigh. "Now, have you a presentable ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... A quiet evening together!'" murmured Selma as she walked away. "Wilbur is right; purse-proud, frivolous little thing! She is ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... of the mavis or blackbird, while her heart was as tender as that of any other sighing maiden. Two lovers sought her hand—one rich, the other poor. The poor man she declared to be her choice, but the purse-proud father declared his firlot of silver money, his twelve cows, and as many calves, his sheep and oxen, intended as his daughter's dower, would never enrich a pennyless man without houses and lands. So he said; yet he changed his mind through the influence of a fortune-teller, ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... it. He could not endure his future stepfather; between them there existed a bottomless chasm of dislike and distrust. Levison considered Shafto a conceited young cub, "but a clever cub"; and Shafto looked on Levison as a purse-proud tradesman, ever bragging of his "finds," his ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... all. As Ferdinand Brandeis' wife she had occupied a certain social position in the little Jewish community of Winnebago. True, they had never been moneyed, while the others of her own faith in the little town were wealthy, and somewhat purse-proud. They had carriages, most of them, with two handsome horses, and their houses were spacious and veranda-encircled, and set in shady lawns. When the Brandeis family came to Winnebago five years before, these people had waited, cautiously, and investigated, and then had called. They were of ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... I need not say, of course," continued General Belch, "must be a good man and a faithful adherent of the party. He must be the consistent enemy of a purse-proud aristocracy." ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... use of taking the trouble to run a gold mine, and get all dirtied up digging dirty nuggets, when you can get nice, clean gold, all coined, ready to spend, by betting right?" And then dad turned to me and he said; "Hennery, don't let the sight of this wealth make you avaricious. Don't be purse-proud when you find that your poor father, after years of struggle against adversity, and the machinations of designing men, has got next to the Pierpont Morgan class and has money to buy railroads. Don't ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... plots to get Sophie away by having her arrested, but is baffled by a counter-intrigue. Stormy scenes follow the revelation, and in the end it appears that Sophie is not a plebeian maiden at all, but the niece of the purse-proud Commandeur, who has neglected his poor relations. With the literary and dramatic qualities of this play, its absence of humor and of sparkling dialogue, its tedious moralizing, its hollow pathos and its general relation ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... youth had been more the command of the ruler than of the man. Despite himself, there had been something about the dainty peacock he could not help but like; and the bold dash for the window, the disarming of the purse-proud Buckingham, who for many reasons displeased him, and the leap to the sward below, with the accompanying farewell, had especially delighted both his manhood and ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... demands, more ridiculous even than the first. They were decidedly being mystified, and were preparing in consequence to pack up and begone, furious, and swearing by all their gods that they would never again expose science to see itself disgraced by a purse-proud vulgarian's scorn; when, lo! happily, a good fairy, the special friend of learned men, came passing by that way. She raised her enchanted wand with the tip of her finger, and all at once a little girl dressed in rags appeared in the midst of our astonished professors. Without ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... takin' her by the arm hauled her out o' the ring. An' then up comes the big man with his face as red as fire. 'Look' here!' says he to her, as if he was ready to eat her up. 'Did you draw every cent of that money?' 'Not yet, not yet,' says she. 'You did, you purse-proud cantalope,' says he. 'You know very well you did, an' now I'd like to know where my ox-money is to come from.' But Jone an' me didn't intend to wait for no sich talk as this, an' he tuk the man by the arm, ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... again: for how we should have paid the fare, I don't know, I am sure. So I have just brought her to you to know if her mother's old friend thinks it is a right thing for Kathleen Elmsdale's daughter to put herself under the feet of a parcel of ignorant, purse-proud snobs?" ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... imaginative artist, is an opportunity! To paint the wholesale wickedness and small villanies of the Corn-laws! What a contrast of scene and character! Squalid hovels, and princely residences—purse-proud, plethoric injustice, big and bloated with, its iniquitous gains, and gaunt, famine-stricken multitudes! Then for the Debt—that hideous thing begotten by war and corruption; what a tremendous moral lesson might be learned from a nightly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... who had slain the Lord was close at hand. Then, as now, the commerce of the world was in Jewish hands, and it was felt that so much wealth ought not to be in such hands. That element which still exists in the Jewish character of being purse-proud and offensively familiar in prosperity, is reported to have twitted the Christians with the worship of a Jewish prophet ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell
... son to reside with him at the rectory, but he soon found that his disorders rendered him an intolerable inmate. And as the young men of his own rank would not endure the purse-proud insolence of the Creole, he fell into that taste for low society, which is worse than "pressing to death, whipping, or hanging." His father sent him abroad, but he only returned wilder and more desperate than before. It is true, this unhappy youth was not without his good qualities. He ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... man," that they might have a decent funeral. I once saw a set of grave-clothes nicely folded up, which consisted of a long shirt and cap of white flannel, and a shroud of fine linen made of yarn, spun by the gude wife herself. I did not like that gude wife; she was purse-proud, and took every opportunity of treating with scorn a poor neighbour who had had a misfortune, that is, a child by her husband before marriage, but who made a very good wife. Her husband worked in our garden, ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... was enabled to discover all his history, and also so gain an insight into his proceedings whilst away from her. It seems that he had married her under an assumed name, his real patronymic being Stephens, and that his people were purse-proud and overbearing. On his arrival in England his father, who had heard of the young man's escapades in Canada peremptorily ordered him to have no more correspondence with his Canadian wife, but to marry a noble lady whom he had ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... one's very soul. She would have been very glad to give them money, and had indeed wondered frequently if she might dare to offer it to them, if they would be outraged and insulted and slay her in their wrath at her purse-proud daring. She had tried to invent ways in which she could approach the subject, but had not been able to screw up her courage to any sticking point. She was so overpowered by her consciousness that they seemed continually to intimate that Americans ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to try and save a poor girl from fatal error. I have devoted the best years of my life to the cause of the poor as against the rich, the down-trodden against the purse-proud. I should not have presumed to speak to you on such a subject had I not heard your name lightly, slightingly used among these very satraps whom Mr. Forrest hails as companions,—comrades. It is to ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... for the emigration of such persons may be summed up in a few brief words;—the emigrant's hope of bettering his condition, and of escaping from the vulgar sarcasms too often hurled at the less-wealthy by the purse-proud, common-place people of the world. But there is a higher motive still, which has its origin in that love of independence which springs up spontaneously in the breasts of the high-souled children of a glorious land. They ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... marvel of millinery; indeed, she presented a striking contrast to the professor's daughter in her plain, neat black coat and frock, and small toque, with its trimming of white narcissi, and I cannot say that I was favourably impressed by the unknown, she was far too cold and purse-proud looking to ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... for something else, stay on the farm. Read books which will make you desire to be a pure man, just for the noble name it will give you. If you can get as great a desire to be a good man as you have to be a purse-proud man, you will be on the right track; for you will see that honesty is easier in the perfumed fields than it is in the polluted air of a city business-house. Read over the biographies, and see how certainly all our great men got their greatness ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... States, almost every American feels himself bound to run for the office. A man thinks small things of himself, and his neighbors think less, if he does not find his heart filled with an insane desire, in some way, to attain to fame or notoriety, riches or bankruptcy. Nevertheless, we are not purse-proud,—nor, indeed, proud at all, more's the pity,—and receive a man just as readily whose sands of life have been doled out to suffering humanity in the shape of patent pills, as one who has entered Fifth Avenue by the legitimate way of pork and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... an abrupt, ill-mannered, dapper business man; purse-proud, I should call him, as there was every reason he should be, for he had earned his own fortune. He was doubtless equally proud of his new title, which he was trying to live up to, assuming now and then a haughty, domineering attitude, and again relapsing into the keen, incisive ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... 'm a lad o' laigh degree, Her purse-proud daddy 's dour an' saucy; An' sair the carle wad scowl on me, For speakin' to his dawtit lassie: But were I laird o' Leven's glen, An' she a humble shepherd's daughter, I 'd kneel, an' court her for my ain, The bonny ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Have nothing to do with this accursed trade of ink-spilling. Literary work! God save the mark!' (I wondered what particular ink 'mark' this referred to.) 'The purse-proud wretches think they buy your soul with their starveling cheques. Ten years' use of my brain; ten years wasted in slavish pot-boiling for them; and ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... My second brother-in-law's name is Cheng, his style is Tzu-chou. His present post is that of a Second class Secretary in the Board of Works. He is modest and kindhearted, and has much in him of the habits of his grandfather; not one of that purse-proud and haughty kind of men. That is why I have written to him and made the request on your behalf. Were he different to what he really is, not only would he cast a slur upon your honest purpose, honourable brother, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... saw such a girl as you to think of ways for spending money. What kind of a purse-proud plutocrat do you think I am? I've only seventy-five cents left. How much have ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... Gaius," they shouted. As for the cook, he was given a drink and a silver crown and a cup on a salver of Corinthian bronze. Seeing that Agamemnon was eyeing the platter closely, Trimalchio remarked, "I'm the only one that can show the real Corinthian!" I thought that, in his usual purse-proud manner, he was going to boast that his bronzes were all imported from Corinth, but he did even better by saying, "Wouldn't you like to know how it is that I'm the only one that can show the real Corinthian? Well, it's because the bronze worker I patronize is named Corinthus, ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... wonder why these flurries come, but I suppose it is to let a man pick up some sound stocks at a reasonable rate, if he has the money by him. Perhaps they are also sent to teach humility to those who might else become purse-proud. We are but finite creatures, Sneed, here to-day and gone to-morrow. How foolish a thing is pride! And that reminds me that if your two daughters should happen to think as I do on the uncertainty of riches, I wish you would ask them to ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... is gone. There is little credit to be got from charity; for if you conceal your good deeds it is certain that nobody will suspect you of doing them, and if you do them before the world every one will say that you are vainglorious and purse-proud, and altogether a dangerous hypocrite. On the other hand, there is undeniably much social interest attached to a man who is supposed to be bad, but who has never been caught in his wickedness; and if a thorough-going sinner is discovered, ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... laboring man on the wayside would exclaim, "a purse-proud bodagh upon our hands. Why, thin, does he forget that we remimber when he kept the shebeen-house, an' sould his smuggled to-baccy in gits (* the smallest possible quantities) out of his pocket, for fraid o' the gauger! Sowl, he'd show a blue nose, any way, only for ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... birth is known by the simplicity of its dress and the good manners of its bonne; while that of the parvenu is at once recognised by the showiness and expensiveness of its clothes, and the superciliousness of its nurse, who, accustomed to the purse-proud pretensions of her employers, values nothing so much as all the attributes that indicate the ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... a few months, a few months, and Evelyn must be mine. Saxingham has already lent me what he can; but he is embarrassed. This d——-d office, what a tax it is! and the rascals say we are too well paid! I, too, who could live happy in a garret, if this purse-proud England would but allow one to exist within one's income. My fellow-trustee, the banker, my uncle's old correspondent—all, well thought of! He knows the conditions of the will; he knows that, at the worst, I must have thirty ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... ...; and I have been less at home than elsewhere ever since I came from London; which hath vext me the more in regard I have been detained from the desire I had of being with you before this time. Such entertainment, however, must all those have that have to do with such a purse-proud and wilful person as Sir Edward Hales. This next week being Michaelmas week, we shall end all and I be at liberty, I hope, to consider my own contentments. In the meantime I know not what excuses to make for the trouble I have put you ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... originally produced it; and the second, which is far inferior to the last, is likewise able to buy the first. The heads of old families are more tolerant to the great men of genius than they are to the accumulators of riches; and a wide distinction is made by them between the purse-proud millionaire and the poor man of genius, whose refined tastes and feelings are more in unison with ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... our slaves; We are liege to marble and steel; We go our ways through our purse-proud days, Lifting our voices in loud self-praise— Forgetting the God at ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... from Griffin, offering to make a public submission and pay costs. I want none of his submissions, neither will I pocket any of his money. The fellow is a bad neighbour, and I desire, to have nothing to do with him: but as he is purse-proud, he shall pay for his insolence: let him give five pounds to the poor of the parish, and I will withdraw my action; and in the mean time you may tell Prig to stop proceedings. — Let Morgan's widow have the Alderney cow, and forty shillings to clothe her children: but don't say a syllable of the ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... from the aged Abbe Chelan who grounds him in theology,—for Julien had proclaimed his intention of studying for the priesthood. By unexpected good luck, his Latin earned him an appointment as tutor to the children of M. de Renal, the pompous and purse-proud Mayor of Verrieres. Julien is haunted by his peculiar notions of duties which he owes it to himself to perform as steps towards his worldly advancement; for circumstances have made him a consummate hypocrite. One of these duties is to make love to Mme. de Renal: ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... lower than ourselves; in being sometimes magnificent, and sometimes impoverished; but, rarely, indeed, do they equal the French in the light, classical, and elegant taste that so eminently distinguishes these people. There is something ponderous and purse-proud about the magnificence of England, that is scarcely ever visible here; though taste is evidently and rapidly on the increase in England on the one hand, as comfort is here on the other. The French have even partially adopted the ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Peabody, loftily. "She would marry me, poor as I am, but for her purse-proud, mercenary sire. It will be a happy day when, with my pockets full of gold, I enter his presence and claim his ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... wrong in this, as compassion to the miserable is a debt of charity due from all mankind to their fellow-creatures; and though the purse-proud tradesman may be able to say he is above the fear of being in the like circumstances, as some may be, yet, even then, he might reflect that perhaps there was a time when he was not so, and he ought to pay that debt of charity, in acknowledgement ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... be obliged to some purse-proud coxcomb for a scandalous bottle, where we must not pretend to our share of the discourse, because we can't pay our club o' th' reckoning.—Damn it, I had rather sponge upon Morris, and sup upon a dish of ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... stray to the chords of "Ben Bolt." She tried, and fairly succeeded in answering his letters in a cool, matter-of-fact way. Occasionally when he referred to his heart hunger, and how hard he was studying in hopes that she might think better of him, she wished that he had no purse-proud and haughty mother to stand between him and a poor girl, and her next letter would be more chilly than ever. What perhaps was a bitter-sweet thought was the fact that the colder she answered him, the warmer his next letter would be. Unwisely, too, he happened to mention once that ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... resources, Harold, like a purse-proud millionaire, who boasts his bursting coffers. We depend rather upon our determined hearts and resolute right hands. Upon our power to endure, greater than yours to inflict, reverse. Upon our united people, and the spirit that animates them, which can never be subdued. The naked ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... Club' (where, you wretch, you are always going without my leave), and you are to beg Monsieur Mirobolant, your famous cook, to send you one of his best aides-de-camp, as I know he will, and with his aid we can dress the dinner and the confectionery at home for ALMOST NOTHING, and we can show those purse-proud Topham Sawyers and Rowdys that the HUMBLE COTTAGE can furnish forth an elegant entertainment as well as the gilded ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray
... disliked the daughter, but the father is worse. Offensive, purse-proud, vulgar beast! How dare he speak to me like that! I'm glad, yes, I'm glad Godfrey knocked him down, though I suppose there will be a scandal. Well, my hands are clean; I have done my duty, and I must not complain if it is unpleasant, since I have ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... opens his lips without some allusion to his own birth and station; or Mr. Briggs, without some allusion to the hoarding of money; or Mr. Hobson, without betraying the self-indulgence and self-importance of a purse-proud upstart; or Mr. Simkins, without uttering some sneaking remark for the purpose of currying favour with his customers; or Mr. Meadows, without expressing apathy and weariness of life; or Mr. Albany, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson |
