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Stingy   /stˈɪndʒi/   Listen
Stingy

adjective
1.
Unwilling to spend.  Synonym: ungenerous.  "An ungenerous response to the appeal for funds"
2.
Deficient in amount or quality or extent.  Synonyms: meager, meagerly, meagre, scrimpy.  "Meager fare"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Stingy" Quotes from Famous Books



... a wry face, master, don't be stingy. You must expect to sacrifice something for friendship. Everybody thinks that I have great power over the famous artist, and they ask me favors and are constantly getting me into difficulty. They don't know you, they don't realize how perverse, ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... hadn't no other way to get my livin' an' I was kinder in the habit of it. There's some little variety, even in savages, an' it's human natur' to keep on a-hopin.' I've had 'em stingy an' generous, drunk an' sober, peaceful an' disturbin'. After the first few times, I learned to take real pleasure out'n their queer notions. When you've learned to enjoy seein' your husband make ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed

... two strings to it, and that brings one glass more. Well then, what is the use of two strings if they ain't fastened? If you want to keep the cap on, it must be tied, that's sartain, and that is another go; and then, minister, what an everlastin' miserable stingy, ongenteel critter a feller must be, that won't drink to the health of the Female Brewer. Well, that's another glass to sweethearts and wives, and then turn in for sleep, and that's what I intend to do to-night. I guess I'll tie the ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... have no doubt that grapes taste best in other people's mouths. It is an old notion that it is easier to be generous than to be stingy. I am convinced that the majority of people would be generous from selfish motives, if they had the opportunity. Philosophical Observation. —Nothing shows one who his friends are like prosperity and ripe fruit. I had a good friend in the country, whom I almost ...
— Widger's Quotations of Charles D. Warner • David Widger

... said this was quite what she had expected of those people; that they were horrid and stingy and vulgar; and she should see what face they would have to ask her to take tickets when they were trying to get up something. She began to be vexed with herself, she confessed, at the joke she was playing on Mr. Homos, ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells

... Florence, "but all the same I don't believe this ribbon could have been bought for twopence a yard. I must speak to mademoiselle; she could not—oh, no, no, that is impossible—mademoiselle is very poor and stingy—but what does it mean?" ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade

... the invitation, and then paused. I will write instead. Mary Penrose is on the long-distance line,—toll thirty cents in the daytime! In spring I am very stingy; thirty cents means six papers of flower seeds, or three heliotropes. Whereas in winter it is simply thirty cents, and it must be a very vapid conversation indeed that is not worth so much on a dark ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright

... you know," Dick went on. "Such rot, to hold a girl responsible for her ancestors! Isn't it rot, now? Father says they're a bad stock, dissipated and arrogant and spendthrift and shiftless and weak—oh, and a lot more! He's not stingy with his adjectives, bless you! Picture to yourself Madge being dissipated and arrogant and—have you ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... "One thing I'll say for you, young George; you haven't a stingy bone in your body. That's the Amberson stock ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... poor people who really needed work, and she found it a much wiser plan to give them employment and pay them for it, and advise them to lay in coal and various other matters for winter. She was not a stingy woman; but she did not believe in confirming ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas

... favourite so long that his absence was soon noticed, and the men he had so often entertained and treated were loud in their complaints and jeers. The ridicule was hard enough to bear, but the sneers at his stingy ways ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis

... Elmore's—ha! ha! If he gets scent and looks shy at you, my lad, come to me. I'm at the Star Hotel for the next few days. I want a tight faellow like you, and you shall have a fair percentage. I'm none of your stingy ones. I say, I hope this devil is quiet? She cocks up her ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... ought to be grateful for it; and the one way they can best show their gratitude is by helping those who are less fortunate than themselves. Men endowed with any, or most, or all of these fortunate conditions ought not to be stingy in helping others who have not been so fortunate as themselves."—Mr. Lloyd George at Denmark ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various

... a cow the reception the codfish to breathe stingy scanty, curtailed she was painful to look upon are you having holidays? whatever she may say, she ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet

... Mary, you know very well she's just as good as I am; better, probably, for she's got no pies nor starch in her pedigree. Her father's a Major and her mother was of quite good family—and she's got lots of rich, stingy relations ... and she doesn't sponge on 'em. What's the ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker

... pious, stingy, scandal-talkin', flag-raisin' crew!" he roared. "Rebecca never took the flag; I found it in ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... were planted to vegetables each year for the slaves and, in season, they had all the vegetables they could eat, also Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes, roasting ears, watermelons and "stingy green" (home raised tobacco). In truth, the planters and "Niggers" all used "stingy green", there then being very little if any "menufro" (processed ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration

... if it ended in their youth, while mind and body had still enough vitality and elasticity to endure! I paint it, because it accounts for the accusation sometimes made—especially by men—that women are naturally stingy. Possibly so: but in many instances may it not have been this petty struggle with petty wants this pitiful calculating of penny against penny, how best to save here and spend there, which narrows a woman's nature in spite of herself? It sometimes takes ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)

... way, and assured me we were not overdoing it. Anything left the crew would divide and take home with them—it seemed this was the custom. It appeared to me that I was providing for this crew for the winter, but I did not like to appear stingy, and said no more. The amount of drink required also surprised me. I arranged for what I thought we should need for ourselves, and then Mr. Goyles spoke up for the crew. I must say that for him, he ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome

... I dont want you to introduce me to your swell relations; it is not worth my while to waste time on people who cant earn their own living. And never mind your governor: we can get on without him. If you are hard up for money, and he is stingy, you had better get it from me than from ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... because he had only time to get a few hundred eggs, two turkeys, a heap of butter and a can of milk. At Keneh one Issa (Jesus) also lent a donkey, and sent me three boxes of delicious Mecca dates, which Omar thought stingy. Such attentions are agreeable here where good food is not to be had except as a gift. They all made me promise to see them again on my return and dine at their houses, and Wassef wanted to make a fantasia and have dancing girls. How you would love the Arab women in the ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... her board, and, in exchange, she pays me in return—at least, I think so; for, my good fellow, you know, the absent are often in the wrong. Now, I am the more tenacious to know if I am wrong, as Alexandrine—she is called Alexandrine—has sent for some money. I have never been stingy with the fair sex; but I do not wish to be made a fool of. Thus, before playing the generous with this dear friend, I wish to know if she deserves it by her fidelity. I know there is nothing more absurd than fidelity; but it is a weakness I have. You will render me, then, a friendly service, ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... funny tale 'of a stingy man, Who was none too good but might have been worse, Who went to his church, on a Sunday night And carried along his ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various

... her a shilling. Incidents parallel to this had kept her faith in humanity green. There must be plenty of these open-handed gentlemen in houses such as she worked in, and, perhaps, in Mrs. O'Connor's house there might be more than one such person. There were stingy people enough, heaven knew, people who would get one to run messages and almost expect to be paid themselves for allowing one to work for them. Mrs. Makebelieve anathematized such skinflints with a vocabulary which was quite equal to the detailing of their misdeeds; but she refused to dwell ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens

... and might have done much good with his money, he was so stingy and so hard, that the people did not love him at all. But his bags of silver and gold did not buy him water; and at last the thought came to him, "Why! I will dig a well, as people used to do in my country. ...
— The Nursery, August 1877, Vol. XXII, No. 2 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various

... I s'pose, that you have seen him," added Barkspear, in that peculiar whining tone which always indicates a mean, stingy man. ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic

... specks under the finger nails, said to portend gifts or presents. A stingy man is said to be as full of gifts as a brazen ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.

... I thought I was right in believing that Cavalcanti to be a stingy fellow. How can a young man live upon 5,000 francs ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... wait. Kiss me, Betty." But she was silent, with face turned from him. Again he lifted her face to his. "I say, kiss me, Betty. Just one? That was a stingy little kiss. You know I'm going away, and that is why I spoke to you now. I didn't dare go without telling you this first. You're so sweet, Betty, some one might find you out and love you—just as I have—only not so deeply in love with you—no one could—but ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine

... right after the goods!... I vow I'm bout sick o' my job! Never WITH the crowd, allers JEST on the outside, s if I wa'n't as good's they be! If it paid well, mebbe I wouldn't mind, but they're so thunderin' stingy round here, they don't leave anything decent out for you to take from em, yet you're reskin' your liberty n' reputation jest the same!... Countin' the poor pickin's n' the time I lose in jail I might most's well be done with it n' work out by the day, ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... him outside?" he demanded. "Into the open. This ain't no place to bust a horse like him! That horse needs air! Get him out into about three-quarters of these United States! Git ginerous! Git ginerous! I hate a stingy man!" ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton

... Maine appeared in his mantle, entering by the King's little door. Never before had he made so many or such profound reverences as he did now—though he was not usually very stingy of them— then standing alone, resting upon his stick near the Council table, he looked around at everybody. Then and there, being in front of him, with the table between us, I made him the most smiling bow I had ever given him, and did it with extreme volupty. He repaid me in the same coin, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... everybody did it. To be bidden to this garden-party was in itself a cachet of respectability. This indeed was the only satisfaction to be gathered from the festivity. If the honour was great, the hospitality was small. If the condescension was vast, the fare provided was verging on the stingy. Here were served by half-starved domestic servants, in the smallest of tumblers, "cups" wherein were mixed liquors, such as cider, usually consumed by self-respecting persons in the undiluted condition and ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman

... know—you gullible little fool. Well, to start with, Avery Goodman—in his true nature, he's a worldly, carnal man. His religion is a cloak, a raincoat, a mere disguise. Mrs. Charity Givens, now, she's no more truly charitable than I am! She's shrewd and stingy, her lavish gifts to the poor are merely made for the sake of the praise and eulogy heaped upon her by her admiring friends. Manley Knight, renowed for his bravery in the war, is an arrant coward. His soul is a thing of whining terror, his heroism but a mask. Oh, I know—I read these ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells

... been brought about (27th of Jamada al-Akhirah April 16, 744) by his cousin and successor Yazid (No. iii.) surnamed the Retrencher. The tale in the text speaks well for him; but generosity amongst the Arabs covers a multitude of sins, and people say, "Better a liberal sinner than a stingy saint." ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton

... she admitted. "He told me no less than three times that you said it. It seemed to tickle him most to death, for some reason, and that's queer, too, for he's anything but stingy. But there, I suppose you can pay board if you want to, though who you'll pay it to is another thing. I shan't take a cent from the only grandson ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... murmured they in angry astonishment; "how can even the land be got tilled in that way?" "We cannot work if we don't get food," said the hand laborers and slaves. "It lies in King Hakon's blood," remarked others; "his father and all his kindred were apt to be stingy about food, though liberal enough with money." At length, one Osbjorn (or Bear of the Asen or Gods, what we now call Osborne), one Osbjorn of Medalhusin Gulathal, stept forward, and said, in a distinct manner, "We Bonders (peasant proprietors) thought, King Hakon, when thou heldest thy first ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle

... much of a knife," said Jim, apologetic but pleased. Jim's views of the world were changing: his father, although a bandit chief, had let him go to jail, while this stingy old man, with no halo of adventure about him, gave him a knife; and here were Miss Ware and Mr. Farnsworth and Mrs. Calkins and the jailer, none of them smugglers, who were ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson

... are difficult of attainment by those that are wanting in Exertion. The Brahmana attains to prosperity by holy living, the Kshatriya by prowess, the Vaisya by manly exertion, and the Sudra by service. Riches and other objects of enjoyment do not follow the stingy, nor the impotent, nor the idler. Nor are these ever attained by the man that is not active or manly or devoted to the exercise of religious austerities. Even he, the adorable Vishnu, who created the three worlds ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... Gentry are gone down to their respective Seats in the Country, in order to keep their Christmas in the Old Way, and entertain their Tenants and Trades-folks as their Ancestors used to do and I wish them a merry Christmas accordingly. I must also take notice to the stingy Tribe, that if they don't at least make their Tenants or Tradesmen drink when they come to see them in the Christmas Holydays, they have Liberty of retaliating which is a ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... was due to a touch of poetry. She polished her verses in beeswax and turpentine, and sought on her floors and tables for that which the poet seeks in Eden or Atlantis. It must not be imagined that because she was so particular she was stingy. She was one of the most open-handed creatures that ever breathed. She loved plenty. The jug was always full to overflowing with beer, and the dishes were always heaped up with good things, so that nobody was ever ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford

... Hartford, and I've a five-dollar gold-piece in my puss,' says I, 'that I can spare, and will give that more to the same charity, for the privilege of tellin' before these ladies, that heard me accused of being stingy, why I don't give to you when you ask me to, and especially why I didn't give the last time you asked me. I would like to tell why I didn't help sew in the Dorcas Society, to buy the new carpet,' says I, 'but I don't want to hurt anybody's feelin's that ha'n't hurt mine, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... looks of the strange dark man who got out of the car and came into the yard with the air of a thrashing machine bolting into whatever came in his way. He stood sturdily and waited until he was asked who lived there, and admitted with a stingy "yes" that it was Mrs. Carson's house. A thundering knock on the front door followed, and the other man in the car got out and came into the yard behind ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill

... always bound to be such a person in every well-furnished house! They seem to be just as necessary as the sofas and easy-chairs—but not quite so comfortable to have around. We are all deathly afraid of her! She is rich, stingy, and says that she has made a will, leaving every dollar to the "Widows and Orphans' Home"—a nice way to do her relations! So of course we are on the strain; on our best behavior to effect a change in our favor. Ma says she will never, in this ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.

... said Lindsley, rushing to the ladder. "Come along, Raymond. Howe and his fellows have been stingy and mean enough ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic

... This precept of the divine law does not forbid anyone to beg, but it forbids the rich to be so stingy that some are compelled by necessity to beg. The civil law imposes a penalty on able-bodied mendicants who beg from motives neither of utility ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... after him] As if I cared about a stingy brat like you! Go back to the freckled maypole you left for me: you've been fretting for her ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw

... yourself, ma'am, to abuse a poor dumb animal, ma'am, as knows no better than to take food when he sees it, ma'am? He only follows the nature which God has given, ma'am; and it's a pity your nature, ma'am, which I've heard, is of the stingy saving species, does not make you shut your cupboard-door a little closer. There is such a thing as law for brute animals. I'll ask Mr. Jenkins, but I don't think them Radicals has done away with that law yet, for all their Reform Bill, ma'am. My poor precious love of a Tommy, is he hurt? and is ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell

... out o' that silver pocket-pistol o' his'n. He got drunk a lot up here; but he didn't drink alone; no'm. There wasn't a stingy hair in ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... expected that every person who opens an account at bank by eating a supper there shall buy a number of "shad," but not with the view of taking them home to show to his wife and children. Yet it is not an uncommon thing for persons of a stingy and ungrateful disposition to spend most of their time in these benevolent institutions without ever spending so much as a dollar for "shad," but eating, drinking, and smoking, and particularly drinking, to the best of their ability. This reprehensible practice is known familiarly ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... away, his conscience was beginning to give him salutary twinges. After all, perhaps it would have been better to have gone to Sunday School and church. Mrs. Lynde might be bossy; but there was always a box of cookies in her kitchen cupboard and she was not stingy. At this inconvenient moment Davy remembered that when he had torn his new school pants the week before, Mrs. Lynde had mended them beautifully and never said a ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... thread of cotton which gives it a rough look when laundered, and there is generally a shortage in width—which suggests the advisability of measuring the table top before buying, for cloths come in different widths, and one which is too narrow looks out-grown and awkward and—stingy! The average table is about 4 feet across, and requires a cloth 2 yards square, though in buying by the yard it is safe to allow an extra quarter for straightening the edges and hemming. The cloth should hang at least a foot ...
— The Complete Home • Various

... about the shore, and then went into the cottage for a bit, and that afforded Bob another opportunity for a few sneers about this being Bigley's home now, addressing him as the master of the house, bantering him about being stingy with his cider, and finally jumping up as he saw my father coming down from the mine, and then we all went over to the Bay ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn

... Well, for sure, I ain't so old like what I'll look. But Old Man Savarin was old already. He's old, old, old, when he's only thirty; an' mean—bapteme! If de old Nick ain' got de hottest place for dat old stingy—yes, for sure! ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson

... that. I don't believe you're scared of work; you're only sort of shy about it. I never saw you really afraid of more'n three things—bein' a spoil-sport, or out of style, or havin' a waiter think you're stingy. No, you ain't afraid of work, but you never been properly introduced, so you're kind of standoffish about it. I've always kind of hoped you'd take a tip from Bob Standish—there's one of your own breed that knows where the durable satisfactions of life are. Just as good family's ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall

... be too generous to the mammal mind. For in the cases we have just mentioned, part of man's mind has, so to speak, got into the animal's. On the other hand, when we study rabbits and guinea-pigs, we are apt to be too stingy, for these rodents are under the average of mammals, and those that live in domestication illustrate the stupefying effect of a too sheltered life. The same applies to domesticated sheep contrasted with wild sheep, ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... extravagant desires was matched by an inborn capacity to get the necessary money. His luxurious tastes were certainly not moderated by his associations—enormously rich people who, while they could be stingy enough in some respects, at the same time could and did fling away fortunes in gratifying selfish whims—for silly showy houses, for retinues of wasteful servants, for gewgaws that accentuated the homeliness of their homely women and coarsened ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips

... you should not be so stingy, you know. Just let me tell you how necessary land is to peasants! Eh, what? ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al

... I was your age," . . . he would begin saying—but Julio would suddenly bring the dialogue to a close. He had heard his father's story too many times. Ah, the stingy old miser! What he had been giving him all these months was no more than the interest on his grandfather's legacy. . . . And by the advice of Argensola he ventured to get control of the field. He was planning to hand over the management of his ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... than never; and after so many years, the King has his own again. Schwerin is sumptuously lodged in the Jesuits, Palace: Liegnitz, essentially a Protestant Town, has many thoughts upon this event, but as yet will be stingy of speaking them. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... buy something to eat with his own money," said Martha; "all the better,—it is just so much saved. Isn't he stingy, the ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac

... homely, hard-working life. Her husband an honest, decent man enough, was a brewer, and somewhat given to over drinking, and so he was often surly and stingy and unpleasant. ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein

... a hard man. Everybody in Riverdale said he was mean and stingy. Any generous-hearted man would have been willing to make an easy bargain with an honest, industrious, poor man, like John Bright, who wished to own the house in which he lived; but Mr. Hardhand, although he was rich, only thought how he could make ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic

... Levi said that whoever is born on the first day of the week (Sunday) will be either thoroughly good or thoroughly bad, because on that day light and darkness were created. If on the second day of the week, he will be stingy, because the waters were divided on that day. If on the third day, he will be rich and prosperous, because on that day abundant vegetation was created. If on the fourth day, he will be wise and happy, because on that day ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... this one, Miss Glaser always states that she does not want it understood that she considers the Scotch people at all stingy; but they are a ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers

... men and women the Biblical promise, "As thy day, so shall thy strength be," comes now as the message of modern science. Nature is not stingy. She has not given the human race a meager inheritance. She did not blunder when she made the human body, nor did she allow the spirit of man to develop a civilization to whose demand his body is not equal. After its long process ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury

... and stingy. He lives in the country. He is the well-known Prince Bolkonski who had to retire from the army under the late Emperor, and was nicknamed 'the King of Prussia.' He is very clever but eccentric, and a bore. The poor girl is very unhappy. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... to dun the publishers when they don't send in a sufficient number of reviewers' copies; Finot, as editor, appropriates two and sells them, and I must have two to sell. If a book of capital importance comes out, and the publisher is stingy with copies, his life is made a burden to him. The craft is vile, but I live by it, and so do scores of others. Do not imagine that things are any better in public life. There is corruption everywhere in both regions; every man is corrupt or corrupts others. ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... or Catherine Hall, was a slattern and a minx, Mrs. Score was a far superior shrew; and for the seven years of her apprenticeship the girl was completely at her mistress's mercy. Yet though wondrously stingy, jealous, and violent, while her maid was idle and extravagant, and her husband seemed to abet the girl, Mrs. Score put up with the wench's airs, idleness, and caprices, without ever wishing to dismiss her from the "Bugle." The ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray

... doesn't think I'm stingy about the wine,' he said; 'he might drink it all for anything I should ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... which immediately followed. The latter alternative leaves scope and offers temptations for such inventiveness of fancy about details and incidents, whys and wherefores, as the absence of all but the following stingy revelations may justify. The good Adam, after recording, in November, 1604, and in the ensuing March, two mysterious rides with his son, has left, this, under date of March 28th, 1605:—"My soonne was sollemly contracted to Mary Foorth, by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... she cried, joyfully. "And now let us see if it is potent. The stingy wizard didn't give me much of it, but I guess there's enough for two or ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... a stingy man, nohow. Often and often White has told me about seeing Hank, after he'd sold a piece of land, treating the hull town down in Nolan's bar-room jest as come-easy, go-easy as if it wasn't money he orter paid his ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis

... uproar if they have not," cried Frank. "The rajah is a regular old pirate, as my father says, and he helps himself to whatever he fancies from everybody round, but there's nothing stingy about him as ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn

... uncle is dead, granted twenty or thirty taels in excess, is it likely that Madame Wang would not have given you her consent? It's evident that our Madame Wang is a good woman and that it's you people who are mean and stingy. Unfortunately, however, her ladyship has with all her bounty no opportunity of exercising it. You could, my dear girl, well set your mind at ease. You wouldn't, in this instance, have had to spend any of your own money; ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... I have not done for a long time. Listen then! I brought with me hither the two last cantos of 'Oniegin,' ready for the press, a tale in octaves, (the Little House in the Kolomora,) number of dramatic scenes—'The Stingy Knight,' 'Mozart and Salieri,' 'The Feast in the Time of the Plague,' and 'Don Juan.' Besides this, I have written about thirty small pieces of poetry. I have not done yet; I have written in prose (this is a great secret) five tales," (Ivan ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... of Polos have written to have created such an effect? Then came the General Lliano, a very handsome man, but who I thought was rather stingy, as he only put the Spanish Army at my disposition, and himself (cela va ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone

... looked resentfully at his back as he walked away, and Mrs. Crumpet openly expressed her opinion that he knew nothing more about it himself. "If he did, he couldn't help letting it dribble out by degrees, like a leaky kirn, being too stingy to tell it out free, like any other body," ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... was discouraging to lose the corn, and John, to take the place of the shortened crop, had had a field plowed and sewed to millet. A promise of rain meant a probable crop of that substitute for the heavier grain, but it must be rain, not a mere shower. Disappointed at the stingy display of water, John wandered about the house, disturbed by Jack's noise, and ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... reckon that feller was jest about as stingy as the feller you 've been tellin' about, and mebby stingier, 'cause he 'd take more risks. Anyway, he was as ornery stingy as he could be an' live. If he 'd been any wuss he 'd of died to save grub an' shoe leather. W'y, him and me was out huntin' together oncet, over toward ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly

... think that their morality in wifehood is all sufficient. A woman may boast of her "virtue" until doom's day, but "if her soul is small and her heart stingy" her example is not worthy of imitation—for she is only good to herself. She has no way of proving the ownership of the "virtue of virtues." It takes many virtues to make one "good," in the real ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley

... sea; that the Turk had sent him alone back, with the express order to say to him that, unless he sent him five hundred crowns, he would take his son to be a slave in Algiers—ah, ah, ah! You may imagine our miser, our stingy old curmudgeon, in the greatest anguish, struggling between his love for his son and his love for his money. Those five hundred crowns that are asked of him are five hundred dagger-thrusts—ah! ah! ah! ah! He can't bring his mind to tear out, as it were, this sum from his heart, and his anguish ...
— The Impostures of Scapin • Moliere (Poquelin)

... the extravagance ceases; everybody gets stingy. A man with five thousand dollars doesn't buy a five thousand dollar lot. He doesn't buy anything; his wife must wear the old bonnet, and his church assessment is reduced. Then the tide turns and the country recovers ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain

... get a good observation, and asked me for the new nautical almanac! You know they are only calculated for five years. We had two Greenwich ones on board, and they ran out December 31, 1865. But the government had been as stingy in almanacs as in coal and compasses. They did not mean to keep ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale

... You can't hardly wait from week to week to get the new instalments. Trouble is, ma says, we'd ought to each of us have a copy, we're so crazy to get hold of it when it comes. Some of the girls take fashion papers, and we lend them 'round. Some lend, I mean. Some are stingy, and won't. They have patterns in them. You can get some of the patterns free, and some cost ten or fifteen cents. Say, how do ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond

... laugh.—"You have wrung this love out of your heart? If it was easy to do, did it need to wring with it every sparkle of pleasure and grace out of your life? Your very hair is gathered out of your sight: you feared to remember how my hand had touched it? Your dress is stingy and hard; your step, your eyes, your mouth under rule. So hard it was to force yourself into an old ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... good crops, and prayers were offered for more. Each family took it in turn to provide food, and they feasted until it had gone the round of the village. The family who had a great display of good things was praised; but the stingy, stinted offerers were cursed. After all had prayed and partaken for the day, nothing was kept for another meal. Whatever was over was thrown away or buried. At one place in Savaii Salevao had a temple in which a priest constantly resided. The sick were ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner

... slave-girls were subjected—enough in themselves to crush the spirit of men—they were, really, kept nearly half starved; they seldom knew{117} what it was to eat a full meal, except when they got it in the kitchens of neighbors, less mean and stingy than the psalm-singing Mrs. Hamilton. I have seen poor Mary contending for the offal, with the pigs in the street. So much was the poor girl pinched, kicked, cut and pecked to pieces, that the boys in the street knew her only by the name of ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... enterprising restaurateur had to revert to the local system, and replace all the former waiters, who ran back to London rather than be reduced to the dire necessity of going into the workhouse. Young men, as a rule, are more generous than elderly people, and the fair sex is, in general, very stingy. A gentleman accompanied by a lady, if she is only an acquaintance, is sure to tip generously, pour la galerie, although he may look as if he wanted to accompany every penny by a kick. But when the same person dines with his wife or sister, the remuneration ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... bangs me over the head with it. But I'm like the Doctor in the Punch and Judy show—he thinks he's knocked me flat. He hasn't. I've a new argument every time he comes. And as for my daughters, they think me a lunatic—a stingy lunatic besides—because I won't give to their Red Cross shows and bazaars. I've nothing to give. The income tax gentlemen have ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... in his offerings, and not be so profuse till he was master of the countries which those sweet gums and spices came from. So Alexander now wrote to him, saying, "We have sent you abundance of myrrh and frankincense, that for the future you may not be stingy to the gods." Among the treasures and other booty that was taken from Darius, there was a very precious casket, which being brought to Alexander for a great rarity, he asked those about him what they ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... in addition to the intelligence Hycy had just received from his mother, was not calculated to improve his temper. "You may laugh," he replied; "but if your respectable father had treated you in a spirit so stingy and beggarly as that which I experience at your hands, I don't know how you might ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... his circuits," he said. "You know he travels around the country and hears confession and sings Mass for us poor egg-stealers who have been unlucky enough to fall into the clutches of some rich and greedy and anti-social Giant who is too stingy to hire servants, but captures them instead, and who won't allow us to leave the premises ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer

... how damned stingy my father is, curse you," whined my cousin, in return. "I told you I should not have it till the first of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... things to her,—when they told her that Becky Hawkins was nothin' but one o' that low lot who lived down amongst that thieving set by the East Cove alleys,—that jus' as like as not she was a thief herself; that she was awful close and stingy, anyway, and saved up every scrap she could find; that they'd seen her themselves pick up old strings and buttons and such duds from the gutters! But if Lizzie laughed out of her light lively heart, and declared she didn't believe what they said was true, and didn't care if it was, there ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry

... me take off old Pond's gate to-night," called Toby Ross. "We can take it down and hang it on the fountain in the square. That'll be a good mile from his house, and old Pond will be awful mad, because he'll have to tote it all the way back himself. He's too stingy to hire a teamster to ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock

... sort of notion that it was all through Daisy that they were just as stingy and selfish in the kitchen, and that his meals were now so absurdly few and plain. It was very ungrateful of her, for he had gone out of his way to be polite and attentive to her. When he thought of her behaviour to him he felt strongly inclined to sulk, but somehow ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey

... about and watching the red rays gleaming through the stones. "And now," she gloated, "that faded Elsa will cease to lord it over me—and to think that another Karl Armstadt has brought me this—why that stingy fellow would never have bought me a blue-stone ring, if he had ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings

... not understand at all what yes and no mean? I tell you short and plain that I cannot afford to do it. My back is too weak to lift such a burden. A man can stretch out his feet in bed only as far as the covers reach. Isn't that true? Am I stingy? And would I be ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous

... him in the Vier Prison," dryly explained Ranulph, helping himself to roasted conger eel and eyeing hungrily the freshly-made black butter Guida was taking from a wooden trencher. "The Royal Court is stingy," he added. "'It's nearer than Jean Noe, who got married in his red queminzolle,' as ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... are in store for one who calls in casually at some of the remoter schools. I have more than once found the teacher giving instruction in his shirt sleeves. In one school, I saw the master with a large melodeon (the Board being too stingy to supply a piano), giving an inharmonious accompaniment to the musical drill. I got a dreadful surprise on meeting the schoolmaster of a district in Jura: the unfortunate gentleman was stone-deaf, his auditory nerves being completely destroyed. ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... were!—well, I remember winding it up that night. I kissed it, and bade it good-by. But I never dreamed of not winding it up because I was going to be killed. What! am I not to be praised again, as I was on board ship? Stingy! can't afford to praise one twice ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... makin' de kernel like any o' de low-down No'th'n folks—keerful, and stingy, and mighty 'fraid o' de opinions o' de biggety people. And fo' what? Jess to strut round wid dat child like he was her ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... that my Chin was romantic, but that my Ears were stingy, being small and close to my head. This irratated me, although glad they are small. So I bought him a gardenia to wear from a flour-seller, but as the flour-seller refused a check, he had ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... were ever penurious, might it not be of these handsome loaves of hers? The little housewife will be very gentle to the persecuted man of Scripture who was so reluctant to get up at midnight and give away his bread. She will even be charitable to the stingy merchant scorned by Saadi, of whom it was written, that, "if, instead of his loaf of bread, the orb of the sun had been in his wallet, nobody had seen daylight in the world till the Day ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various

... near him as she questioned him, her great, soft eyes pleading in fear, and laid her hand on his shoulder as if to hold him against any further evasion. He smiled a little, in his stingy way of doing it, taking her hand to allay her tumult ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden

... Under Akim everything was in the old-fashioned style, snug, but not over clean; and his oats were apt to be light, or musty; the cooking, too, was somewhat indifferent: dishes were sometimes put on the table which would better have been left in the oven and it was not that he was stingy with the provisions, but just that the cook had not looked after them. On the other hand, he was ready to knock off something from the price and did not refuse to trust a man's word for payment—he was a good man and a genial host. In talking, ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... man is the hardened swelling on the breast of society. He is my sworn enemy. He fills himself up with cheap truths, with gnawed morsels of musty wisdom, and he exists like a storeroom where a stingy housewife keeps all sorts of rubbish which is absolutely unnecessary to her, and worthless. If you touch such a man, if you open the door into him, the stench of decay will be breathed upon you, and a stream of some musty trash will be poured into the air you breathe. ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky

... Polly a white headed devil an' said she done ramshacked 'til dey wuzn' nothin' left, but he made his mens tote off meat, flour, pigs, an' chickens. After dat Mis' Polly got mighty stingy wid de vittles an' de ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various

... were beginning to be the talk of our society. M. D—— R——-, Madame F——, and I were the only ones who had a box full of them. I was stingy with them, and no one durst beg any from me, because I had said that they were very expensive, and that in all Corfu there was no confectioner who could make or physician who could analyse them. I never gave one out of my crystal box, and Madame F. remarked it. I certainly did not believe them ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... farmer, and what will you subscribe?" Harry answered, "that on this occasion he must beg to be excused, for he had nothing to give." "Here is a pretty fellow!" answered Mash; "last night we saw him pocket thirty shillings of our money, which he cheated us out of at Commerce, and now the little stingy wretch will not contribute half-a-crown, while we are giving away whole guineas." Upon this Miss Matilda said, in an ironical manner, "that Master Harry had always an excellent reason to give for his conduct; and she did not doubt but he could prove to the satisfaction ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... custom for the midshipmen to take up provisions and spirits beyond their allowance, and pay the purser an extra sum for the same; but this Mr Culpepper would not permit—indeed, he was the most stingy and disagreeable old fellow that I ever met with in the service. We never had dinner or grog enough, or even lights sufficient ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat

... and yet you want to git out of doin' anything more for him. You're thinkin' how much more comfortable it will be to sit dozin' in your chair, and not have any stranger botherin' round. But I'll head you off agin in spite of your cussed, mean, stingy, selfish, old, shrivelled-up soul, that would like to take its ease even though the hull world was a-groanin' outside the ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... there in the moonlight before the tent, the noises of the town swelling louder and louder as the night grew older, his big frame doubled into the stingy lap of a canvas chair, his knees almost as high as his chin. But it was comfortable, and his tobacco was as pleasant to his senses as the ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... Petrie. Mail-Order Petrie is a miserly old codger who buys everything out of town that he can buy a penny cheaper than the home merchants sell it. He is a hard-working man, so far as that goes, and so stingy that he has been accused of going barefooted in the summer time to save shoes. When he is sick he sends out of town for patent medicines, and for ten years he worked in his truck-garden, fighting floods and droughts, bugs and blight, to save something like a hundred dollars, which he put in a mail-order ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White

... exclaimed, as soon as he could speak; "I should like to know what you call being well fed! Since I have come to this hateful country, not once have I had an opportunity of filling my cheeks with grain. Man, stingy man, thinks it enough to give me a wretched pittance from day to day,— to me who have had a hundred pounds of corn packed up in my own deep hole,— to me whose delight it was to carry three ounces weight of it at once in these bags with which ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.

... roof, but also those that drank out of the same cup or ate out of the same dish. Let us never mind Homer's entertainments; they were good for nothing but to starve a man, and the makers of them were kings more stingy and observant than the Italian cooks; insomuch that in the midst of a battle, whilst they were at handy-blows with their enemies, they could exactly reckon up how many glasses each man drank at his table. But those that Pindar ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch



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