"Skinflint" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... His stock in trade was of a different sort, but he made as much as he could out of every worm he sold, and always got the best of the bargain when he traded with the boys for string, knives, fish-hooks, or whatever the article might be. The boys who all had nicknames, called him "Skinflint," but Jack did not care as long as the old tobacco-pouch in which he kept his money grew ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... to the repast when the weazen-faced patriarch of the tribe remarked, by way of grace, it may be supposed, "Be jabers, but isn't ould Holcroft givin' us a foine spread the noight! Here's bad luck to the glowerin' ould skinflint!" and he poured out a bumper ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... th' man as was ready t' give a month's pay fer a quart. 'A dollar th' bottle! Why, yer miserable old skinflint!' ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... sharp lawyer, and almost invariably wins his cases. Dad says he has won out many times when the law was all against him, and is not over-scrupulous how he does it. They say he is rich, and a skinflint. He always reminds me ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... it through his head that you had fallen into a fortune the old beast looked at you as if he could eat you, mother. If he ever comes courting around here I'll be tempted to do something desperate, the old skinflint. He's the worst-hated man in all Riverview, even if he is the richest," declared Dick, as he heard the vehicle moving down the road with sundry creakings and groanings, for they said Hezekiah Cheatham was too stingy to buy ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... Mullins came by thereafter with the old nag and the sack of corn, and Lum went on doing little jobs for him for nothing, for Jeb was a skinflint, a moonshiner, and a mean old man. He did not turn Martha out of his hut, because he was callous and because he needed her to cook and to save him work in the garden and corn-field. Martha stayed closely at home, but she was treated so kindly by some of the neighbors ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... sign of the old sinner's true repentance. When the deacons, with their white gloves on, poked under his nose their black velvet bags, hung at the end of fishing poles, ten feet long, this man, who had been for years a skinflint, dropped in a silver ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... just try it on!... This morning, relying on your intercession, I asked him for cash. What do you suppose the old skinflint answered? "I'll pay your debts," says he, "if you like. Up to twenty-five roubles inclusive!" Do you hear, inclusive! No, sir, this was a gift from God in ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... That old skinflint, Dr. Harper, who is running the sanitarium, has a place he calls his Guest House, and when folks come to see their nutty relations he sees to it that they stop there. There is never a nickel that gets by that old gouger. ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... is nowt is nivver in danger. Whear's the plague as wad think it worth while to bodder wid a skinflint like thee? Good neet, 'Becca, good neet, and 'od white te, lass, God ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... jiggered!" Peggy's eyes stared as they had never stared before. "Dan Brayley, he's a miser'ble ol' skinflint. Thet man couldn't raise decent mellings ef ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... talk with the townsfolk. He had earned for himself the reputation of an awful skinflint, of a miser in the matter of living. He mumbled regretfully in the shops, bought inferior scraps of meat after long hesitations; and discouraged all allusions to his costume. It was as the barber had foretold. For all one ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... text, 'We brought nothin' into the world, and it's sartin we can carry nothin' out; and having food and raiment, let us be therewith content.' Parson Lothrop he got round the subject about as handsome as he could: he didn't say what a skinflint old Black Hoss was, but he talked in a gineral way about the vanity o' worryin' an' scrapin' to heap up riches. Ye see, Parson Lothrop he could say it all putty easy, too, 'cause since he married a rich wife he never hed no occasion to worry ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... but where's the remedy? The person who signed the order must rescind it. But this sham lunatic won't rescind it. Altogether the tenacity of an asylum is prodigious. The statutes are written with bird-lime. Twenty years ago that old Skinflint found the rates and taxes intolerable; and doesn't everybody find them intolerable? To avoid these rates and taxes he shut up his house, captured himself, and took himself here; and here he will end his days, excluding some genuine patient, unless you sweep him into the street ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... of Yankee ingenuity were sold clandestinely to the rebel guards, who ventured to disobey strict orders. No skinflint vender of wooden nutmegs, leather pumpkin-seeds, horn gunflints, shoe-peg oats, huckleberry-leaf tea, bass-wood cheeses, or white-oak hams, ever hankered more for a trade. Besides the products of our prison industry, they craved watches, rings, gold chains, silver ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... allow the water to have free access, then more potatoes, beef, onions, and kidney, and then the final deck of paste, and a suitable amount of water were added. It was quite a common thing whilst these exploits of cookery were going on, for the skinflint skipper to stand over the boy, and if he detected him taking too thick a skin from the potato, he was lucky if he got off with a severe reprimand. It was usually an open-handed blow, intended sternly ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... skinflint won't miss it as much as I would a penny," declared our faithful handmaiden. "And I'm sure you've earnt that twenty-five thousand if anyone ever did. You've had as much care and worry about them brats as you would if ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... paid it back. I could have put it back if the old skinflint hadn't got to sniffing round and sicked 'em on my books. I could have won it all back in time, Renie. With my own uncle, my own mother's brother, it—it wasn't like I was stealing it, was it, ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... the Yankee, soothingly; "don't I tell you it's a buster? However, the lie is none o' mine, it's that old cuss Skinflint set it afloat; he is ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... said the spiteful fairy. "Her old skinflint of a father cut down the cedar which I loved best in the whole forest, and made a chest of it to hold his money in; besides, I never liked the princess—everybody praised her so. But come, we shall be too late for ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... skinflint!" exclaimed Rod excitedly, all the incipient manhood rising in his ten-year-old breast. "Is she gone to live ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... "you are a wicked old fraud, a miserly skinflint, a miserable land crab. Behold, your share for the year in all our partnership has been thousands of dollars. The head clerk has given me this paper. It says that in the year you have drawn just ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... 'Wade, be good enough to hand Mr. Tresslyn the little acknowledgment for his services?' Then and there, that lawyer gave Anne a thick envelope and Wade gave me a little box,—a little bit of a box that I wish I'd kept to bury the old skinflint in. It would be just about his size. I had it in my vest pocket for awhile. 'Wade, your arm,' says he, and then with what he probably intended to be a sweet smile for Anne, he got to his feet and went out of the room, holding his side ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... Tom, but found no response in that dogged countenance. But he knew Tom, and knew what to expect from him. "You old grouch," he shouted, running his hand through Tom's already tousled and rebellious hair. "Why don't you laugh? So you wouldn't trust me for two cents, you old Elk skinflint, wouldn't you. Well, then, the letter doesn't get mailed, that's all, for I happen to have only one stamp left and that's going to Pee-wee Harris. Come on, get your wits to work now, and we'll send him the invitation in the form of a verse, ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... head slowly, with an interjectional "Surely, surely!"—from which it might be inferred that she would have found the country-side somewhat duller if the Rector's lady had been less free-spoken and less of a skinflint. Indeed, both the farmers and laborers in the parishes of Freshitt and Tipton would have felt a sad lack of conversation but for the stories about what Mrs. Cadwallader said and did: a lady of immeasurably high birth, descended, as it were, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... it says here in fine print? How the old skinflint has changed—instead of screaming his head off about spending money he's actually offering to. Frank, ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... secret conviction, was merely a polite euphemism to cover his unscrupulous nature. Many acts of his were condoned, or even laughed at, which would have been nothing short of outrageous if performed by another. He had been widely exploited as a "character"; in reality he had been a merciless old skinflint, with a supreme disregard for the ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... his wealth on his tombstone. A dollar mark would not look well there. The best epitaph proclaims simple old Scripture virtues, like honesty and diligence and patience. And you will observe that when the meanest skinflint or the most disgracefully avaricious millionaire dies, his tombstone never refers to his most notorious characteristics. His friends speak not of his scandalous speculations, but of his benevolences. Thus some of the most conscienceless rogues in a generation go ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... know you, and know that you are a regular skinflint. I say that in all friendship. If I possessed any power over you I should hang you to ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... won't get it out of him, sir.... He's a famous skinflint.... Wait, I've got a five-copeck piece somewhere.... We'll have a glass between us—half each [Searches in his pockets] The devil... it's lost somewhere.... Thought I heard it tinkling just now in my pocket.... No; no, it isn't there, brother, it's ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... will! He cannot do worse for us than he has done! All the Forest will cry shame on him for a mean-hearted skinflint to turn his brothers from their home, ere their father and his, be cold in his grave," cried Stephen, clenching the grass with his hands, in his passionate sense ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... he, "I think you are honest. There are not many that can be said of. As for Abner Holden, I know him. He's a mean skinflint. Pah!" and he spit, contemptuously. "You'd better not ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... give a pretty good deal to get even with that old skinflint, I would that. You and your wife just shift up along with me. There's an extra room upstairs with nothing in it at all. We'll manage top hole. Sure, 'twill be fine havin' me cooking done for me. You can be giving me ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... sheriff as they strode down the street, "and she'd step into the store some time to-day and settle for them. By thunder, you could have knocked me over with a feather, Kenneth. If your stepmother was a man we'd describe her as a skinflint. She's as stingy and unfeeling as they make 'em. Hard as nails and about as kind-hearted as a tombstone. What other woman on this here earth would have gone out to Martin Hawk's last night just for the satisfaction of seein' him arrested? ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... County, "doing well, too," they say, and he had cared for little 'Tildy until last spring, when a lover married her. A hard life the lad had led, toiling for meat, and laughed at because he was homely and crooked. There was Sam Carlon, an impudent old skinflint, who had definite notions about "niggers," and hired Ben a summer and would not pay him. Then the hungry boy gathered his sacks together, and in broad daylight went into Carlon's corn; and when the hard-fisted farmer set upon him, the angry boy ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... and food, he had had his palm tickled with many a copper, had he gone and taken service with the biggest and most inveterate old coxcomb who ever stuffed himself with macaroni, to the patched Carnival fool who strutted about like a satisfied old hen after a shower of rain, to the snarling skinflint, the love-sick old poltroon, who infected the air of the Via Ripetta with the disgusting bleating which he called ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... in his highest key of contempt, "did your wits blow away with your hat out of Heer Snediker's nut tree yesterday? Do not you know that the Heer Governor is at royal odds with Dominie Curtius because the skinflint old dominie will not pay the taxes due the town? Why, lad, the Heer Governor will ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... downright skinflint! And how did you get into the town again? Who let you in across the moat ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... say, there's Duncan, of the Central, and the other is Lovejoy, of the Northwestern. Lovejoy's a bachelor and a skinflint. Those two, Duncan and Lovejoy, are using every means in their power to prevent Worthington from getting that franchise. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... as his father bade him. Brought up with all the ideas of a rural skinflint, he thought no decent person could object to marrying an ugly bad-tempered woman, so long as she had plenty ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... from behind the tomato and his eyes swept the other with fiery scorn. "Gettin' cold feet, huh? Mebbe you'd like to git down on your knees an' crawl back to th' old skinflint? The rest of us started out to do somethin' an' I guess we'll stick. Ain't that so, boys?" There was a low murmur of ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... Not that he really felt that the deacon's head should not be cut off by his long-suffering wife, but that it was hardly the proper thing for her to do it in public. Virtually every man in Tinkletown had declared, at one time or another, that Mrs. Rank ought to slit the old skinflint's throat, or poison him, or set fire to him, or something of the sort, but, even though he agreed with them, the fact still remained that Marshal Crow considered it his duty to protect the deacon ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... in an access of irony. "I see dat skinflint gib'n' me a better wage. Puuh!" The suddenly she realized where the conversation had wandered, and stared at the secretary with widening eyes "Good Lawd! Did dat fool Cap'n set up a nigger in dis bedroom winder jes to ketch ole Rose packin' off a few ole lef'-overs?" Peter began a hurried denial, ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... "and that wouldn't be the case if that skinflint barge of Lindsay's had got it in her clutches. At any rate, it's a shame for her and them to abuse the Goodwins as they do. If ould Hamilton left it to them ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... letters H.R.H. Anyhow, there were many rumors afloat at the time, and her guardian—a regular, tarry old sea dog, by George—drags her away from her brother's side, and buries her in the country, like the one-armed old pirate he is, eye to her money they tell me; regular old skinflint; bad as a Jew—damn him! But speaking of the race, sir, do you happen ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... savin's, an' you're welcome to what you need, Liz. For as sure as you're alive and kickin', if you've got into the 'ands of Skinflint Lockhart, 'e'll sell you up, garding an' all! I know 'im! Ah—I know 'im. So 'elp ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... Abel Perry turned 'em out of that when the rent got behind. He's the meanest skinflint that ever strained skim milk. He got married ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... No? Well then, take that and that, and be hung to you for a little muff." Another time it would be, "Hi there, No-thank-you—we want sixpence for a pack of cards. Oh, you won't be so sinful as to part with sixpence for cards? Confounded little miser;" "Niggard," said another; "Skinflint," shouted a third. And a general cry of "Saint," which expressed the climax of villainy, ended the verbal portion of the contest. And then, some one would slap him on the cheek, with "take that", "and that," from another, "and that," from a third—the last ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... said to his wife; "you must invite Sicardot: he has annoyed me with that rosette of his for a long time! Then Granoux and Roudier; I shouldn't be at all sorry to make them feel that it isn't their purses that will ever win them the cross. Vuillet is a skinflint, but the triumph ought to be complete: invite him as well as the small fry. I was forgetting; you must go and call on the marquis in person; we will seat him on your right; he'll look very well at our table. You know that Monsieur Garconnet ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... I guess I know his pa, a mean old skinflint, if ever there was one. But he dotes on that boy of his, and he'll get him the suit ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... sick to think of Lyte carrying off most of the profit when I did all the work, the old skinflint! And—What else have I got to do to-day?... Like to take a good long vacation. Motor trip. Something." He sprang up, rekindled by the thought of lunching ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... of flowers, among which here and there we find a bright rose plucked but yesterday and worn for a day; and on this an old hag is always to be seen crouching—first cousin to Usury, the skinflint bargainer, bald and toothless, and ever ready to sell the contents, so well is she used to sell the covering—the gown without the woman, or ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... word or two when I see her," she cried, viciously flourishing a roll of print in the faces of her friends. "If Abe isn't a money grubbing skinflint I just don't know nothin'. Look at that stuff. Do I know print? Do I know pea-shucks! He's been tryin' to sell me faded goods that never were anything else but faded, at twice the price they ever were, when they couldn't have ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum |
