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More "Paltry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... affronting his parents but by venturing to kill his wife and the heir of the crown? A baby that wounds itself to vex its nurse is no more void of reflection. The scene which commenced by unfeeling idiotism closed with paltry hypocrisy. The Queen on the first notice of her son's exploits, set out for St. James's to visit the Princess by seven in the morning. The gracious Prince, so far from attempting an apology, spoke not a word to his mother; but on her retreat ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... Three days.... Three miserable, paltry, insufficient days, blighted by the chaperoning Evershams.... Frantically he hoped against his dark foreboding that one menace at least might be averted—that by now Luxor would have ceased to shelter a certain ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... in love. It was when he first began guiding the cloth over the hot roller, and it was with the daughter of the superintendent. She was much older than he, a young woman, and he had seen her at a distance only a paltry half-dozen times. But that made no difference. On the surface of the cloth stream that poured past him, he pictured radiant futures wherein he performed prodigies of toil, invented miraculous machines, won to the mastership of the mills, ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... be merely trying to pay back a debt? He, Mahony, might shrink from lying under an obligation to John, but, so far, the latter had not scrupled to accept favours from him. But that was always the way with your rich men; they were not troubled by paltry pride; for they knew it was possible to acquit themselves of their debts at a moment's notice, and with interest. This led him to reflect on the great help to him the loan of his wealthy relative's name would be: difficulties would melt before it. And surely no undue risk was involved ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... chiefs, and soon filled them with all sorts of ideas concerning the alarming want of public spirit in the people of Imeeo. More especially did he dwell upon the humiliating fact of their living in paltry huts of bamboo, when magnificent palaces of boards might ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... is indeed sad to see professors, for the sake of paltry pelf, or to escape from persecution, denying the Lord Jesus. It subjects religion to scorn and contempt, and doubles the sorrows and sufferings of real Christians. Bunyan expresses himself here in a ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... wonderful pleasure park I ever saw. O King, your garden here is a paltry affair in comparison ...
— The Buddha - A Drama in Five Acts and Four Interludes • Paul Carus
... was something final and convincing in his companion's measured words. His own protest, when at last he spoke, sounded paltry. ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... he seemed ashamed of the paltry booty his followers had obtained, and Denham seized the favourable moment to advise that the Arabs should give everything back, and have a few sheep and an ox for a feast. He gave the order, and the property was restored, with the exception of ten ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... knaves cannot be better expressed than by Chesterton. 'They are real somewhere. We are talking to a garrulous and peevish sneak; we are watching the play of his paltry features, his evasive eyes and babbling lips. And suddenly the face begins to change and harden, the eyes glare like the eyes of a mask, the whole face of clay becomes a common mouthpiece, and the voice that ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... which the villain now stood accused was that of robbing a farmer of the paltry sum of eight shillings, in the neighborhood of Ilfracombe. He pleaded not guilty, but put in no defence. A verdict was recorded against him, and in due form A —— sentenced him to be hanged. An expression of fiendish malignancy gleamed over the haggard features of the felon as he asked leave ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... to throw away upon two paltry bits of cardboard!" chafed Miss Carlyle. "You always were a noodle in money matters, Archibald, and always will be. I wish I had the keeping of ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... surely be well when you read this, so what's the use of writing? I should like well to have some details of your life, but how can I hope for it? I have often tried to give you a picture of mine, but I have not the skill. I get a heap of details, mostly paltry in themselves, and not enough to give you an idea of the whole. Oh, for one hour's talk! You are getting too far off and beginning to look strange to me. Do you look as you used to do, I wonder? What do you and Ellen Nussey talk about when ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... with which they herd to their own level, they are apt to sink to theirs; and persons with talents that might have served for nobler purposes are suffered to degenerate into diseurs de bons mots and raconteurs de societe, content with the paltry distinction of being considered amusing. How many such have I encountered, satisfied with being pigmies, who might have grown to be giants, but who were consoled by the reflection that in that world in which ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... same time, to obtain the love of my people, not from any weak thirst for love, but from a queenly ambition. But I am set aside, and Amelia will be a queen; my fate will be that of my elder sisters, I shall wed a poor margrave, or paltry duke, and may indeed thank God if I am not an old maiden ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... emotion; and to steal impurity into their hearts, by gently perverting the most simple and generous of their affections. In the execution of this unworthy task, he labours with a perseverance at once ludicrous and detestable. He may be seen in every page running round the paltry circle of his seductions with incredible zeal and anxiety, and stimulating his jaded fancy for new images of impurity, with as much melancholy industry as ever outcast of the muses hunted for ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... it was an ordeal. I believe I have wept since: for Benjy scratched my door often yesterday evening, and looked most wistful when I came out. Merely paltry self-love, dearest:—I am so ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... there isn't a shadow of war in the sky. Money that might be spent, and should be spent, on the betterment of the lives of the people and destroying, the possibility of poverty and want, is spent in Dreadnoughts and weapons to kill. Hundreds of millions are being spent on the Army and Navy, while paltry sums are grudged for education and all those things which go to make up ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... society, and all of them, so he judged, just excuses for putting unwanted fingers into unwanted, dangerous pies. He thought of it like that—he could not help it; he saw too far into motive and internal action; was too impatient of the little storms, the paltry, tea-cup things. She, with her unique gift of serenity—her place was not among the busybodies grinding axes that were better blunt; interfering with the slow, slow working of the Mills of God. Her gift was example—rare and delicate; her light the silver light of a soul, that through ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... "Well, she's had paltry food for a lover since he went away. He's got certain ideas, and she'll hear direct when—but there, I must shut my mouth, for I swore by ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... Mr. Yates. "What are you talking of? The most trivial, paltry, insignificant part; the merest commonplace; not a tolerable speech in the whole. Your sister do that! It is an insult to propose it. At Ecclesford the governess was to have done it. We all agreed that it could not be offered to anybody else. A little more justice, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... were at the other end of the large tent, and seemed occupied with a loud argument over some paltry matter. The Rupun, stooping low, and making pretence to tuck me ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... in a more or less perfect state, and all correspond in design, proportion, and execution to the tower. The ruins of the old Hindoo temples about the place, and about every other place in India, are totally different in all three; here they are all exceedingly paltry and insignificant, compared with the church and its tower, and it is evident that it was the intention of the founder to make them appear so to future generations of the faithful, for he has taken care to make his own great work support rather than destroy ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... Wan chimed in. "This, if actually adopted, will delight the heart of Madame Wang. Pecuniary economies are of themselves a paltry matter; but there will be then in the garden those to sweep the grounds, and those whose special charge will be to look after them. Besides, were the persons selected allowed to turn up an honest cash by selling part of the products, they will ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... rents and Factors, rights of chace, Sheriffs, and Lairds and their domains 70 Would all have seem'd but paltry things, Not ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... Would you be humble, daughter? You must look up, not down, and see yourself A paltry atom, sap-transmitting vein Of Christ's vast vine; the pettiest joint and member Of His great body. ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... outer world into his service and that of religious art. It is said also that his Madonnas seem 'amiable beings imbued with a lofty grace;' while his saints are 'powerful and noble forms.' But he never descended to the paltry or the vulgar. He knew from the depths of his own soul how to invest a face with moral grandeur. Especially in his representations of our Saviour Gian Bellini 'displays a perception of moral power and grandeur seldom equalled in ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... said her master, in angry, stammering tones. "John, my brother, has left all his money to this Judas of a girl! A hundred and fifty pounds a year, if you please! and only a paltry 100 pounds to me, and the same to Jim Harris, the sailor. Ach y fi! the greediness of people is enough to turn ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... Through our paltry stir and strife, Glows the wished Ideal, And longing molds in clay, what life Carves in the ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... when he does go off? Mother said one day she thought it wouldn't be more than five hundred pounds. She doesn't know; he does not tell her about his private affairs—never has told her. Five hundred pounds! If he left me a paltry sum such as that, I'd fling it in the ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... man who doesn't want to be bothered; but he is only deferring the bother—he is like a man who stays in bed because he doesn't like dressing. But it isn't a solution to stay in bed—it is only suspending the solution. No, we mustn't have any regard for human consistency—it's a very paltry attribute; it's the opposite of anthropomorphism. That makes out God to be in the image of man, but consistency claims for man the privilege of God. And that isn't wholesome, you know, either for ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Specious petitions were continually addressed to the easy magistrates of Rome, which stated the want of stones or bricks, for some necessary service: the fairest forms of architecture were rudely defaced, for the sake of some paltry, or pretended, repairs; and the degenerate Romans, who converted the spoil to their own emolument, demolished, with sacrilegious hands, the labors of their ancestors. Majorian, who had often sighed over the desolation of the city, applied a severe remedy to the growing evil. [43] He reserved ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... startled out of his lethargy by this appalling suggestion. Was he, the man who, after planking down thirty-two thousand eight hundred and fifty-nine dollars, sixty-eight cents for "props" and "frames" and "rehl," had sold out for a paltry ten thousand, to be ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... incidents—of that direful night? The lean figure in the black frock-coat, and black silk waistcoat, with that great gleaming watch-chain, the long, shabby, withered face, and flushed, bald forehead; and those paltry little eyes, in their pink setting, that nevertheless fascinated her like the gaze of a serpent. How had that horrible figure come there—why was this meeting—whence his knowledge? An evil spirit incarnate ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... of a colony—the patronage of the Crown, the right over the public domain, the civil list, the customs, the post office have all been relinquished ... she guards our coasts, she maintains our troops, she builds our forts, she spends hundreds of thousands among us yearly; and yet the paltry payment to her representative is made a topic of grumbling and popular agitation."[49] In the same spirit he fought annexation, and killed it, among his followers; and, when confederation came, he helped to make the new dominion not only Canadian, but British. In that age when British faith ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... Leinster, no military movement of much importance was made, in consequence of the jealousy the Justices entertained of Ormond, and the emptiness of the treasury. In June, the Long Parliament remitted over the paltry sum of 11,500 pounds to the Justices, and 2,000 of the troops, which had all but mutinied for their pay, were despatched under Ormond to the relief of Athlone. Commissioners arrived during the summer, appointed by the Parliament to report on the affairs of Ireland, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... nothing to make me uneasy! It was simply physical! A glass of beer and a mouthful of biscuit were all that was necessary to restore my strength of mind and make my thoughts clear and resolution fixed. How paltry all this is!" ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... refined women will object to this mean and jealous sentiment in a woman of like passions with themselves. I know, myself, that a lofty love will regard the good of the beloved object first, and itself last,—that jealousy is a paltry and sinful emotion; but, my dear creatures, I can't help it,—so it was. And if any one of you can, with a serene countenance and calm mind, see your husband devote himself to a much prettier, more agreeable, younger woman than ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... with an old man's pride in a handsome only son, had left the bulk of his fortune to Bertie, while Hannah, who had ministered to his comfort and borne his ill-humor, inherited only a paltry couple of hundred a year, with a fairly well furnished house in Wilton Street, Hyde Park. Her brother would have willingly added to this pittance, but she sternly refused to accept what did not of right belong to her. Bertie went with ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... affections, one great emotional upheaval exhausts the possibilities of nature; leaving only the capacity for feeble and ineffective echoes. The edifice of love that is raised upon the ruins of a great passion can compare with the original no more than can the paltry mosque that perches upon the mound of Jonah with the glories of the palace that lies entombed beneath. I had made a pretext to write to Juliet and had received a reply quite frank and friendly in tone, ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... not. Olga had always been quite sure that she was not romantic. She had always loved cricket and hockey and all outdoor sports. She had even—quite privately—been a little scornful over such shreds of romance as had come beneath her notice, dismissing them as paltry and ridiculous. Possibly also Violet's scoffing attitude towards her ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... of Orleans hath not made me smart; These words of yours draw life-blood from my heart: On that advantage, bought with such a shame, To save a paltry life and slay bright fame, Before young Talbot from old Talbot fly, The coward horse that bears me fall and die! And like me to the peasant boys of France, To be shame's scorn and subject of mischance! Surely, by all the glory ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... such a nature, if it does not change it at last. But I see I fail to make myself understood by you; let me try again. I don't know how it may be in your country, but here, at least as far as my personal observation has extended, the remuneration received by ministers is insufficient, not to say paltry. I don't mean that in many cases they and their families actually suffer, but there are few of them so situated as regards income, that economy need not be the very first consideration in all their arrangements. Comparing them with other professional men they may ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... insisted on side recesses, that might serve as chantry chapels when the church became Roman Catholic. Wren was accused of delays and chidden for the faults of petty workmen, and, as the Duchess of Marlborough laughingly remarked, was dragged up and down in a basket two or three times a week for a paltry L200 a year. The narrow escape of Sir James Thornhill from falling from a scaffold while painting the dome is a tradition of St. Paul's, matched by the terrible adventure of Mr. Gwyn, who when measuring the dome slid down the convex surface till ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Rhinoceros indicus is being rushed into oblivion. We marvel at the fossil shell of the gigantic turtle called Collosochelys atlas, while the last living representatives of the gigantic land tortoises are being exterminated in the Galapagos Islands and the Sychelles, for their paltry oil and meat; and only one man (Hon. Walter Rothschild) is doing aught to save any of them in their haunts, where they can breed. The dodo of Mauritius was exterminated by swine, whose bipedal descendants have exterminated many other ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... been given a sample of the Englishmen's brazen daring already. After his troops mutinied, and pandemonium reigned in the village where he was quartered, the Englishman had steamed up with his paltry stem-wheel launch, and by sheer dash and recklessness had carried him and his last parcel of faithful men away in ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... strength: I would, therefore, entreat those who with myself are seeking to carry out this scheme, and to arrive at a better state of things, to persevere, nothing daunted at the first repulse, but to continue their course, rising superior to the paltry prejudices that may and will assail them, until they have succeeded in procuring for their brethren, a name and a station worthy of them in the ranks ...
— Suggestions to the Jews - for improvement in reference to their charities, education, - and general government • Unknown
... should be presented to her by the hostess. He wore no shirt-collar,—he had on black gloves,—and was flourishing a red bandanna handkerchief! Match me this, ye proud children of poverty, who boast of your paltry sacrifices for each other! Virtue in humble life! What is that to the glorious self-renunciation of a martyr in pearls and diamonds? As I saw this noble woman bending gracefully before the social mendicant,—the white billows of her beauty heaving under the foam of the traitorous laces that ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... the offended Mr. Vickers, regarding him fiercely, "stick to it like leeches. Now, suppose I was a young man keeping company with a gal and her father wanted to borrow a couple o' quid—a paltry couple o' thick'uns—what ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... I, "that's not his name; he is Lord Privilege." (I was very much surprised that he knew that my grandfather was a lord.) "And do you suppose," continued I, "that I would forfeit the honour of my family for a paltry seven shillings?" ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... this time, I would have told you that it was quite impossible without enormous capital. Quite impossible. Understand that, if you please. But, negatively, you have profited, because others have failed—hundreds of firms and contractors—while you have lost but the paltry fifteen thousand or so with which you began. And you have acquired great knowledge and experience. Therefore, on the whole, you have been the gainer. In balancing an account one takes but the sordid debit and credit and compares ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... favour me to-day! For sooth this is a man with whom I play. No paltry risk—but life and death at stake; As Sarkap does, so do, for ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... modesty, and unerring sureness in dealing with the things of sense, never conceive aught base or ignoble of themselves: but the multitude the contrary. Why, what am I?—A wretched human creature; with this miserable flesh of mine. Miserable indeed! but you have something better than that paltry flesh of yours. Why then cling to the ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... azaleas make themselves delightfully at home. It is wild as a hawk, an untamable creature that slowly pines to death when brought into contact with civilization. Greedy street venders, who ruthlessly tear up the plant by the yard, and others without even the excuse of eking out a paltry income by its sale, have already exterminated it within a wide radius of our Eastern cities. How curious that the majority of people show their appreciation of a flower's beauty only by selfishly, ignorantly picking every specimen they ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... our hands are gripped tightly—a faint foretaste of that last terror, when he or I shall pass away into the shadows and the other will be left alone for ever. It is when I ponder upon that scene that I realize what our friendship has become, that I realize how paltry every other familiar or even relative appears by comparison. Let me treasure this friendship carefully, healthfully, old friend, for, by my love of life, it is rare enough in ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... from my audience!" wailed Jane, falling into convenient arms. "Why not install a ghost in Madison if you are all so keen on it? I can't see how you expect one paltry spook to ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... object of the war, we had supposed, was to abolish all fallacies of sectional distinction in a patriotism that could embrace something wider than a township, a county, or even a State. But Mr. Johnson has chosen to revive the paltry party-cries from before that deluge which we hoped had washed everything clean, and to talk of treason at both ends of the Union, as if there were no difference between men who attempted the life of their country, and those who differ from him in their ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... scenes of their youth after a long absence, to see into what small dimensions Langholm had shrunk. That High Street, which before had seemed so big, and that frowning gaol and court-house in the Market Place, were now comparatively paltry to eyes that had been familiar with Shrewsbury, Portsmouth, and London. But he was charmed, as ever, with the sight of the heather hills and the ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... poet's height? What puts a full house in a merry mood? More closely view your patrons of the night! The half are cold, the half are rude. One, the play over, craves a game of cards; Another a wild night in wanton joy would spend. Poor fools the muses' fair regards Why court for such a paltry end? I tell you, give them more, still more, 'tis all I ask, Thus you will ne'er stray widely from the goal; Your audience seek to mystify, cajole;— To satisfy them—that's a harder task. What ails thee? ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... considered what urgent need there will be for those new fields? It is no paltry question of an outlet for the surplus products of a mere nation of seventy-five millions that confronts you. Your mathematical professors will tell you that, at the ratio of increase established in this Nation by the census returns for the century ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... married i' the afternoon, for, do you mark, I am none of these sneaking fellows that will stand thrumming of caps and studying upon a matter, as long as Hunks with the great head has been about to show his little wit in the second part of his paltry poetry,[156] but if I begin with wooing, I'll end with wedding, and therefore, good clerk, let me have it done with all speed; for, I promise ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... the paper aside with the bill receipt. In the man to whom the bright New Orleans itself almost owed its brightness, it was a paltry act to search and pick for a debtor. Friends had betrayed and deserted him; relatives had forgotten him; merchants had failed with his money; bank presidents had stooped to deceive him; for he was an old man, and had about run the ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... wounded Indian soldiers in the Pavilion Hospital at Brighton (with the Scottish accent underlying them all), and noted the thorough understanding there was between him and the men. Young as he was, he had managed to get inside the Oriental mind. He was killed in a paltry frontier affray, six months after the Armistice. I am convinced that Norman Kemp would have made a great name for himself had he lived. He had the peculiar faculty of gaining the confidence of the Oriental, and I think that he would have ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... this paltry discussion, had stood up on the high stool "Farva" had made for him, and personally inspected the big mush-pot. Then he turned to Mac, and, pointing a finger like a straw (nothing could fatten those infinitesimal hands), he said ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... famous scene where Amelia is spreading, for the recreant who is losing his money at the King's Arms, the historic little supper of hashed mutton which she has cooked with her own hands, and denying herself a glass of white wine to save the paltry sum of sixpence, "while her Husband was paying a Debt of several Guineas incurred by the Ace of Trumps being in the Hands of his Adversary"—a scene which it is impossible to read aloud without a certain huskiness in the throat,—the visits to the pawnbroker and ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... my tabernacle take my rest, With those nine columns round me, two and two, The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands: Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse. 30 —Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone, Put me where I may look at him! True peach, Rosy and flawless: how I earned the prize! Draw close: that conflagration of my church —What then? So much was saved if aught were missed! My sons, ye would not be my death? Go dig The white-grape vineyard where ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... all over the front of your tavern with scorpion-words. For my girl, who has fled from my embrace (she whom I loved as ne'er a maid shall be beloved—for whom I fought fierce fights) has seated herself here. All ye, both honest men and rich, and also, (O cursed shame) all ye paltry back-slum fornicators, are making hot love to her; and thou above all, one of the hairy-visaged sons of coney-caverned Celtiberia, Egnatius, whose quality is stamped by dense-grown beard, and teeth with Spanish ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... readily enough to this paltry gossip, but found that it robbed the poet's memory of some of the reverence that was its due. Indeed, this talk over his grave had very much the same tendency and effect as the home-scene of his life, which we had been visiting just previously. Beholding his poor, mean dwelling and its surroundings, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... swallowed-up of Time, and there remains no wreck of them any more; and Arcturus and Orion and Sirius and the Pleiades are still shining in their courses, clear and young, as when the Shepherd first noted them in the plain of Shinar. Pshaw! what is this paltry little Dog-cage of an Earth; what art thou that sittest whining there? Thou art still Nothing, Nobody: true; but who, then, is Something, Somebody? For thee the Family of Man has no use; it rejects thee; ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... explain away the apparently miraculous incidents in his story, but he lacks the persevering ingenuity that partly compensates for her frauds. On a single page he calmly discloses secrets which have harassed us for four volumes, and his long-deferred explanations are paltry and incredible. The bleeding figures that wrought so painfully on the sensitive nerves of Ippolito are merely waxen images that spout blood automatically. Disappearances and reappearances, which seemed supernatural, are simply effected by private exits and entrances. Other startling ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... been here twice, almost three times. He taunted me with being angry at his being a simple devil and not Satan, with scorched wings, in thunder and lightning. But he is not Satan: that's a lie. He is an impostor. He is simply a devil—a paltry, trivial devil. He goes to the baths. If you undressed him, you'd be sure to find he had a tail, long and smooth like a Danish dog's, a yard long, dun color.... Alyosha, you are cold. You've been in the snow. Would you like some tea? ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of an English country gentleman of the old type. He was tall and thin, aristocratic of mien, with white hair and faded blue eyes. His face was not impressive. At first sight it seemed merely that of a tired old man, weary of the paltry exactions of life, and longing for rest; but, at odd moments, one caught a passing resemblance to a caged eagle in a swift turn of the falcon profile, or in a sudden flash of the old eyes beneath the straight Heredith brows. At such times the Heredith face—the warrior ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... is not love that steals the heart from love: 'Tis the hard world, and its perplexing cares; Its petrifying selfishness, its pride, its low ambition, and its paltry aims." ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... the gentle mother who had risen at the Master's call to go up higher. And as she so sat, a peace, born of the surrounding silence, brooded down over her troubled soul. Her anger at the boys' mutiny died out. Somehow, among the silent sleepers round about her, it seemed small and paltry to fume over the wranglings of the schoolroom. The wind that stole up from the bay dried the tears on Theo's cheek. New resolves stirred her heart. She would pluck up courage and try, once again, to move Alick's stubborn will. Not that she had much ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... fill up the first volume with Waltzes. Why make this paltry concession to the trifling requirements of the drawing- room? Chopin's Waltzes are certainly charming, elegant and full of invention...still his Polonaises and Mazurkas have a ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... people, and its care for poor children, it sinks immeasurably below the level I had placed it upon, and England, even England, bad and faulty as the old land is, and miserable as millions of her people are, rises in the comparison.... Freedom of opinion; where is it? I see a press more mean and paltry and silly and disgraceful than any country I ever knew.... In the respects of not being left alone, and of being horribly disgusted by tobacco chewing and tobacco spittle, I have ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... adversaries—this hero according to some—this illustrious warrior, and mighty sovereign—should have stooped to be guilty of an act of mean and petty malice worthy of a spiteful old woman,—a piece of paltry cruelty which could not at all conduce to his success in the war, or produce any effect except to degrade his country, and exasperate ours;—this, surely, is quite incredible. "Pizarro," says Elvira in Kotzebue's play, ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... to him that there was nothing real in that religion, but that reality in presence of it was so paltry that it deserved not the time for thought. Expanses of some kind, of which hitherto he had not had a suspicion, surrounded him,—certain immensities, certain clouds. That cemetery began to produce on him the impression of a ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... will be turned to brine; Thou'lt hardly make one petty, paltry wave. Lovest thou the sun? He will not know thee there. Is't sweet to run, Know thine own whence and where? 'Tis here thy joy, thy love, thy life are thine; There thou wilt neither be, nor do, nor have. The mighty sea Will blindly number thee To bear the ships, send thee to shape the shore ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... prepared for the fight gayly, never doubting for a moment that victory would be on their side. So paltry had been the resistance that the Confederates had heretofore been able to oppose to the Northern arms, by sea, that the blue-jackets felt that they had only to open a fight in order to win it. The officers were more serious. Rumors had reached them that the "Merrimac" was a most ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... was made an earl not long since—you may have heard of the fuss about it. Uncle Sam's only a miserable baron yet. And Uncle Cuthbert is that paltry insect—a baronet. ...
— The Title - A Comedy in Three Acts • Arnold Bennett
... do me the honor to listen," I said, scornful of his paltry attempt at wit, "you would see that the book is the object of my travelling. I travel to write. I do not write because I have travelled. I am not going to subordinate my book to my adventures. My ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... tenanted by the Canterbury pilgrims; the gallery probably differing but little in appearance from what it was when Chaucer frequented it in search of good wine. The landlord eventually became insolvent; the paltry tavern was shut up, and the bedrooms were dismantled. In that plight they might be seen some years ago, may still possibly be seen—empty, dusty, dreary—ranged above ground-floor premises which do duty as a parcels' conveyance office, and abutting on a mean, ill-kept yard. Until within ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... 10s. 8d. a little later. It is an impudent misstatement of fact when Socialist leaders tell the workers, "We are not killed by rates, we are killed by rent."[680] "The whole of our municipal expenditure is only a paltry 110 millions a year. What do we pay in rent? Two hundred and seventy-five millions!"[681] After all, people in other countries, where the blessings of Socialist local government are unknown, and where poverty is much rarer than in Great Britain, also pay rent. On an average the rates ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... addressing the benchers in the true Junius style. He contrasts Stephen with his persecutors. Stephen might not know Law Latin, but he had read Bracton and Glanville and Coke; he knew French and had read Latin at Aberdeen; he had been educated, it was true, in some 'paltry principles of honour and honesty,' while the benchers had learnt 'more useful lessons;' he had written letters to Wilkes copied in all the papers; he had read Locke, could 'harangue for hours upon social feelings, friendship, and benevolence,' and would trudge miles to save a family ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... endeavoring to effect an entrance into the door way, for it is within the hive that their instinct teaches them they must deposit their eggs. You can hardly find them by day, for they are cunning and secrete themselves. "They love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil." They are a paltry looking, insignificant little grey-haired pestilent race of wax-and-honey-eating and bee-destroying rascals, that have baffled all contrivances that ingenuity has devised ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... rather discouraging for them. They were now talking about their respective ways of procuring the sums of money needed, and the trifle they had managed to save, and the small amounts they earned in one way or another, to augment the original sums, seemed so paltry to Toinette, who never stopped to ask whence came the five-dollar bills so regularly sent her each week, and who, had a fancy entered her head for one, would have walked out and bought a camera very much as she would have bought ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... is about a paltry gilt ring that Nerissa gave me, with words upon it like the poetry on a cutler's knife: 'Love me, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... cleverness inspires me with despairing admiration, and whose consistent falsity to all I care to call existence, with despairing wrath. If I had no better hope than to continue to revolve among the dreary and petty businesses, and to be moved by the paltry hopes and fears with which they surround and animate their heroes, I declare I would die now. But there has never an hour of mine gone quite so dully yet; if it were spent waiting at a railway junction, I would have some scattering ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ask, indeed, the following questions: (i) Has not the Treasury during the last ten years lost a large portion of its control, and since the War almost its whole control over expenditure on a large scale? (ii) Is the Treasury not more concerned with paltry details than in imposing any real check on the extravagance of spending departments? (iii) Has not the policy sometimes been actually to encourage expenditure, and has not there been one case at least, even of introducing vexatious ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... and soldiers.' Now Dent was a place of importance, in those days, and looked down on even Sedbergh as a mere village. Wherefore to be sent off to a small farm in the outskirts of Sedbergh in search of a nest of Quakers was a paltry job at best for these fine gentlemen from Dent. Naturally, they set about it, cursing and swearing with a will, to shew what brave fellows they were. For here were all these Quakers whom they had been sent to harry, brazening out their ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... necessary before the outbreak. After having thrown off the yoke of a knave—and perhaps hung the knave up by the neck, or chopped his head off with an axe—mankind not unfrequently fall under the control of a fool; frightened at their temerity in dethroning an idol of metal, they bow down before a paltry statue of wood. ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... "Still, through our paltry stir and strife, Glows down the wished ideal, And longing molds in clay what life Carves in the ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... time he had ever broken the law of its accretion. Once broken, that law was henceforth an object of scorn, and the tail grew with frightful rapidity. It was indeed a great dragon. And none of the paltry fields about Rothieden should be honoured with its first flight, but from Bodyfauld should the majestic child of earth ascend into the regions of ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... the mother-in-law. "I'm surprised at you. For a few paltry votes you—" Just here the front door bell rang, and the business of the day beginning stopped the conversation, which bade fair to ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... to me noteworthy, as showing what may be gained by concentrating even humble energies upon a paltry thing. Had Creso persevered as well upon the stage, I do not doubt that he would have made a splendid actor. If he did so well with a mere nostrum, why should he not have gained riches and a less grotesque fame by the sale of a ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... of rule and place, Though granted by the mean and base; Yet all superior merit fly, Nor will endure an equal nigh. They o'er some ale-house club preside With smoke and joke and paltry pride. Nay, e'en with blockheads pass the night; If such can read, to ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... be abased, and to obviate one of the objections that thou madest to me, when we were last together, that the pleasure which attends these nobler aims, remunerates not the pains they bring with them; since, like a paltry fellow as thou wert, thou assertedst ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... value. Ellen returned, much elated by her success; the money she had received for the ring seemed to them in their present circumstances a small fortune. "Little did once I think," said the widow, as she carefully counted the bank-notes, "that a few paltry pounds would ever seem of so much value to me; but perhaps it is well that we should sometimes experience the want of money, that we may learn how to make a proper use of it; and be more helpful to those less favored than ourselves." The money they obtained more than sufficed ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... improvement in his lodgings he was punished indirectly. Poor Sim had dislocated a bar of the window in pushing the straw into Ralph's hands, and for this offence he was apprehended and charged with prison breaking. Four days later the paltry subterfuge was abandoned, as we know, for a more serious indictment. Ralph's new abode was brighter and warmer than the old one, and had no other occupant. Here he passed the second week of his confinement. The stone walls of this cell had a melancholy interest. They were carved over nearly ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... offering, I simply requested the Sheikh to give him four yards of American sheeting, and thought no more about the matter, until presently I found the cloth returned. The "Sultan" could not think of receiving such a paltry present from me, when on the former journey he got so much; if he showed this cloth at home, nobody would believe him, but would say he took much more and concealed it from his family, wishing to keep all his goods to himself. I answered that my footing in the country had been paid for ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... Burgrave, and are consulted by the Marquis of Steyne in every think. We ought to know a thing or two, Mr. Lightfoot. You're a young man, I'm an old cove, as you say. We've both seen the world, and we both know that it ain't money, nor bein' a baronet, nor 'avin' a town and country 'ouse, nor a paltry five or ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in the calm and silent night!— The senator of haughty Rome, Impatient urged his chariot's flight, From lordly revel, rolling home. Triumphal arches gleaming swell His breast, with thoughts of boundless sway. What recked the Roman what befell A paltry province far away, In ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... now welcome the doctor. Thankfully will they pay the paltry sum he claims as a recompense for his services. We are more confident than the doctor. Experience is a sure teacher. The door does not now fly open at his approach. He gives his name to the girl who answers the bell, and in due time the lady of the ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... not seem possible, but, nevertheless, I shall prove, by quotations, that the whole theory of our author is based upon this paltry equivocation. ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... rich (O passing rich), One of the idlers, softly bred, From whom the hands of David itch To pluck their plumage, quick or dead; For then, a super-man, I'd scorn to grudge it— This super-tax on my estate, But like a bird contribute to his Budget The paltry two-and-eight. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... woodwork was painted gray. The plastered ceiling, divided in two parts by a heavy beam which started from the fireplace, seemed a concession tardily made to luxury. Armchairs, with their woodwork painted white, were covered with tapestry. A paltry clock, between two copper-gilt candlesticks, decorated the mantel-shelf. Beside Madame de la Chanterie was an ancient table with spindle legs, on which lay her balls of worsted in a wicker basket. A hydrostatic lamp ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... understand the very serious peril which overhung Denry. Multiply it by fifteen hundred and you will understand that Denry had been culpably silly to inaugurate a mighty scheme like the Universal Thrift Club on a paltry capital of two thousand pounds. He had. In his simplicity he had regarded two ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... with both hands to every paltry possession? All I have teaches me to trust the Creator for all ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... have saved the empire From ruin—with our best blood have we sealed The liberty of faith and gospel truth. But now already is the benefaction No longer felt, the load alone is felt. Ye look askance with evil eye upon us, As foreigners, intruders in the empire, And would fain send us, with some paltry sum Of money, home again to our old forests. No, no! my Lord Duke! no!—it never was For Judas' pay, for chinking gold and silver, That we did leave our King by the Great Stone[24] No, not for gold and silver have ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... some old forgotten London bills had come down and swamped this Midsummer quarter's allowance, so that the promise must stand over till—till Michaelmas; or it might be that Ferdinand's matters were arranged, and then what would such a paltry sum be? Wilmet turned away in shame and disgust at having trusted for a moment to such offers. She could only do what she had never done before—apply to Mr. Froggatt for an advance on Felix's account: and she detained him ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... against odds to make a living for herself and those she loved. But there were some compensations in this life of toil. One person wrote her, "What I am I owe in large measure to the stimulus you imparted. You roused my heart with high hopes; you raised my aims from paltry and vain pursuits to those which lasted and fed the soul; you inspired me with a great ambition, and made me see the worth ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... that young lad go free. How would you like to have one of your own boys or young brothers treated as you threaten to treat him? There's life and work and happiness in him, and you'd just knock it all to pieces for the sake of a paltry revenge. What good can killing the boy do to any of you? Why, I'll tell you— murder will out, and you'll all be hanged, every one ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... who had assented to its acts they had loaded with every species of calumny—slanders—which they knew to be such. They had not even spared that character supposed to have been clothed with inviolability—not the paltry inviolability of constitutional proscription, but an inviolability infinitely more respectable, founded on the public gratitude, and resulting ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... to insert words which have no use nor meaning to fill up the vacuities in a sentence. There are likewise some who, in imitation of Hegesias (a notorious trifler as well in this as in every other respect) curtail and mince their numbers, and are thus betrayed into the low and paltry style of the Sicilians. Another fault in composition is that which occurs in the speeches of Hierocles and Menecles, two brothers, who may be considered as the princes of Asiatic Eloquence, and, in my opinion, are by ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... assistance, since he was a very influential man. Of course I knew as long as he did not rob us we were quite safe. I then photographed him and his house, and he evidently felt quite flattered. He accompanied me for a mile down the road, and then, taking me aside, handed me back the paltry sum I had paid for the provisions, saying he did not accept payment from his guests. This was rather embarrassing, but there was no way out of it, and I had to accept it. I afterward sent him a copy of his photograph ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... indignation meeting was called in the Park, coroners' juries stultified themselves, and a senseless outcry was made generally. Twenty-two were killed and thirty wounded. It was a terrible sacrifice to make for a paltry quarrel between two actors about whom nobody cared; and in this light alone many viewed it, forgetting that when the public peace is broken, it matters not how great or insignificant the cause, it must be preserved; and if the police or military are called out to do it, and are attacked, they ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... fellow in Middlemarch than Bowyer," said Ladislaw, indignantly, "but it seems as if the paltry fellows were always ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... of each, make all the town. A mile or so up stream under palm trees are bungalows of what must have been cantonments, some machinery repair-shops, and odds and ends of railway track. It is all as paltry a collection of whitewashed houses, pitiful gardens, dead walls, and trodden waste spaces as one would wish to find anywhere; and every bit of it quivers with the remembered life of armies and river-fleets, as the finger-bowl rings when the ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... crying their goods for sale, he saw one of them hending in hand an ivory tube in length about a cubit, which he was offering for sale at the price of thirty thousand Ashrafis. Hearing such demand Prince Ali thought to himself, "Assuredly this fellow is a fool who asketh such a price for so paltry a thing."—And as the morn began to dawn ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... to deceive the girl I love. Permit me to explain the tricks." So he explained them. His eyes sought hers across the bowl of gold-fish, his fingers trembled as he taught her to manipulate the magic canister. One by one, she mastered the paltry secrets. Her respect for him waned with every revelation. He complimented her on her skill. "I could not do it more neatly myself!" he said. "Oh, dear Miss Dobson, will you but accept my hand, all these things shall ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... distinct and comparatively opaque, they do not modify, but conceal; but through the rain-cloud, and its accessory phenomena, all that is beautiful may be made manifest, and all that is hurtful concealed; what is paltry may be made to look vast, and what is ponderous, aerial; mystery may be obtained without obscurity, and decoration without disguise. And, accordingly, nature herself uses it constantly, as one of her chief means of most perfect effect; not in one country, nor another, but ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... for a suitable opportunity to regain the country; instead of which, although he had lost so great an empire by sea and land, he yet insisted on continuing his frantic and fruitless efforts to reconquer the paltry territory ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... wretched Dick had already disposed of it to these clamorous boys, and, what was worse, had stipulated with considerable forethought for payment in advance. For the first time he repented his paternal harshness. Like the netted lion, a paltry white mouse or two would have set him free; but, less happy than the beast in the ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... 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 men; and these modern flagellants are sure, with a rigid fidelity, to whip their own enormities on the vicarious back ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... her a present in nearly two weeks, and women set great store by such attentions. He decided to invest his money in Maiden Lane and demand credit from his tailor. But a half-hour at a jewelry shop convinced him that nothing suitable to so splendid a creature as his wife could be purchased for a paltry five hundred dollars, and he was upon the point of returning to Crosset with a request to double the loan when his common sense asserted itself. Poverty was odious, but not shameful, he reflected; ostentation, on the other hand, was vulgar. Would it not be in bad taste to squander ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... diminutive stature, his enormous mouth, his pimples and his yellow hair were sufficiently ridiculous. "Nay, don't envy our friend," Rowland said to Singleton afterwards, on his expressing, with a little groan of depreciation of his own paltry performances, his sense of the brilliancy of Roderick's talent. "You sail nearer the shore, but you sail in smoother waters. Be contented with what you are and paint me ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... for paltry money," replied the old woman, scornfully. "I like to do all the good ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... And armed Rebellion pressing on The broken lines of Washington! No stronger voice than thine had then Called out the utmost might of men, To make the Union's charter free And strengthen law by liberty. How had that stern arbitrament To thy gray age youth's vigor lent, Shaming ambition's paltry prize Before thy disillusioned eyes; Breaking the spell about thee wound Like the green withes that Samson bound; Redeeming, in one effort grand, Thyself and thy imperiled land! Ah cruel fate, that closed to thee, O sleeper by the Northern sea, The gates of opportunity! God fills the gaps of ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... law of the land in which he happens to be sojourning. Is it to be supposed that any minister would give himself the trouble to mix himself up in such affairs? He might address a note to the authorities, when the facts would in all probability be denied, or some paltry excuse made: the minister declares himself satisfied, and the Perotes have the laugh against us and our boasted powerful and energetic government. Now, had it been a Frenchman, a Russian, or even a Prussian, who had been served in this scandalous manner, how different ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... was the price of the cow, offering at the same time all the beans in his hat for her. The silly boy could not conceal the pleasure he felt at what he supposed so great an offer: the bargain was struck instantly, and the cow exchanged for a few paltry beans. Jack made the best of his way home, calling aloud to his mother before he reached the door, thinking ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... expenditures in 1910. Of this amount $407,000,000 were appropriated for war expenditures and the glories of militarism. For this same year agriculture received for all its needs the comparatively paltry sum of $12,000,000. In spite of the fact that our nation is devoting two thirds of its enormous national expenditures to war, our militarists point to our vast national wealth and sneer at the niggardly mortals who object to spending ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... chain of my servitude. Having kept close in shore for the land-breeze, we passed the Mission of San Juan Capistrano the same night, and saw distinctly, by the bright moonlight, the cliff which I had gone down by a pair of halyards in search of a few paltry hides. ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... not a matter of paltry traffic, or trifling parsimony and retrenchments of capital. Marseilles looks on all questions of commerce as a dilation and expansion of French capital, and of the raw material exported and imported from Europe and Asia. Commerce at Marseilles is a lucrative ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... never took it amiss if a colonist of Natal or of Cape Colony was unwilling to fight with us against England, yet I admit that it vexed me greatly to think that some of these colonists, for the sake of a paltry five shillings a day, should be ready to shoot down their fellow-countrymen. Such men, alas! there have always been, since, in the first days of the human race, Cain killed his brother Abel. But Cain had not long ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... period, had access to men in the very highest positions—to ministers, ambassadors, to the sons of a king, and even to the late king himself, it is much to his credit that he has contented himself with a paltry riband and a modest place, as Conservateur de la Bibliotheque Mazarine. M. de Sacy belongs to a Jansenist family. Apropos of this, M. Texier tells a pleasant story concerning him. A Roman Catholic writer addressing him one day in the small gallery reserved for the journalist at the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... no man would grudge a paltry three years out of his whole life's happiness to avoid so dreadful a thing as ill blood between twin brothers. If she could wait for his sake, he could wait for hers. A woman must not cheapen herself; if she is worth winning, she ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... tell you that in order to deceive her, not you! But you know better, La Corriveau! It was not for the sake of paltry jewels I desired you to come to the city to see me at this hour ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... is a small and shallow stream. Although from the extent of the stockade Mogoung has evidently in former periods (during the Shan dynasty) been of extent and consequence, it is at present a mean and paltry town. It derives any little consequence it possesses from being the rendezvous of the Shan-Chinese, who flock here annually for ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... troubled by them now? And the absurdity of Professor Black's is surely obvious. A child would laugh at it. Yes, a child! I have never been a diary writer. I have never been able to understand the amusement of sitting down late at night and scrawling minutely in some hidden book every paltry incident of one's paltry days. People say it is so interesting to read the entries years afterwards. To read, as a man, the menu that I ate through as a boy, the love-story that I was actor in, the tragedy that I brought about, the debt that I have never paid—how could it ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... themselves as to what was best to be done in the event of the non-arrival of the rescue party within a reasonable limit; Seth fretting and worrying himself the while as much as any, although he tried to preserve a quiet demeanour in order to reassure the rest, and exclaiming against the "paltry wounds," as he called them—which gave him much pain in spite of Jasper continually soaking the bandages around them with cold water in pursuance of his directions—that prevented him from taking an active part in his protege's recovery, ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... largeness and munificence of mercy boundless as space, free and open as the expanse of the firmament. We hope, therefore, the gospel, the real gospel, is as unlike the views of some of its interpreters, as creation, in all its boundless extent and beauty, is unlike the paltry scheme of some wretched scholastic in the middle ages. The middle age of science and civilization is now terminated; but Christianity also had its middle age, and this, perhaps, is not yet fully terminated. There is still a remainder of the old spell, even the spell of human authority, and ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... might have mov'd a Scythian or wild Arab, or indeed any thing but him, to pay her her Portion. To which, however, he seemingly consented, and promis'd to take her to Town with him, and there give her all the Satisfaction she cou'd expect: And having dipp'd some paltry Acres of Land, deeper than ever Heaven dipp'd 'em in Rain, he was as good as his Word, and brought her to Town with him, where he told her he would place her with an ancient Lady, with whom he had contracted a Friendship at his first coming to London; adding, that she was a Lady of incomparable ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... friend say what he pleased; and Reineke himself felt it so. It sate heavy, for him, on his soul, and alone of all the actions of his life we are certain that he wished it undone—the death and eating of that poor foolish Lampe, the hare. It was a paltry revenge in Reineke. Lampe had told tales of him; he had complained that Reineke, under pretence of teaching him his Catechism, had seized him and tried to murder him; and though he provoked his fate by thrusting ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... know where wisdom prompts, and where conceit. Alike their draughts to every scribbler's mind (Blind to their faults as to their danger blind); - We write enraptured, and we write in haste, Dream idle dreams, and call them things of taste, Improvement trace in every paltry line, And see, transported, every dull design; Are seldom cautious, all advice detest, And ever think our own opinions best; Nor shows my Muse a muse-like spirit here, Who bids me pause, before I persevere. But she—who ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe
... down. At its soft, chill touch Gideon's brain cooled and cooled, till he seemed to see everything in a cold, hard, crystal clarity. Life and death—how little they mattered. Life was paltry, and death its end. Yet when the world, the Potterish world, dealt with death it became something other than a mere end; it became a sensation, a problem, an episode in a melodrama. The question, when a man died, was always how and why. So, when Hobart had died, they were all dragged into ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... poor words, our poor deeds, thank Him? How mean and paltry our deepest gratitude, our highest loyalty, when compared with Him to whom it is due—that adorable victim, that perfect sin- offering, who this day offered up Himself upon the altar of the cross, in the fire of His own boundless zeal for the kingdom of God, ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... understandings return to us, and learn to bless the Most High, and not our own wit, and cunning, and prudence; and praise and honour Him that liveth for ever, instead of praising and honouring our own pitiful paltry selves, who are in death in the midst of life, who come up and are cut down like the flower, and ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... hateful, and destroys itself, the moment its presence becomes too perceptibly felt. Bear in mind, however, that all things that happen in our moral being must be equally lightly held, if regarded from the point of view whence you deliver this judgment. Love is a paltry affair, the moment of possession once over that alone is real and ensures the perpetuity of the race; and yet we find that as man grows more civilised, the act of possession assumes ever less value in his eyes if there go not with it, if there do not precede, accompany, and follow it, the ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... don't believe—I can't believe—that simply for the sake of a paltry sum like that you would have risked so much. You could have swindled me in a thousand ways before now, and done it easily, too, with small chance of being found out. But this—this was bound to be discovered sooner or later. You ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the warriors, and carried off the women and children, with everything else he could lay hands on. Of course Amalatok made reprisals; attacked a small island belonging to Grabantak, and did as much general mischief as he could. The paltry islet about which the war began was not worthy either ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... result of his musings had been a desire to live away from the world with those he loved. The world, as other men viewed it, had no charms for him. Its pursuits and passions seemed to him on the whole paltry and faint. He could sympathise with great deeds, but not with bustling life. That which was common did not please him. He loved things that were rare and strange; and the spell that bound him so strongly ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... farming purposes and the land-owner doesn't give a darn then whether he rents to white or yellow—so long as he gets the highest bidder's money. The chink spends hardly anything on clothes, he lives in a hovel; eats rice, works seven days in the week, pays no taxes except a paltry Road Tax of something like four dollars a year—and generally manages to evade even that;—doesn't contribute to Church, Charity or Social welfare, and sends every gold coin he can exchange for dollar bills over ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... I marvel (if it be That aught may wond'rous seem to me) That Jove's high Gift, your noble Art, Bestow'd to raise Man's grov'ling heart, Refining with ethereal ray Each gross and selfish thought away, Should pander turn of paltry pelf, Imprisoning each within himself; Or like a gorgeous serpent, be Your splendid source of misery, And, crushing with his burnish'd folds, Still narrower make ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... which took the breath away. Several of the most conservative owners parted with their estates after naming a figure which they supposed beyond the danger point, and half a dozen second-rate situations, affording but a paltry glimpse of the ocean, were snapped up in eager competition by wealthy capitalists from Chicago, Pittsburg, and St. Louis who had set their hearts on securing ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... busy to stop, but in his blind terror the dwarf would single out some luckless wight—commonly some well-dressed person; Juniper instinctively sought the protection of the aristocracy—getting behind him, ducking between his legs, surrounding him, dancing through him—doing anything to save the paltry flitch of his own bacon. Presently the bear would lose all patience and nip the other fellow. Then, ashamed of losing his temper, he would sneak sullenly away, taking along the body. When he had gone, poor Juniper would fall upon his knees, tearing his beard, pounding his breast, ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... thoughts in a diary. You would say, I should have been superior to circumstances; so I should—so I should; but you see I was not. When fate wronged me, I had not the wisdom to remain cool: I turned desperate; then I degenerated. Now, when any vicious simpleton excites my disgust by his paltry ribaldry, I cannot flatter myself that I am better than he: I am forced to confess that he and I are on a level. I wish I had stood firm—God knows I do! Dread remorse when you are tempted to err, Miss Eyre; remorse is ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... is always a short-cut to his sense, for his estate was too spacious for him to need that trick of winding the path of his thought about, and planting it out with clumps of epithet, by which the landscape-gardeners of literature give to a paltry half-acre the air of a park. In poetry, to be next-best is, in one sense, to be nothing; and yet to be among the first in any kind of writing, as Dryden certainly was, is to be one of a very small company. He had, beyond most, the gift of the right word. And ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... worst; and resolve to lose your life sooner than your virtue. What though the doubts I filled you with, lessen the pleasure you would have had in your master's kindness; yet what signify the delights that arise from a few paltry fine clothes, in comparison ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... with the most harsh reproaches on his perfidy. "Go, monsieur," said he to him, "and let me never again see you before my eyes!" At the same time, and in accordance with formal orders received from Paris, Pius VII was surrounded with the most paltry vexations; henceforth he was deprived in his captivity of all his old servants. The papers and portfolios of the Pope were all seized. "Never mind my purse," said the holy father; "but what will they do with my breviary and the office ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... feeble as to need to have his triumph adorned. He himself had taken hold of practical things at an early age; he had made something out of nothing—a good deal out of nothing; and compared with this act of creation the fabrication of verses or of pictures was a paltry affair, indeed. ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... pledged the fealty of her lover's soul, and demanded hers then and forever? His conscience might have been sullied by crimes more heinous than those charged upon him by her brother and his friends; he might—he HAD—let her go easily, as one resigns his careless hold upon a paltry, unprized toy; but when her hand had rested thus in his, and his passionate regards penetrated her soul, he loved her, alone and entirely! She would fold this conviction to her torpid heart for a little while before she turned herself away finally ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... existence are merged in that of the species only. It is taken for granted that anything that is high, great, or noble by its very nature stands isolated in a world where no better expression can be found to signify what is base and paltry than the term which I have mentioned as ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... that comes from a quick intelligence—a keen appreciation of the intelligence of the great artists who had interpreted a story which thrilled the imagination of generation after generation, and he felt that Parliament was a paltry thing. Parliament—what was Parliament? The wrangle of political parties over a paltry issue. It had no real life in it; it had nothing of the fullness and breadth of the matters that interested ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... cabin to relate the particulars: the destruction of the president's house, the treasury, war, and navy offices, the capitol, the depository of the national library and the public records. There was a momentary pause after the speaker had ceased, when some paltry spirit lifted his head from his settee, and in a tone of complacent derision, 'wondered what Jimmy Madison would say now.' 'Sir,' said Mr. Irving, glad of an escape to his swelling indignation, ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... far as I can see, purity, religious sanctity, or religious sentiment itself. But here is where the change begins. In order to accommodate a religion to all natures, all sorts of petty, miserable, paltry things are introduced. The pomp of the ceremonies, instead of being a true pomp which lays hold on the soul, often degenerates into a commerce in relics, medals, of little saints and Virgins. To what, gentlemen, do the ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... Britain! France would now have an opportunity to develop her socialistic experiments, as she would be permitted to maintain only a very small army. The mistake of 1870 must not be repeated. This time there would be no paltry levy of five billion francs. A great German Empire would rise on the ruins of the British. Commercial gain was the theme. I did not gather from the conversation that anybody but Germany would be a party ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... Tryggveson," Queen Sigrid would often say, and had long been saying, to her Svein, "to marry thy sister without leave had or asked of thee; and now flaunting forth his war navies, as if he, king only of paltry Norway, were the big hero of the North! Why do you suffer it, you kings ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... seize thy mortal frame, Oblivion's pen shall blot thy worthless name; For thy rude hand ne'er plucked the beauteous rose That on Pie'ria's sky-clad summit blows: [Symond's "Greek Poets," First Series, p. 139.] Thy paltry soul with vilest souls shall go To Pluto's kingdom—scenes of endless woe; While I on golden wings ascend to fame, And leave behind a ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... for ever. Stirring ideas; store of knowledge patiently heaped up; visions of better sights than this world can show, falling freshly and sunnily over the pages of my first book; all these were past and gone—withered up by the hot breath of the senses—doomed by a paltry fate, whose germ was the accident of an ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... was it possible for him to persuade himself that so many magnificent palaces, so many splendid temples, so many rich mercantile establishments, had been forsaken by their owners, like the paltry hamlets through which he had recently passed? Daru's mission, however, was fruitless. Not a Muscovite was to be seen; not a particle of smoke arose from a single chimney; not the slightest noise issued from this ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... the two Sosias,(17) in a Whig newspaper. Sosias, can you read it? The pamphlet begins to make a noise: I was asked by several whether I had seen it, and they advised me to read it, for it was something very extraordinary. I shall be suspected; and it will have several paltry answers. It must take its fate, as Savage(18) said of his sermon that he preached at Farnham on Sir William Temple's death. Domville saw Savage in Italy, and says he is a coxcomb, and half mad: he goes in red, and with yellow waistcoats, and was at ceremony kneeling to ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... crime being committed. We have therefore advanced an important step in our enquiry when we have ascertained that the witch of the Old Testament was not capable of anything beyond the administration of baleful drugs or the practising of paltry imposture; in other words, that she did not hold the character ascribed to a modern sorceress. We have thus removed out of the argument the startling objection that, in denying the existence of witchcraft, we deny ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... mistake in one part." "What was it?" the other asked. "Waal, you say that So-and-so 'lipped the hole for a half.'" "Yes, that is right." "Oh, go away; you don't mean to tell me that a rich man like that would be playing for a paltry fifty cents. I've altered it to 'lipped the hole for a hundred dollars.'" And I remember that once when I was playing the best ball of two amateurs, one of the reporters had been instructed by his chief to keep the best ball score. I ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... dismembered, slew the edifice, in its form as well as in its symbolism, in its logic no less than in its beauty. But fashion restored, a thing which neither time nor revolution ever pretended to do. Fashion, on the plea of "good taste," impudently adapted to the wounds of Gothic architecture the paltry gewgaws of a day,—marble ribbons, metallic plumes, a veritable leprosy of egg-shaped moldings, of volutes, wreaths, draperies, spirals, fringes, stone flames, bronze clouds, lusty cupids, and bloated ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... the extortionate money-lender of Warwick. Riding on an easy rein through the town, Hind heard a tumult at a street corner, and inquiring the cause, was told that an innkeeper was arrested by a thievish usurer for a paltry twenty pounds. Dismounting, this providence in jack-boots discharged the debt, cancelled the bond, and took the innkeeper's goods for his own security. And thereupon overtaking the usurer, 'My friend!' he exclaimed, 'I lent you late a sum ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... fidelity, modesty, and unerring sureness in dealing with the things of sense, never conceive aught base or ignoble of themselves: but the multitude the contrary. Why, what am I?—A wretched human creature; with this miserable flesh of mine. Miserable indeed! but you have something better than that paltry flesh of yours. Why then cling to the one, and ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... drawn by oxen, a heap of paternosters of Sanct Claude, every one of them being of the bigness of a hat-block; and thus walking through the cloisters, galleries, or garden, he said more in turning them over than sixteen hermits would have done. Then did he study for some paltry half-hour with his eyes fixt upon his book; but as the comic saith, his mind was in the kitchen. Then he sat down at table; and because he was naturally phlegmatic, he began his meal with some dozens of hams, dried meats' tongues, mullet's roe, chitterlings, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... state and with the rest of the population. Nevertheless, they are glad to escape when the time of their service expires. The people all dread being made soldiers: so that Government is compelled to resort to the most paltry tricks to get recruits. Men are often unjustly charged with theft or debt, and put in prison, and then let out as a favour to be enlisted, or sometimes are clapped into the ranks at once. Youths have been seized as soldiers for kicking up the dust in ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... or less perfect state, and all correspond in design, proportion, and execution to the tower. The ruins of the old Hindoo temples about the place, and about every other place in India, are totally different in all three; here they are all exceedingly paltry and insignificant, compared with the church and its tower, and it is evident that it was the intention of the founder to make them appear so to future generations of the faithful, for he has taken care to make his own great work support rather than destroy them, that they might ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... of chance delays, I should make the trip in two months. Think of it, Alma! Four thousand in two months! Beats the paltry hundred a month I'm getting now. Why, we'll build further out where we'll have more space, gas in every room, and a view, and the rent of the cottage'll pay taxes, insurance, and water, and leave something over. And then there's always the chance of my striking it and coming out a millionaire. ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... paltry fellow in Middlemarch than Bowyer," said Ladislaw, indignantly, "but it seems as if the paltry fellows were always to turn ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... her, will discover his value, and send him to the devil. Now, if it had been Hareton!—Do you know that, twenty times a day, I covet Hareton, with all his degradation? I'd have loved the lad had he been some one else. But I think he's safe from her love. I'll pit him against that paltry creature, unless it bestir itself briskly. We calculate it will scarcely last till it is eighteen. Oh, confound the vapid thing! He's absorbed in drying his feet, ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... earliest of the paltry insinuations against Marie Antoinette emanated from her not counterfeiting deep affliction at the decease of the old King. A few days after that event, the Court received the regular visits of condolence and congratulation of the nobility, whose ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 4 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... "What do you know about it, Bessie? It is dreadfully hard on an ambitious fellow to be forced to turn his back on all his fine visions of usefulness and distinction for the paltry fear that death may ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... half-stunned him. Beside it he himself and his work seemed like dust in the balance. Where were all his plans and achievements now, his greatness, his position, his authority in the town? Compared with amounts like this, what were the paltry sums he had ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... the above he was surprised, and said to himself, "These articles arc so paltry and of such trifling value as not to be worth an arbitration; for surely this shabby cap, the drum, and the wooden ball, cannot be worth altogether more than half a deenar; but I will inquire farther about them." ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... desperately pressed by his duns, had received a small remittance from his father, a struggling Clergyman. The sum amounted to L50, just enough to pay the young fellow's bills, and leave him a paltry sovereign. Do you think he was such a fool as to have read my Circular in vain? He very wisely brought the money to me. I bought Boomerangs at 11 3/4. In 57 1/2 hours that young man was a millionnaire. He has magnificent chambers on the Embankment; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... Huguenot refugee, arrived with a demand for surrender. The heart of the valiant Champlain was wrung. He had inspected his empty magazine and the rickety fort which the improvidence of the Company had allowed to fall into ruin. But even the weakness of his starved and paltry garrison did not affect his fortitude. Kirke's envoy was courteously dismissed, with the bold assurance that Quebec would defend itself to the last man. Champlain still clung to the hope that supplies would arrive from France; and even as he uttered his bold defiance, ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... their horses to the rear, in the care of varlets who subsequently saved themselves by riding them off. The solid ranks are formed bristling with spears. There is a pause as the two parties survey each other. The nobles pass the word along that it looks like a paltry business:— ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... great Naya should be held in awe by all her subjects, for in her anger she seemed capable of the most fiendish cruelty. As in Kumassi, so also in Mo, death seemed to come quickly, and for any paltry offence. Gankoma, executioner to the Great White Queen, was, I afterwards learnt, continually busy obeying the royal commands, and the rapidly increasing number of victims whose heads fell beneath his terrible knife was causing ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... is an English nobleman whose estates are reputed to be worth a larger sum. "She is very great," says a French writer, "that odious England." Odious she may be, but she is great,—too great to be bribed to baseness by a paltry fee. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... friends, for braving the king's displeasure. "By the mass, Master More," he said, "it is perilous striving with princes; therefore, I wish you somewhat to incline to the king's pleasure, for 'indignatio Principis mors est.'" "And is that all, my lord?" replied this man, so much above all paltry considerations; "then in good faith the difference between your grace and me is but this—that I may die to-day, and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... sky at the horizon, although it was of a clear pale primrose hue, had that peculiar indescribable "hardness" of tint that, to the experienced eye, is the sure forerunner of a good wholesome breeze. That breeze, however, was yet to come; the wind at the moment being very paltry—little more than sufficient, indeed, to keep the heavier canvas "asleep," and to send the barque along at a speed of about five knots. The water was perfectly smooth, save of course for the ripple caused by the light breeze; but, so far as swell was concerned, there was absolutely none, ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... lake. At another time Saunders believed the spirit to belong to a man whom Eustace had once employed as a laboratory assistant, "a black-haired spiteful little brute," he said, "who died cursing his doctor because the fellow couldn't help him to live to settle some paltry score with Borlsover." ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... got out the oars, pulling gently to the lee side of these rocks, and with some difficulty landed and made fast my boat between two lofty pillars of granite, which rose sheer from the sea. I was dreadfully cold and could find no shelter from the rain, which had completely saturated my paltry clothing. I therefore had a dip in the sea, which appeared to me warmer than the cold rain and night air, and less likely to have bad after effects upon my constitution. Oh, poor Robinson Crusoe! here was a pretty kettle of fish at the very first trip. How gladly would ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... very dull and depressing that people living there are apt to be driven, by sheer boredom, into spending their lives in a round of small excitements and incessant, wearisome gossip, and into taking far more interest in the paltry squabbles of their neighbours over some storm in a teacup than in the more important topics which invigorate the minds of men and women in healthier and broader societies. Long before Rodenbach's romance was written this peculiarity of Bruges was ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... few minutes there was little doubt about its being a genuine bonfire and no paltry makeshift. Selina, a Maenad now, hatless and tossing disordered locks, all the dross of the young lady purged out of her, stalked around the pyre of her own purloining, or prodded it with a pea-stick. And as she prodded she ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... the peers of the realm,—no time for pleasure or relaxation,—being devoted entirely to public interests of the greatest magnitude; for on his shoulders rested the government of the kingdom. What was the paltry dispute of a few hundred pounds in a distant colony to the Prime Minister of England! All that Franklin could secure was an interview with the great man's secretaries, and they did ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... discussions in which little minds exhaust themselves. In order properly to understand the precise character of the piety of Jesus, we must forget all that is placed between the gospel and ourselves. Deism and Pantheism have become the two poles of theology. The paltry discussions of scholasticism, the dryness of spirit of Descartes, the deep-rooted irreligion of the eighteenth century, by lessening God, and by limiting Him, in a manner, by the exclusion of everything which is not His very self, ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... velvet collar, new from the first, and, we really believe, a permanent velvet collar, adhered to in storm and in sunshine, has a very money-making impression on the world. It shows a spirit superior to feelings of paltry economy, and we think a person would be much more excusable for being victimized by a man with a good velvet collar to his coat, than by one exhibiting that spurious sign of ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... cut down and the railroad bridges burned. A mere handful of regulars, the few volunteers that had got through before the outbreak in Baltimore, and a small number of Union residents and Government department clerks—these, under General Winfield Scott, constituted the paltry force that, for ten days after the Call for troops, held the ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... enjoyable four weeks' visit to Goeteborg), I had scarcely been a month a freshman, attending philosophical lectures and taking part in student life than the dreaded separation between us two so differently constituted friends came to pass. The provocation was trifling, in fact paltry. One day I was standing in the lecture-room with a few fellow- students before a lecture began, when a freshman hurried up to us and asked: "Is it true, what Sebastian says, that he is the person you think most of in the world?" My reply was: "Did he ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... of pictures, which I had the pleasure of starting three years ago with some of your own, only contains, as far as Old Masters go, one Velasquez, one Rembrandt, and three paltry Rubens. You have a great many more. Since it is a shame such masterpieces should be in your hands, I propose to appropriate them; and I shall set about a respectful acquisition of them in your Paris house ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... disciple of Plato: "therefore it is unquiet till it finds repose in God." From this unrest proceed all our miseries. Men do not always succeed in contenting themselves with a petty prosaic happiness, a dull and paltry well-being, and in stifling the while the grand instincts of our nature. If then the heart lives, and fails of its due object; if it does not meet with the supreme term of its repose, its indefinite aspirations attach themselves ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... was generally followed by a crowd of boys who were trying to sell all sorts of little trinkets. One of them especially, was very persistent in trying to dispose of an ancient coin of the Ceasars, which he guaranteed to be very valuable and for which he would take the paltry sum of ten lire. Boyton finally told him that he knew all about the coin, and would give two lire to find the man who made it. The young villain mysteriously whispered the information, which later on was found to be correct. Some of the boys would get him ten fine oranges for one cent ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... "If you had seen her as I did, gliding among the rubbish of the ruined hut, looking about her on all sides, muttering I know not what! Oh, but she has frightened me very much! If she had seen me, I was a lost man. She would have changed me into a lizard, a toad, or a bat. She took a paltry herb—the paltriest I ever saw—of a pale sickly yellow, with red and black marks, like the flames, as they say, of hell. The horror of the thing is, that the whole stalk was hairy like a man, with long, black, sticky hairs. She ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... boys of the best families, whom he boarded on his own terms and undertook to instruct in the French and Latin languages, so as to qualify them for the colleges of Westminster and Eton. While this plan was in its infancy, he was so fortunate as to meet with Jennings, who, for the paltry consideration of thirty pounds a year, which his necessities compelled him to accept, took the whole trouble of educating the children upon himself, contrived an excellent system for that purpose, and, by his assiduity and knowledge, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... allegorical interpretation of the Book of Canticles was in truth the source of, or at least the model for, a vast amount of unwholesome and repulsive pietism. Not a word need be said for such a paltry narrative of endearments and sickly compliments as the "Revelations of the Nun Gertrude," in the thirteenth century. Nor are we concerned to deny that the artificially induced ecstasy, which is desired on account of the intense pleasure ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... of money to be sent to him, instead of the gold which he had promised. Ferdusi was in the public bath when the money was given to him, and his rage and amazement exceeded all bounds when he found himself thus insulted. He distributed the paltry sum among the attendants of the bath and the slaves ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... "da Groto himself did not act that play so well, when I saw him years since in the Farnese theatre at Parma. But you have taken liberties with the lines and, per Bacco! have improved them. Whoever you may be you are too good an actor for such paltry assistance." ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... the language of nature, I translated from her hieroglyphic pages in characters of flame. With rash hands I stripped false seemings from material beauty, and limned the naked divinity of Idea. Shorn by degrees in my strife of youth and strength and passion, I wound them in my work—toiling like paltry larvae. And it was done—retouched and lingered over long, apotheosized by mighty effort. So I offered ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... very unfortunate in his speculations, obliged to sell our plantation and negroes, and now, he says, 'a few paltry thousands only remain;' but, oh! that is not the worst; I wish it were, he has sold out everything, broken every tie, and will be here this evening on his way to Texas. He writes that I must be ready ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... of Swinburne's skits. Modern respectability is so utterly without God, faith, heart; it shows so singular an ingenuity in and injuring everything that is noble and good, and so systematic a preference for what is mean and paltry, that I am not surprised at a young fellow dashing his heels into the face of it .... When there is any kind of true genius, we have no right to drive it mad. We must deal with it ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... with Babo for a thousand doubloons," murmured the black, overhearing the offer, and taking it in earnest, and, with the strange vanity of a faithful slave, appreciated by his master, scorning to hear so paltry a valuation put upon him by a stranger. But Don Benito, apparently hardly yet completely restored, and again interrupted by his cough, made but ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... to record, shall we, who so oft have witnessed—nay, shared—the hardy exploits of our fellow-cits, shall we sit still, and never cease the eternal twirl of our dexter around our sinister thumb, while other scribes hand down to future ages the paltry feats of beardless Meltonians, and try to shame old Father Thames himself with muddy Whissendine's foul stream? Away! thou vampire, Indolence, that suckest the marrow of imagination, and fattenest on the cream of idea ere yet it float on the milk of reflection. Hence! slug-begotten ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... dared to say that thing in my presence,' said the paltry blusterer, with valor on his tongue and pallor on his ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... in some surprise, for it consisted of six white whales' teeth, and two of the same dyed bright red, which seemed to me very paltry things. However, I did not dare to hesitate or ask any questions; so, gathering them up, I left the cabin and was soon on my way to the chief's house, accompanied by Bill. On expressing my surprise at the ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... depth to which he descended for the purpose of making money. No article of trade, however petty, that he thought himself able to make a few dollars by, was passed aside unnoticed, while he would sell from the paltry amount of a pound of flour to the largest quantity of merchandize required. Like all persons who are suddenly elevated, from comparative dependence, to wealth, he had become purse proud and ostentatious, as he was humble and cringing before the ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... But I think it's about time he had some news of her. He ought to know she wasn't actuated by any such paltry, childish motive." ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... visit to Fort Smith would convince anyone of the absolute failure of this method. In the miserable prison pen, one hundred and forty-four were crowded like cattle. Among this multitude of criminals were young boys, just entering upon a life of crime, imprisoned for some paltry offence, and herded with them were grey-headed murderers. All these prisoners were from the Indian Territory, or the "Nation" as they call it. One man had just been convicted of murder. Two beautiful daughters of an ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 1, January 1888 • Various
... the dregs of the cup of woe I am draining. Edith, do not refuse the only aid I can offer you in your loneliness; and accept the earnest assurance that I shall be grateful for the privilege of promoting your comfort. Affection and trust I have not, and a few paltry thousands are all I am now able to bestow. By the love you once professed, and in the name of that compassion you should feel for me, I beg of you, despise not the gift; and let the consciousness that I have saved ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... Then let come what might on this plane of foolish contention, where we strive to cover the Immutable with the petty mask of our mutabilities. We sweat and toil for ends which we know not, and our paltry and blind decisions, our triumphs and failures, determine nothing but the degree of our own ignorance and impotence. The Lord's aims and issues are not ours, and ours do but measure our spiritual stature, and direct our immortal destiny, ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... darted through her brain. She would ask Miss Mitchell, the drawing-room boarder, to lend her the three-and-sixpence which the little shoes would cost. It was the first time she had ever borrowed, and her pride rose in revolt at even naming the paltry sum—but, for the sake of her boy's ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... requiring that his Prussian Majesty shall "help in executing Imperial Orders" in the neighboring Anarchic Country. Which rather huffed little George,—hitherto, since, his Father's death, the principal, or as good as sole Commissioner,—if so big a Britannic Majesty COULD be huffed by paltry slights of that kind! Friedrich Wilhelm, who has much meditated Mecklenburg, strains his intellect, sometimes to an intense degree, to find out ways of settling it: George, who has never cared to meditate it, nor been able if he had, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... And so you mean to let your gifts go to waste? To bury your talent? Do you think your paltry achievements at Leipsic amount to the ne plus ultra of genius? Let us but once get to the great world—Paris and London! where you get your ears boxed if you salute a man as honest. It is a real jubilee to practise one's handicraft there on a grand scale. How ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... I did, my lord. Sell the crown diamonds. Trust me, don't let us try to do things cheaply. Great undertakings come poorly off with paltry means." ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... appeared to me! The wife gossiped as usual, with a tap now and then to the child, a bone to the dogs, and a smile to the philosopher. Not once did Heurtebise turn towards us, and yet he was not asleep. I hardly know whether he thought. Dear, valiant fellow! In those paltry and ceaseless struggles, the mainspring of his strong nature had broken, and he was already beginning to die. The silent death agony, which however was rather an abandonment of life, lasted several months; and then Madame Heurtebise found herself ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... 'Pay me that thou owest.' He had just come through an agony of experience that might have made him tender. He had just received a blessing that might have made his heart glow. But even the repetition of his own petition does not touch him, and when the poor fellow-servant, with his paltry debt, says, 'Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all,' it avails nothing. He durst not sell his fellow-servant. God's rights over a man are more than any man's over another. But he does what he ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... dollars to his quota. For two months, he had carried the double load, and beaten his schedule; in early May, he was falling behind at the rate of fifty dollars a week. With twelve weeks ahead, he faced a deficit of a paltry six hundred dollars—and the Mix amendment was peeping over ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... I have already much diminished the number of employments involving degradation; and raised the character of many of those that are left. There remain to be considered the necessarily painful or mechanical works of mining, forging, and the like: the unclean, noisome, or paltry manufactures—the various kinds of transport—(by merchant shipping, etc.) and the conditions ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... afresh upon its contents. He had left St. Ignace on Monday morning, and it was now Thursday; Henry Clairville was dead and buried; the funeral obsequies being of a complex nature, shabby and ornate, dignified and paltry, leisurely and hurried, while the ceremony was at least well attended, since, as Dr. Renaud had said, a Seigneur did not die every day. Profuse in the matter of lappets, crucifixes, and in the number of voluble country-folk and stout serious-lipped priests, Father Rielle, who had ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... know that men of the Dwining stamp, when they have had the control of nations, often do good simply from the dictates of superior wisdom—the wisdom of the serpent—which, no Ramorney ever did. The skill with which the crawling, paltry leech controls his fierce lord; the contempt for his power and pride shown in Dwining's adroit sneers, and above all, the ease with which the latter casts into the shade Ramorney's fancied superiority in wickedness, is well set forth—and such a character ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... me, 'Come,' and he has given me 'rest.' I have had a long, long struggle, but the conflict is over. Ah, He is so different from human creditors! I have been a poor debtor, chased, hunted, oppressed, goaded almost to insanity, and none took pity on me, because I owed them a few paltry dollars, which I had the heart to pay, but, through the robberies of another, and their oppressions, could not. But what a debt I owed my Savior! Yet, without a word of reproach, he has forgiven ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... the world lay newly made under my eyes. Vastly as my mind had stretched to embrace the idea of a great country, when I exchanged Polotzk for America, it was no such enlargement as I now experienced, when in place of the measurable earth, with its paltry tale of historic centuries, I was given the illimitable universe to contemplate, with the numberless ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... was THE BEST in the universe. The most ridiculous part of the affair is, that the toothpick-case was his, after all—he had left it on the Nawaub's table at tiffin. I can't conceive what madness prompted him to fight about such a paltry bauble; he had much better have yielded it at once, when he saw I was determined to have it. From this slight specimen of my adventures, the reader will perceive that my life has been one of no ordinary interest; and, in fact, I may say that I have led a more remarkable life than ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
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