"Beggary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lawk! I declare I be all of a tremble; My mind it misgives me about Sukey Wimble, A splatter faced wench neither civil nor nimble She'll bring Billy to beggary." ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... downfall of the empire. Their personal interest in its prolongation was clear. With them it was a matter, if not of life and death, at least of comparative dignity and prosperity at home, or of exile and beggary abroad. ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... got from him, and I had no other course. Your bankruptcy would have meant your downfall. That dressmaker woman was inexorable. You would have been sued by your stock-broker, and—who knows what wretchedness was awaiting us?—perhaps absolute beggary in obscure lodgings, and our daily bread purchased with money begged from our friends. You know what father is: you know how he hates both you and me, how he would rub salt into our wounds, and gloat over our humiliation. If—if Dick hadn't gone ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... Maitland had been a gentleman's son of the east country, but driven out of his father's house, when a laddie, by his stepmother; and that he had served as a servant lad with her father, who was the Laird of Yillcogie, but ran through his estate, and left her, his only daughter, in little better than beggary with her auntie, the mother of Captain Malcolm, her husband that was. Provost Maitland in his servitude had ta'en a notion of her; and when he recovered his patrimony, and had become a great Glasgow merchant, on hearing how she was left by her father, he offered ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... clothworkers, and builders who are dismissed (the remaining thirty out of every hundred) being without work and without houses, are at once in a state of beggary. Only by betaking themselves to some new industry will they be able to get a livelihood, and it rests with them to devise their new industries. Meanwhile they can only subsist on charity, which is ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... population of one of the most flourishing towns in the state abandoning their homes and property, starting on a journey of thirty odd miles, through a hostile country, with a possibility of being massacred on the way, and no hope or prospect but the hospitality of strangers and ultimate beggary. The disposition of the guard was confided to Captain Cox. The march was successful; no Indians were encountered. We reached Crisp's farm, which was about half way between New Ulm and Mankato, about evening. I pushed the main column on, fearing danger from various sources, but camped at this ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... paved. The ordinary houses were built of bricks negligently and to a giddy height, mostly by speculative builders on account of the small proprietors; by which means the former became vastly rich, and the latter were reduced to beggary. Like isolated islands amidst this sea of wretched buildings were seen the splendid palaces of the rich, which curtailed the space for the smaller houses just as their owners curtailed the burgess- rights of smaller men in the state, and beside whose marble pillars and Greek statues ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... for twenty-four hours. Strother, don't be an artist. It means beggary. Your life depends upon people who know nothing of your art and care nothing for you. A house dog lives better, and the very sensitiveness that stimulates an artist to work keeps ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... The parapets that are whitewashed? The roads that are repaired? fountains, and fooleries? [Footnote: Jacobs: und solches Geschwatz. The proceedings of Eubulus are here more particularly referred to.] Look at the men of whose statesmanship these are the fruits. They have risen from beggary to opulence, or from obscurity to honor; some have made their private houses more splendid than the public buildings; and in proportion as the state has declined, their ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... Vienna without encountering further mishap, but gained no thanks for his heroism. He was compelled to give up a small estate that he had purchased with the remains of his property, the purchase-money proving insufficient, and he must have been consigned to beggary, had not Hofer's son, who had received a fine estate from the emperor, engaged ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... have I, Jack. Boys are boys, and can to some extent make themselves what they like. Poor men's sons can, if they are steady and industrious and clever, rise in the world; rich men's sons can come down to beggary. But it is different with girls. And it always has been a great grief to me too when I have thought of Lily's future. For myself, I do not like taking the money—that you can well believe,—but for her sake I should be very wrong ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... the mechanic, and the labourer. The landlord had met with no reverse since the commencement of the war; his rents had progressively increased, in proportion as the rest of the community had suffered privations; the nearer the mechanic and the labourer had approached to starvation and beggary, the higher were the profits and the more efficient the means of the landholder. This was no theoretical proposition, hastily introduced, it was a practical truism, the result of careful and recent inquiry. He would ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... constantly with nurses, who sometimes coax them, sometimes beat them, and sometimes scold them; so, through their mother's idleness, they learn many vicious tricks. Evil grows upon evil. Through your extravagance, and your husband's misfortunes, you are brought to beggary. How ...
— The Boarding School • Unknown
... go, though it be utterly My death, or flight from Thebes in beggary. 'Tis thy sad lips, not his, that make me know Pity. Him I ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles
... looks of his domestics?" This he might safely do; because every thing about him was magnificent, regular, and polite. I answered, "that his excellency's prudence, quality, and fortune, had exempted him from those defects, which folly and beggary had produced in others." He said, "if I would go with him to his country-house, about twenty miles distant, where his estate lay, there would be more leisure for this kind of conversation." I told his excellency "that I was entirely at his disposal;" ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... evidently desired to avoid me when he recognized who I was. But, shocked to find him in so pitiable a condition, I pressed my questions, and finally told him I could not bear to see any one who had been in my service reduced to beggary; and though I had no actual need of his services, yet, rather than see him thus, he might return to his old position as servant in my house, and be paid the same wages as he had before. He hesitated, was much ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... maidenhood, I may add that We-we, Caubvick, Ikewna, and Pussay were exceptions to the general rule of beggary. They asked us for nothing. Something seemed to restrain them: perhaps the attentions we had shown them. Be that as it may, they fared the better for it. Wade led off by giving Ikewna a broad, highly-colored worsted scarf, which he wrapped in folds about her fox-jacket, covering ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... Who made each heart with joy rebound, Yet never ran her state aground, 180 Was turn'd off, or (which word I find Is more in modern use) resign'd.[138] Half-starved, half-starving others, bred In beggary, with carrion fed, Detested, and detesting all, Made up of avarice and gall, Boasting great thrift, yet wasting more Than ever steward did before, Succeeded one, who, to engage The praise of an exhausted age, 190 Assumed ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... to lay up for the future a certain portion of every week's earnings, be it little or much; to avoid consuming every week or every year the earnings of that week or year; and we counsel them to do this, as they would avoid the horrors of dependence, destitution, or beggary. We would have men and women of every class able to help themselves—relying upon their own resources—upon their own savings; for it is a true saying that "a penny in the purse is better than a friend at court." The first penny saved is a step in the world. The fact ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... man knowing when it would be his turn to go. Many of the government clerks were now old men who had been in the service almost since the government was established. When they were turned out, there was nothing for them to do, nothing but beggary for them to look forward to. In consequence there was a great deal of misery and poverty. But ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... prior to my leaving the country, for to this I had already made up my mind. In a foreign climate, being unknown, I might, with some probability of success, endeavor to conceal my unhappy calamity—a calamity calculated, even more than beggary, to estrange the affections of the multitude, and to draw down upon the wretch the well-merited indignation of the virtuous and the happy. I was not long in hesitation. Being naturally quick, I committed to memory the entire tragedy of "Metamora." ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... daughter married him. They went at her, poor creature, those two, with all the mercilessness of a couple of wolves. Her father would be disgraced, kicked out of the army, barred from all the clubs, reduced to beggary, and all that, if she did not yield; and in the end they so played upon her feelings, that to save him she gave in; Stavornell took out a special license, and they were married. Of course, the man never cared for her; he only wanted his revenge on her, ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... may count on forty dollars a week; and if Depew City—one of nature's centres for this State—pan out the least as I expect, it may be double. But it's forty dollars anyway; and to think that two years ago you were almost reduced to beggary!" ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was increasing faster than any other, and that this tacitly meant the suppression of rank and the abolition of monarchy. He warned March against the appearance of industrial prosperity in Germany; beggary was severely repressed, and if poverty was better clad than with us, it was as hungry and as hopeless in Nuremberg as in New York. The working classes were kindly and peaceable; they only knifed each other quietly on Sunday evenings ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... handsome property in contesting elections for his native county, and in keeping up that system of unlimited hospitality for which Ireland in general, and Galway more especially, was renowned. The result was, as might be expected, ruin and beggary. When he died the only legacy he left to his brother was a boy of four years of age, entreating him, with his last breath, "Be anything you like to him, Godfrey, but a father—or, at least, such a one ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... his miserable situation over and over again in his mind without avail. There seemed no way out of it; no way of obtaining the few pounds that would save him from homeless beggary and his splendid invention from being lost to him and the world, certainly for ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... revolution, the situation of the peasantry be improved, we must not forget, on the other hand, that to effect this improvement, the nobility, gentry, yeomanry, and, we might almost add, farmers, have been very generally reduced to beggary. The restraint which the existence of these orders ever opposed to the power of a bad king, of a tyrant, or of an adventurer, might have remained, and all have been happier, better, and richer than ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... an indolent frivolous people, fond of dancing and song, and sensual amusements. They live under the most glorious sun and benign heaven in Europe, and their country is by nature rich and fertile, yet in no province of Spain is there more beggary and misery; the greater part of the land being uncultivated, and producing nothing but thorns and brushwood, affording in itself a striking emblem of the moral state ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... upbringing of children, the national settlement of religion in Wales and elsewhere, and as to the best method of dealing with the licensing problem. But the wife whose industry keeps him and his household from beggary, who pays the rent and taxes which constitute him a voter, who is therefore really responsible for his qualification to vote, is not taken into account in the slightest degree. I came in contact not long ago with a great girls' school in the south ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... they gossiped in the evenings about their late master. They said Jeanne was a bastard. Of her relatives they knew nothing. The Count had an aunt in England who was married to a rich lord; but he had not corresponded with her lately. The little one then was reduced to beggary as the estate was to ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... with beating the governor of Jamaica at another game, after they had lost to him a matter of ten thousand crowns,—the earnings of several weeks faithfully devoted to privateering. In order to continue the game (to their complete beggary), the fellows had borrowed from acquaintances in Kingston, who, seeing no way to get their money back, decided to have them imprisoned for debt. Hearing of this plan, the elder of the precious pair reported to the governor that he had a negro whom he would like to sell, cheap, in order to ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... pledges of happiness and security. The day of the reception of Lord Cornwallis, Ambassador of England, the First Consul ordered that the greatest magnificence should be displayed. "It is necessary," he had said the evening before, "to show these proud Britons that we are not reduced to beggary." The fact is, the English, before setting foot on the French continent, had expected to find only ruins, penury, and misery. The whole of France had been described to them as being in the most distressing ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... "Beggary and rags," repeated the tailor. "Aye, aye; 'tis all very fine strolling about after the sheep with your hands in your pockets in summer weather, but you'll sing another song in winter time, and be sorry you did not know when you had a ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... from Congress," he said. "It is no place for me in times so insubstantial. There is darkness and beggary ahead for all your Southern race. There is a crisis coming which will be followed by desolation. The generation to which your parents belong is doomed! I open my arms to you, dear girl, and offer you a home never yet gladdened by a wife. Accept it, and leave Washington with me and with ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... are no less beautiful in appearance than satisfactory in their results. It was said, by an author belonging to the last century, of alchemy, "that its beginning was deceit, its progress labour, and its end beggary." It may be said of modern chemistry, that its beginning is pleasure, its progress knowledge, and its objects truth and utility. I have spoken of the scientific attainments necessary for the chemical philosopher; I will say a few words of the intellectual qualities necessary for discovery ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... pleaded for Love and Conscience, till I was weary: I had many clients, and many matters that made my purse light, and my heart heavy: Therefore let them plead for Conscience that list for me; I'll plead no more for such as brings nothing but beggary. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... the unenclosed lands of the country and fenced them in for sheep pastures, thus driving into beggary many who had formerly got a good part of their living from these commons. At the same time farm rents rose in somee cases ten and even twenty fold,[1] depriving thousands of the means of subsistence, and reducing to poverty many who had ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... days of pain and penitence. I saw where all must end. I saw, too well, Edward was growing idle,—that his form Was gathering disgustful corpulence,— That he was going down, and dragging me To shame and ruin, beggary and death. But judgment came, and overshadowed us; And one quick bolt shot from the awful cloud Severed the tie that bound two worthless lives. What God hath joined together, God may part:— Grace, have you ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... spectacles, tidings from the dead of their youthful friend Starkey, they will feel a pang, as I do, at ever having teased his gentle spirit." They were big girls, it seems, too old to attend his instructions with the silence necessary; and however old age and a long state of beggary seem to have reduced his writing faculties to a state of imbecility, in those days his language occasionally rose to the bold and figurative: for, when he was in despair to stop their chattering, his ordinary phrase was, "Ladies, if you will ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... by the emperor and his nobles. They placed Ernst under the ban of the empire, and thus deprived him of rank, wealth, and property, reducing him by a word from high estate to abject beggary. His life and liberty were left him, but nothing more, and, driven by despair, he sought the retreat of his fugitive friend Werner, who had taken refuge in the depths of the ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... imposition; we will wander no longer in this labyrinth of fraud, of low and vile intrigue, of dark crime of which the clue disappears in the night, and of which the trace is lost in a doubtful mixture of blood and mire; we will listen no longer to the cry of the widow and her four children reduced to beggary, to the groans of obscure victims, to the cries of terror and the death-groan which echoed one night through the vaults of a country house near Beauvais. Behold other victims whose cries are yet louder, behold yet other crimes and a punishment ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... a remarkable era in its history; and to Richard William Vaughan, a Stafford linendraper, belongs the melancholy celebrity of having led the van in this new phase of crime, in the year 1758. The records of his life do not show want, beggary, or starvation urging him, but a simple desire to seem greater than he was. By one of the artists employed—and there were several engaged on different parts of the notes—the discovery was made. The criminal had filled up to the number of ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... shewing me a document authorizing him to beg, and a passport stating he had left Madrid six weeks before. He came from Parma, and was named Costa. When I saw Parma my national prejudice spoke in his favour, and I asked him what misfortune had reduced him to beggary. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... pen meant wealth or poverty for us, Claire. I am too old to face beggary after living a life of luxury. You will not betray me, Claire—you dare not, knowing that it was done for ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... cordial that my thoughts apply Turns to a corsive and doth eat it farther. There is no taste in this philosophy; 'Tis like a potion that a man should drink, But turns his stomach with the sight of it. I am no such pill'd Cynick to believe, That beggary is the only happiness; Or with a number of these patient fools, To sing: "My mind to me a kingdom is," When the lank hungry belly barks for food, I look into the world, and there I meet With objects, that ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... in them.... They forget that the much-desired foreigner does not come to Venice to read signboards from a steamboat up and down the Grand Canal; and, by handing over this magnificent waterway to a company of foreign speculators, they have well-nigh reduced the ancient body of gondoliers to beggary. The steamers are numerous and noisy.... If one contrasts the passengers of these rival craft, the gondola and the vaporetto, one asks which, as a body, most contribute to the prosperity of Venice, and so merits most consideration.... ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... out by what little they could derive from beggary or robbery, formed their chief subsistence; for many of them were positive mendicants, and were so denominated: and being possessed of a sanctuary within their own quarters, to which they could at convenience retire, they submitted to the constraint of no laws except those enforced ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... a mad fantastical trick of him to steal from the state, and usurp the beggary he was never born to. Lord Angelo dukes it well in his absence; ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... poor man suddenly becomes rich, there is no lack of good words thrown away; but when a rich man suddenly comes to beggary, all that is said is—that he is a deplorable wretch—that everybody expected it—and that it serves him right. Klaus led a horrid life. He was shunned by universal consent. The youngest urchins of the parish threw dirt at him, made faces, called him ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... good name and large estates, and cast into a loathsome prison, to languish and to die: I am the son of that murdered man. I am he whom you have robbed of his inheritance; whose proud escutcheon you have tarnished; whose family you have reduced to beggary and ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... meaning whereof hath got on the wrong side of my comprehension; unless it may be argued, that bishops build no houses, because they are so rich; and therefore, the inferior clergy will certainly build, if you reduce them to beggary. But I knew a very rich man of quality in England, who could never be persuaded to keep a servant out of livery; because such servants would be expensive, and apt, in time, to look like gentlemen; whereas the others were ready to submit to the basest offices, and ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... individual out of a shilling had he asked him for it in a corner; but a printed list, with "His Royal Highness" at the top, plays the devil with English guineas. A subscription for individuals may be considered a society for the ostentatious encouragement of idleness, impudence, beggary, imposture, and ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... society. Embracing in their arms the carcasses of base criminals, and promoting their relations on the title of their offences, they drive hundreds of virtuous persons to the same end, by forcing them to subsist by beggary or by crime. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of what the people honestly believe, a chart of their aims and aspirations. Charity in our day no longer means alms, but justice. The social settlements are substituting vital touch for the machine charity that reaped a crop of hate and beggary. Charity organization—"conscience born of love" some one has well called it—is substituting its methods in high and low places for the senseless old ways. Its champions are oftener found standing ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... vicinity. He explained to them the situation in which he was placed; showing that his and their destruction was inevitable should they continue any longer in the territory of the pasha, who would not fail to seize this opportunity of levying fines and exactions, and reducing them to want and beggary. They were assembled in the men's tent, to the number of ten persons; the place of honour, the corner, being given to my father's uncle, the elder of the tribe, an old man, whose beard, as white as snow, descended ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... meeting of the council an arrogant, pedagogical remonstrance, scrutinizing his sentiments, informing him of his duties, calling upon him to accept the new "religion," to sanction the decree against unsworn ecclesiastics, that is to say, to condemn to beggary, imprisonment, and transportation[2515] 70,000 priests and nuns guilty of orthodoxy, and authorize the camp around Paris, which means, to put his throne, his person, and his family at the mercy of 20,000 madmen, chosen by the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... they carefully conceal from the knowledge of the Dutch. During the last war in Java, which continued from 1716 to 1721, the inhabitants of some parts of the country were so often plundered that they were reduced to absolute beggary; yet, after a year's peace, they were observed to have grown excessively rich, having plenty of gold, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... public had had a little too much of it, as they were nearly reduced to beggary by the contributions they had given to one ideal-originator after another; and they certainly would have lynched any new aspirant to the Idea, had one ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... folkland and bookland, sticking to his fingers, instead of finding its way to their coffers. This was far from their meaning in setting him up in the high places of Mercia. So they strip him and thrust him out, and he dies in beggary. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... indefeasible title whatever in any of his personal estate. As a consequence, a husband may strip his wife, by mere voluntary disposition to strangers, of all claim on his estate after his death, and thus add beggary to widowhood. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... stumbling-blocks and snares. He robbed his father to build a church; and, like so many of the Roman Catholic saints, confounded filth with humility, exchanged clothes with beggars, and walked the streets of Assisi in rags amid the hootings of his townsmen. He vowed perpetual poverty and perpetual beggary, and, in token of his renunciation of the world, stripped himself naked before the Bishop of Assisi, and then begged of him in charity a peasant's mantle. Crowds gathered to his fervid and dramatic eloquence. His handful of disciples multiplied, till Europe became thickly dotted with ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... also ordained kings, dukes, or leaders of the people, magistrates, judges, and other degrees among men. And as honor is left to posterity, for a mark and ensign of the virtue and understanding of their ancestors: so (seeing Siracides preferreth death before beggary: and that titles, without proportionable estates, fall under the miserable succor of other men's pity) I account it foolishness to condemn such a care: provided, that worldly goods be well gotten, and that we raise not our own buildings out of other ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... whose trade depended on exports and interchange of wealth, became bankrupt. Such things, when they happen singly, affect only the immediate parties; but the prosperity of the nation was now shaken by frequent and extensive losses. Families, bred in opulence and luxury, were reduced to beggary. The very state of peace in which we gloried was injurious; there were no means of employing the idle, or of sending any overplus of population out of the country. Even the source of colonies was dried up, for in New Holland, Van Diemen's Land, ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... Lake. To see the ingratitude of this generation! That I, that have spent my youth; set at nought my fortune; and, what is more dear to me, my honour, in the service of gentlemen; should now, in my old age, be left to want and beggary, as if I were the vilest and most unworthy creature upon God's ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... another beggar wishing to rent his profit from him, Vieux par-Chemins refused ten crowns for it; in fact, the same evening he spent fourteen crowns in drinking the health of the alms-givers, because it is the statutes of beggary that one should show one's gratitude to donors. Although he carefully got rid of that of which had been a source of anxiety to others, who, having too much wealth went in search of poverty, he was happier with nothing in the world than when he had his father's money. And seeing what ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... her son were sad over the loss of the good meals, the two pets were even more so. They were reduced to beggary and had to go forth daily upon the streets in search of stray bones and refuse that decent dogs and cats turned up ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman
... France, besides, is supposed to contain 24,000,000 of inhabitants. Our North American colonies were never supposed to contain more than 3,000,000; and France is a much richer country than North America; though, on account of the more unequal distribution of riches, there is much more poverty and beggary in the one country than in the other. France, therefore, could afford a market at least eight times more extensive, and, on account of the superior frequency of the returns, four-and-twenty times more advantageous than that ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... bare room in order to keep warm. At another time they were rescued from their extremity only by the kindness of their friend, the Baroness Waldstaetten, who intervened just in time to save them from beggary. After three years, Leopold Mozart relented enough to visit his daughter-in-law, whom he found far more deserving than he had expected; but he himself was not well off, and could be of ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... streets, O Paris! doth the stain Of blood defy the cleansing autumn rain; Still breaks the smoke Messina's ruins through, And Naples mourns that new Bartholomew, When squalid beggary, for a dole of bread, At a crowned murderer's beck of license, fed The yawning trenches with her noble dead; Still, doomed Vienna, through thy stately halls The shell goes crashing and the red shot falls, And, leagued to crush thee, on the Danube's side, The bearded ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... merry, well-nourished collection of waifs and strays, of all ancestries, Hindu, Muhammadan, and Christian, mostly gathered in through the wards of the Mission Hospitals. Only an experienced social worker could estimate what such a home means in the prevention of future disease, beggary, and crime. It is good for the medical students to live in close neighborliness with this bit of actual service. One student in writing of her future plans mentions that, as an "avocation" in the chinks of her hospital work, she plans ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... merchant, with his mother—the mother of only twenty-five children. This merchant had traveled in the United States, and could not help contrasting the thrift and enterprise of our country with the beggary and laziness of his own, adding, with a show of sincerity, "I am sorry I have Spanish blood in my veins." The suburbs of Bodegas reminded us of the outskirts of Cairo; but the road soon entered a broad savannah instead of a ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... thought it was the Union between England and Scotland; and Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, "The Patriot," as he was called, urged its Repeal. In one of his publications, he endeavoured to show that about one-sixth of the population of Scotland was in a state of beggary—two hundred thousand vagabonds begging from door to door, or robbing and plundering people as poor as themselves.[1] Fletcher was accordingly as great a repealer as Daniel O'Connell in after times. But he could not get the people to combine. There were others who ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... say so. Considerably less, for some of us. We shall have to look what end it had, and Mauduit will look!—Most people, Pitt probably among the others, came to think that Choiseul, though his France is in beggary, had no real view from the first, except to throw powder in the eyes of France and mankind, to ascertain for himself on what terms those English would make Peace, and to get Spain drawn into his quarrel. A Choiseul with many arts. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... to the children of Israel, that would have them make brick and give them no straw, so he tasks him to be a gentleman, and leaves him nothing to maintain it. The pride of his house has undone him, which the elder's knighthood must sustain, and his beggary that knighthood. His birth and bringing up will not suffer him to descend to the means to get wealth; but he stands at the mercy of the world, and which is worse, of his brother. He is something better than the ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... borrow or steal it from the more industrious. So deep-rooted is this tendency in Nature, that plants may become parasitic—it is an acquired habit—as well as animals; and both are found in every state of beggary, some doing a little for themselves, while others, more abject, refuse even ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... because you are wounded in the arm, you call yourself a cripple. Is that right? Is that no exaggeration? And is it my doing that all exaggerations are so open to ridicule? I dare say, if I examine your beggary that it will also be as little able to stand the test. You may have lost your equipage once, twice, or thrice; your deposits in the hands of this or that banker may have disappeared together with those of other people; you may have ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... out, and came with such a penitent face, I forgave him, and clothed him from head to foot. But he had not been a week in the house, before some of his creditors arrested him; and, he selling my goods, I found myself once more reduced to beggary; for I was not as well able to work, go to bed late, and rise early, as when I quitted service; and then I thought it hard enough. He was soon tired of me, when there was nothing more to be had, and ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... of its counterpart. The frescoes, which are admirable, represent certain leading events in the life of St. Francis, and suddenly remind you, by one of those anomalies that are half the secret of the consummate mise-en-scene of Catholicism, that the apostle of beggary, the saint whose only tenement in life was the ragged robe which barely covered him, is the hero of this massive structure. Church upon church, nothing less will adequately shroud his consecrated clay. The great reality of Giotto's designs adds ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... as I trust the stars; Nor cruel loss, nor scoff of pride, Nor beggary, nor dungeon-bars, Can move ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... perform when sober. Rallying signs and watchwords were adopted and soon displayed. It was thought that nothing better suited the occasion than the immediate adoption of the costume as well as the title of beggary. In a very few days the city streets were filled with men in gray cloaks, fashioned on the model of those used by mendicants and pilgrims. Each confederate caused this uniform to be worn by every member of his family, and replaced with it the livery of his servants. Several fastened ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... industry being laid out on my stock in trade, and on the plenishing of our bit house. The darkness of the latter days came over my spirit like a vision before the prophet Isaiah; and I could see nothing in the years to come but beggary and starvation; myself a fallen-back old man, with an out-at-the-elbows coat, a greasy hat, and a bald pow, hirpling over a staff, requeeshting an awmous—Nanse a broken-hearted beggar wife, torn down to tatters, and weeping like Rachel when she thought on better days—and poor wee Benjie going ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... Adultery, Drunkenness, Swearing, breaking Jayl, and abundance of Crimes; but when Matters were examin'd and things came to the Test, they could never prove the least thing upon him.——- In this manner however they continually worryed the poor Man, till they ruin'd his Family and reduc'd him to Beggary; and tho' he came out of the Prison they cast him into by the meer force of Innocence, yet they never left persuing him with all sorts of violence.——— At last they made use of their Brother of the Girdle who was in Commission as above, and this Man being ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... say that, sir. If ever a horse wanted the whip, he do. He's brought me to beggary almost with his snail's pace. I'm very glad you've come ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... thing remained but a cow. The poor woman one day met Jack with tears in her eyes; her distress was great, and for the first time in her life she could not help reproaching him, saying, "Oh! you wicked child, by your ungrateful course of life you have at last brought me to beggary and ruin. Cruel, cruel boy! I have not money enough to purchase even a bit of bread for another day—nothing now remains to sell but my poor cow! I am sorry to part with her; it grieves me sadly, but we must not starve." For a few minutes, Jack felt a degree of remorse, but it ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... said the old man; "to give lavishly without discrimination is to put a premium on beggary and to ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... by the shoulders, and thrust her violently out of the room. After a few hours, however, the weak-minded monarch called upon her. The countess, trembling in view of her dismissal, with its dreadful consequences of disgrace and beggary, threw herself at his feet, bathed in tears, and ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... plumber wants a crumb, He may unto the baker come And plumb. A joker needing hats or cloaks Can go and pay for them with jokes, And so on: what a fellow's got Shall pay for things that he has not. If beggars' rags were cash, you'd see No longer any beggary; In short, there'd be no poverty." "A splendid scheme," quoth I; "but stay! What of the nation's credit, pray?" "Ha-ha! ho-ho!" he loudly roared. "We'll leave that problem to the Lord. And if He fails to keep us straight Once more we'll ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... basis to is withdrawn, which would be in a sound state at least one hundred millions. When one hundred millions, or more, of the circulation we now have shall be withdrawn, who can contemplate without terror the distress, ruin, bankruptcy, and beggary that must follow? The man who has purchased any article—say a horse—on credit, at one hundred dollars, when there are two hundred millions circulating in the country, if the quantity be reduced to one hundred ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... work and pleasure. Desire and curiosity are the two eyes through which he sees the world in the most enchanted colours: it is they that make women beautiful or fossils interesting: and the man may squander his estate and come to beggary, but if he keeps these two amulets he is still rich in ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Kuvalda, who was thought "a good soldier, clever, and courageous"; the other was convinced of the fact that the teacher was "superior" to Kuvalda. The latter's admirers were those who were known to be drunkards, thieves, and murderers, for whom the road from beggary to prison was inevitable. But those who respected the teacher were men who still had expectations, still hoped for better things, who were eternally occupied with nothing, and who were nearly ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... age, donec facinus invasit mortales, as the poet says; and the Scythians always detested it. I will prove it that an unthrift, of any, comes nearest a happy man, in so much as he comes nearest to beggary. Cicero saith, summum bonum consists in omnium rerum vacatione, that is, the chiefest felicity that may be to rest from all labours. Now who doth so much vacare a rebus, who rests so much, who hath ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... mill were not kept at work, the old man could not live, and no rent would be paid. At any rate, it would be better that this great sorrow should not be allowed so to cloud everything as to turn industry into idleness, and straitened circumstances into absolute beggary. But the Squire found it very difficult to deal with the miller. At first old Brattle would neither give nor withhold his consent. When told by the Squire that the property could not be left in that way, he ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... the same way as cultivation by slave labor, notwithstanding its expensiveness and inordinate waste, enables the first planter on a virgin soil, and with an open market for his produce, to roll in his carriage, though beggary is to be the fate of the second or third generation ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... a ravenous wolf," says Renauldon, "let loose on the estate. He draws upon it to the last sou, he crushes the subjects, reduces them to beggary, forces the cultivators to desert. The owner, thus rendered odious, finds himself obliged to tolerate his exactions to able ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... of Ireland, they are mostly ignorant and superstitious. They are workers in the bogs, or day-laborers, and all think themselves very fortunate if they can obtain employment at wages which will keep them and their children from starvation. Beggary is very common everywhere, and is not considered a disgrace, except by the ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... gander that will head the flock, pilot king of their flight. Each man is to enjoy about four hundred births on earth, poetic justice leading him successively through all the grades and phases of fortune, from cripplehood and beggary to paragonship and the throne. The invisible residence of spirits and the visible are both on this globe, the former in the Great Soul, the latter in bodies. In the other life the soul becomes a sharer in the woes of the Great Soul, which is as unhappy as seven eighths of the incarnated ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the scuffle downstairs when the wife tried to force her way up, and perhaps he has already heard from his Lascar confederate that the police are hurrying up the street. There is not an instant to be lost. He rushes to some secret hoard, where he has accumulated the fruits of his beggary, and he stuffs all the coins upon which he can lay his hands into the pockets to make sure of the coat's sinking. He throws it out, and would have done the same with the other garments had not he heard the rush of steps ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... beside whatsoever, for the sake of Thy love, and the enjoyment of Thy presence in that kingdom which is not of this world. I wholly sacrificed myself to Thee, even earnestly begging Thee rather to reduce our family to beggary, than ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... have been accomplished without considerable expenditure of time, money, and labor, they shook their heads in strong disapprobation, and predicted that that woman's extravagance would bring Herman Brudenell to beggary yet. ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... point of some mystery to the present writer that Bernard Shaw should have been so long unrecognised and almost in beggary. I should have thought his talent was of the ringing and arresting sort; such as even editors and publishers would have sense enough to seize. Yet it is quite certain that he almost starved in London for many years, writing occasional ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... schedule in bankruptcy in the land. Clothes will also breed rags, for without clothes to grow threadbare and frayed, it is clear that the raw material of rags and tatters would be lacking, and many a scene of beggary ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... in the same coffin. For in the vault under the church there is still a large double coffin, in which, according to tradition, lies a chain of gold of incalculable value. Some twenty years ago, the owner of Mellenthin, whose unequalled extravagance had reduced him to the verge of beggary, attempted to open the coffin in order to take out this precious relic, but he was not able. It appeared as if some powerful spell held it firmly together; and it has remained unopened down to the present time. May it remain so until the last awful day, and may the impious hand of avarice ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... which such a reputation inevitably subjects them. Nine-tenths of the free blacks have no idea of setting themselves to work except as the hirelings and servitors of white men; no idea of building a church, or accomplishing any other serious enterprise, except through beggary of the whites. As a class, the blacks are indolent, improvident, servile and licentious; and their inveterate habit of appealing to white benevolence or compassion whenever they realize a want or encounter a difficulty, is eminently baneful and enervating. If they ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... we are again. And there—good God!—to see the arrogance of ignorance! To listen to the vapid joke of his worship on the crime of beggary! To see the punishment of the poor—to mark the sweet impunity of the rich! And then are we not in the Old Bailey—in all the criminal courts! Have we not seen trials after dinner—have we not heard sentences in which the bottle ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... must live together, she will think; and shall this hated encroacher find refuge from beggary and vileness under her roof,—be lodged and banqueted at her expense? That her indignant heart will ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... get eighteenpence.' You remind the mechanic that the man in the landau has been the ruin of thousands, and you mention people whom he himself knows, people in various grades of life, widows and orphans amongst them, whose little all he has dissipated, and whom he has reduced to beggary by inducing them to become sharers in his delusive schemes. But the mechanic says: 'Well the more fools they to let themselves be robbed. But I don't call that kind of thing robbery, I merely call it out-witting; and everybody in this free country has a right to outwit others if he ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... benefit of the investment; for the purchase was heavily encumbered, and paid them nothing till some years before their death. In the meanwhile, the Jackson family also, what with wild sons, an indulgent mother, and the impending emancipation of the slaves, was moving nearer and nearer to beggary; and thus of two doomed and declining houses, the subject of this memoir was born, heir to an estate and to no money, yet with inherited qualities that were to make ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to such desperation, fools gold away with such idiocy as you do. You conduct yourself as if you were a millionaire, sir; and what are you? A pauper on my bounty, and on your brother Montagu's after me—a pauper with a tinsel fashion, a gilded beggary, a Queen's commission to cover a sold-out poverty, a dandy's reputation to stave off a defaulter's future! A pauper, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... be the better able," continued his lordship, "to provide suitably for Davie; he is what a son ought to be! But hear me, Forgue: you must be aware that, if I left you all I had, it would be beggary for one handicapped with a title. You may think my anger unreasonable, but it comes solely of anxiety on your account. Nothing but a suitable marriage—the most suitable of all is within your arm's length—can save you from the life of a moneyless peer—the most ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... cavity within that was then disclosed there rolled out, if you please, a string of gold pieces some twenty at least in number—the result, probably, of this respectable mendicant's very industrious beggary since he had taken to the trade, the old rascal carrying his horde about ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... had little effect upon the mind of such a man. He loved her as well as he could love anything, and he fancied that he loved his children, while he was daily reducing them, by his favourite vice, to beggary. ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Indians went to the dogs. They were cheated out of their small possessions and were driven to beggary or plunder. The Fathers were implored to take charge again of their helpless flock. Meanwhile the Pious Fund of California had run dry, as its revenues had been diverted into alien channels. The good friars resumed ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... Micawber. 'The cloud is past from my mind. Mutual confidence, so long preserved between us once, is restored, to know no further interruption. Now, welcome poverty!' cried Mr. Micawber, shedding tears. 'Welcome misery, welcome houselessness, welcome hunger, rags, tempest, and beggary! Mutual confidence will sustain us ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... extent of private fortunes must also regulate the increase of families. If children multiply beyond the means of supporting them, the intention of the law will be frustrated and families will be suddenly reduced from opulence to beggary, a revolution always dangerous to public tranquillity."[896] At the same time Aristophanes showed in his comedy "Ecclesiazusae" that the community of goods would necessarily lead to ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... of the foreigner and never took their eyes off us. Later, individual monks came running round the shrines, beating a gong as though to call the attention of the deity, and shouting a few words of perfunctory praise or prayer. Irreverence more complete I have not seen even in Italy, nor beggary more shameless. Such is the latter end of the gospel of Buddha in China. It seems better that he should sit deserted in his Indian caves than be ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... your own business,' says you: you must despise your wedded wife, that has more brains in her finger than you have in all your great long useless carease: you must have your secrets: one day poison, another day beggary: you have ruined me, you have murdered me: get out of my sight! for if I find a knife I'll put it in you, I will." And in her ungovernable passion, she actually ran to the dresser for a knife: at which Maxley caught up a chair and lifted it furiously, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade |
