"Poverty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Fortune has kept the talent of some fine intellect subjected for a period by poverty, that she thinks better of it, and at an unexpected moment provides all sorts of benefits for one who has hitherto been the object of her hatred, so as to atone in one year for the affronts and discomforts of many. This was seen in Lorenzo, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... Austrian family, known to us in later days as H.P.B. When those made their attempt to change the face of Europe, they failed, the time not being ripe; the misery and the wretchedness of the epoch, the degradation of the masses of the population, the horrible poverty, the shameful starvation, all these were the rocks on which split, and was broken up into foam, the spiritual wave of which those two personages were the crest. The karma of that, for the one whom we know of as H.P.B., was the trying and suffering incarnation ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... accession of Mary, being stripped of all his benefices as a married priest, Parker with his family was reduced to poverty and distress; and it was only by a careful concealment of his person, by frequent changes of place, and in some instances by the timely advertisements of watchful friends, that he was enabled to avoid a still severer trial of his constancy. During this period of distress he found support ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... sorrowful; for the invalid father had derived much support as well as enjoyment from the company of his sons. At first, the English experiences of the young Germans were somewhat severe. They endured all the pangs of poverty; pangs endured with heroic composure, while William relaxed not a whit in his devotion to the pursuit of knowledge. Happily, however, his musical proficiency attracted the attention of Lord Durham, who offered him the appointment of bandmaster ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... entertained during the whole way, were all suppressed and overcome by the single consideration of my wife's pain, which continued incessantly to torment her." The second despatch of a messenger, in great haste to bring the best reputed operator in Gravesend recalls Murphy's words: "Of sickness and poverty he was singularly patient and under pressure of those evils he could quietly read Cicero de Consolatione; but if either of them threatened his wife he was impetuous for her relief." The remedies both of the Gravesend 'surgeon of some ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... poor boy, miserably ill-clad, a sufferer from poverty, and our aspect seemed to alarm him a great deal; in fact, only half clothed, with ragged hair and beards, we were a suspicious-looking party; and if the people of the country knew anything about thieves, we were very likely to ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... mediaeval tradition, interrupted by four hundred years of modern civilisation. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did not attract him; and as for the eighteenth, it simply did not exist for him.[28] The ugliness of modern life, with its factories and railroads, its unpicturesque poverty and selfish commercialism, was hateful to him as it was to Ruskin—his teacher. He loved to imagine the face of England as it was in the time ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... a flower, a flower removed immeasurably from his world; a flower in a crystal vase, set on a high and precious cabinet, and to be approached only over stretches of shining floor. What had he to do with, or to think of, such a young woman who, though poverty-stricken, looked like a princess, and who, though smiling, had at her heart, he ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... dealing of the world!" he said. "There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... production since, by eliminating from the productive mechanism the incentive of individual interest, the product becomes rarer and more costly. Socialism then, as experience has shown, leads to increase in consumption, to the dispersion of capital and therefore to poverty. Of what avail is it, then, to build a social machine which will more justly distribute wealth if this very wealth is destroyed by the construction of this machine? Socialism committed an irreparable error when it made of ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various
... The removal of all necessity for concealing thought allowed her story to write itself on her face. The speculative would have felt some curiosity as to the cause of a sadness in one seemingly so well treated by destiny. Neither poverty nor the cares of great wealth could have weighed upon her spirit; she had beauty, and a quality more attractive than beauty, which must have placed many things at her command; she had evident talent—her very attitude proclaimed it—and the power over Fortune that talent ought to give. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... drenched out by rains and all the people and the soldiery of the fort were down with bilious and scarlet fever. The widow was just getting over a long attack of this illness, and her brother, the schout, regarded the innocent Nanking as the cause of her poverty. ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... From the Prison's direr gloom; From Poverty's heart-wasting languish: From Distemper's midnight anguish; Or where his two bright torches blending Love illumines Manhood's maze; Or where o'er cradled Infants bending Hope has fix'd her ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... into the conspiracy. It will be remembered what he had formerly suffered from his father; since that time he had married, and the close-fisted old man had left him, with his wife and children, to languish in poverty. Guerra's house was selected to meet in ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... ship off Greenwich—in all seven cases. These are amongst the lowest and most wretched classes, chiefly Irish, and a more lamentable exhibition of human misery than that given by the medical men who called at the Council Office yesterday I never heard. They are in the most abject state of poverty, without beds to lie upon. The men live by casual labour, are employed by the hour, and often get no more than four or five hours' employment in the course of the week. They are huddled and crowded together by families in the same room, not as permanent lodgers, but procuring a temporary shelter; ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... young man. I never knew his wife, but I am afraid he did not marry very well. Reliance will probably have to work for her living, but that is no reason why she should not be treated as an equal. The people about here know she comes of good stock and that the poverty of the family was due more to misfortune than misbehavior. I have no doubt but Reliance will make a fine woman, as her grandmother was, and when she is grown up, she may marry some farmer of the neighborhood, and take the place ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... bringing the ten thousand francs promised. He counted the notes out carefully,—Cyrillon watching him quietly the while, and taking sympathetic observation of his shabby appearance, his thread-bare coat, and his general expression of pinched and anxious poverty. ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... best among others. Freedom breeds commerce as commerce demands freedom. Only free men can buy and sell; for without selling no man nor nation has means to buy. When China is a nation, her people will be no longer a "yellow peril." It is poverty, slavery, misery, which makes men dangerous. In the words of "Joss Chinchingoss," the Kipling of Singapore, we have only to give ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan
... the poor people. Thus also with the forthcoming inquiries concerning malarial fever, which is spreading all over the country. Every Indian knows that, like the plague, this form of fever is due to the poverty and consequent physical weakness of the people. It is, however, to the mosquito that the authorities went for the causes of the disease, just as to the rats for the causes of plague. Different medicines ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... books and cheated by an unscrupulous partner, he finally had to transfer the business to a regular firm. Galds' novels have enjoyed an enormous sale, but at the low price of two or three pesetas a volume, instead of the customary four or five. In 1914 Galds was represented as in poverty, for reasons never made clear, and a public subscription opened for his benefit; an episode sadder for the sponsors than for him. He died on ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... reckoning that a poor girl, isolated as we are, might turn to evil without wishing it. When one has nobody to advise with, one has so few means of defense; the men make such fine promises; and then, sometimes poverty is so hard. Do you remember little Julie, who was so pretty? and Rosine, the ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... girl for being in her way while she is at work, and who realizes on seeing Annie that she should at least be thankful that her child has health and strength, and does not, therefore, add the care and worry of sickness to the burden of poverty. Finally, on the top floor, a young man, heart-sick and weary of the vain search for work in a strange city, coming out of his room finds little Annie asleep, her head resting against the frame of the door. As he carries her down to her own flat, he picks up courage, banishes the thoughts ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... such taunts over the general poverty of the land and character of the army as were made in a ballad called "The ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... folks" went forth to the day's toil. It was hard, partly from its then rough character, partly from poverty of appliances. For the hardest jobs neighbors would join hands, fighting nature as they had to fight the Indians, unitedly. Farming tools, if of iron or steel, as axe, mattock, spade, and the iron nose for the digger or the plough, the village blacksmith usually fashioned, as he did the ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... there they come, Poor amid poverty; she with her gown Drawn over her meek head; he trying much, But fruitless half, to shield her from the rain. They enter the wide gates, amid the jar, And clash, and shudder of the awful force That, conquering force, still vibrates on, as if With an ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... of his own poverty stricken condition. His thoughts turned from Rochester and his jokes, to his own immediate and tragic position. The whole thing was his own fault. It was quite easy to say that Rochester had led him along ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... he found it hard to leave Madison Gardens, although the White Way called to the youth and love of gaiety within him. He had never before seen so plainly the line of demarcation between sunlight and shadow. The startling proximity of riches to poverty, gladness to sadness, shocked him; he had a vague fear of something, he did not know what. Maybe it ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... his Majesty's satisfaction," answered the squire. "Proud Preston never was so proud before, and never with such good reason; for if the people be poor, according to the proverb, they take good care to hide their poverty. Bombards were fired from the bridge, and the church bells rang loud enough to crack the steeple, and bring it down about the ears of the deafened lieges. The houses were hung with carpets and arras; the streets strewn ankle deep with sand ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... And busy intention of a man, devout And wise, should be to fore-cast and secure The state and end of this short life with deeds Of mercy and pity, especially to provide For those whom poverty insulteth, those To whom the power of labouring for the needs Of life, is interdicted. He became The Father of the City. Felons died Of fever in old Newgate. He rebuilt The prison. London sickened, from the lack Of water, and he made fresh fountains flow. He heard the cry of ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... While their ceaseless civil wars rendered the condition of the country so uncertain and so unsettled, yet the authority of the local rulers tended to preserve peace and dispense a rude kind of justice among their own subjects. Thus while in many parts of Japan poverty and desolation had eaten up everything, and lawlessness and robbery had put an end to industry, yet there were some favored parts of the islands where the strong hand of the daimyos preserved for their people the opportunities of life, and kept ...
— Japan • David Murray
... employed; some were lading their packhorses with bags of meal, others with heavy mallets were pounding grain into flour, while others were hoeing in the rice grounds up to their knees in water. There was no sign of poverty, and even the lowest people were well and comfortably clad in coarse garments, shorter than those of the more wealthy classes. All wear the hair drawn up and fastened at the top in a knot. In rainy weather ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... however, far too loyal to associate men who held the commission of George III, with the irregular warriors, whose excesses he had so often witnessed, and from whose rapacity, neither his poverty nor his bondage had suffered even him to escape uninjured. The Cowboys, therefore, did not receive their proper portion of the black's censure, when he said, no Christian, nothing but a "Skinner," could betray a pious child, while honoring ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... Because the workingman has these two persons on top of him, the landlord sitting (literally) on his stomach, and the schoolmaster sitting (literally) on his head, the workingman must allow his little girl's hair, first to be neglected from poverty, next to be poisoned by promiscuity, and, lastly, to be abolished by hygiene. He, perhaps, was proud of his little girl's hair. But ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... a thin plate of brass or ebony swims by virtue of its dilated and broad figure. Also, I cannot omit to tell my opponents that this conceit of refusing to bathe the surface of the board might beget an opinion in a third person of a poverty of argument on their side, especially as the conversation began about flakes of ice, in which it would be simple to require that the surfaces should be kept dry; not to mention that such pieces of ice, whether wet or ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... their full importance. In his "The Old Faith and the New," although he speaks with great earnestness of moral demands, yet he deeply degrades that which is connected with a Christian renunciation of self and the world, when he reproaches Christianity with "a thorough cult of poverty and mendicity" (!) and, regarding its demand for self-denial, he denies that it has any comprehension of the tasks of {395} industry, of the virtues of home and family life, of patriotism ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... him, and called him "her young Lord Keeper." It means also that the religious atmosphere in which he was brought up was that of the nascent and aggressive Puritanism, which was not satisfied with the compromises of the Elizabethan Reformation, and which saw in the moral poverty and incapacity of many of its chiefs a proof against the great traditional system of the Church which Elizabeth was loath to part with, and which, in spite of all its present and inevitable shortcomings, her political sagacity taught her ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... hand toward Marsa's carriage with a graceful gesture and a broad smile—the supplicating smile of those who beg. A muscular young fellow, his crisp hair covered with a red fez, her brother—the woman was old, or perhaps she was less so than she seemed, for poverty brings wrinkles—walked by her side behind the sturdy little ponies. Farther along, another man waited for them at a corner of the road near a laundry, the employees of which regarded him with alarm, because, at the end of a rope, the gipsy ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... everything belonging to her. But after that newspaper paragraph, there was such a flowering of memory around her name as would have done credit to a whole cemetery on All Saints. It took three generations to do justice to the old lady, for so long and so slow had been her descent into poverty that a grandmother was needed to remember her setting out ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... lived to accomplish his end by drink. There were whispers against him, but no certain proof that he had ever acted as intermediary in selling the pass. His defenders could always urge his notorious poverty. Before his death he had parted with more than two-thirds of his estate. There was no child to inherit ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... about eighty-four; and wore, as usual, a uniform of watchet (i.e. azure) and white—with horse-cloths and housings of the same colors:—and the ancient custom had been that all the horses should be white: this rule had been relaxed in later times from the poverty of the Penmorfa people in consequence of repeated irruptions of the sea, but was now restored, with brilliant effect on the coloring of the procession, by the liberality of Sir Morgan Walladmor. Next after these rode the sheriff of Merionethshire and his billmen, ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... confession of the once favourite minister of the most powerful monarch in Europe. He never touched the ground, or even gazed on the distant hills of Spain again. In one of the obscure streets of Paris, in solitude and poverty, he dragged the grief and infirmities of his old age slowly towards the grave; and at length, in the seventy-second year of his age, on a natural and quiet deathbed, closed the troubles ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... Spain with undying fervour, while an infernal policy—the leading characteristics of which were to sow dissensions among the nobles, to confiscate their property on all convenient occasions, and to bestow it upon Spaniards and other foreigners; to keep the discontented masses in poverty, but to deprive them of the power or disposition to unite with their superiors in rank in demonstrations against the crown—had sufficed to suppress any extensive revolt in the various Italian states united under Philip's sceptre. Still more intense than the hatred of the Italians ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... in the midst of poverty and privation, Jonathan Edwards wrote the treatise on the Freedom of the Will, the greatest of all existing polemics. A portion of the old parsonage remains in the village, and there are still shown marks ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... small, and bearing strong marks of poverty, was neat in the extreme. In an arm-chair, his head reclined upon his hand, his eyes fixed on a book which lay open before him, sat an aged man in a Lieutenant's uniform, which, though threadbare, would sooner call a blush of shame into the face of ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... glides easily along under his protection, while those who have bad husbands, of which, alas! there are too many, are not aware of the depths of their degradation until they suddenly and unexpectedly find themselves, through the influence of the law, totally destitute, condemned to hopeless poverty and servitude, with an ungrateful tyrant for a master. No respectable man with a decent woman for a wife, will ever demean himself so much as to insult or abuse his wife. Wherever such a state of things exists, it is a disgrace ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... happen then He was no God of hers—that she would never enter His service—that the Lord Christ was no bridegroom for her; and, her novitiate was ended—ended together with every vow of chastity, of humility, of poverty, of even common humanity which she had ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... and vegetable life to point a moral or to help out a sermon. The arguments he used appear to us puerile in their old-world dress, and yet similar ones are to be heard to-day in every pulpit where a smattering of science is used to eke out a poverty of theology. And, to be fair, such reasoning is not confined to pulpits. Even so eminent a writer as Mr Edward Carpenter has been known to moralize on the habits of the wild mustard, irresistibly reminding us of the "Camomill which the more it is trodden and pressed down the more it ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... any haste to attack us. As to ourselves, we republicans preach lectures to our sovereign master, the people, to induce him to recommence his exertions. In the mean while we practise so much frugality, and are in such a state of poverty and nudity, that I trust an account will be kept in the next world, whilst we remain in purgatory, of all we ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... offences of his private life, especially his extravagance and consequent debts. Two years later he was deposed by the Assembly, when the King cast him off, and gave the temporalities of his see to one of the Court favourites. After that Adamson never lifted his head. When he had fallen into poverty and sickness he made a pitiful appeal to Melville, which was most generously met. His old opponent visited him, and for months provided for him out of his own purse; and it was through the good offices of both the Melvilles that he was able to make ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... magnificence, though not so much in literature as in painting is this side of the Christmas story represented. The Epiphany is the great opportunity for imaginative development of the regal idea. Then is seen the union of utter poverty with highest kingship; the monarchs of the East come to bow before the humble Infant for whom the world has found no room in the inn. How suggestive by their long, slow syllables are the Italian names of the Magi. Gasparre, Baldassarre, Melchiorre—we picture ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... became disgusted with his native land, and set out for England, whose scientific and theological literature had already fired his mind. George I. and the Princess of Wales, afterward Queen Caroline, distinguished him by their attentions, and relieved his poverty by securing large subscriptions to his works. It was here that he commenced to lay up a princely fortune; but it was not until the close of his long and stirring life that he forswore his miserly habits. He found in the deistical ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... Browning "Thanatopsis," but who could have written "Her Letter," or "Flynn of Virginia," or "Jim," or "Chiquita"? An American, flesh and bone, and none other. If the East would only discard him, as Edinburgh society did his greater prototype, he might be forced to return to his "native heath" in poverty, and rise again as the first truly American poet. But poets, and indeed great artists as a class, seem to yield their best only under pressure. The grape must be crushed if we would have wine. Give a poet "society" at his feet and he sings no more, or sings ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... passed from hollow opulence to voluntary poverty, —one under the pressure of a vice, the other through the promptings of the purest virtue. None of these petty details are useless in teaching the lesson which ought to be learned from this present history, drawn as it is from the most commonplace ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... walking. You cannot see where the narrow paths end, the grass is so tall and overhangs them so. If our countrymen were here they would soon render slave-buying unprofitable. Perhaps God may honor us to open up the way for this. My heart is sore when I think of so many of our countrymen in poverty and misery, while they might be doing so much good to themselves and others where our Heavenly Father has so abundantly provided fruitful hills and fertile valleys. If our people were out here they would not need to cultivate little snatches by the ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... are infinitely worse off in every way, to-day, than we were under the rule of the Incas. Poverty, misery, oppression, and suffering of every kind are to be met with on all hands and wherever one goes, while four hundred years ago we had a far higher state of civilisation than now exists, in ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... and conflagration marked his progress: for he destroyed all the provisions he could not take with him, and burnt all the towns before he left them; so that the full result of his conquests were murder, poverty, and desolation. ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... hardships of his workaday life were for the time forgotten. In his ardor for science all the uncongenial experiences of his life as a bank clerk vanished. Like many another rising genius in art, literature, or science, his zeal for knowledge and investigation in those days of grinding poverty fed the fires of his genius, and this was the light which throughout his long poverty-stricken life shed a golden lustre on his toilsome existence. He did not then know that the great Linne, the father of the science he was to illuminate and so greatly to expand, ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... grips the earth that glaciers glitter on the flanks of Indian and Australian hills, and fields of ice spread over what are now semitropical regions. In some degree the cold penetrates the whole earth. The rich forests shrink slowly into thin tracts of scrubby, poverty-stricken vegetation. The loss of food and the bleak and exacting conditions of the new earth annihilate thousands of species of the older organisms, and the more progressive types are moulded into fitness for the new environment. It is a colossal application of natural selection, ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... large fortune, without parting with his honesty in earning a single dollar. As his property has increased, his generous spirit has seen larger opportunities and at once embraced them. He has not been among those who withhold more than is meet and tend to poverty. Property in such hands is not a grinding monopoly, but a wide blessing. Such men can afford to be wealthy. They represent the true socialistic spirit, which is, that private capital should be held ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... to the secret, there was Josephine, who shared the family burden of poverty and pride; Josephine, who was a beauty, and not spoiled at that, but light of heart and cheerful, disposed to make the best of things; laughing lightly over mishaps which made her mother weep; Josephine, ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... zixpences under my thumb, Oh, then I be welcome wherever I qeum But when I have none, oh, then I pass by,— 'Tis poverty pearts good company." ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... themselves in numberless unexhausted streams, conducted by the hands of two lovely servants, Goodness and Beneficence;—and he saw honesty, integrity and goodness of mind, inhabitants of the humble cot of poverty. ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... British stage, Great Anarch! spread thy sable wings; Not fired with all the frantic rage, With which thou hurl'st thy darts at kings. As thou in native garb art seen, With scattered tresses, haggard mien, Sepulchral chains and hideous cry By despot arts immur'd in ghastly poverty. ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... fact is seen under the light of an idea, the gaudy fable fades and shrivels. We behold the real higher law. To the wise, therefore, a fact is true poetry, and the most beautiful of fables. These wonders are brought to our own door. You also are a man. Man and woman, and their social life, poverty, labor, sleep, fear, fortune, are known to you. Learn that none of these things is superficial, but that each phenomenon has its roots in the faculties and affections of the mind. Whilst the abstract question occupies your intellect, ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... another thought. The result of this majestic, supernatural, universal, abundant, divine life is practical sagacity in the commonest affairs of life. 'Look ye out from among you seven men, full of the Holy Ghost and of wisdom.' What to do? To meet wisely the claims of suspicious and jealous poverty, and to distribute fairly a little money. That was all. And are you going to invoke such a lofty gift as this, to do nothing grander than that? Yes. Gravitation holds planets in their orbits, and keeps grains ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... in which a child of God lives and walks—and dies; the security of every movement, the confidence in every action, the rest in all turmoil, the fearlessness in all danger; the riches in the midst of poverty, the rejoicing even in time of sorrow; the victory over sin and death, wrought in him as well as for him;—Eleanor's heart seemed to die within her, and at the same time started in a struggle for life. Had the words been said coldly, ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... poverty and its attendant struggles, Mozart's marriage was a happy one, because it was a marriage of love. Like every child of genius, he had his moods, but Constance adapted herself to them and thereby won his confidence and gained an influence over him which, however, she brought ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... tempted me, and I took from him his badge, 213. I see the hated figures now. When he woke, he knew not he had lost it. The car started, and he walked to the rear. With the badge on my coat I collected eight fares within, stepped forward, and sprang into the street. Poverty is my only apology for the crime. I concealed myself in a cellar where men were playing with props. Fear is my only excuse. Lest they should suspect me, I joined their game, and my forty cents were soon three dollars ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... Cilicia. On departing, they leave their sons in the care of Geta, one of Demipho's servants. Shortly afterward, Phaedria falls in love with a Music-girl, but, from want of means, is unable to purchase her from her owner. In the mean time, the Lemnian wife of Chremes, urged by poverty, embarks for Athens, whither she arrives with her daughter and her nurse. Here they inquire for Stilpho, but in vain, as they can not find any one of that name. Shortly after, the mother dies, and Antipho, seeing Phanium by accident, falls in love with her. Being wishful ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... to tell us, if rightly inquired into, why these things are so, why there is evil in the world, and what shall be the end of it. The world has existed, it is believed, nearly six thousand years, and at this day we see that many suffer from sorrow and pain, labour and poverty are the lot of a very large proportion of the populations, calamities by fire and water are frequent, plague and pestilence still visit the earth, cruelty and murders are rife, and so far from there ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis
... the deepest pit of his personality. At first he ascribed his restlessness to the sultry weather, then to his abuse of tea and cigarettes,—perhaps it was the sharp odour of the average congregation, that collective odour of humanity encountered in church, theatre, or court-rooms. The smell of poverty was mingled with the heavy scents of fashionable women, who, in the minority, made their presence felt by their showy gowns, rustling movements, and attitudes of superior boredom. In a vast building like this extremes ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... disposition would; when the announcement of the family misfortune reached him. He did not come to London, but he wrote to his mother to draw upon his agents for whatever money was wanted, so that his kind broken-spirited old parents had no present poverty to fear. This done, Joseph went on at his boarding-house at Cheltenham ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... city, Blake's machine, for which he had telephoned from Larchmont, was waiting; and in this they made the journey through the traffic-thronged New York streets, to the dock; a route that leads one from wealth to poverty, from respectability to license, from well—doing to ill-doing, and ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... dispersion, that thou mayest escape thy very organs themselves and thine own life. That is to say, die often, and examine thyself in the presence of this death, as a preparation for the last death. He who can without shuddering confront blindness, deafness, paralysis, disease, betrayal, poverty; he who can without terror appear before the sovereign justice, he alone can call himself prepared for partial or total death. How far am I from anything of the sort, how far is my heart from any such stoicism! But at least we can try to detach ourselves from all that can be taken ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Did this old man's death mean another scandal, ruin for another family, and one she had known well,—disgrace, scandal, possibly poverty? ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... from wickedness—unless he gives up thinking much about pleasure or rewards, and gets strength to endure what is hard and painful. My father had the greatness that belongs to integrity; he chose poverty and obscurity rather than falsehood. And there was Fra Girolamo—you know why I keep to-morrow sacred: he had the greatness which belongs to a life spent in struggling against powerful wrong, and in trying ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... vice-chancellor. Dr. Ridley then took off his gown and tippet, and gave them to his brother-in-law, Mr. Shipside. He gave away also many trifles to his weeping friends, and the populace were anxious to get even a fragment of his garments. Mr. Latimer gave nothing, and from the poverty of his garb, was soon stripped to his shroud, and stood venerable and erect, fearless of death. Dr. Ridley being unclothed to his shirt, the smith placed an iron chain about their waists, and Dr. Ridley bid him ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... vicinity to the door, and the ease with which a citizen, whose tanner case{1} and toggery{2} are out of repair, may make his entree and exit, without subjecting himself to the embarrassing gaze and scrutiny of his more fortunate fellow-citizens. Juniper Ward, which is directly opposite to Poverty Ward, may in a moral point of view be said to mark the natural gradation rom the one to the other. Whether these wards are so placed by the moral considerations of the ingenious citizens or not, we ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Pilgrims. Here also are to be found Petrarch's famous tale of patient Griselda, which Chaucer also took and gave a wider fame, and a long poem written in 1342 by Jean Bruyant, a notary of the Chatelet at Paris, and called 'The Way of Poverty and ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... poem teaches the happiness of poverty, so the next, "The Juggler of Touraine," teaches the happiness ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... Wilkinson—who inherited a snug little fortune from his mother, and expanded it into a very considerable fortune by building up a large manufacture of carpet-slippers for the export trade—the rule in my family has been a respectable poverty that has just bordered upon actual want. But all the generations since my great-great-great-uncle's time have been cheered, as poverty-stricken people naturally would be cheered, by the knowledge that the pirate hoard was in existence; and by the hope that some day it would ...
— Our Pirate Hoard - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... deaf, and Alexandre persisted in his silence, and died at Angers, in 1832, in great poverty, without ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... think I spent not less than the fine of fifteen men among them, in order that I might come among you. Nor do I regret it, nor count it enough, for I still spend, and shall ever spend, happy if the Master allows me to spend my soul for you....For I know certainly that poverty and plain living are better for me than riches and luxury. The Anointed our Master was poor for us. I am poorer still, for I could not have wealth if I wished it. Nor do I now judge myself, for I look forward daily to a violent death, or to be taken captive and ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... multitudes, the statistics of home conditions revealed by Children's Courts furnish testimony of like character. The unknown toll of loss of personal aptitude for family life leading to broken homes, or to hopeless struggles against invasions by poverty of the right of common men and women to a home, are proof positive that a change in economic conditions is demanded in ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... undertone to many of these stories "hot from the lips of a spaceman" is Utopia. On these other worlds there is no illness, they've learned how to cure all diseases. There are no wars, they've learned how to live peaceably. There is no poverty, everyone has everything he wants. There is no old age, they've learned the secret of ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... "Woodlands" and in Charleston, he dispensed a generous and delightful hospitality and made welcome his many friends from North, South, and West. The last few years of his life were darkened by distress and poverty, in common with his brethren all over the South; and his heroic struggle against them reminds us of that of Sir Walter Scott, though ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... asked, "is there not danger, that, when removed from these comfortable homes, and subjected again to the iron gripe of poverty, they will resume ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... are many who have a scanty living, with a small variety of food, there is a large number who have an abundance and a large variety. The former class, in many cases, live miserable lives, either to hoard up for miserly purposes the money which might make them happy, or in some cases through poverty; while the latter class, as a rule, have better health and have much more enjoyment in this life, unless it be some who are gluttonous, and make themselves miserable by abusing the blessings they should enjoy. ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... combinations of words which stick fast to the memory, and do more than pages to express the author's meaning. He has little command of expression. His imagery is common; and his manner of arranging a trite figure in a rich suit of verbiage, only makes its essential commonness and poverty more apparent. His style is not dotted over with any of those shining points, either of imagery or epigram, which illumine works of ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... house." The old man was lame in consequence of the treatment he had suffered. Woe to him who in this country is suspected of having a competency—a hundred spies are always ready to denounce him. The appearance of poverty is the only security against the rapine of power and ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... a good time to get in his work, so he began talking to the Indian about the wickedness of looking upon the whisky when it was bay, and when it giveth its color in the nose. He told the Indian of the wrecked homes, the poverty, the disgrace and death that followed the use of liquor, and wound up by pleading with him to give up his cups and join the angel band and shout hosannas in a temperance lodge. The Indian did not understand a word that Suthland was saying, ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... the season; but the visitor who came with keen eyes, observing everything, not because he had any special object, but because he could not help it, took in in a moment the faded air of solid respectability, the shabbiness which does not mean poverty, the decent neglect, as of a place whose inhabitants took no thought of such small matters, which showed everywhere. It was not neglect, in the ordinary sense of the word, for all was carefully and nicely arranged, fresh flowers on the tables, and signs ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... tale of all of us. I have seen things more terrible than any dream and yet lived, but I have paid a price for such experience. First I went to Italy where there were friends, and I wished only to have peace among kindly people. About poverty I do not care, for, to us, who have lost all the great things, the want of bread is a little matter. But peace was forbidden me, for I learned that we Russians had to win back our fatherland again, ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... influence on private happiness? Who shall say how many thousands have been made wiser, happier, and better, by those pursuits in which she has taught mankind to engage; to how many the studies which took their rise from her have been wealth in poverty, liberty in bondage, health in sickness, society ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... is no necessity to suppose this very strange account to be true. A poet not long dead was often obliged to study in the fields, and write upon scraps of paper, which he occasionally borrowed; but his case was poverty, and absolute want.[1] Langbaine observes of our author, that he was a general scholar, and a tolerable linguist, as his several translations from Lucian, Erasmus, Texert, Beza, Buchanan, and other Latin and Italian authors sufficiently manifest. Nay, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... beginning to feel the pressure of poverty. His father's affairs were probably getting into disorder. One anecdote—it is one which it is difficult to read without emotion—refers to this period. Many years afterwards, Johnson, worn by disease and the hard struggle of life, was staying at Lichfield, where a few old ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... the United States will make due preparation for enlightening those held so long in bondage. On the nature of that preparation it defends (I have often heard Captain Frankland say) whether their dear-bought liberty shall give joy and gladness, or poverty and misery. ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... inhabitants of Hurlston averred that they might have kept not only a pony-chaise, but a carriage and pair, with the sums they annually distributed in the place. Their charities were, however, discerning and judicious, and although those who had brought themselves into poverty received assistance when there was a prospect of their amending, if they were known to be continuing in an evil course they might in vain look for help, and were pretty sure to meet with a somewhat strong rebuke from Miss Jane, as Miss Pemberton was generally called. In their inquiries ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... referred to the Germans, since they build houses, carry shields, and travel with speed on foot; in all which particulars they totally differ from the Sarmatians, who pass their time in wagons and on horseback. [272] The Fenni [273] live in a state of amazing savageness and squalid poverty. They are destitute of arms, horses, and settled abodes: their food is herbs; [274] their clothing, skins; their bed, the ground. Their only dependence is on their arrows, which, for want of iron, are headed with bone; [275] and the chase is the support of ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... young men of the better families,— dissipated and extravagant when the means are at hand; ambitious at heart, and impotent in act; often pinched for bread; keeping up an appearance of style, when their poverty is known to each half-naked Indian boy in the street, and standing in dread of every small trader and shopkeeper in the place. He had a slight and elegant figure, moved gracefully, danced and waltzed beautifully, spoke good Castilian, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... wild and happy, and had their hour. 'They oughtn't to have called me Fleur,' she mused, 'if they didn't mean me to have my hour, and be happy while it lasts.' Nothing real stood in the way, like poverty, or disease—sentiment only, a ghost from the unhappy past! Jon was right. They wouldn't let you live, these old people! They made mistakes, committed crimes, and wanted their children to go on paying! The breeze died away; midges ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... glorious and decorous way, the fortune of all will be made in the course of progress which events are preparing for this happy country; whilst it is not known what is to be had in Peru, because, as you observe, the war is only beginning, which will be followed by poverty, discontent, and above all, anarchy. They will soon feel the want of you and of the squadron, and those ungrateful officers who separated themselves from you to enter the Peruvian navy will also feel their deceit and punishment. They have been scratched out of the list of the Chilian navy, ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... been delayed so long on account of poverty that it brought little of humanizing emotion into his life. He never mentioned his love-life now, or if he did, it was only to sneer obscenely at it. He had long since ceased to kiss his wife or even speak kindly to her. There was no longer any sanctity ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... consider it as a gain.' [37] Capiundae. Respecting the e or u in such gerunds and gerandives, see Zumpt, S 167. [38] Auxerat. He had increased both by the above-mentioned qualities—namely, his poverty by extravagance, and the consciousness of guilt by the crimes he committed. The neuter plural quae, referring to two feminine substantives denoting abstract ideas, is not very common, though quite justifiable. ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... Mencius[20] taught, "When Heaven is about to confer a great office on anyone, it first exercises his mind with suffering and his sinews and bones with toil; it exposes his body to hunger and subjects him to extreme poverty; and it confounds his undertakings. In all these ways it stimulates his mind, hardens his nature, and supplies his incompetencies." True honor lies in fulfilling Heaven's decree and no death incurred in so doing is ignominious, whereas death to avoid what ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... cried solicitously. And then, remembering that all his recent worries had been of a financial nature, he was fearful that some wolf of poverty had thrust its head into the studio door. "If—if—it's money that keeps you from going ahead as you have been, I—look here! Your work mustn't stop. We're too good friends to be falsely modest. If—if you're broke, I'd like to let you have some money. I haven't got much, but—Mary—I'm going ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... was, after a fashion; but I am sure he had trouble, of one kind or another—sickness, poverty, and his people not very kind to him—tired of him, at any rate. However, that don't ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... lament and wail; And, 'midst the wailing, one before us heard Cry out "O blessed Virgin!" as a dame In the sharp pangs of childbed; and "How poor Thou wast," it added, "witness that low roof Where thou didst lay thy sacred burden down. O good Fabricius! thou didst virtue choose With poverty, before great wealth with vice." The words so pleas'd me, that desire to know The spirit, from whose lip they seem'd to come, Did draw me onward. Yet it spake the gift Of Nicholas, which on the maidens he Bounteous bestow'd, to save their youthful prime Unblemish'd. ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... his shoulders. Doubtless he had seen more than one broken gentleman cover poverty with a brave front of fine lawn and ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... of money, because that subject savoured of commerce and trade, and though some might be poor, we were all aristocratic. The Cranfordians had that kindly esprit de corps which made them overlook all deficiencies in success when some among them tried to conceal their poverty. When Mrs Forrester, for instance, gave a party in her baby-house of a dwelling, and the little maiden disturbed the ladies on the sofa by a request that she might get the tea-tray out from underneath, everyone took this novel proceeding as the most ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... apart, watching the marching, shouting youngsters, scrubbed till they shone, clothed in clean though often clumsy garments and heavy shoes. No great poverty was indicated by their apparel, and some, evidently of French origin, were dressed with real taste and daintiness. These were also remarkable for a more vivacious appearance than the stolid little Anglo-Saxons. Some ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... that poverty of spirit is not the beatitude corresponding to the gift of fear. For fear is the beginning of the spiritual life, as explained above (A. 7): whereas poverty belongs to the perfection of the spiritual life, according to Matt. 19:21, "If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... of those wanderers of the West gathered together in the Foss River camp. We have said that these places are hot-beds of crime, a curse to the country; but that description scarcely conveys the wretched poverty and filthiness of these motley gatherings. From a slight rising ground Horrocks looked down on what might have, at first sight, been taken for a small village. A scattering of small tumbled-down shacks, about fifty in number, set out on the fresh green of the prairie, ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... Hyacinth; 'I shall be all right. But I can't bear to think of you and Mrs. Quinn. Poverty like that in Dublin! Have you thought what it means? A shabby little house in a crowded street, off at the back of somewhere; dirt and stuffiness and vulgarity all around you. She can't be expected to stand ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... pried into the bottom of the vehicle, he would have detected a large crack in the side of the left boot, beneath which a gray stocking had been carefully masked with ink. Still, all these signs of poverty were so artfully concealed, and his dress worn with so careless an air of opulence and ease, that every body might have supposed the traveller did not put on better clothes only because he had ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... a little thaw when Lord Northmoor asked about the population, larger, alas, than the congregation might have seemed to show, and Mary asked if there were much poverty, and was answered that there was much suffering in the winter, there was not much done for the ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and they see themselves already ruined by the losses and delays they have been made to incur, and by the failure of the original object of their voyage. They throw themselves, therefore, on the patronage of the government, and pray that its energy may be interposed in aid of their poverty and ignorance, to restore them to their liberty, and to extend to them that retribution which the laws of every country mean to extend ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... the wish is o'er: The sun begins to shine; I lift my heart in thankfulness, And say, "Thy will is mine." 'Tis true, of poverty and pain We both have had our share, But do you think in all the world There ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... learned by experience that, "It is much better to write than [to] starve."—Kirkham's Gram., Stereotyped, p. 89. It is cruel in any man, to look narrowly into the faults of an author who peddles a school-book for bread. The starveling wretch whose defence and plea are poverty and sickness, demands, and must have, in the name of humanity, an immunity from criticism, if not the patronage of the public. Far be it from me, to notice any such character, except with kindness and charity. Nor need I be told, that tenderness is due to the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... does not determine the prize. We must take into consideration the hindrances, the weights we have carried, the disadvantages of education, of breeding, of training, of surroundings, of circumstances. How many young men are weighted down with debt, with poverty, with the support of invalid parents or brothers and sisters, or friends? How many are fettered with ignorance, hampered by inhospitable surroundings, with the opposition of parents who do not understand them? How many a round boy is hindered in ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... woman, very feeble and very feminine, and with the simplicity that is characteristic of such sweet and shallow natures she allows her brother to defraud her of all her property. The widow is rather a bore and the brother is quite a bear, but Margaret Rivers who, to save her sister from poverty, marries a man she does not love, is a cleverly conceived character, and Lady Lyons is an admirable old dowager. The book can be read without any trouble and was probably written without any trouble also. The style is ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... upon the bloom of spring, the maid Was a fresh flower that scarce began to blow: Her sire with many children was o'erlaid, And was to poverty a mortal foe. Hence 'tis an easy matter to persuade Mine host his buxom daughter to forego, And let them, where they will the damsel bear; In that to treat ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... been an Englishman, he would have felt much, but said less on that account; if he had been an American, he would have tried to conceal his poverty, and impress the family with his past grandeur, present importance, or future prospects; being a German, he showed exactly what he was, with the childlike frankness of his race. Having had no dinner, he ate heartily of what was ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... Sir Kenneth had retired from the tent, and the Queen, at first little moved by Edith's angry expostulations, only replied to her by upbraiding her prudery, and by indulging her wit at the expense of the garb, nation, and, above all the poverty of the Knight of the Leopard, in which she displayed a good deal of playful malice, mingled with some humour, until Edith was compelled to carry her anxiety to her separate apartment. But when, in the morning, a female whom Edith had entrusted to make inquiry brought word that the Standard was ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... find metaphors, rhymes, music, color, but not man, not humanity. Poetry of this factitious kind may beguile one at twenty, but what can one make of it at fifty? It reminds me of Pergamos, of Alexandria, of all the epochs of decadence when beauty of form hid poverty of thought and exhaustion of feeling. I strongly share the repugnance which this poetical school arouses in simple people. It is as though it only cared to please the world-worn, the over-subtle, the corrupted, while it ignores all normal healthy life, virtuous habits, pure affections, steady labor, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... presented to me a girl, giving me to understand she was at my service. Miss, who probably had received her instructions, wanted, as a preliminary article, a spike-nail or a shirt, neither of which I had to give her, and soon made them sensible of my poverty. I thought, by that means, to have come off with flying colours; but I was mistaken; for they gave me to understand I might retire with her on credit. On my declining this proposal, the old lady began to argue with me; and then abuse me. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... disciples repent of ever having missed an opportunity for enjoyment and resolve never so to offend again. Here, as often, Goethe comes into the closest touch with our modern feeling. We, too, can never return to the Franciscan ideal of poverty, celibacy, and obedience as the highest life for man on earth. We have done with self-denial except as the means to a human end. We are still in the tide of what I would call the Modern Renascence; we claim the whole garden of the world for our own, the tree with the ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... moved. Whether the unfamiliarity of the forest was the cause of it, or something less definite, she could not determine. Her mind left the scene and occupied itself with anxieties for Ridley, for her children, for far-off things, such as old age and poverty and death. Hirst, too, was depressed. He had been looking forward to this expedition as to a holiday, for, once away from the hotel, surely wonderful things would happen, instead of which nothing happened, and here they were as uncomfortable, as restrained, as self-conscious ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... Dr. Chrystal had in mind, and the class of people that inhabited it. For square after square, tenement houses, tall, grimy, and repulsive, alternated with groggeries, flaunting, flashy, and reeking with iniquity. The residents were of the lowest and poorest order. Filth, vice, and poverty, held high carnival the whole year round. In the day time crowds of tattered roughs played rudely with one another in the streets, and after dark, drunken soldiers, sailors, and wharf men, made night hideous with their degraded ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... is in Browning's tragedies! Even when he writes of the feeble-hearted, as in The Statue and the Bust, he leaves us with the feeling that we are in the presence of weakness in a world in which courage prevails. His world is a place of opulence, not of poverty. Compare The Last Ride Together with Mr. Hardy's The Phantom Horsewoman, and you will see a vast energy and beauty issuing from loss in the one, while in the other there is little but a sad shadow. To have loved ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... celibate vows, and learning that it did not, he had industriously run its wearer to sainted earth—had, that is to say, pursued her to a top-floor tenement and there found her upon her knees with sanitary zeal scrubbing dirt from the boards of poverty; and poverty upon its bed whimpering with rage and feebly cursing her for thus coming to disturb its peace. Thus they had met, and very promptly and practically had the wearer of the habit made him pay the price for his intrusion by setting him there and then to work of a kind he ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... to pass away in one paragraph—months of ineffectual struggle against poverty and want of employment, which Newton made every exertion to obtain as mate of a merchant vessel. The way in which he had been impressed had caused a dread of the king's service, which he could not overcome; and although he had but ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... unexpectedly fallen heir to princely estates, titles or power; but I have something more to be desired than all the world's treasures—the love of my friends, and honorable fame, won by my own industry and talents. Despite my poverty, it is my privilege to be the companion of the rich and mighty. I am too grateful for all these blessings to wish for more from princes, or from the gods. My little Sabine farm is dear to me; for here I spend my happiest ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... and then that it lacked fresh oil, and she must refill it. So what with one thing and another she was an immense time trotting to and fro, and all the while she now and again bade the Prince have patience. When at last he stood within the little hut he saw with despair that it was a picture of poverty, and that not a crumb of anything eatable was to be seen, and when he explained to the old woman that he was dying of hunger and fatigue she only answered tranquilly that he must have patience. However, ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... was brought to us—one of many, already received!—insisting on immediate payment of a debt that had been too long unsettled. The detestable subject of our poverty insisted on claiming attention when there was a messenger outside, waiting for my poor Harry's last ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... to an agricultural family of Franche-Comte. He had a relation, a minim,' in that country. The minim, who had the charge of educating the pupils of the Military School of Brienne, being very poor, and their poverty not enabling them to hold out much inducement to other persons to assist them, they applied to the minims of Franche-Comte. In consequence of this application Pichegru's relation, and some other minims, repaired to Brienne. An aunt of Pichegru, who was a sister ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... reason to inforce your attention to what I am about to write. I was, as I have said, the instructor of your choice. When I had yet remained neglected in the world, when my honours were withered by the hand of poverty, when my blossoms appeared in the eyes of those who saw me of the most brown and wintery complexion, and, if your lordship will allow me to finish the metaphor, when I stank in their noses, it was then that your lordship remarked and distinguished me. Your bounty it was that ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... upon you,' wailed the Great Tyee. 'You have despised a mother-woman. You will suffer evil and starvation and hunger and poverty, oh! foolish tribes-people. Did you not know how great ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... rooms this condition is changed, for in a long perspective the ceiling comes into sight and consciousness. There would be a sense of barrenness and poverty in a long stretch of plain surface or unbroken colour over a vista of decorated wall, and accordingly the ceilings of large and important rooms are generally broken by ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... Madame Lafargue, two letters from Chateaubriand to 'Pertuze, Boot-maker, names of celebrities ancient and modern at the foot of an invitation to dinner, or perhaps a request for money, a complaint of poverty, a love letter, &c, enough to cure anyone of writing for ever. All the autographs were priced; and as Madame Astier paused for a moment before the window she might see next to a letter of Rachel, price 12L., a letter from Leonard Astier-Rehu to Petit Sequard, his publisher, price 2s. ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... no question," said he, "which I feel at this very late hour inclined to answer. A man who has been tracked as I must have been for you to find me here, is hardly in a mood to explain his poverty or the mad desire for former luxuries which took him to the house of one friendly enough, he thought, to accept his presence without inquiry as to the place he lived in or the nature or number of the reverses which had brought him to such a place ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... years I have been deprived of your dear presence, and have implored your clemency without any reply. God and the Holy Virgin are my witnesses that my greatest suffering throughout that period has proceeded less from exile, poverty, and humiliation, than from the estrangement of a son, and the loss of his dear presence. Meanwhile I am becoming aged, and feel that each succeeding hour is bringing me more rapidly to the grave. Thus, Sire, ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe |
