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Prodigality   Listen
Prodigality

noun
1.
The trait of spending extravagantly.  Synonyms: extravagance, profligacy.
2.
Excessive spending.  Synonyms: extravagance, high life, highlife, lavishness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Prodigality" Quotes from Famous Books



... be materials, tools, and provisions for the employment of an additional industry, a part also may be taken back in foreign wines, silks, &c. to be consumed by idle people who produce nothing; and so far the substitution promotes prodigality, increases expense and consumption, without increasing production. So far also, then, it lessens the capital of the nation. What may be the amount which the conversion of the part exchanged for productive goods, may add to the former productive mass, it is not easy to ascertain, because, as ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... V.72: An union shall he throw,] i.e., a fine pearl. To swallow a pearl in a draught seems to have been equally common to royal and mercantile prodigality. It may be observed that pearls were supposed to possess an exhilarating quality. It was generally thrown into the drink as a compliment to some distinguished guest, and the King in this scene, under the pretence ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare

... as an actor in the theatre at Naples, which theatre, as soon as the audience dispersed, tumbled to pieces,—a little late so far as Nero himself was concerned. Returning to Rome, he indulged in every species of vice and folly, lavishing the wealth of the state with the utmost prodigality. On the lake of Agrippa he had a pavilion erected on a great floating platform, which was moved from point to point by the aid of boats superbly decorated with gold and ivory, while to furnish the banquet here given, animals of the chase were sought in the whole country round, and ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... when I gave that Chicago property to you, I explained the necessity of curbing your reckless extravagance. Were I possessed of Rothschild's income, it would not suffice to keep upon his feet a man who sells himself to the Devil of the gaming table, and entertains with the prodigality of a crown prince. I never dreamed until last night that the real estate at home is encumbered by mortgages, and it will be an everlasting shame if the homestead should be sacrificed; but I can do no more for you. This ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... assume the character of prudence, and moroseness, in despising pleasures, wishes to be taken for temperance; and pride, which puffs a man up, and which affects to despise legitimate honours, seeks to vaunt itself as magnanimity; prodigality calls itself liberality, audacity imitates courage, hardhearted sternness imitates patience, bitterness justice, superstition religion, weakness of mind lenity, timidity modesty, captiousness and carping at words wishes to pass for acuteness in arguing, ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero

... Books which were at that time written had not been sufficient for his Use, he composed others on purpose for him: Notwithstanding all this, History informs us, that Marcus proved a meer Blockhead, and that Nature, (who it seems was even with the Son for her Prodigality to the Father) rendered him incapable of improving by all the Rules of Eloquence, the Precepts of Philosophy, his own Endeavours, and the most refined Conversation in Athens. This Author therefore proposes, that there should be certain Tryers or Examiners appointed ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... disquisition regarding the latent union between covetousness and prodigality, involving a proof that the discourse about the rich man was applicable to the Pharisees who were not of prodigal habits, although very good in itself, is scarcely relevant; inasmuch as it is not the parable of the rich man, but the reproofs intervening between ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... machine, and its coughing, open exhaust was adding to the din on the highway. It was trailing smoke in a dense, bluish cloud that meant they were burning up their lubricant with spendthrift prodigality. But the ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele

... Deen did nothing for a whole year but feast and make merry, wasting and consuming, with the utmost prodigality, the great wealth that his predecessors, and the good vizier his father, had with so much pains and care acquired ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.

... passion for unnecessary expense is, under different circumstances, frequently repressed by an inability to procure credit; but it is the curse and bane of Mr. Omnium's nephew, and Miss Saveall's niece, that so far from any obstacle being opposed to their prodigality, almost unlimited indulgence is offered, nay, actually pressed upon them, by the trades-people of their wealthy relations; who take especial care that their charges shall be of a nature to repay them for any complaisance or long suffering, as it regards the term of credit, they ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various

... not prevent me from acknowledging the beauty of the earth. On the contrary, social injustice intensified nature's prodigality. I said, "Yes, the landscape is beautiful, but how much of its beauty penetrates to the heart of the men who are in the midst of it and battling with it? How much of consolation does the worn and weary renter find in ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... (yet no collision, no trouble,) with masses of bright color, action, and tasty toilets; (surely the women dress better than ever before, and the men do too.) As if New York would show these afternoons what it can do in its humanity, its choicest physique and physiognomy, and its countless prodigality of locomotion, dry goods, glitter, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... already possessed, and it would cost him nothing, because the sale of the other piece, the commode, would cover the entire cost! And although in his letters to Mme. Hanska he defended himself against the charge of prodigality, these "good bargains" still continued. A clock of royal magnificence and two vases of pale green garnet, also Bouchardon's "Christ" in a frame by Brustolone. And for years he continued in pursuit of bric-a-brac, paintings and other works of art. In 1845, on his way home after ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet

... Lester, "London will, I suppose, be your first destination. I can furnish you with letters to some of my old friends there: merry fellows they were once: you must take care of the prodigality of their wine. There's John Courtland—ah! a seductive dog to drink with. Be sure and let me know how honest John looks, and what he says of me. I recollect him as if it were yesterday; a roguish eye, with a moisture in it; full cheeks; ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... rather than with the ceaseless longings of a miser. In short, the motive that urged them both so soon to go against the Hurons, was an habitual contempt of their enemy, acting on the unceasing cupidity of prodigality. The additional chances of success, however, had their place in the formation of the second enterprise. It was known that a large portion of the warriors-perhaps all—were encamped for the night abreast of the castle, and it was hoped that the scalps of helpless ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... after her death he was a noble aid to me in many ways. I needed his precautions about spreading myself too thin, about being less flamboyantly loquacious, and subduing my excessive enthusiasm and emotional prodigality. Once after giving me a drive, he kindly said, as he helped me out, "I have quite enjoyed your cheerful prattle." Fact was, he had monologued it in his most sesquipedalian phraseology. I had no chance to say one word. He had his own way of gaining magnetism; believed in ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn

... he had friendships—or rather, habits of fifteen years' standing, and men with whom he supped, and dined, and indulged his wit. He earned from seven to eight hundred francs a month, a sum which he found quite insufficient for the prodigality peculiar to the impecunious. Indeed, Lousteau found himself now just as hard up as when, on first appearing in Paris, he had said to himself, "If I had but five hundred francs a month, I ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... received him with great distinction. The honours which were shown him during his visit to Oxford, by the especial command of the Queen, were equal to those rendered to sovereign princes. His extraordinary prodigality rendered his enormous wealth insufficient to defray his expenses, and he therefore became a zealous adept in alchymy, and took from England to Poland with him two known alchymists. — Count Valerian Krasinski's "Historical Sketch of the Reformation in Poland."] An interesting conversation ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... esteem and respect of his contemporaries and of posterity. The Indians who flocked to his standard were attached to him with almost enthusiastic affection, and the enemy even expressed an involuntary regret at his untimely fall. His prodigality of life bereft the country of his services at the early age of forty-two years. The remains of this gallant officer were, during the funeral service, honored with a discharge of minute guns from ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... time around the tables, following the winners and getting douceurs from them. These were by no means small—most of them being gifts pure and simple, given from mere goodness of heart or sheer prodigality for there were too many gay and beautiful women flocking around ready to smile on winners in the game for the Countess now to make even a temporary conquest. However, at this period she lived well—even extravagantly—but, of course, saved nothing. As related, ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... With jaunty prodigality we have scattered these primary sources of wealth precisely as we scattered transportation and other franchises upon which dangerous private monopolies were built. The kind of mistakes that have been made with the franchises, we have in this generation come to see clearly. In the ...
— The Conflict between Private Monopoly and Good Citizenship • John Graham Brooks

... passes the pleasant lawns and copses of Escot. Once the property of the Alfords, Escot was bought in 1680 by Sir Walter Yonge (father of George II's unpopular 'Secretary-at-War'), who built a new and large house and lavishly improved the grounds. But prodigality was the bane of the Yonges, and not much more than one hundred years later it passed away from Sir Walter's ruined grandson, and was ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... if so," Simonides said, in a low voice; then louder, "Malluch, the curse of the time is prodigality. The poor make themselves poorer as apes of the rich, and the merely rich carry themselves like princes. Saw you signs of the weakness in the youth? Did he display ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... things the most precious, wasting of Time must be (as POOR RICHARD says) the greatest prodigality; and since, as he elsewhere tells us, Lost time is never found again; and what we call Time enough! always proves little enough, let us then up and be doing, and doing to the purpose: so, by diligence, shall we do more with less perplexity. Sloth makes all things difficult, ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody

... thanks to the control we have acquired over nature, the productiveness of labour has become infinitely greater. Labour may have become infinitely more productive; indeed, I think it probable that it is no longer possible for the maddest prodigality of the few wealthy to give full employment to the whole of the labour-energy at present existing without admitting the masses to share in the consumption; but it would be possible for the wealthy to consume a very large ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... and what less injurious, since they are his own works which injure the sinner? Yea, sloth would fain be at rest; but what stable rest besides the Lord? Luxury affects to be called plenty and abundance; but Thou art the fulness and never-failing plenteousness of incorruptible pleasures. Prodigality presents a shadow of liberality: but Thou art the most overflowing Giver of all good. Covetousness would possess many things; and Thou possessest all things. Envy disputes for excellency: what more excellent than Thou? Anger ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine

... madam?" cried he. "Will, you have the goodness to look at this document? I know well enough you married me for my money, and I hope I can make as great allowances as any other man in the service; but, as sure as God made me, I mean to put a period to this disreputable prodigality." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... one of the oldest and most respectable of the country, and deservedly enjoyed the highest consideration. M. Olivier de ——, his father, was not rich, and therefore could not do much for his son; the consequence was that owing to his outrageous prodigality the son was sorely pinched for means to keep up his position; he exhausted his credit, and was soon overwhelmed with debt. Among the companions of his dissipation was a young man whose abundant means filled him with admiration and envy; ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... to impress people with the magnificence of her style of living, though her fortune was problematical, and her household conducted in the most frugal style. Her attire suggested a continual conflict between elegance and economy—between real poverty and feigned prodigality. She wore a corsage and overskirt of black satin; but the upper part of the underskirt, which was not visible, was made of lute-string costing thirty sous a yard, and her laces were Chantilly only in appearance. Still, ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... the old mine gave symptoms of exhaustion," says Bulwer, the new mine, ten times more affluent at least in the precious metals, was discovered. In 1814 he commenced that long and magnificent series of prose fictions which for seventeen years were poured out with an unprecedented prodigality, and which can onlv be compared with the dramas of Shakspeare, as presenting an endless variety of original characters scenes historical situations and adventures. In 1826, he became bankrupt, in consequence ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... country, to judge whether our conduct at that time was inconsistent with the principles by which we are guided at present. That revolutionary policy which I have endeavoured to describe, that gigantic system of prodigality and bloodshed by which the efforts of France were supported, and which counts for nothing the lives and the property of a nation, had at that period driven us to exertions which had, in a great measure, exhausted the ordinary means of defraying our immense expenditure, and had led many of those ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones

... attempting to account for these inconsiderable extravagances, Mrs. Cliff was often obliged to content herself with admitting that while she had been abroad she might have acquired some of those habits of prodigality peculiar to our Western country. This might be a sufficient excuse for the new bottom step to the side door, but how could she account for the pair of soft, warm Californian blankets which were at the ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton

... during the course of the great emergency and after it was over, the Office of Works perhaps, upon the whole, took precedence over all rivals. Its prodigality was, to do it justice, tempered by extortion. Did the system of commandeering hotels and mammoth blocks of offices create new Departments of State? Or did the creation of new Departments of State precede the commandeering of the hotels and blocks ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... seem to have been ornate. Thus T[homas] W[hite], in A Sermon Preached at Pawles Crosse, on Sunday the Thirde of November, 1577, exclaims: "Behold the sumptuous Theatre houses, a continual monument of London's prodigality"; John Stockwood, in A Sermon Preached at Paules Cross, 1578, refers to it as "the gorgeous playing place erected in the Fields"; and Gabriel Harvey could think of no more appropriate epithet for it than "painted"—"painted theatres," ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams

... newspaper is thus widening the language in use, and vastly increasing the number of words which enter into common talk. The Americans of the lowest intellectual class probably use more words to express their ideas than the similar class of any other people; but this prodigality is partially balanced by the parsimony of words in some higher regions, in which a few phrases of current slang are made to do the whole duty of exchange of ideas; if that can be called exchange of ideas when one intellect flashes forth to another the remark, concerning some report, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... The tribunal having been called to order, Cosmas produced his charges against the emperor: the Servian marriage; oppressive taxes upon salt and other necessaries of life, whereby a heavy burden was laid upon the poor, on one hand, and imperial prodigality was encouraged on the other; failure to treat the petitions addressed to him by Cosmas with the consideration which they deserved. The defence of Andronicus was skilful. He maintained that no marriage of the Kraal had violated Canon Law as ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen

... it was apt; he was, indeed, the ragpicker of physiology. With a scavenger's sense of honour he endeavored to rob Sir Charles Bell of the credit for his discovery concerning the functions of the spinal nerves, by a prodigality of torment, from which the nobler nature of the English scientist instinctively recoiled. When there came to him an opportunity of experimenting on man, he embraced it with avidity, and again and again, while operating for cataract, plunged ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell

... amount of pollen given off by some wind-fertilized trees—so great in some places that it covers hundreds of square miles of earth and water with a film of yellow dust—-strikes us as an amazing waste of material on the part of nature; but in these cases we readily see that this excessive prodigality is necessary to continue the species, and that a sufficient number of flowers would not be impregnated unless the entire trees were bathed for days in the fertilizing cloud, in which only one out of many millions of floating ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... the successors of Augustus splendor increased to almost fabulous limits, as, for instance, in the vast extent and the prodigality of ivory and gold in the famous Golden House of Nero. After the great fire in Rome, presumably kindled by the agents of this emperor, amore regular and monumental system of street-planning and building was introduced, and the ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin

... of his doctrine is somewhat more definite and exact than the original. These are needs rather more difficult to satisfy. The third class consists of needs which are neither natural nor necessary, the need of luxury and prodigality, show and splendor, which never come to an end, and are ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer

... become somewhat concentrated. Children know nothing of it. They live chiefly from without, not from within. Only gradually as they approach maturity do they cut loose from the scaffolding and depend upon their own centre of gravity. Appearances are very strong in school. Money and prodigality have great weight there, notwithstanding the democracy of attainments and abilities. If I live a thousand years, I do not believe I shall ever do a more virtuous deed than I did long ago in staying ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... causing anybody pain that it may be said, his gentleness, his humanity, his easiness, had become faults; and I do not hesitate to affirm that that supreme virtue which teaches us to pardon our enemies he turned into vice, by the indiscriminate prodigality with which he applied it; thereby causing himself many sad embarrassments and misfortunes, examples and proofs of which will be seen in ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... the environment, the epoch, and the race peculiar characteristics, and it is clear that all the groups into which it enters will be proportionately modified. If the sentiment of obedience is merely one of fear,[4] you encounter, as in most of the Oriental states, the brutality of despotism, a prodigality of vigorous punishments, the exploitation of the subject, servile habits, insecurity of property, impoverished production, female slavery, and the customs of the harem. If the sentiment of obedience is rooted in the instinct of discipline, sociability, and honor, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... of wagons came over from Wilmington laden with rations, and they were dispensed to us with what seemed reckless prodigality. The lid of a box of hard tack would be knocked off, and the contents handed to us as we filed past, with absolute disregard as to quantity. If a prisoner looked wistful after receiving one handful of crackers, another ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... strength and brutal courage.—Their characters were all different, though of the same class; Sagestus did not stay to discriminate them, satisfied with a rough sketch. He saw indolence roused by a love of humour, or rather bodily fun; sensuality and prodigality with a vein of generosity running through it; a contempt of danger with gross superstition; supine senses, only to be kept alive by noisy, tumultuous pleasures, or that kind of novelty which borders on absurdity: this formed the common outline, and ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft

... employed to animate his brethren to the practice of virtue. When he proposed anything that was difficult to them, such as to go about soliciting alms, "Go," he would say, "and ask it for the love of God." He found a noble prodigality in asking it for that motive, and he thought those demented who preferred money to the love of God, the price of which is incalculable, and sufficient to purchase the Kingdom of Heaven, and which the love of Him who has so loved us must make infinitely dear to us. They ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe

... conscientiousness in the smallest detail; life bowed in all humility, but yet steadfast and fervent; imagination and beauty that do not strive to shine: if you want a proof, look at the great number that remained anonymous! Here, on the contrary, prodigality, exultant love, blood coursing triumphantly through conquered veins. Rubens is the apostle of wholehearted happiness. The biggest things seem easy when you are in his presence. If ever you feel ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc

... degree. However meager the contents of the pod, there is a superabundance of consumers. Dividing the sum of the eggs upon such or such a pod by that of the peas contained therein, I find there are five to eight claimants for each pea; I have found ten, and there is no reason why this prodigality should not go still further. Many are called, but few are chosen! What is to become of all these supernumeraries, perforce excluded from the ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent

... America and to the people of every race and clime which have followed his discovery. His genius and faith gave succeeding generations the opportunity for life and liberty. We, the heirs of all the ages, in the plenitude of our enjoyments, and the prodigality of the favors showered upon us, hail ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... show how far from appreciating France's generosity the easterners, and especially the anti-Jeffersonian Federalists in America, were at that time. Other and less conscientious newspapers put the prodigality of ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... the service of Charles VII., and sheathed for ever his sword, in the retirement of the country. The death of his maternal grandfather, Jean de Craon, in 1432, made him so enormously wealthy, that his revenues were estimated at 800,000 livres; nevertheless, in two years, by his excessive prodigality, he managed to lose a considerable portion of his inheritance. Maulon, S. Etienne de Malemort, Loroux-Botereau, Pornic, and Chantol, he sold to John V., Duke of Brittany, his kinsman, and other lands and seigneurial rights he ceded to the Bishop of Nantes, and to the chapter ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould

... trade had ruined the Bristol House of Frere—and bought for him a commission in a marching regiment, hinting darkly of special favours to come. His open preference for his nephew had galled to the quick his sensitive wife, who contrasted with some heart-pangs the gallant prodigality of her father with the niggardly economy of her husband. Between the houses of parvenu Devine and long-descended Wotton Wade there had long been little love. Sir Richard felt that the colonel despised ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... to spend money freely before he was forced to earn it laboriously. He scattered his patrimony gaily and then when the last inherited cent was gone, turned with, equal gayety to earning, not only enough to support himself, but the wife and family that, with the royal and reckless prodigality of genius, he provided himself with at the very outset of ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... said, that, for myself, I had no impromptu faculty; and perhaps that very deficiency made me marvel the more at one who possessed it in perfection. M. Emanuel was not a man to write books; but I have heard him lavish, with careless, unconscious prodigality, such mental wealth as books seldom boast; his mind was indeed my library, and whenever it was opened to me, I entered bliss. Intellectually imperfect as I was, I could read little; there were few bound and printed volumes that did not weary me—whose perusal did ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... had Portsmouth Harbour been fuller of others fitting and refitting for sea, or its streets more crowded with seamen laughing, dancing, singing, and committing all sorts of extravagances, and flinging their well-earned money about with the most reckless prodigality. ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston

... inhabit, you will discharge your women, and come and occupy two rooms in this house, to which there will be no access except through my apartment. You will never go out alone. You will accompany me to the services of the church. Your emancipation terminates, in consequence of your prodigality duly proven. I will take charge of all your expenses, even to the ordering of your clothes, so that you may be properly and modestly dressed. Until your majority (which will be indefinitely postponed, by means of the intervention of a family-council), you will ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... poems also contains The Brides' Tragedy, written when he was but nineteen. More simple and coherent in plot and construction than the other drama, it has more sweetness and less strength. It is full of the innocence of love, and rich with that prodigality of beauty with which youthful genius loves to make itself splendid. It begins with a scene in a garden, and "while that winged song, the restless nightingale, turns her sad heart to music," two lovers talk of flowers and love and dreams—dreams of the Queen of Smiles, and her attendant mob ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various

... miscarriages the kingdom of art is full. In the kingdom of art not only are many called and few chosen, but the few that do get chosen are for the most part chosen amiss, or are lavished in the infinite prodigality of nature. We flatter ourselves that among the kings and queens of art, music, and literature, or at any rate in the kingdom of the great dead, all wrongs shall be redressed, and patient merit shall take no more quips and scorns from the unworthy: ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler

... recommends that they should face the east, for the benefit of the early sun. One of the most important apartments in the whole house was the triclinium, or dining-room, so named from the three beds, which encompassed the table on three sides, leaving the fourth open to the attendants. The prodigality of the Romans in matters of eating is well known, and it extended to all matters connected with the pleasures of the table. In their rooms, their couches, and all the furniture of their entertainments, magnificence and extravagance were carried to their highest point. ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... "History of Europe" Alison quotes Lamartine oftener than any other French writer, and evidently admires his genius, and throws no doubt on the general fidelity of his works. A partisan historian full of prejudices, like Macaulay, with all his prodigality of references, is apt to be in reality more untruthful than a dispassionate writer without any show of learning at all. The learning of an advocate may hide and obscure truth as well as illustrate it. It is doubtless the custom of historical writers generally to ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord

... had time to express his gratification, when the Palace of Blacherne, the Very High Residence, burst upon him in long extended view, a marvel of imperial prodigality and ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... present and future. He is not obliged to take part in another festival of the kind unless another near relative dies. He pays off all old scores of hospitality and lays his friends under future obligations by his presents. He is often beggared by this prodigality, but he can be sure of welcome and entertainment wherever he goes, for he is a man who has discharged all his debts to society and is therefore deserving of honor for the ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes

... establish cooperative buying and selling, to suppress personal, local, sectional, and national prejudices, and to discountenance "the credit system, the fashion system, and every other system tending to prodigality and bankruptcy." As to business, the Patrons declared themselves enemies not of capital but of the tyranny of monopolies, not of railroads but of their high freight tariffs and monopoly of transportation. ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck

... is still periodically made in New York, may be said to have had its beginning in April, 1792. Seldom has an election been contested with such prodigality of partisan fury. The rhetoric of abuse was vigorous and unrestrained; the campaign lie active and ingenious; the arraignment of class against class sedulous and adroit, and the excitement most violent and memorable. If a weapon ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... it. Tom, give them some of Koku's, will you? I'll settle with you later," for the giant had formed a liking for the weed, and Tom did not have the heart to stop him smoking a pipe once in a while. With his usual prodigality, the giant had brought along a big supply, and some of this was soon distributed among the ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton

... mortgagee up to that date. Instalment payments were expressly ruled out. The entire sum intact was made obligatory. Therefore the danger of speedy redemption did not disquiet Charles. He knew the man he had to deal with. Sigismund's lack of foresight and his prodigality were notorious. There was faint chance that he could ever command the amount in question. Accordingly, Charles was fairly justified in counting the mortgaged territory as annexed to ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... intrigues, and thus John was consecrated by him on the 26th of February, in 398.[12] In regulating his own conduct and his domestic concerns, he retrenched all the great expenses which his predecessors had entailed on their dignity, which he looked upon as superfluous, and an excessive prodigality, and these sums he applied to the relief of the poor, especially of the sick. For this purpose he erected and maintained several numerous hospitals, under the government of holy and charitable priests, and was very careful ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... of leaves, he told mad tales of a reckless Prince, of the placid Brummel, of the "Dashing" Vibart, the brilliant Sheridan, of Fox, and Grattan, and many others, whose names are now a byword one way or the other. He recounted a story of wild prodigality, of drunken midnight orgies, of days and nights over the cards, of wine, women, and horses. But, lastly and very reverently, he spoke of a woman, of her love, and faith, and deathless trust. "Of course," he ended, "I might have starved very comfortably, and much quicker, in ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol

... born in 1633, must have had experiences of youthful playgoing before the great Civil War, finds evidence afterwards of "the vanity and prodigality of the age" in the nightly company of citizens, 'prentices, and others attending the theatre, and holds it a grievance that there should be so many "mean people" in the pit at two shillings and sixpence apiece. For several years, he ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... Mr. Brierly. The Colonel had entire confidence in Harry's influence with Wall street, and with congressmen, to bring about the consummation of their scheme, and he waited his return in the empty house at Hawkeye, feeding his pinched family upon the most gorgeous expectations with a reckless prodigality. ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

... their own hoard, for these goods were their own, and the more they sold and the more they got for them, the greater their gain. The more wasteful the people were, the more articles they did not want which they could be induced to buy, the better for these sellers. To encourage prodigality was the express aim of the ten ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... studied if its true inwardness is to be grasped. Isolating a few stanzas wherein the poet, alarmed and perplexed at the cruelties and terrors of Nature, her dark and circuitous ways, her astounding prodigality and wastefulness, lifts up in his helplessness "lame hands of faith," and falters where once he firmly trod, many writers have professed to see in Tennyson the expression of a reverent agnosticism. Such agnosticism we may all respect, for it is very different from the ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... found in any European capital; and the natives, instructed and regulated by the missionaries, were the object of an elaborate protective legislation, which gave reason for attachment to the mother country. The prodigality of nature was too much for tropical society, and it accomplished nothing of its own for the mind of man. It influenced the position of classes in Europe by making property obtained from afar, in portable shape, predominate ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... problemo. Proboscis rostro. Proceed procedi. Proceedings (law) proceso—ado. Proceeding procedo. Procession procesio. Process procedo, rimedo. Proclaim proklami. Procrastinate prokrasti. Procure havigi. Procuration konfidatisto. Prodigal malsxpara. Prodigality malsxparemo. Prodigious mireginda. Prodigy miregindajxo. Produce produkti. Produce produktajxo. Product produktajxo. Production produkto. Productive fruktoporta. Proem antauxdramo, antauxdiro. Profanation malpiegajxo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... instance, they use a great deal of tea and fine flour, and fancy biscuits and preserves, and other things of that kind. I think that has a very deleterious effect upon the people themselves, because it encourages prodigality, and the same earnings would go much further if laid out on different ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... to telescopic vision differ in no respect from the generality of their fellows in the galaxy. The familiar stars of the Pleiades cluster, for example, appear on the negative immersed in a hazy blur of light. All in all, the accumulated impressions of the photographic film reveal a prodigality of nebulous matter in the stellar ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... of want wandering by, though, notwithstanding appearance, he suffered nobody about him to be in such wants as himself. Penurious, perhaps, on small objects; in those which are greater, he was certainly liberal almost to prodigality. The hoarding principle might be strong in him, but in the conduct of it he was often generous, always easy. No man in England probably lost more money in large sums, for want of asking for it: for small money, as in farthings to street beggary, few men probably have lost less. ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... Ardagh, as we choose to call him, was the heir and representative of the family whose name he bore; but owing to the prodigality of his father, the estates descended to him in a very impaired condition. Urged by the restless spirit of youth, or more probably by a feeling of pride which could not submit to witness, in the paternal mansion, what he considered a humiliating alteration in ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... Frank, were large-hearted generous creatures in the article of apology, as in all things less skimpingly dealt out. And seeing that Leonard Fairfield would offer no plaster to Randal Leslie, they made amends for his stinginess by their own prodigality. The squire accompanied his son to Rood Hall, and none of the family choosing to be at home, the squire in his own hand, and from his own head, indited and composed an epistle which might have satisfied all the wounds which the dignity of ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Sundays in the park, vaudeville—first balcony—on Wednesdays, and a moving picture now and then. These lavish attentions, coupled with an occasional assault upon some delicatessen establishment, had satisfied her cravings for the higher life. Now that Gross had appeared and sown discord with his prodigality she no longer cared for animals and band concerts, she had acquired the orchestra-seat habit, had learned to dance, and, above all, she now possessed a subtle refinement in regard to victuals. She criticized Marlowe's acting, and complained that cold food gave her indigestion. No ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... quitted Cambridge in 1628 to travel on the Continent, and for a time served in the army of Gustavus Adolphus in Germany; returning to England about 1632 he became a favourite at Court, where he was noted for his wit, prodigality, and verses; supported Charles in the Bishops' Wars against the Scots; sat in the Long Parliament; was involved in a plot to rescue Strafford, and to bring foreign troops to the aid of the king, but discovered, had to ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... as she spoke, "a regular apostle of the poor, named Lorenzo Dow. How I would like to have him here. He was a man who would let people know in trumpet tones, by day and by night, what he thought of wicked, wasteful prodigality, no matter how pleasant it might be, how easy it might be, or how proper in people who could afford it. Is there to be anything more, ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton

... oracle came with terrible force, and generations of Nile husbandmen must toil early and late to pay the interest on the public debt incurred through Ismail's prodigality. This degraded man in his exile persistently maintained that he believed he was doing right when borrowing for the canal, for it was to elevate Egypt to a position of honor and prominence in the list of nations. And it is the irony of fate, ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield

... readers the endless diversity of structures, and the prodigality of resources displayed for gaining the same end, the fertilisation of one flower by pollen from another plant. "The more I study nature," he says, "the more I become impressed with ever-increasing force that the contrivances ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany

... corrupted, we have good hopes of her." Unfortunately her brilliant and commanding qualities were vitiated by an inordinate pride and egoism, which exhibited themselves in an utter contempt for public opinion, and a prodigality utterly regardless of the necessities of the state. She seemed to consider Swedish affairs as far too petty to occupy her full attention; while her unworthy treatment of the great chancellor was mainly due to her jealousy of his extraordinary reputation and to the uneasy conviction that, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... to see the vegetation of eternal summer and the lavish prodigality of nature, and one revels among hothouse plants "at home," and all the splendor of gigantic leaves, and the beauty and grace of palms, bamboos, and tree-ferns; the great, gaudy flowers are as marvelous as the gaudy ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... among all living things helps us to understand the necessity for Nature's prodigality. If the plants and animals that serve as food for others were not produced in great numbers, they would soon become extinct. It is seldom that any one kind of plant or animal, because of its many enemies, has an opportunity ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks

... of a disagreeable shock. He had been talking in generalities, giving away the future with that fluent prodigality, that easy prophecy which costs so little. ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... to sustain those appearances, which are all the world looks to. It is possible, therefore, that little efforts have been made to initiate youth, prior to entering the universities, in that path of self-denial and high-mindedness which are the safeguard from vicious prodigality. They bring with them the vices of their caste, whatever that caste may be. Youth is imitative, and seldom a clumsy copyist, of the faults of its elders, provided those faults are fashionable faults, however unprincipled. However this may be, I must protest against ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... with tropical vegetation would be amazed at the prodigality of the oasis of Nefta; in point of exuberance it is as superior to Tozeur as that to Gafsa. But the cathedral-like gravity of Tozeur is lacking; there is too much riot and opulence, too many voluptuous festoons and spears and spirals, a certain craving, so to speak, ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... were sent to Eton at ten with gold dressing-boxes to grace their dame's tables, embryo dukes for their co-fags, and tastes that already knew to a nicety the worth of the champagnes at Christopher's. The old, old story—how it repeats itself! Boys grow up amidst profuse prodigality, and are launched into a world where they can no more arrest themselves, than the feather-weight can pull in the lightning-stride of the two-year-old, who defies all check, and takes the flat as he chooses. They are brought up like young dauphins, and tossed ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... the air. Men were drunk with it; carried off their feet, delirious. Money! It had lost its value. Every one you met was "lousy" with it; threw it away with both hands, and fast as they emptied one pocket it filled up the others. Little wonder a mad elation, a semi-frenzy of prodigality prevailed, for every day the golden valley was pouring into the city a ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... evident the authorities at Quebec knew little of the value of the lands on the St. John river or they would hardly have granted them with such prodigality. The Sieur de Soulanges seems to have been highly favored by Frontenac for the three seigniories granted to him included an area of more than a hundred square miles. The one at the mouth of the river possessed all those natural advantages ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond

... thieves, and runs to the door and names more men than he hath. The least sheaf he ever culls out for tithe, and to rob God holds it the best pastime, the clearest gain. This man cries out above others of the prodigality of our times, and tells of the thrift of our forefathers: how that great prince thought himself royally attired, when he bestowed thirteen shillings and fourpence on half a suit. How one wedding gown served our grandmothers till they exchanged it for a winding-sheet; ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... of the lark is beautiful, the song of the poet is not surpassed. The riotous spirit of music sings in every line, beauty is seen in every stanza, is lavished upon every phrase, upon every melodious verse. The prodigality of beautiful phrases is marvelous. The phrases descriptive of the bird alone are strikingly apt ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... the meeting of the notables which had hastened Mirabeau's return to Paris. He felt that his proper place was in the centre of the great events announced and begun by this convocation. After the undignified and inglorious prodigality of the previous reign, which had laid the foundation of serious financial vicissitudes, the young King Louis XVI. had brought with him to the throne the private virtues of a good and honest man, but not the qualities ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... was the portion assigned to the combatants, and derived its name from the sand with which it was strewn, to absorb the blood and prevent it from becoming slippery. Some of the emperors showed their prodigality by substituting precious powders, and even gold dust, for sand. The arena was generally of the same shape as the amphitheatre itself, and was separated from the spectators by a wall built perfectly smooth, that the wild beasts might not by any possibility climb it. At Rome it ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... by, his soberer intellect, and made him disproportion his vast ends to his unsteady means, by the proud fallacy, that where man failed, God would interpose. Cola di Rienzi was no faultless hero of romance. In him lay, in conflicting prodigality, the richest and most opposite elements of character; strong sense, visionary superstition, an eloquence and energy that mastered all he approached, a blind enthusiasm that mastered himself; luxury and abstinence, sternness ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... what is done with A's; he observes the amount of industry which A's profusion feeds; he observes not the far greater quantity which it prevents from being fed; and thence the prejudice, universal to the time of Adam Smith, that prodigality encourages industry, and parsimony ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... resentment, paragraphs of encomium upon his hated guest. Had he ever indulged himself in the luxury of profanity it would have gushed now in torrents of curses over Stuart Farquaharson, upon whom life seemed to lavish her gifts with as reckless a prodigality as that of a licentious monarch for an ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... which they did not require; or whether they had cause really to believe the majority of the monastic bodies to be as they affirmed—whether, that is to say, there really were such cases either of flagrant immorality, neglect of discipline, or careless waste and prodigality, as to justify the general censure which was pronounced against the system by the Parliament ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... chosen Plato's Epistles or Anacreon's Poems instead of the Anabasis or the Ars Poetica, he would have reduced the extent of the falsehood, and would have furnished a ready reply which would have been equally effective with his Sunday-school teachers and their disputants. Hence we conclude this prodigality of misstatement, this exuberance of mendacity, is an effervescence of zeal in majorem gloriam Dei. Elsewhere he tells us that "the idea of the author of the 'Vestiges' is, that man is the development of a monkey, that the monkey is the embryo man, so that if you keep a baboon long enough, ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... Fitzroy my grateful recollection of his personal kindness; and I determined, with Captain Wickham's permission, to call this new river after his name, thus perpetuating, by the most durable of monuments, the services and the career of one, in whom, with rare and enviable prodigality, are mingled the daring of the seaman, the accomplishments of the student, and the graces of the Christian—of whose calm fortitude in the hour of impending danger, or whose habitual carefulness ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes

... "the making of a Baron;" that is to say, he might raise money by bargaining with some one who wanted a peerage; when, however, later on, he asked Buckingham for a repetition of the favour, Buckingham gave him a lecture on the impropriety of prodigality, which should make it seem that "while the King was asking money of Parliament with one hand he was giving with the other." How things were in Chancery in the days of the Queen, and of Bacon's predecessors, we know little; but Bacon himself implies that there was nothing new in what he did. "All ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... three hundred in his kitchen; and all the other offices were furnished in proportion.[*] It must be remarked, that this enormous train had tables supplied them at the king's expense, according to the mode of that age. Such prodigality was probably the source of many exactions by purveyors, and was one chief reason of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... unbridled desire to publish family secrets, also to quarrel, to strike, to take revenge, to do evil, to steal, to tell lies, to deceive, to blaspheme; carelessness about the children, intemperance, luxury, excessive prodigality, drunkenness, uncleanness, immodesty, application to magic and witchcraft, impiety, with several other causes. By legitimate causes we do not here mean judicial causes, but such as are legitimate in regard to the other married partner; separation from the house also ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... the general appropriation bills should be conducted with the greatest care and the closest scrutiny of expenditures. Appropriations should be adequate to the needs of the public service, but they should be absolutely free from prodigality. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison

... just policy, it is still true to itself, and faithful to its own perverted order. Those who are bountiful to crimes, will be rigid to merit, and penurious to service. Their penury is even held out as a blind and cover to their prodigality. The economy of injustice is, to furnish resources for the fund of corruption. Then they pay off their protection to great crimes and great criminals by being inexorable to the paltry frailties of little ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... something indescribably satisfactory in the intense solidity of those old stairs and floors—no spring in the planks, not a creak; you walk as over strata of stone. What clumsy grandeur! What Cyclopean carpenters! What a prodigality of oak! ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... the present on the neck of the future, still continue. His expenses forerun his means; he incurs debts on the faith of what his magic pen is to produce, and then, under the pressure of his debts, sacrifices its productions for prices far below their value. It is a redeeming circumstance in his prodigality, that it is lavished oftener upon others than upon himself; he gives without thought or stint, and is the continual dupe of his benevolence and his trustfulness in human nature. We may say of him as he says of one of his heroes, "He could not stifle the natural impulse ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... for then, as sole reply, I shall point you to their claws and teeth. Before the Belgian engineers became interested in the economy of fuel, they burned double the quantity. Therefore on their part there was carelessness, negligence, prodigality, waste, perhaps theft, although they were bound to the administration by a contract which obliged them to practise all the contrasted virtues. IT IS GOOD, you say, TO INTEREST THE LABORER. I say further that it is just. But I maintain ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... experienced the limits of his authority whenever he demanded subsidies, however moderate, from the parliament; and therefore, not to hazard a refusal, he made no mention this session of a supply: but as his wars both in France and Scotland, as well as his usual prodigality, had involved him in great expense, he had resource to other methods of filling his exchequer. Notwithstanding the former abolition of his debts, he yet required new loans from his subjects; and he enhanced gold from forty-five shillings to forty-eight ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume

... wretched store where Rosario had been born, streamed away between the fingers of the spendthrift husband; and the cow was running dry, as the mistress of the tavern-boat observed to her son one day, in a lecture on prodigality. ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... rainbow—syne to the Tolbooth, which is a terror to evil-doers, and from which the Lord preserve us all!—syne to the Market, where ye'll see lamb, beef, mutton, and veal, hanging up on cleeks, in roasting and boiling pieces—spar-rib, jigget, shoulder, and heuk-bane, in the greatest prodigality of abundance;—and syne down to the Duke's gate, by looking through the bonny white-painted iron-stanchels of which, ye'll see the deer running beneath the green trees; and the palace itself, in the inside of which ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... for men are prone to call the well-balanced nature cold and the well-regulated life Pharisaic. Addison did not escape charges of this kind from the wild livers of his own time, who could not dissociate genius from profligacy nor generosity of nature from prodigality. It was one of the great services of Addison to his generation and to all generations, that in an age of violent passions, he showed how a strong man could govern himself. In a time of reckless living, he illustrated ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... prophecy was happily not fulfilled in its gloomy completeness: nobody had blown his head off; but Billy Blee's prodigality of ammunition proved at last too much for the blunderbuss of the bygone coach-guard, and in its sudden annihilation a fragment had cut the gunner across the face, and a second inflicted a pretty deep flesh-wound on his arm. Neither injury was very serious, and the general escape, as John Grimbal ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... calmness, and said it was better his palace should be burnt than the cottage of a poor peasant." (These thoroughly good men always go too far, and lose their power over the mass.) He died exemplifying the mean he had always observed between prodigality and avarice, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... value their own masters and mistresses by the same standard; and in their attachment there is a necessary mixture of that sympathy which is sacred to prosperity. Setting aside all interested motives, servants love show and prodigality in their masters; they feel that they partake the triumph, and they wish it to be as magnificent as possible. These dispositions break out naturally in the conversation of servants with one another; if children are suffered to hear them, they will quickly catch the same tastes. But if these ideas ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... or manufacturing, the consumption which would have taken place would have been more than balanced at the end of the year by new products, created by the labor of those who would in that case have been the consumers. By C's prodigality, that which would have been consumed with a return is consumed without return. C's tradesmen may have made a profit during the process; but, if the capital had been expended productively, an equivalent profit would have been made by builders, fencers, tool-makers, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... of King Solomon, his son Rehoboam became ruler of the Israelites. The prodigality and magnificence of Solomon's court, and his lavish way of living had been met by heavy taxation. Seeing the vast revenues of the kingdom employed in this way, the people had ...
— The Man Who Did Not Die - The Story of Elijah • J. H. Willard

... his own most secret emotions written on the very rocks—who gathers up the many beautiful things that in the prodigality of nature lie scattered over the earth, neglected or unheeded, and the more dearly, the more passionately loves them, because they are now appropriated to the uses of his own imagination, who will by her alchymy so further brighten them that the thousands ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... French batteries woke up and began sending over shells with Gallic prodigality, the Germans replying sparingly, and as if in invitation, for my benefit, a French aeroplane no bigger than a Jersey mosquito appeared and circled over the German positions trying to locate the cleverly concealed heavy batteries, ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various

... of species, of which we have heard so much of late; and, to give a single instance, the seeming waste, of human thought, of human agony, of human power, seems but another instance of that inscrutable prodigality of nature, by which, of a thousand acorns dropping to the ground, but one shall become the thing it can become, and grow into a builder oak, the rest be craunched up ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley

... honourers of clergymen, but all of Cambridge, and chiefly Doctor Bamberge, Doctor Howlsworth, Broanbricke, Walley, and Mickelthite, and Sanderson, with many others. We lived in great plenty and hospitality, but no lavishness in the least, nor prodigality, and, I believe, my father never drank six glasses of wine in ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe

... Greeks the doctrine of metempsychosis. It is difficult to reconcile with either of these notions their belief that the spirit dwelt in the body so long as the body could be rescued from decay, and the reason which they give for bestowing such prodigality of labor on their sepulchres—that the tomb was man's eternal home. The darkness of uninterpreted hieroglyphics still rests to a great extent on the religious creed and practices of the Egyptians. But three things we think ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... personify. Had Greece been united under one monarchy, and characterized by one common monotony of soil, a single river, a single mountain, alone might have been deemed divine. It was the number of its tribes—it was the variety of its natural features, which produced the affluence and prodigality of its mythological creations. Nor can we omit from the causes of the teeming, vivid, and universal superstition of Greece, the accidents of earthquake and inundation, to which the land appears early and often to have been exposed. To the activity and caprice of nature—to the ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... of magnificence of the purse about them, and a peculiar propensity to expenditure at the goldsmith's and jeweler's for rings, chains, brooches, necklaces, jeweled watches, and other rich trinkets, partly for their own wear, partly for presents to their female acquaintances; a gorgeous prodigality, such as was often to be noticed in former times in Southern planters and West India creoles, when flush with the profits ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving

... it, Billy. The one secure asset is a big capital. Money rules this world. Some men have been lucky enough to rise and stay risen, without money. But not a man of all the men who have been knocked out could have been dislodged if he had been armed and armored with money. My prodigality was my fatal mistake. I shan't make it again—if I get the chance. You don't know, Tetlow, how hard it is to get money when you are tumbling and must have it. I never dreamed what a factor it is in calamities of every ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips

... parsimonious ancestors have informed us, that the fatal waste of fortune is by small expenses, by the profusion of sums too little singly to alarm our caution, and which we never suffer ourselves to consider together. Of the same kind is the prodigality of life; he that hopes to look back hereafter with satisfaction upon past years, must learn to know the present value of single minutes, and endeavour to let no particle of time fall ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... unsuitable, beggarly place conceivable to harbour a young lady. At the same time came in on my mind the recollection of the clothes that I had bought for her; and I thought this contrast of poverty and prodigality bore an ill appearance. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... several churches—rich, on the outside, with all the luxury of architecture,—withinside, gorgeous with painting, sculpture, and many-coloured marbles. The prodigality with which the most splendid and costly materials are lavished here is perfectly amazing: pillars of lapis-lazuli, columns of Egyptian porphyry, and pavements of mosaic, altars of alabaster ascended by steps incrusted with agate ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntington The Death of Robert Earl of Huntington Contention between Liberality and Prodigality Grim ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... so, we had eyes for nothing but the varied beauties of nature which lay spread before us in such luxuriant prodigality. ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood

... all things the most precious, wasting time must be,' as Poor Richard says, 'the greatest prodigality'; since, as he elsewhere tells us, 'Lost time is never found again; and what we call time enough, always proves little enough.' Let us, then, up and be doing, and doing to the purpose; so by diligence ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various

... and lace curtains and victrolas may stand not only for the improvidence of the poor, but for the neurasthenic yearnings of the rich. Talk about the economy of Nature! Why, nothing in the universe, not even the civilization of man, has ever equalled her indecent prodigality!" ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow

... of mankind have been more bitterly scouted than that of meanness in money matters. Of the two, prodigality has been thought the better. The man who is poor has not been censured for being careful; rather has he been praised for not being ashamed to own his poverty. But the spectacle of the rich man hoarding his wealth and not living ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams

... at the prodigality and licence of his style, and the unchartered daring of his imagination, will find a most curious and brilliant discussion of the whole subject in his Essay on Shelley, which may be summed up in the injunction that "in poetry, as in the Kingdom of God, we should not take thought ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... of a shepherd for his flock, the love of God for His creatures, should be so extraordinary as to provide the wondrous benefits which Christ in the Eucharist has wrought for us. We simply cannot grasp with our feeble minds the prodigality of such enduring love. But the Saviour knew His purpose with us, and He knew the needs of our souls. As guests destined for an eternal banquet, and as heirs to celestial thrones, it is needful for us, amid the rough ways and perils of life, to be constantly reminded ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan

... madam," replied the Lady of Lochleven, in the same bitter tone, "you retain an exchequer which neither your own prodigality can drain, nor your offended country deprive you of. While you have fair words and delusive smiles at command, you need no other bribes to ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... space the great ones and the small ones of mediaeval and early England did not indulge in this riotous sort of living, but "kept secret house," as it was called, both after their own fashion. The extremes of prodigality and squalor were more strongly marked among the poorer classes while this country was in a semi-barbarous condition, and even the aristocracy by no means maintained the same domestic state throughout the year as their modern representatives. There are not those ostentatious ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt

... Motives produce the Excesses of which Men are guilty of in the Negligence of and Provision for themselves. Usury, Stock-jobbing, Extortion and Oppression, have their Seed in the Dread of Want; and Vanity, Riot and Prodigality, from the Shame of it: But both these Excesses are infinitely below the Pursuit of a reasonable Creature. After we have taken Care to command so much as is necessary for maintaining our selves in the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... the unfortunate debtor. But has it not, at the same time, exposed the confiding tradesman to deception and to consequent ruin, by destroying all adequate punishment, and therefore removing every check upon vice and prodigality? In a Dictionnaire des Gens du Monde, insolvency has been, not unaptly, defined, a mode of getting rich by infallible rules! See Idler 38, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... counteracted by the softness of her skin and the healthy colour of her curving lips. She bore his scrutiny so impersonally, with such sweet and challenging interest, that he persisted in it. Her brown hair was almost troublesome in its prodigality. There were little curls about her neck which defied restraint. Her cool muslin gown, even to his untutored perceptions, revealed a distinction which the first dressmaker in London had endorsed. She ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... reported to have been far more correct and careful in drawing than was Tintoret, while Veronese's prodigality of colour was a mellowed version of Tintoret's glare or deadness. One of Veronese's best pictures is the 'Marriage of Cana,' painted originally for the refectory of the convent of San Giorgio, Venice, and now in the Louvre. 'It is not less ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler

... Enclosed is a letter to a Russian nobleman, an old lover of mine, who, I understand, is in favour. He will certainly be at your command. He is a man possessed by the desire of having reputation among foreigners, vain of the preference of our sex, generous even to prodigality. By his means you will be immediately placed on an easy footing with all the leading persons of the Russian court. You will go on from one step to another, till you are at the height which I have in ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... the conditions of success are so complex! If the seed fall here, it will not germinate; if there, it will be drowned or washed away; if yonder, it will find too sharp competition. There are only a few places where it will find all the conditions favorable. Hence the prodigality of Nature in seeds, scattering a thousand for one plant or tree. She is like a hunter shooting at random into every tree or bush, hoping to bring down his game, which he does if his ammunition holds out long enough; or like the British soldier in the Boer War, ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs

... certain dissonances would offend the ear by their harshness if they were heard quite alone, and yet in combination they render the harmony more pleasing. He also points out divers goods involved in evils, for instance, the usefulness of prodigality in the rich and avarice in the poor; indeed it serves to make the arts flourish. We must also bear in mind that we are not to judge the universe by the small size of our globe and of all that is known to us. For the stains and defects in it may ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... Physiognomy, Pigmentaries, Pilgrimages, Piron, Pirre, Pitman, Isaac, Pity, Plaisters, Plato, Polygamy, Polygamy or polyandry? Pompeye, Porters of gates, Porus, Poverty, Princes' oaths and promises, Prisoners, Prodigality, Promises, Proverbs, Ptolome, Publius Ceser, ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton

... again; and the lover of beauty, instead of finding under one roof whatever genius had created for the worship of the ages, would have to wander over all Europe, seeking in isolated and widely-separated positions the riches which at the Louvre were strewed before him in congregated prodigality. But lamentations were in vain. The miracles of human inspiration were borne to the congenial climes which originated them, to have, in all after time, the tale of their journeyings an inseparable appendage to their history, and even their intrinsic merit to derive additional lustre from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various

... however, the wine was taking toll, and Lorelei felt a certain pity for him. Waste is shocking; it grieved her to see a man so blessed with opportunity flinging himself away so fatuously. The hilarity which greeted him on every hand spoke of misspent nights and a reckless prodigality that betokened long habitude. Only his splendid constitution—that abounding vitality which he had inherited from sturdy, temperate forebears—enabled him to keep up the pace; but Lorelei saw that he was ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... tragedy on Marino Faliero, none of which is yet gone to England. The fifth act is nearly completed, but it is dreadfully long—40 sheets of long paper of 4 pages each—about 150 when printed; but 'so full of pastime and prodigality' that I think it ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... group, a circumstance that the trailing Wilbur noted with alarm. The families did not commonly affiliate, and the circumstance boded ominously. It could surely not be without purpose. The Wilbur twin's alarm was that the Whipple family had regretted its prodigality of the day before and was about to demand its money back. He lurked ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... forgetting that "the sleeping fox catches no poultry," and that "there will be sleeping enough in the grave," as Poor Richard says. If time be of all things the most precious, "wasting of time must be," as Poor Richard says, "the greatest prodigality;" since, as he elsewhere tells us, "lost time is never found again," and what we call "time enough! always proves little enough." Let us, then, up and be doing, and doing to the purpose; so by diligence shall we do more with less perplexity. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... mysterious way, better for the deed? That is the splendid fruit of all such sublime sacrifice. It enriches the whole human family. It makes us lift our heads with pride that we are men—that there is in us at our best this noble gift of valiant unselfishness, this glorious prodigality that spends life itself for something greater than life. If we had met this nameless sailor we should have found him perhaps a very ordinary man, with plenty of failings, doubtless, like the rest of us, and without any idea that he had in him ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... words over a coffin wherein lies a wasted, weary, gray-haired woman, whose eyes have so long held that pathetic story of loss and suffering and patient yearning, which so many women's eyes reveal to those who weep? Why not have made the wilderness in her heart blossom like the rose with the prodigality of your love? Now you would give worlds, were they yours to give, to see the tears of joy your words would have once caused, bejeweling the closed windows of her soul. ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins



Words linked to "Prodigality" :   dissipation, improvidence, profligacy, prodigal, shortsightedness, wastefulness, waste, extravagance



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