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More "Prodigal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... heart, Francis. Ah! I know your reasons. You think I am returned again like the prodigal son, with an empty purse, 'after eating of the husks which the swine did eat.' ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... King, here concurred with reasons of state. Not only had Brunswick married the sister of George III; but their daughter, the Princess Caroline, was now the reluctant choice of the Prince of Wales. The parents, both at Windsor and at Brunswick welcomed the avowal by the royal prodigal of the claims of lawful wedlock. The Duchess of Brunswick fell into raptures at the brilliant prospects thus opened out for her daughter; and it seemed that both Hymen and Mars, for once working in ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... with cavernous eyes aglow; Hair tawny; hollow cheeks; looks resolute; Lips pouting, but to smiles and pleasance slow; Head bowed, neck beautiful, and breast hirsute; Limbs shapely; simple, yet elect, in dress; Rapid my steps, my thoughts, my acts, my tones; Grave, humane, stubborn, prodigal to excess; To the world adverse, fortune me disowns. Shame makes me vile, and anger makes me brave, Reason in me is cautious, but my heart Doth, rich in vices and in virtues, rave; Sad for the most, and oft alone, apart; Incredulous alike of hope and ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... to the Ambassador, who stood by, astonished at the grandeur of soul he witnessed. He promised her that he would never cease to take the liveliest interest in her fate, and assured the Count of his father's forgiveness. 'He will receive with open arms,' said he, 'the prodigal son, returning to the bosom of his distressed family; the heart of a father is an exhaustless mine of tenderness. How great will be the felicity of my friend on the receipt of these tidings, after his long anxiety and affliction; how happy do ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... reigned in his bosom. He felt as a father toward Scotland. For every son and daughter of that harassed country, he was ready to lay down his life. Edwin he cherished in his heart as he would have done the dearest of his own offspring. It was as a parent to whom a beloved and prodigal son had returned, that he looked on Bruce. But Helen, of all Scotland's daughters, she was the most precious in his eyes; set love aside, and no object without the touch of that all-pervading passion could he regard ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... Excellency! My father has killed the fatted calf for his returned prodigal, and I must dine ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... hotel. He knew, that within a few hours, perhaps minutes, he and Verka would be corpses; and for that reason, although he had in his pocket only eleven kopecks, all in all, he gave orders sweepingly, like a habitual, downright prodigal; he ordered sturgeon stew, double snipes, and fruits; and, in addition to all this, coffee, liqueurs and two bottles of frosted champagne. And he was in reality convinced that he would shoot himself; but thought of it somehow affectedly, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... creature. For if he hated his sin, nay if he felt weary and heavy laden in the least degree because of it, he might leave it. There is a free grace, and a proffered assistance of the Holy Ghost, of which he might avail himself at any moment. Had he the feeling of the weary and penitent prodigal, the same father's house is ever open for his return; and the same father seeing him on his return, though still a great way off, would run and fall upon his neck and kiss him. But the heart is hard, and the spirit is utterly selfish, and the will is perverse and determined, ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... No prodigal ever received such an ovation. There was literally a fight for his person. Jill snatched him from me and pressed his nose to her face; Berry dragged him from her protesting arms and set him upon his knee; ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... prodigal, the calf has returned!" cried Sabrina the Show Girl, as her taxicab drew up to ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... sing in public. Kent had said he would be happier if he knew I had given up that life and was among friends. And they—they had called themselves my friends. When I went back to them they welcomed me. Mr. Cripps called me his 'prodigal daughter,' and Mrs. Cripps prayed over me. It wasn't until I told them I had no 'inheritance,' except one of debt, that they began to show me what they really were. They wouldn't believe it. They said you were trying to defraud me. It was dreadful. I—I ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... covering the hills like a yellow carpet called this "The Land of Fire." This beautiful flower is one of California's natural wonders—"Copa-de-oro"—cup of gold. It is as famed in the East as in the West, and thousands come to California to see it in its prodigal beauty. Steps should quickly be taken to conserve this wild splendor, and restrictions should be put upon the vandals, who, not content with picking what they can use to beautify the home, tear them up by the roots just to see how large an armful they can gather, scattering their golden petals ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... charge, fell in his way, all her friends concluded as a matter of certainty that Sir Tom would jump at this extraordinary windfall, this gift of a too kind Providence, which sometimes will care for a prodigal in a way which he is quite unworthy of, while leaving the righteous man to struggle on unaided. But for some time it appeared as if society for once was out in its reckoning. Sir Tom did not pounce upon the heiress. ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... many will reckon but a worthless weed; but the more historical associations we can link with our localities, the richer will be the daily life that feeds upon the past, and the more valuable the things that have been long established: so that our children will be less prodigal than their fathers in sacrificing good institutions to passionate impulses and impracticable theories. This herb of grace, let us hope, may be found in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and prizes[671] and glory on others, while they rob themselves of respect and fair fame. And if we see that the person who importunes us only does so for money, does it not occur to one that it is monstrous to be prodigal of one's own fame and reputation merely to make somebody else's purse heavier? Why the idea must occur to most people, they sin with their eyes open; like people who are urged hard to toss off big bumpers, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Prodigal son? You're late, to-day, As always when you've business in Bellingham. That's through, I trust: those ewes have taken a deal Of seeing to: and I'm lonely as a ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... the star of the harem. But if some of the women of that court were deeply degraded—if the termagant and imperious Castlemaine; the lovely and intriguing Denham; the coquettish, cold, and cunning Richmond; the innately-dissipated and unrestrainable Southesk; the equivocal Middleton; the rapacious, prodigal, and insinuating Querouaille,—are rendered infamous in our national history—let us not confound the innocent with the guilty. We can point out to our daughters, for admiration and example, the patient, affectionate, and enduring Lady Northumberland, the beloved ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... of "Kentucky" was sung with animation, after which came the sermon, of which the marquis understood but few words, though he understood the pantomime by which the venerable minister represented the return of the prodigal and the welcome he received. When he saw the tears in the eyes of the hearers, and heard the half-repressed "Bless the Lord!" of an old brother or sister, and saw them glance joyfully at one another's faces as the sermon went on, he was strangely impressed with ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... 1388, the former councillors of his father, the petty nobles, or marmousets, as the great seigneurs contemptuously called them, resumed the direction of affairs, but, with all their prudence and ability, were quite unable to restrain the prodigal wastefulness of the prince. The entry of the queen, Isabeau de Baviere, whom he had married three years before, was made the occasion of extravagant processions, pomps, diversions, and mystery-plays in Paris, as was the marriage of his brother, the Duc d'Orleans, with the beautiful ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... You are so prodigal! if you loved my master, You would not tear his doublet so:—How's this! Two swelling breasts! a woman, and my rival! The stings of jealousy have given me courage, Which nature never gave me: Come ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... spending more money! In very truth the years following the Centennial witnessed an extraordinary awakening of worship of beauty, almost religious in its fervor. Passionate pilgrims ransacked Europe and the Orient; a prodigal horde of their captives, objects of luxury and of art, surged into galleries and museums and households. No cold, critical taste weeded out these adorable aliens. The worst and the best conquered, together. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... calls many a thing sin whereof we men think but too lightly. Yet, bethink thee that 'if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father.' Now, dear heart, if thou wilt be ruled by me, thou wilt 'arise and go to thy father' and thy mother, and say to them right as did the prodigal, that thou hast sinned against Heaven and in their sight. I think neither of them is so much angered as sorrowful and pitying: yet, if there be any anger in them, trust me, that were the way to disarm it. Come back, Milly—first to God, and then to them. Thou shalt find ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... of its spectacular conditions the water traffic on the rivers of the Mississippi Valley is greater now than at any time in its history. Its methods only have changed. Instead of gorgeous packets crowded with a gay and prodigal throng of travelers for pleasure, we now find most often one dingy, puffing steamboat, probably with no passenger accommodations at all, but which pushes before her from Pittsburg to New Orleans ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... as though they said, "Master, is it not too bad? See how thy generous testimony has been requited! In the day of thy glory thou wert too profuse in thy acknowledgments, too prodigal in thy testimonials. Now this new Teacher has taken a leaf out of thy programme; He too is preaching, baptizing, and gathering a school of disciples." But there was no tinder in that noble breast which these jealous sparks could kindle. Nothing but love dwelt there. He had been plunged into the ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... John the Baptist!' When out of breath, the brethren asked him what he meant. 'I mean a glass of cider.' If the peace party were as frank as the Indian, they would tell us that their cry signifies place, power, self. The prodigal sons of the South are to be lured back by promises of pardon, indemnification, niggers ad libitum, before they have satiated themselves with the husks which seem to have fallen to their portion, and are willing ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... and they have often been used by Christian parents yearning for the best interests of their children, and sometimes of their wayward and prodigal children. But consecrated as they are by that usage, I am afraid that their meaning, as they were uttered, was nothing so devout and good as that which is often attached ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... family in a measure also (and with reservations), and it would have been impossible to him, of all men, to confess himself beaten, and return to them for assistance of any kind. He could never have enacted the part of the prodigal son. He knew this in earlier days, when husks were for the most part all he had to sustain him. But the mind requires not even the material husk, it lives on better food than that, and in his case mind had triumphed over body, and borne it triumphantly ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... glanced at a caption running half-way across the top of the front page; then, fretfully he crumpled up the printed sheet in his hand and let it fall upon the floor. He had no desire to read the account of his one failure. Why should the editor dwell at such length and with so prodigal a display of black head-line type upon this one bungled job when every other job of all the jobs that had gone before, had been successful in every detail? Let's see, now, how many men had he hanged with precision and with speed and with never ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... light of noonday from midnight. The courtier who ruins his fortune for the attainment of a title which can do him no good, or power of which he can make no suitable or creditable use, the miser who hoards his useless wealth, and the prodigal who squanders it, are all marked with a certain shade of insanity. To criminals who are guilty of enormities, when the temptation, to a sober mind, bears no proportion to the horror of the act, or the probability of detection and punishment, the same observation ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... beyond measure, whose prodigal soil rewards labor with an unharvestable abundance of exuberant fruits, occupied by a people signalized by enterprise and industry—there came a summer of prosperity which lingered so long and shone so brightly, that men forgot that winter could ever come. Each day grew brighter. ...
— Twelve Causes of Dishonesty • Henry Ward Beecher
... For myself, I take pleasure in acknowledging that you have been my tutor all the way through, and that I could have done nothing without you." Such was the spirit of these men, who, while the struggle lasted, were prodigal of health and ease; but who, in the day of triumph, disclaimed, each for himself, even that part of the merit which their religion allowed them to ascribe to human ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... and restored after it has been for years a stranger. Nature, though a severe disciplinarian, is still, in many respects, most patient and easy to be entreated, and meets any repentant movement of her prodigal children with wonderful condescension. Take Bulwer's account of the first few weeks of his sojourn at Malvern, and you will read, in very elegant English, the story of an experience of pleasure which has surprised and delighted many a patient at a water-cure. ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... crimes, he has before him the declarations and examples which we have herein drawn from the Scriptures of the Old Testament. If, on the other hand, he is inclined to mercy, he has the example of Jesus Christ, who represented the prodigal son as received and forgiven when he returned and repented, who dismissed the woman taken in adultery, when by the law she deserved to be stoned, and who said that he would have ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... built by the last proprietor, Northmour's uncle, a silly and prodigal virtuoso—presented little signs of age. It was two stories in height, Italian in design, surrounded by a patch of garden in which nothing had prospered but a few coarse flowers; and looked, with its shuttered windows, not like a house that had been deserted, ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... left such a resolve till now? Why, like that other prodigal, have you waited till everything else has failed, till your own resources and cunning have been exhausted to the last dregs, before you turn ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... makes the sun to know his time, and splits an erring planet into fragments, driving it into space "with hideous ruin and combustion." It is a pitiful and a sad thing to say, but if my father had not been a prodigal in a true but very different meaning, if he had not spent his substance, the portion of goods that fell to him, the capital of life given him by God, in what we must believe to have been needless and therefore preventable excess of effort, we might have had him still with us, shining more and more, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... waste of the goods, revenues, and possessions of the said monastery, and of certain other enormous crimes and excesses hereafter written. In the rule, custody, and administration of the goods, spiritual and temporal, of the said monastery, you are so remiss, so negligent, so prodigal, that whereas the said monastery was of old times founded and endowed by the pious devotion of illustrious princes of famous memory, heretofore kings of this land, the most noble progenitors of our most serene Lord and King that now is, in order ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... way. The noblest in the battle meet their doom— To die a bitter, yea, a cruel death— Tortured with thirst, and under horses' hoofs, A doubler, sharper, bitt'rer meed of pain Than ever, sinner on the gallows-tree, And sickness daily takes our best away; For God is prodigal with human life; Should we be timid, then, where his command, His holy law, which he himself has giv'n, Demands, as here, that he who sins shall die? Together then, we will request the King To move from out his path this stumbling-block Which keeps him ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the husks; his prodigal heart was turning again toward the mountains. His mind was yet strangely clogged, and his thoughts and memories were returning to his brain one by one, like carrier pigeons over a stormy sea. But Coltrane was satisfied with the progress ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... the highest order, for the brave are prodigal of the most precious things. Our blood is nearer and dearer to us than our money, and our life than our estate. Women are more taken ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... God's lost prodigal; I left Him for the world's delusive charms. With mild reproof He wooed me to His arms; And when I come, He lights the vaulted hall, Prepares a banquet for the son restored, And makes His noblest creature my reward. From this time forth I'll never leave that Light,— ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... vagabond in the street, than to see the face of my father, or the faces of the young people, who were my associates in the days when I felt myself as good as they." He was yet unhumbled. He was yet unwilling, like the prodigal, to return to his father's house. However, after much persuasion, he promised that the next morning he would set off for home. But he had not the moral courage to fulfil his purpose. He was ashamed to arise and go ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... 200 billion feet of lumber. Where forest areas are cut off, the [Page 10] sun and air at once start to life seeds which lie dormant in the shade and a new crop at once starts and the old ground is in a few years reforested in nature's prodigal way, a thousand seeds sprouting and growing where only one ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell
... honorable parentage, whom fortune had graced with many favors, and nature honored with sundry exquisite qualities, so beautified with the excellence of both, as it was a question whether fortune or nature were more prodigal in deciphering the riches of their bounties. Wise he was, as holding in his head a supreme conceit of policy, reaching with Nestor into the depth of all civil government; and to make his wisdom more gracious, ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... danger, not to be delivered out of it. Who will snatch a plank from one lost by shipwreck? Who will envy the healing of wounds?" He mentions the parables of the lost drachma, the lost sheep, the prodigal son, the Samaritan, and God's threats, adding: "God would never threaten the impenitent, if he refused pardon. But you'll say, only God can do this. It is true; but what he does by his priests, is his power. What is that he says to his apostles? Whatsoever you shall ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... adjurations, calling him father, assuring him she was wholly cured and entirely repentant of her disobedience, and entreating forgiveness; and I soon saw that she need fear no great severity from Mr. Greensleeves, who showed himself extraordinarily fond, loud, greedy of caresses and prodigal of tears. ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... amongst the ranks of those who rail at the injustice of "the world." But if a man will not be his own friend, how can he expect that others will? Orderly men of moderate means have always something left in their pockets to help others; whereas your prodigal and careless fellows who spend all never find an opportunity for helping anybody. It is poor economy, however, to be a scrub. Narrowmindedness in living and in dealing is generally short-sighted, and leads ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... only a memory which can never be realised again, is as pathetic and as natural as that a beautiful woman should die young. To the actor, the dancer, the same fate is reserved. They work for the instant, and for the memory of the living, with a supremely prodigal magnanimity. Old people tell us that they have seen Desclee, Taglioni; soon no one will be old enough to remember those great artists. Then, if their renown becomes a matter of charity, of credulity, if you will, it will be but equal with the renown of all those poets and painters who ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... mine' was the refrain last time. Now it's weeping over the penitent prodigal. How ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... perfection; nor is their excellence more wonderful than their variety. His invention never seems to flag; nor is he ever under the necessity of repeating himself, or of wearing out a subject. There are no dregs in his wine. He regales us after the fashion of that prodigal nabob who held that there was only one good glass in a bottle. As soon as we have tasted the first sparkling foam of a jest, it is withdrawn, and a fresh draught of nectar is at our lips. On the Monday we have an allegory as ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... all hollow. Here's the prodigal son found at last, eating his dinner with the—" began Bluff, when ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... you come; the gate stands open; the Redeemer from within is calling chief sinners in, He has pledged himself to cast no comer out because of his worthlessness. Nor does the freeness of his grace prove that the prodigal's sins are small; it proves only that the forgiving love of Christ ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... sparkling on the slopes! Ye snow-white lambs that trip Imprisoned 'mid the formal props Of restless ownership! Ye trees, that may to-morrow fall To feed the insatiate Prodigal! Lawns, houses, chattels, groves, and fields, All that the fertile valley shields; Wages of folly—baits of crime,— Of life's uneasy game the stake, Playthings that keep the eyes awake Of drowsy, dotard Time; O care! O guilt!—O vales and plains, Here, 'mid his own unvexed domains, A ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... scarf pins, ties, and like articles, for which she declared she had not the slightest use. In the purchase of soda water and candy at the casino, where she scribbled her father's initials on the checks, or at the confectioner's in the village where she enjoyed a flexible credit, her generosity was prodigal. She was constantly picking up other youngsters and piloting them on excursions that her ready fancy devised; and if they returned late for meals or otherwise incurred parental displeasure, to Marian it was only part of the joke. She was always late and ingeniously plausible ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... prevails, but then again new desires and new disorders arise, and the whole mob of passions gets possession of the Acropolis, that is to say, the soul, which they find void and unguarded by true words and works. Falsehoods and illusions ascend to take their place; the prodigal goes back into the country of the Lotophagi or drones, and openly dwells there. And if any offer of alliance or parley of individual elders comes from home, the false spirits shut the gates of the castle ...
— The Republic • Plato
... his starving subjects, who cried to him for protection through their cages—meeting the curses of some of his subjects, and the prayers of others—with famine at his heels, and reproach following him,—then it was that this Prince is represented as exercising this act of prodigal bounty to the very man whom he here reproaches—to the very man whose policy had extinguished his power, and whose creatures had desolated his country. To talk of a free-will gift! it is audacious and ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... accordingly. No poor, simple, virtuous body was ever cajoled by the attentions of an electioneering politician with more ease than Aunt Chloe was won over by Master Sam's suavities; and if he had been the prodigal son himself, he could not have been overwhelmed with more maternal bountifulness; and he soon found himself seated, happy and glorious, over a large tin pan, containing a sort of olla podrida of all that had appeared on the table for two or three days past. ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... great. It seemed to me that Xerxes, the first Napoleon, or the greediest of conquerors, ancient or modern, would have beheld with amazement the gigantic preparations at command of the Federal Government. Energy and enterprise displayed their implements of death on every hand. One was startled at the prodigal outlay of means, and the reckless summoning of men. I looked at the starred and striped ensign that flaunted above the Fort, and thought of Madame Roland's appeal to ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... planned to marry. It is time the prodigal marry and settle down, is it not? So long as we were in England it did not matter, except to that Faroy girl you seduced and flung out into ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... chosen her imperiously for his assistant and underling in the house of the priest, had informed her that she was to receive twenty-five lire a month for her services, besides food and lodging, and plenty of the good, red wine of Amato. To Lucrezia such wages seemed prodigal. She had never yet earned more than the half of them. But it was not only this prospect of riches which now moved and ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... I saw the natives launching their light canoes and paddling off through the surf to the ship; or leapt eagerly into the boat alongside; reached the strip of dazzling beach—strewn now with beautiful shells; plunged into the grateful shade of enticing groves rich with the prodigal luxuriance and fantastic beauty of tropical growth, ablaze with flowers of gorgeous hues, alive with birds whose plumage flashed like living gems, and breathed an atmosphere oppressive ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... man only, is justifeed, wha pits himsel' into the Lord's han's to sanctifee him. Noo! An' that'll no be dune by pittin' a robe o' richteousness upo' him, afore he's gotten a clean skin aneath't. As gin a father cudna bide to see the puir scabbit skin o' his ain wee bit bairnie, ay, or o' his prodigal son either, but bude to hap it a' up afore he cud lat it come near ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... all Thought-books for Ministers the most suggestive and philosophical we have seen for many a year. If we have any objection to make, it is on the score of too prodigal an expenditure of mental wealth."—Monthly ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 236, May 6, 1854 • Various
... why he had come out there was no question in the mind of the captain. The latter had left Mr. Thomas, the prodigal father, prostrate and blasphemous in the road the previous evening. His next view of him was when, transformed and sanctified, he had been summoned to the platform by Mr. Atkins. No doubt he had returned to the barber shop and, in his rage and under Mr. Simpson's cross examination, ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... first go into business somewhere, and retrieve myself in my own eyes at least," he had said, "not be taken back as a prodigal." ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... be urged that these Christians are all prodigal in order to throw Shylock's avarice and meanness into higher light; but that this disdain of money is not assumed for the sake of any artistic effect will appear from other plays. At the risk of being ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... alternate stripes of white and silver; and nothing can be imagined more beautiful than the effect of its semi-transparent veil concealing just enough to leave some scope for the imagination, displaying more than enough for the most prodigal of beauty. ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... for Henry Adams, fresh from Europe and chaos of another sort, he plunged at once into a lurid atmosphere of politics, quite heedless of any education or forethought. His past melted away. The prodigal was welcomed home, but not even his father asked a malicious question about the Pandects. At the utmost, he hinted at some shade of prodigality by quietly inviting his son to act as private secretary ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... poets of the sixteenth century that liberty, that fantasy, that disorder which were characteristic of the times of Ronsard. So far as poets were concerned, that generation must be regarded as entering on a first romanticism. Theophilus de Vian, a fine but over-prodigal poet, without ballast, did not live long enough to grow wise and acquire self-mastery: Cyrano de Bergerac was a brilliant madman, sometimes sparkling with wit and imagination, but often dirty and ridiculous. Saint-Amant possessed plenty of imagination and capacity for exquisite poetical feeling, ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... showeth mercy with cheerfulness." "Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father which is in heaven is merciful." "He that winneth souls is wise." "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." The Good Samaritan. The Prodigal Son. The Barren Fig-tree. The Hatefulness and Wickedness of Lukewarmness. The Woman that did what she could. The Christian's Race. The Good Steward. The duty of Christians to strive with one heart and one mind for the faith of the Gospel. The example of Christ. "Give no occasion to the adversary ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... of my heart is to preserve peace, and I wish that not only you but every son and daughter of South Carolina were here, that I might tell them so.' Mr. Cameron, Secretary of War, came up, and after some remarks he said, 'South Carolina [which had already seceded] is the prodigal son.' 'Ah, Mr. Secretary,' said she, 'if South Carolina is the prodigal son, Uncle Sam, our father, ought to divide the inheritance, and let her go; but they say you are going to make war upon us; is it so?' 'Oh, come back,' said Lincoln, 'tell South Carolina ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... on her work, and is prodigal to her favorite. As one drop of water hath an attraction for another, so ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... a third sort of sinner, spoken of in Christ's next parable in this chapter, from which my text is taken, of whom it is not said that God the Father sends out to seek and to save him. That is the prodigal son, who left his father's house, and strayed away of his own wantonness and free will. Christ does not go out after him. He has gone away of his own will; and of his own will he must come back: and he has to pay a heavy price for ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... lord, And what I have is yours, and what I have not Your fancy lends me, like a prodigal Spending its wealth on what is ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... the water I had left with them, and were in great alarm lest they should die of thirst; I was exceedingly provoked at Morgan's neglect, more particularly as the comfort of the other men was involved in the delay, although they deserved to suffer for the prodigal waste of their previous supply. But it is impossible to trust to men in their sphere of life under such circumstances, as they are seldom gifted with that moral courage which ensures calmness in critical situations. I made ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... twofold dignity, one in respect of God, the other in respect of the Church. In respect of God he again loses a twofold dignity. One is his principal dignity, whereby he was counted among the children of God, and this he recovers by Penance, which is signified (Luke 15) in the prodigal son, for when he repented, his father commanded that the first garment should be restored to him, together with a ring and shoes. The other is his secondary dignity, viz. innocence, of which, as we read in the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... you a chance, Bob, you will make a great thief-catcher," exclaimed Hawk with his naturally prodigal generosity of appreciation. ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... to, wild-oats! spendthrift! prodigal! I'll cross thy name quite from my reck'ning book: For these accounts, faith, it shall scathe thee somewhat, I will not say what somewhat ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... marriage at first. Oh, my tender-hearted little one, can you not see that the bondage is more humiliating, more craven than is the idea of the veriest chattel mortgage? Yet you refuse to let the injured one go free, as you would not refuse the poorest prodigal whose one chance for home and happiness ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... the past. The past, like the country through which we walk, becomes indistinct as we advance. My position is like that of a person wounded in a dream; he feels the wound, though he cannot recollect when he received it. Come, then, thou regenerate man, thou extravagant prodigal, thou awakened sleeper, thou all-powerful visionary, thou invincible millionaire,—once again review thy past life of starvation and wretchedness, revisit the scenes where fate and misfortune conducted, and ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... showing as it did how Master Walter had been weaned, and had cut a double tooth, and done many other extraordinary things, quite worthy of his high descent. In short, we were made very happy and grateful; and felt as if the prodigal father and mother had got ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... sole highway to Szechuan; all the trade of China's largest province, the one best endowed by nature, must pass up and down here. Any people less prodigal of their strength, less determined and less resourceful than the Chinese, would have given up the struggle before it was begun, and Szechuan would have slumbered undeveloped and forgotten, instead of being as it is now the richest and most ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... to the prodigal son?" further suggested Julius. "Does not this prove that the exercise is not sinful ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in the midst of his guilt, had not ceased to reverence and love. For many years the apostate had tried to drive from his mind all thought of Hadassah; now her image came vividly before him, not in the attitude of uttering a malediction, but as holding out her arms to receive back her prodigal son. ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... for this brief visit had enshrined a sweet, girlish face within his heart of hearts, and he no longer felt lonely and orphaned. He and George became the closest friends, and messages from the New England home came to him with increasing frequency, which he returned with prodigal interest. It also transpired that he occasionally wrote for the papers, and Elsie insisted that these should be sent to her; while he of course wrote much better with the certainty that she would be his critic. Thus, ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... served for many years as the honored chairman of the national committee, although in a moment of weakness he had sent his son abroad to be educated. Now he was dead, but remembered well, and as a presidential campaign costs much money—legitimate money—and his son was a prodigal giver, the leaders could not refuse to the younger Heathcote the place of national ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... "made on purpose." I had therefore a double stroke of bad luck in finding both these elements present in The Splendid Fairing (MILLS AND BOON). But the more credit to Miss CONSTANCE HOLME that, despite my increasing conviction that the wrong prodigal would return, and that the powers of nature were throughout almost visibly preparing to engulf him, the gentle and unforced power of her story did hold my attention till the final wave. Distinction shown in apparent absence of effort would, I think, be my verdict on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... me in many ways—nay, prodigal; it is not every man who can perceive the humor in a jest of which he is himself the subject. I laughed with her. "I trust that ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... personally {211} were dead, we certainly cannot believe that its editor had better information than those of the First Folio, who were the poet's personal friends, and who did not include these plays. The spurious dramas printed in the Third Folio were: The London Prodigal, The History of the Life and Death of Thomas Lord Cromwell, The History of Sir John Oldcastle, The Puritan Widow, Yorkshire Tragedy, and The Tragedy ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... that the German painters at the beginning of the sixteenth century succeed in representing with perfect mastery these scenes of country life, as, for instance, Albrecht Durer, in his engraving of the prodigal son. But it is one thing if a painter, brought up in a school of realism, introduces such scenes, and quite another thing if a poet, accustomed to an ideal or mythological framework, is driven by inward impulse into realism. Besides which, priority in point of time is here, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the shop, and took to the road with the stride of a giant. To be compelled to walk, when if he had had his horse he could ride that mile in two minutes! His heart was beating high. Mother! Grieving for me. Alice a big girl. And a baby boy! This is too good for a prodigal like me. ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... uncongenial companionship that it involved, especially that of my aunt Mary, who took up so much room herself in the narrow path that she effectually kept me out of it. From my earliest youth, also, I took extreme interest in the parable of the Prodigal, and as soon as it became possible I exemplified it myself. I may even say that I acted the part in a manner that did credit to a beginner; but the wind-up was ruined by the lamentable inability of others, who shall be nameless, to ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... French ambassador at The Hague. He imposed no restraints on public opinion, nor would he establish the odious system of espionage cherished by the French police; but he was fickle in his purposes, and prodigal in his expenses. The profuseness of his expenditure was very offensive to the Dutch notions of respectability in matters of private finance, and injurious to the existing state of the public means. The tyranny of Napoleon became ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... of height and degrees of declivity. These banks were chequered by patches of dark verdure and shapeless masses of white marble, and crowned by copses of cedar, or by the regular magnificence of orchards, which, at this season, were in blossom, and were prodigal of odours. The ground which receded from the river was scooped into valleys and dales. Its beauties were enhanced by the horticultural skill of my brother, who bedecked this exquisite assemblage of slopes and risings with every species of vegetable ornament, from the giant arms of the oak ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... perfectly? If there is one thing which ought to cause astonishment it is this, that the deplorable absurdities which our manners heap up around the nuptial couch give birth to so few hatreds! But that the life of the wise man is a calm current, and that of the prodigal a cataract; that the child, whose thoughtless hands have stripped the leaves from every rose upon his pathway, finds nothing but thorns on his return, that the man who in his wild youth has squandered a million, ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... repentance too has come upon me—so I have resolved to go to the Sergiev monastery of the Holy Trinity to expiate my sins in prayer. For what refuge was left me? ... And so I have come to you to say good-bye, uncle, like a prodigal son.' ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... appreciation they will allow themselves to give to anything. They shrivel—body and soul. Economy is waste: it is waste of the juices of life, the sap of living. For there are two kinds of waste—that of the prodigal who throws his substance away in riotous living, and that of the sluggard who allows his substance to rot from non-use. The rigid economizer is in danger of being classed with the sluggard. Extravagance is usually a reaction from suppression ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... the one dealt more with marvels and the other more with morals; and yet the critic should beware of speaking too confidently on this point. It is certain, however, that the Christmas season is meteorologically more favorable to the effective return of persons long supposed lost at sea, or from a prodigal life, or from a darkened mind. The longer, darker, and colder nights are better adapted to the apparition of ghosts, and to all manner of signs and portents; while they seem to present a wider field for the intervention of angels in behalf of orphans and outcasts. The dreams of elderly sleepers ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... voracity of persons writhing under the united agonies of hunger and death! Yet the very country thus groaning under such a terrible sweep of famine is actually pouring from all her ports a profusion of food, day after day; flinging it from her fertile bosom, with the wanton excess of a prodigal oppressed ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... first to congratulate Lord Lyttelton on the event." This was in February 1772; and in the Chatham Correspondence, vol. iv. p. 195., is Lord Lyttelton's letter of thanks in reply. The reviewer would evidently have it inferred, that Thomas Lyttelton had returned home like a prodigal son, after a temporary estrangement, and from a comparatively short distance; but surely, had the volume of Poems been referred to, it might or rather must have occurred to a candid inquirer, that in February 1772 Thomas Lyttelton returned from his ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... how doth the earth afford us a doctrinal example in the little Pismire, who in the summer provides and lays up her winter provision, and teaches man to do the like! The earth feeds and carries those horses that carry us. If I would be prodigal of my time and your patience, what might not I say in commendations of the earth? That puts limits to the proud and raging sea, and by that means preserves both man and beast, that it destroys them not, as we see it daily doth those that venture upon the sea, and are there shipwrecked, ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... your Royal Highness that this method of ridding yourself of a poor devil's importunities is such as we should consider abrupt and almost cruel in Europe. Let me beg you to moderate your Royal impetuosity for the future; and, as your Highness's tutor, entreat you to be a little less prodigal of ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... return, Mr. Mannion found me looking at his tea-equipage. "I am afraid, Sir, I must confess myself an epicure and a prodigal in two things," he said; "an epicure in tea, and a prodigal (at least for a person in my situation) in books. However, I receive a liberal salary, and can satisfy my tastes, such as they are, and save money too. What can ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... The prodigal son, as in Luke we read, Which in vicious living his good doth waste, As soon as his living he had remembered, To confess his wretchedness he was not aghast; Wherefore his father lovingly him embrac'd, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... Six they say Miss Rose Has slain a score of hearts, And Cupid, for her sake, has been Quite prodigal of darts. The imp they show with bended bow— I wish he had a gun; But if he had, he'd never deign To shoot with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 402, Supplementary Number (1829) • Various
... understand all that. You were disappointed because Uncle Ira had not left you his money, and I suppose that was your way of working it off. If you had just run away and come back again with a headache, I'd have treated you like the Prodigal Son. But there are some things which are too much, and bringing a perfect stranger back with you for an indefinite period is one of them. I'm not saying anything against Mr Chalmers personally. I haven't had time to find out much about him, except ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... him with sincerity and devotion, had but a brief reign, and was doomed to lead a dreary life of thirty-six years in penitence and neglect in a Carmelite convent. Madame de Montespan retained her ascendency longer for she had talents as well as physical beauty; she was the most prodigal and imperious of all the women that ever triumphed over the weakness of man. She reigned when Louis was in all the pride of manhood and at the summit of his greatness and fame,—accompanying him in his military ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... Meridian, I cut loose. I's tellin' de truf! I's a woman, but I's a prodigal. I used to be a old drunkard. My white folks kep' tellin' me if I got locked up one more time dey wouldn' pay my fine. But dey done it ag'in ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Mississippi Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... Hatchard's return, however, he came back to his old quarters in her house, and began to take a leading part in the planning of the festivities. He threw himself into the idea with extraordinary good-humour, and was so prodigal of sketches, and so inexhaustible in devices, that he gave an immediate impetus to the rather languid movement, and infected the ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... been told it's chic. My own part, I can stand any amount of dead men—healthy dead men, don't you know? But—give you my word—a cadaverous spectacle like that poor chap, bones stickin' out of his hide, and breathin' as if he was stuffed with dry shavin's, or husks like the Prodigal Son, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... measure, the hardships of poverty; and their wants were seasonably supplied by the ambitious liberality of the candidates, who aspired to secure a venal majority in the thirty-five tribes, or the hundred and ninety-three centuries, of Rome. But when the prodigal commons had not only imprudently alienated the use, but the inheritance of power, they sunk, under the reign of the Caesars, into a vile and wretched populace, which must, in a few generations, have ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... mind all the consequences that would arise from this new trouble—the public disgrace; Mr. Ascott's anger and annoyance, not that she cared much for this, except so far as it would affect Selina; lastly, the death-blow it was to any possible hope of reclaiming the poor prodigal. Who she did not believe was dead, but still, fondly trusted he would return one day from his wanderings and his swine's husks, to have the fatted calf killed for him and glad tears shed over him. But after being advertised as "absconded," Ascott never would, never ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... open all your eyes, that ye may see the many differences between this feast and all other feasts; for other feasts are but feasts for the body, and they are but feasts for the belly; an Esau may have them, a reprobate may feed upon them. These are nothing else but the swine's husks, whereon the prodigal fed for a time, and scarce could get them; but when he came back again to his father's house, then he fed upon the fatted calf; and then he got a feast, and then was there plenty, then did his well run over, then was his cup to ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... is my way of life nowadays: in the morning I receive not only a large number of "loyalists," who, however, look gloomy enough, but also our exultant conquerors here, who in my case are quite prodigal in polite and affectionate attentions. When the stream of morning callers has ebbed, I wrap myself up in my books, either writing or reading. There are also some visitors who listen to my discourses under the belief of my being a man of learning, because I am a trifle more learned ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... it was all inevitable: we were as wise as any one can be before the event. I admit that we, scrupulously economical of our pemmican, were terribly prodigal of our man-power. But we had to be: the draft, whatever it may have been on the whole, was not excessive at any given point; and anyhow we just had to use every man to take every opportunity. There is so much to do, and the opportunities for doing it are so rare. Generally speaking, ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... security but De Quincey himself. However, that he did go to Manchester, and did, after rather more than two of his three years' probation, run away is indisputable. His mother was living at Chester, and the calf was not killed for this prodigal son; but he had liberty given him to wander about Wales on an allowance of a guinea a week. That there is some mystery, or mystification, about all this is nearly certain. If things really went as he represents them, his mother ought to have been ashamed of herself, and his guardians ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... all the shyness of a prodigal son returning home. He had not been inside the yellow drawing-room for nearly four years. He still carried his ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... turned upon him. "Fo' de Lawd sake, you scared me! If it ain't Vitus Marsden. Prodigal, come heah! Whah at is you been?" The Wildcat was engulfed in an embrace which reminded him of the time he had been buried under seven tons ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... and all the beau-monde took an interest in the labours of the critic. He wreathed the rod of criticism with roses. Yet even BAYLE, who declared himself to be a reporter, and not a judge, BAYLE, the discreet sceptic, could not long satisfy his readers. His panegyric was thought somewhat prodigal; his fluency of style somewhat too familiar; and others affected not to relish his gaiety. In his latter volumes, to still the clamour, he assumed the cold sobriety of an historian: and has bequeathed no mean ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... was concerned, and also to hide his hurt and disappointment, which were deep. The rumour of lion was genuine and the excitement, extending far down the Nile, intense. In fact, with the aid of the Oriental's prodigal imagination the one royal beast of feminine persuasion which was reported as having been seen prowling around Deir el-Bahari had been multiplied to two pairs ravaging the ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... house-keeping; courtiers, who come there for society and news; adventurers, who have no home; Templars, who dine there daily; and men about town, who dine at whatever place is nearest to their hunger. Lords, citizens, concealed Papists, spies, prodigal 'prentices, precisians, aldermen, foreigners, officers, and country gentlemen, all are here. Some have come on foot, some on horseback, and some in those new caroches ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Indeed they looked sorry enough. Surely no eye e'er saw such scare-crows; and no one could look upon them without emotion—but of what kind, the reader, who has doubtless seen many kindred specimens in this department of a modern education, may decide for himself. The next piece was the Prodigal Son, taking leave of his benevolent father, in a red dress-coat and white-top boots! The drawings were copies, and the needlework resembling the darnings in the hose to be seen on the heels of the ladies sitting ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... usually close at four in the afternoon. Always with the same inscrutable meekness of countenance, each night he methodically danced the cake-walk at Maxim's or one of the Montemarte restaurants, to the cheers of acquaintances of many nationalities, to whom he offered libations with prodigal enormity. He carried with him, about the boulevards at night, in the highly powerful car he had hired, large parties of strange people, who would loudly sing airs from the Folie-Rouge (to my unhappy shudderings) all the way from the fatiguing Bal Bullier to the Cafe' ...
— The Beautiful Lady • Booth Tarkington
... were silent, drinking in the beauty prodigal Nature lavished all about them. Furtively Lucile examined this cavalier of hers. Straight of feature, bronzed from living in the open, eyes so full of fun you had to laugh in sympathy—oh, he was handsome; there was no doubt ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... was an honest-hearted fellow, with affections as tender and simple as ever dwelt in the bosom of any man; and if, in the heyday of his spirits and the prodigal outpouring of his jovial good humor, he could give a hand to many "a lad and lass" whom the squeamish world would turn its back on (indeed, there was a virtue in his benevolence, but we dare not express our sympathies now for poor Doll Tearsheet and honest Mistress Quickly)—if he led a sad riotous ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... which separates the traditionalist from the philosopher. To Dr. Gore the creeds and the miracles are essential to Christianity. No Virgin Birth, no Sermon on the Mount! No Resurrection of the Body, no Parable of the Prodigal Son! No Descent into Hell, no revelation that the Kingdom of Heaven is within! Need we wonder that Dr. Gore cries out despairingly for more discipline? He summons reason, it is true, but to defend and explain creeds without which there is ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... misguided thing!' it was aye 'Effie! Effie!'—If that puir wandering lamb comena into the sheepfauld in the Shepherd's ain time, it will be an unco wonder, for I wot she has been a child of prayers. Oh, if the puir prodigal wad return, sae blithely as the goodman wad kill the fatted calf!—though Brockie's calf will no be fit for killing this ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... outlines and rendering the whole thing of dubious value. A model father! In my bewilderment I nearly cut myself. And yet, supposing, as I had been supposing, that Mr. Carville had set out with the definite object of contrasting himself vividly with his prodigal brother, would he not eventually take up the role of dutiful parentage? The extraordinary thing was that the model father should be ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... old, and was only restrained by the thought that she was grown a great girl now. She called her father, and all the household, and after a while the old doctor came home, and the fatted calf was killed, and all made merry over the return of this altogether unrepentant prodigal son. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... 1849, the Assembly in its last moments invested him with plenary powers for the defence of the Eternal City, and this vote, never revoked, imposed on his imagination a permanent mandate. 'Rome or death' suggested an idea to him which he had never before entertained, prodigal though he had been of his person in a hundred fights: What if his own death were the one thing needful to precipitate the ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... universe mean?—But why is there a universe at all? Why has the unlimited become limited? What was the need for the long cosmic struggle, the ignorance and pain, the apparently prodigal waste of life and beauty? Why does a perfect form appear only to be shattered and superseded by another? What can it all mean, if indeed it has a meaning? This is what thinkers have been asking themselves since thought began, and I have really nothing new to say about it. What I have ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... saddle and came hornin' in, a lot of the boys who'd come over and joined up began castin' homesick glances back in a westerly direction. Natural-like, Uncle Samuel is willin' to welcome home all his prodigal sons, if he can get 'em back, and he's specially forgivin' considerin' that his army at the beginnin' of hostilities is just about one day's bait on a real war-like front. As for flyers, he hasn't got enough of 'em, trained, to do observation work for an energetic ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... own. Could the duke have restrained his sovereign's reckless extravagance in buildings, parks, hunting establishments, and harems, he might have accomplished even greater miracles. He lectured the king roundly, as a parent might remonstrate with a prodigal son, but it was impossible even for a Sully to rescue that hoary-headed and most indomitable youth from wantonness and riotous living. The civil-list of the king amounted to more than one-tenth ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the nature of an Indian's wishes," he concluded, as he led her toward the place where she was expected, "and must be prodigal of your offers of powder and blankets. Ardent spirits are, however, the most prized by such as he; nor would it be amiss to add some boon from your own hand, with that grace you so well know how to practise. Remember, Cora, that on your presence of mind and ingenuity, even your life, as well ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... killed for Master Richard, he had by no means returned like the prodigal son. On the contrary, he had sent home a remittance, as it were, by the butler, of more than five thousand pounds. The whole plot had been devised by honest John as the only method of extricating Master Richard from that Monte Carlo spider's web, and had been carried ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... riotous living. Not when grown into a colossal "youth too old for discipline," (p. 20, bottom,) but in the day of his dire necessity, and when he begins to be sensible of his utter need, behold the heathen nations, (in the person of the poor prodigal,) arising, and going to their true Father, and in the fulness of their misery asking for a hired servant's place in the household. Behold too GOD'S mercies in CHRIST set forth by "the first robe," (that robe of innocence which ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... maintenance of political authority; and although it is difficult, in such a country, to find much that comes within that category, occasional exceptions may be found. Thus drunkenness, debauchery, indecency, and reckless, prodigal, and filthy habits, are but little regarded, while the slightest approach to the acquisition of a liberal education, or the expression of liberal opinions on any subject connected with public polity, is rigidly prohibited. Most of the English newspapers are excluded from ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... with her to America with all his savings, that desertion of his wife and children! But what delicious delirium that one year in New York, prodigal, reckless, ere, with the disappearance of his funds, she, too, disappeared. And now, here he was—after nigh seven apathetic years, in which the need of getting a living was the only spur to living on—glad to take a woman's place when female labour struck ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... has written "The Prodigal Daughter," "The People of Our Parish," and "Orchids." Edna Thacher Russ, also of Wichita, writes ...
— Kansas Women in Literature • Nettie Garmer Barker
... a more singular union than this of the Duc d'Orleans' prodigal daughter with the almost imbecile grandson of the French King. The Duc de Berry, it is true, was good to look upon. Tall, fair-haired, with a good complexion and splendid health, he was physically, at twenty-four, no unworthy descendant of the great Louis. He had, too, many amiable qualities calculated ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... the preachers preached in his name[FN76] and the poets praised him; and he lavished gifts upon the troops and the officers of his household and overwhelmed them with favours and bounties and was prodigal to the people of justice and equitable dealings and goodly usance and polity. When he had accomplished this much of his desire, he caused bring forth the cook and his household to the divan, but spared ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... expedition on the White Nile; and some years later, on our return from the Albert N'yanza, we met him in Shooa, on 3 degrees north latitude. He had repented—hardships and discipline had effected a change—and, like the prodigal son, he returned. I forgave him, and took him with us to Khartoum, where we left him a sadder but a wiser man. He had many near relations during his long journey, all of whom had stolen some souvenir of their cousin, and left him almost naked. He also met Achmet, his "mothers ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... he worked when the night winds bellowed On the riven summit of Giant's Hand, And by day when prodigal Spring had yellowed All the wide, long sweep of enchanted land; And he knew his shift, and the whistle's warning, And he knew the calls of the boys below; Through the years, unbidden, at night or morning, He had taken his stand by ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... increasing with the publication of each successive number, month by month, that the colourists could not keep pace with the printers. The alternate scenes of high life and low life, the contrasted characters, and revelations of misery side by side with prodigal waste and folly, attracted attention, while the vivacity of dialogue ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... piece of childish folly on the boy's part no doubt, this going away; due to his impetuous nature and his immature years; but, he had made his bed, now let him lie in it till he should come to a realization of what he had done, and, like the prodigal son of old, should come back of his own accord, and ask to be forgiven. Yet the days went by, and the weeks grew long, and no prodigal returned. There was no abatement of determination on the grandfather's part, ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... Was ever so prodigal a Harlot? was this the Saint? was this the most tender Consort that ever ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... nothing, and breakfast began, Nan wasting as usual a prodigal amount of energy and spirits even over the operation of eating, Hester looking a little pale and a little thoughtful, Annie in a state of suppressed high spirits, which a slight awe which she still felt at times for Hester ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... loving well. She espouses the interests, the hatreds, the friendships, of the man she loves; she acquires in a day the experience of a man of business; she studies the code, she comprehends the mechanism of credit, and could manage a banker's office; naturally heedless and prodigal, she will make no mistakes and waste not a single louis. She becomes, in turn, mother, adviser, doctor, giving to all her transformations a grace of happiness which reveals, in its every detail, her infinite love. She combines the special qualities of the women of other ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... the character which they have assigned him, or for attributing to him any very estimable qualities. He seems to have been a violent and tyrannical prince; a perfidious, encroaching, and dangerous neighbour; an unkind and ungenerous relation. He was equally prodigal and rapacious in the management of his treasury; and if he possessed abilities, he lay so much under the government of impetuous passions, that he made little use of them in his administration; and he indulged, without reserve, that ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... laughter and fun, excess and the love of victory mingle in hot profusion. Except in the case of the precocious boy of the street, the cold vices of cynicism, misanthropy, and avarice—the reptilians of society—are found almost exclusively among adults. The younger brother is the prodigal. Experience has not taught him how to value property ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... or the ill done by the heroes and heroines of the Romantic Ballad is done on the spur of the moment, on the impulse of hot blood. Whether it be sin or sacrifice, the prompting is not that of convention, but of Nature herself. Love and hate, though they may burn and glow like a volcano, are not prodigal of words. It is one of the marks by which we may distinguish the characters in the ballads from those in later and more cultivated fields of literature that, as a rule, they say less rather than more than they mean. They speak daggers; but they are far more apt in using them. ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... Caroline. In January was presented at Covent Garden "A Nest of Plays," as the author, one Hildebrand Jacob, described his production: a combination of three short plays, each consisting of one act only, entitled respectively, "The Prodigal Reformed," "Happy Constancy," and "The Trial of Conjugal Love." The performance met with a very unfavourable reception. The author attributed the ill success of his work to its being the first play licensed by the authority of the Lord Chamberlain under the new bill, many spectators ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... reapers at their sultry toil. In front they bound the sheaves. Behind Were realms of upland, prodigal in oil, And hoary ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... tide of memory had flowed back and covered the rock of offence, they had got a little used to the dulness of a day from which its brightest hour had been blotted. Dorothy learned very soon to think of Richard as a prodigal brother beyond seas, and when they chanced to meet, which was but seldom, he was to her as a sad ghost in a dream. To Richard, on the other hand, she looked a lovely but scarce worshipful celestial, with merely might enough ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... were still a child. Agathe noticed the coolness which succeeded the first glow of tenderness on the part of Joseph and Madame Descoings; but she hastened to tell them of Philippe's sufferings in exile, and so lessened it. Madame Descoings, wishing to make a festival of the return of the prodigal, as she called him under her breath, had prepared one of her good dinners, to which old Claparon and the elder Desroches were invited. All the family friends were to come, and did come, in the evening. Joseph had invited Leon Giraud, d'Arthez, Michel Chrestien, Fulgence Ridal, and Horace ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... festivities to describe, and cheerful incidents to recount. The boarders assisted vicariously at weddings and wedding receptions, afternoon teas and dances, given in halls. "Up-town" seemed to them largely given to entertainment and hilarity of an enviably prodigal sort. Mrs. Bowse's guests were not of the class which entertains or is entertained, and the details of banquets and ball-dresses and money-spending were not uncheering material for conversation. Such topics suggested the presence and dispensing of a good deal of desirable specie, which ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... have been misunderstood or spurned when Samaria was gay and prosperous; but when its palaces were desolate, the effect of the old name, recalling happier days, must have been as if the elder brother had come out from the father's house and entreated the prodigal to come back to his place at the fireside. The battle would be more than half won if the appeal that was couched in the very name ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... well, Polly, instead of petting her; but it is always the way with the prodigal—he has the fatted calf,' said ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... better {64} scholars Luther took the degrees of bachelor in 1502 and of master of arts in 1505, and immediately began the study of jurisprudence. While his diligence and good conduct won golden words from his preceptors he mingled with his comrades as a man with men. He was generous, even prodigal, a musician and a "philosopher"; in disputations he was made "an honorary umpire" by his fellows and teachers. "Fair fortune and good health are mine," he wrote a friend on September 5, 1501, "I am settled at college ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... think of nothing but the parable of the prodigal son. Mrs. Alexander got him the New Testament, and he read it. She sat at the ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... hand, the prodigal was kneeling by the dead man's bed. He was not praying, however; but had his head well buried in the oaken chest, among the papers of which ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... great Sir, All we have done dyes here if that you dye, And heaven, before too prodigal to us, Shedding beames over-glorious on our heads, ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... noted whoremonger is to be chosen before a man who is a money-lover!—Let me tell you, Niece, this little becomes so nice a one as you have been always reckoned. Who, think you, does more injustice, a prodigal man or a saving man?—The one saves his own money; the other spends other people's. But your favourite is a sinner ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... the dean's love for his country; and such a country as he described, it was impossible not to love. "Salubrious air, fertile fields, wood, water, corn, grass, sheep, oxen, fish, fowl, fruit, and vegetables," were dispersed with the most prodigal hand; "valiant men, virtuous women; statesmen wise and just; tradesmen abounding in merchandise and money; husbandmen possessing peace, ease, plenty; and all ranks liberty." This brilliant description, while the dean read ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... When the Sun gloried o'er a sinless world, And with each ray produced a flower!—From dells Untrodden, hark! the breezy carol comes Upwafted, with the chant of radiant birds.— What meadows, bathed in greenest light, and woods Gigantic, towering from the skiey hills, And od'rous trees in prodigal array, With all the elements divinely calm— Our fancy pictures on the infant globe! And ah! how godlike, with imperial brow Benignly grave, yon patriarchal forms Tread the free earth, and eye the naked heavens! In Nature's stamp of unassisted grace Each limb is moulded; simple as the mind The ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... have followed Ojeda immediately, but his prodigal generosity had exhausted even his large resources, and he was detained by clamorous creditors, the law of the island being that no one could leave it in debt. The gallant little meat-carver labored with success to settle various suits pending, and thought {10} he ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... the New), the rejoicing in the repentance from, and remission of, sins, expressed by means of music and dancing, namely, in the rapturous dancing of David before the returning ark; and in the joy of the father's household at the repentance of the prodigal son. ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... means?" Indeed, the investment has not been for any long time the natural product of the revenue of Bengal. When, by the vast charge and by the ill return of an evil political and military traffic, and by a prodigal increase of establishments, and a profuse conduct in distributing agencies and contracts, they found themselves under difficulties, instead of being cured of their immoral and impolitic delusion, they plunged deeper into it, and were drawn from expedient to expedient for ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... "The Prodigal Son was his father's child. He knew it, and gave in to it. He did not say: 'I wish my father loved me enough to treat me like a child again.' He did not say that, but — I will arise ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... and that with the love of her people, than any two of her predecessors that took most; which was a fortune strained out of the subjects, through the plausibility of her comportment, and (as I would say, without offence) the prodigal distribution of her grace to all sorts of subjects; for I believe no prince living, that was so tender of honour, and so exactly stood for the preservation of sovereignty, was so great a courtier of the people, ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... earth afford us a doctrinal example in the little Pismire, who in the summer provides and lays up her winter provision, and teaches man to do the like! The earth feeds and carries those horses that carry us. If I would be prodigal of my time and your patience, what might not I say in commendations of the earth? That puts limits to the proud and raging sea, and by that means preserves both man and beast, that it destroys them not, as we see it daily doth those that venture upon the sea, and are there shipwrecked, ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... divisions with little time for training, but they had the advantage of serving beside men who knew their business and who had almost become veterans over night. The enemy had taken every advantage of the terrain, which especially favored the defense, by a prodigal use of machine guns manned by highly-trained veterans and by using his artillery at short ranges. In the face of such strong frontal positions we should have been unable to accomplish any progress according to ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... would only keep from these dreadful ramblings about spirits and drinking! It breaks my heart to hear him speak as he does. Oh! I could bear to lose him now, though we have just found him, if I could only feel that he was coming back, like the poor prodigal, in penitence to ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... conjuncture had never occurred. Lothair was profuse, but he was not prodigal. He gratified all his fancies, but they were not ignoble ones; and he was not only sentimentally, but systematically, charitable. He had a great number of fine horses, and he had just paid for an expensive yacht. In a word, he spent a great ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... volunteer. He afterwards obtained a commission, and nothing could be more strikingly different than was the conduct of the young Laird of St. Ronan's and of Lieutenant Mowbray. The former, as we know, was gay, venturous, and prodigal; the latter lived on his pay, and even within it—denied himself comforts, and often decencies, when doing so could save a guinea; and turned pale with apprehension, if, on any extraordinary occasion, he ventured ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... Glyndon. But then, as the minutes passed, and he appeared not, Mervale, whose heart was as good at least as human hearts are in general, grew seriously alarmed. He insisted on returning to search for his friend; and by dint of prodigal promises prevailed at last on the guide to accompany him. The lower part of the mountain lay calm and white in the starlight; and the guide's practised eye could discern all objects on the surface ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... political capacity which was the characteristic of his house he had little or none. Profuse, changeable, false from sheer meanness of spirit, impulsive alike in good and ill, unbridled in temper and tongue, reckless in insult and wit, Henry's delight was in the display of an empty and prodigal magnificence, his one notion of government was a dream of arbitrary power. But frivolous as the king's mood was, he clung with a weak man's obstinacy to a distinct line of policy; and this was the policy not of Hubert or Langton ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... will dispute; and as our country is extremely fortunate in the possession of so brave a general, we have been saying among ourselves that the interests of the nation demand that you should be less prodigal of it!" ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... was sent to rescue Mary's children in their distress. And Clarice! she has been to me as an angel of light. You remember that she gave me a book. I took it to please her, not intending to read it; but I did read it, and it showed me what I was—a wretched, lost sinner. I learned that I was like the prodigal son; and as I heard that my earthly father was no more, I determined to go to my Heavenly Father, knowing that he would receive me. He has done so, and I can now say honestly that I am a Christian, and fit to take charge ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... to America and to the Continent. He was clearly impulsive in all things, and, though occasionally shrewd, betrayed a mania for speculation. Moreover, he was naturally addicted to the Bohemian pleasures of life, being somewhat promiscuous in hospitality, and absolutely prodigal in the art of making presents. To satisfy these various demands on his pocket, he was often driven to spells of desperate work, in spite of the really handsome sums he received from the publishers and editors with whom he ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... the answer of the Indian, made with perfect simplicity, and without any appearance of astonishment at these magnificent offers. This was natural. Djalma would have done for others what they were doing for him, for the traditions of the prodigal magnificence and splendid hospitality of Indian princes are well known. Djalma had been as moved as grateful, on hearing that a woman loved him with maternal affection. As for the luxury with which she nought to surround him, he accepted it without astonishment ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... sent an account of the affair to the real debtor, who came as quickly as was possible and at once discharged the debt. The creditor, full of shame and repentance, hastened to ask pardon of our Blessed Father, and he, receiving the prodigal with open arms, treated him ever afterwards with special tenderness, ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... I also sold my share in the Venus' voyage for one hundred and twenty dollars. This gave me, in all, about five hundred dollars, which money lasted me between five and six weeks! How true is it, that "sailors make their money like horses, and spend it like asses!" I cannot say this prodigal waste of my means afforded me any substantial gratification. I have experienced more real pleasure from one day passed in a way of which my conscience could approve, than from all the loose and thoughtless follies, in which I was then in the habit of indulging when ashore, of a whole ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... wide waters of Hudson Bay—the grave of its discoverer. Familiar as the story is of Henry Hudson's fate, for John King's sake how gladly we repeat it. While sailing on the waters he discovered, in 1611, his men mutinied; the mutiny was aided by Henry Green, a prodigal, whom Hudson had generously shielded from ruin. Hudson, the master, and his son, with six sick or disabled members of the crew, were driven from their cabins, forced into a little shallop, and committed helpless ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... her first words were of kindly concern for my condition, delivered in that sweet, musical voice that was by no means the least charm of a princess to whom Nature had been prodigal of gifts. For without going to that length of exaggerated praise which some have bestowed—for her own ear, and with an eye to profit—upon Madonna Lucrezia, yet were I less than truthful if I sought to belittle her ample claims to beauty. Some six years later ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... furrow of Nature's ploughing, cut out to serve as a drainage for the surrounding plains. It wound its irregular course away east and west, a maze of undergrowth, larger bluff, low red-sand cut-banks and crumbling gravel cliffs, all scattered by a prodigal hand, with a profusion that seemed wanton amidst the surrounding ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... fallen—disgraced! I have been a felon, and in prison! No, I would rather die a vagabond in the street, than to see the face of my father, or the faces of the young people, who were my associates in the days when I felt myself as good as they." He was yet unhumbled. He was yet unwilling, like the prodigal, to return to his father's house. However, after much persuasion, he promised that the next morning he would set off for home. But he had not the moral courage to fulfil his purpose. He was ashamed to arise and go to his father. He continued to roam about the streets, and ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... ducking in and out among the horses and carriages, ran for his life. The men came after him; but he ran like the wind—pant, pant, nearer, nearer; at last the coach was reached, and Melchior seized the prodigal by his rags ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... make me miserable that something stands up on the tip of my heart and does its darnedest to sing. It impresses me as life on such a sane and gigantic scale that I want to be an actual part of it, that I positively ache to have a share in its immensities. It seems so fruitful and prodigal and generous and patient. It's so open-handed in the way it produces and gives and returns our love. And there's a completeness about it that makes me feel it can't ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... criticisms are written in an extravagant, almost a torrential, style; at times his prose falls into a chanting rhythm so attractive in itself as to make us overlook the fact that the praise and censure which he dispenses with prodigal liberality are too personal to ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... upon the threshold of the world, just so, with blown- back hair and shining eyes. Blessed one, blessed prodigal! She poured out her heart like water-for a dog to lap. He was dog-headed, full in the eye, a rich feeder. She decked him with the fair garlands of her thoughts, she made him glisten with her holy oils. She crowned him with starry beams from her eyes, she sweetened him ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... tropics. I have a very strong desire to go and reduce the new language to writing, but I cannot perform impossibilities. I don't think it quite fair for the Churches to expect their messenger to live, as if he were the Prodigal Son, on the husks that the swine do eat, but I should be ashamed to say so to any one ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... a Home. If his advisers lay before him the lesson of life in all its aspects, he will indeed be a prodigal if he have not a Home of his own almost immediately upon leaving the fatherly roof. There are no reasons, no exceptions, which relieve the healthy, able-bodied young man from an early advance on the enemies who threaten the welfare of the citizen. The strongest fortification which the human heart ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... Messer Domeniddio of the Florentines stood rather for a mental effigy that might be played with, than for the reasoned conception of the dread Deity. If we possessed a minutely elaborated history of the Good Shepherd and His adventures, or of the Prodigal's father, or of the Good Samaritan, interspersed with all manner of ludicrous and profane incidents, and losing sight of the original purport of the figure, we should have something like a mythology. Were it not stereotyped as part of an inspired record, the mere romancing tendency of the ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... Nature seems very prodigal in her ways. She is continually creating on the earth a great multitude of living things, far more than there is room for. Each one of these, if it would live, must have a certain amount of air, sunshine, and food. As there is not ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... fainted. The bishop recovering from his astonishment assisted Carl in placing her upon a sofa, and an instant later Eleen, the daughter, was at her side. The bishop embraced the trembling, tearful prodigal, but could only inarticulately murmur: "My boy—my boy—you have come back—you have come back! Can it really ...
— The Mystery of Monastery Farm • H. R. Naylor
... goods, revenues, and possessions of the said monastery, and of certain other enormous crimes and excesses hereafter written. In the rule, custody, and administration of the goods, spiritual and temporal, of the said monastery, you are so remiss, so negligent, so prodigal, that whereas the said monastery was of old times founded and endowed by the pious devotion of illustrious princes of famous memory, heretofore kings of this land, the most noble progenitors of our most serene Lord and King that now is, in ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... Trumpet Sunrise Tomorrow About This Time Amorelle Head of the House Ariel Custer In Tune with Wedding Bells Chance of a Lifetime Maris Crimson Mountain Out of the Storm Exit Betty Mystery Flowers The Prodigal Girl Girl of the Woods Re-Creations The White Flower Matched Pearls Time of the Singing of Birds Ladybird The Substitute Guest Beauty for Ashes Stranger Within the Gates The Best Man Spice Box By Way of the Silverthorns The ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... greatly touched and impressed by his brother's awful death. (Mrs. Dudgeon sneers. Anderson breaks off to demand with some indignation) Well, wasn't it only natural, Mrs. Dudgeon? He softened towards his prodigal son in that moment. He sent for him ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... at her elbow—sometimes professionally cheerful, sometimes professionally grave, but at all times professionally watchful. The woman exulted fiercely in her new-found liberty. She had hours before her—free, glorious hours. She would use them, fill them, squander them in a prodigal spending, following every impulse, indulging every desire, for they were hers and they were her last. In the depths of her brain lay a resolution as silent, as deadly, as a coiled serpent waiting to strike. She would enter ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... parable of the prodigal son teaches us the same lesson. We read of this in the same chapter, St. Luke xv: 11-32. This son had been disobedient and ungrateful. He had taken the money his father gave him and had gone away and spent it in living very wickedly. And when the money was ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton
... working overtime in his behalf, and being at heart sound and genuine, the weight of his obligations to all these auspices warned him not to be too prodigal with his privileges; so, with an effort, the stress of which communicated some of its rigors to his countenance, he closed his eyes for one ascetic moment and came bravely to ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... was"—Santoris replied—"Oxford is a prison, to all who want to feed on something more than the dry bones of learning. While there I was like the prodigal son,—exiled from my Father's House. And I 'did eat the husks that the swine did eat.' Many fellows have to do the same. Sometimes—though not often—a man arrives with a constitution unsuited to husks. ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... like a younker or a prodigal The scarfed bark puts from her native bay, Hugg'd and embraced by the strumpet wind! How like the prodigal doth she return, With over-weather'd ribs and ragged sails, Lean, rent, and beggar'd by the strumpet wind! (Merch. of Ven. ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... given at the Church of the Sorbonne, Paris, may be heard very excellent performances of Oratorio by ancient and modern composers, from Handel and Bach to Claude Debussy; though I do not know whether or no l'Enfant prodigue (The Prodigal Son), by Debussy, is properly styled an oratorio, seeing that it was recently given in London on the stage as an opera. These performances at the Sorbonne are marked by a reverential attention to detail; the soloists, chorus ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... Gods cannot alter the past.' Christ showed that the commonest sinner could do it, that it was the one thing he could do. Christ, had he been asked, would have said—I feel quite certain about it—that the moment the prodigal son fell on his knees and wept, he made his having wasted his substance with harlots, his swine- herding and hungering for the husks they ate, beautiful and holy moments in his life. It is difficult for most people to grasp the idea. I dare say one ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... say so," said Jack, laughing and setting his gun up against a tree. "Dorrie, didn't you save any salad? Ricky, you devouring scourge, there's not a bit of caviare! I'm hungry—Oh, thanks, Betty, you did think of the prodigal, didn't you?" ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... of our sordid life before? Never mind, we would make amends for lost time by spending more money! In very truth the years following the Centennial witnessed an extraordinary awakening of worship of beauty, almost religious in its fervor. Passionate pilgrims ransacked Europe and the Orient; a prodigal horde of their captives, objects of luxury and of art, surged into galleries and museums and households. No cold, critical taste weeded out these adorable aliens. The worst and the best conquered, together. Our architecture, our furniture, our household surroundings were metamorphosed ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... Lord? For He devoted Himself to the service, not of a class or a nation, but of the world. The sick, the poor, the ignorant, the fallen; the little innocent children, the wronged and outcast woman, the hated Samaritan, the despised Pagan, the obnoxious publican, the youthful prodigal, the dying penitent, the cruel persecutor, all shared His love, His pity, and His prayers. He lived, He taught, ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... tree, calling and singing, and there fell pleasantly upon Pearl's ears the ripple and splash of the mountain brook. The joy in her heart at Harry's recovery mingled pleasantly with nature's joy in her prodigal, ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... than the contemporary critical opinions regarding this work, nothing more amusing than to see the at other times censorious Philistines unwrinkle their brows, relax generally the sternness of their features, and welcome, as it were, the return of the prodigal son. We wiser critics of to-day, who, of course, think very differently about this matter, can, nevertheless, enjoy and heartily applaud the prettiness and elegance of the simple first variation, the playful tripping second, the schwarmerische melodious third, the merry swinging ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... 4th. Yesterday, in going to Plymouth with father and mother, read in my Testament of the Prodigal Son. Had no time to read before setting out, and was dull. Thought it no use to take out the book; but, oh, such a sweet contrition came over me, such a sense of being invited to return to my Father's house, such a soft and ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... supplied the club-mosses which made the coal She is paid back principal and interest at the same time; and she straightway invests the carbonic acid, the water, and the ammonia in new forms of life, feeding with them the plants that now live. Thrifty Nature! Surely no prodigal, but most notable ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... ostentation. I think I have discovered among them uncommon pains taken to display their fine linen, of which, indeed, they have great plenty, their furniture, plate, housekeeping, and variety of wines, in which article, it must be owned, they are profuse, if not prodigal — A burgher of Edinburgh, not content to vie with a citizen of London, who has ten times his fortune, must excel him in the expence as well as ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... all-time enemy, the gendarme, each silently waiting his turn to explain his situation. To the credit of the gendarme and all those in authority, it must be said that contrary to their usual custom they acted like loving fathers with these prodigal sons of the Republic—possible information without the sign of a grumble, and advising those who were still streaming in at the door to come back towards five o'clock, when the line should have advanced a little. It was then ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... they were silent, drinking in the beauty prodigal Nature lavished all about them. Furtively Lucile examined this cavalier of hers. Straight of feature, bronzed from living in the open, eyes so full of fun you had to laugh in sympathy—oh, he was handsome; there was no doubt of that. And his hair, ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... there is a great gulf fixed between those who naturally dislike the ornate, and those who naturally love it. There is no remedy; and to attempt to ignore this fact only emphasises it the more. Anyone who is jarred by the expression 'prodigal blazes' had better immediately shut up Sir Thomas Browne. The critic who admits the jar, but continues to appreciate, must present, to the true enthusiast, a spectacle of ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... Park, the town, the school established there, and the trouble connected with it. The village is situated on the west bank of the St. John's River, which at that point is a beautiful expanse of water three miles wide. Nature has been very prodigal in that section. The trees and plants are of a luxurious growth. Flowers are numerous. Every kind of fruit is plentiful. Because of these natural advantages, general climate and apparent fitness for orange ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 1, January, 1896 • Various
... admirably adapted to awe the disloyal, to reconcile the wavering, and to animate the great mass of the inhabitants against successive attempts of the enemy to invade the province, in the last of which he unhappily fell, too prodigal of that life of which his eminent services had taught us to ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... tree and shrub will develop its own individuality; and herein lies one of their greatest charms. If the oak typifies manhood, the drooping elm is equally suggestive of feminine grace, while the sugar-maple, prodigal of its rich juices, tasselled bloom, and winged seeds, reminds us of wholesome, cheerful natures. Even when dying, its foliage takes on the earliest and ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... highly-coloured scripture pieces on the walls, in little black frames like common shaving-glasses, and saw how the Wise Men (with a strong family likeness among them) worshipped in a pink manger; and how the Prodigal Son came home in red rags to a purple father, and already feasted his imagination on a sea-green calf. Then he glanced through the window at the falling rain, coming down aslant upon the sign-post over against the house, and overflowing the horse-trough; and then he looked at the fire again, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... David Lockwin to answer to the name of Robert Chalmers. He has found it totally impossible to become Robert Chalmers in fact. He is David Lockwin, disinherited—a picture of the prodigal son—-but David Lockwin in every bone and muscle—no ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... the stuff. That brief revolt had been spasmodic, sentimental. Here where the heat was almost intolerable and the red tongues sprang like forked daggers before dulled eyes, brutality and hatred alone seemed to reign. The prince might be the prodigal, free-handed gentleman to his officers; he was the slave-driver, by proxy, to his stokers. He who dominated in that place of torment had been an overseer from one of the villages the prince owned; these men were the ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... he has done. Let him neutralise the treachery into which a moment of human weakness betrayed him. Let him return to us the aristocrat he has attempted to save, and we will forget his indiscretion and receive him back amongst us with open arms, as was the prodigal son received." ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... 13), that the death of the saints is precious in His sight, He says also by the mouth of Isaiah (xxvi., 21), that the earth will discover the blood which seems to be concealed. Let the enemies of the gospel, then, be as prodigal as they will of the blood of martyrs, they shall have to render a fearful account of it even to its last drop. In the present day, they indulge in proud derision while consigning believers to the flames; and after having bathed in their blood, they are intoxicated by ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... second time at eleven for their ante- meridiem, or whet; and, assembling in solemn conclave at the hour of two afternoon, for the purpose of consulting for the good of the commonwealth, are so prodigal of their labour in the service of the state, that they seldom separate before midnight. Into this worthy senate, composed partly of Duke Hildebrod's predecessors in his high office, whom he has associated with him to prevent the envy attending sovereign and sole authority, I must presently ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... was conscious of pleasure in the scene, and of a certain pride in forming part of it. These prodigal and splendid persons respected and liked her, even loved her. Her recitation on the previous evening had been a triumph. She was glad that she had shown them that she could at any rate do one thing rather ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... my precious ointment, which might have served for a lifetime of anointing, and I cannot renew the shattered receptacle, nor gather back the wasted fragrance; and so my heart must remain without spikenard or balm during its earthly sojourn. I have been prodigal,—have beggared my womanly nature,—and henceforth shall feast on husks. But this piece of folly can be laid on no shoulders but my own, and I must not wince if they are galled by burdens which only I have imposed. Some women, under similar ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... polished, they did not gain so much in embellishment, as they lost in symmetry, being rendered too taper and slender. Should any one who wonders at the costliness of the Capitol visit any one gallery in Domitian's palace, or hall, or bath, or the apartments of his concubines, Epicharmus's remark upon the prodigal, that ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the two methods of Confession at our disposal. God is "the Father of an infinite Majesty". In informal Confession, the sinner goes to God as his Father,—as the Prodigal, after doing penance in the far country, went {149} to his father with "Father, I have sinned". In formal Confession, the sinner goes to God as to the Father of an infinite Majesty,—as David went to God through ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes
... away in the seductive land of philosophical speculation, and revel in the freedom and irresponsibility of Agnosticism; and lo! when adversity smites, and bankruptcy is upon us, we toss the husks of the "Unknowable and Unthinkable" behind us, and flee as the Prodigal who knew his father, to that God whom (in trouble) we ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... France, encouraged Elizabeth to associate herself with the factious, and to become, as it were, the stalking-horse of the disaffected. She was far too clever to commit herself to any direct act of rebellion, but de Noailles was prodigal of her name in all the intrigues that he fostered, and the plot organised by means of Sir Peter Carew, in Devonshire and Cornwall, had for its declared object the marriage of Elizabeth to Courtenay, Earl of Devon, and the placing of these two on the throne. Sir Thomas Wyatt ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... the house of the American, they were those planted by the winds; if there were any flowers at his door, they were only those with which prodigal nature has carpeted the prairies; and you may see now in the west, many a cabin which has stood for thirty years, with not a tree, of shade or fruit, within a mile of its door! Everything is as bare and ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... Scott had lived at Longueval, Loulou had very often had several pieces of sugar; the Abbe Constantin had become extravagant, prodigal; he felt himself a millionaire, the sugar for Loulou was one of his follies. One day, even, he had been on the point of addressing to Loulou ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... was used up in the most prodigal manner possible, as those in command had not the inducement of treating the rowers well, from that economic standpoint which causes a man to so use his beast of burden as to get the best work from him. In the galley, when a slave could row no more he was flung overboard ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... when the time for reckoning comes,—when the future becomes the present,—it is sometimes hard to pay the priceless present for the squandered past. Next morning we all rode home to Haddon,—how sweet the words sound even at this distance of time!—and there was rejoicing in the Hall as if the prodigal ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... Which were invited to your prodigal feasts, (Wherein the phoenix scarce could 'scape your throats) Laugh at your misery, as fore-deeming you An idle meteor, which drawn forth, the earth Would be soon ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... was it. A man who could propose, even playfully, to quench old McNab's thirst must have been a utopist, a pursuer of chimeras; for of downright irony Heyst was not prodigal. And, may be, this was the reason why he was generally liked. At that epoch in his life, in the fulness of his physical development, of a broad, martial presence, with his bald head and long moustaches, he resembled the portraits of Charles XII., of adventurous memory. However, ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... He had opened his soul to these two. He had been noble Love to the one, and to the other perfect Friendship. He had bid them be brother and sister whom he loved, and live a Golden Age with him at Raynham. In fact, he had been prodigal of the excellences of his nature, which it is not good to be, and, like Timon, he became bankrupt, and fell ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that Betty became of age and was entitled to go home and claim her own. She and Tom went first to a small village in Kent, where dwelt an old lady who for some time past had had her heart full to the very brim with gratitude because of a long-lost prodigal son having been brought back to her—saved by the blood of the Lamb. When at last she set her longing eyes on Tom, and heard his well-remembered voice say, "Mother!" the full heart overflowed and rushed down the wrinkled cheeks in floods of inexpressible joy. And the floods were increased, ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... accounts he had carried back to his friends of the sunny skies, the salubrious clime, the fertile soil, and the majesty and loveliness of the landscape; of mountain, valley, lake and river which Providence had lavished with a prodigal hand in ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... said without a word. I sit beneath thy looks, as children do In the noon-sun, with souls that tremble through Their happy eyelids from an unaverred Yet prodigal inward joy. Behold, I erred In that last doubt! and yet I cannot rue The sin most, but the occasion—that we two Should for a moment stand unministered By a mutual presence. Ah, keep near and close, Thou dovelike help! and, when my fears would rise, With ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... back from Boston, he revolted, too. He had not been a prodigal; indeed, during his second year in the East, he had in one way or another, earned his own living and he had learned even beyond his father's hopes to tune pianos. But he did it at an incredibly small expense in time and energy. What his heart went into during those ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... neck, as of old, and was restrained by the thought that she was grown a great girl now, called in her father, and all the household; and after a while the old Doctor came home, and the fatted calf was killed, and all made merry over the return of this altogether unrepentant prodigal son, who, whether from affectation, or from that blunted sensibility which often comes by continual change and wandering, took all their affection and delight ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... trained like an athlete, he would degenerate and lose his peculiar power. And yet she shrank unaccountably from his reentering the old life, with the bitter feeling in his heart he now had. It meant their living in New York, for one thing, and a growing repugnance to that huge, squirming, prodigal hive had come over her. Once the pinnacle of her ambitions, now it seemed sordid, hectic, unreal. Yet she was too wise to offer her objections, to argue the matter, any more than to open the personal wound of his trial and conviction. ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... his position. He glanced back through the departed years, and did not find one day among those many days which had left him one of those gracious memories which delight and console. Millions had slipped through his prodigal hands, and he could not recall a single useful expenditure, a really generous one, amounting to twenty francs. He, who had had so many friends, searched his memory in vain for the name of a single friend whom he regretted to part from. The past seemed ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... been prodigal of her kindness to Gwynplaine. She had bestowed on him a mouth opening to his ears, ears folding over to his eyes, a shapeless nose to support the spectacles of the grimace maker, and a face that no one could look upon ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... grave age, cherishing the notions of propriety, attaching as a Christian the highest value to the timid virtue of woman. I know not how to express my unhappiness at such a mass of rich endowments bestowed on the prodigal and faithless hours which are ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... To get a picture of it one must realise the solidity with which even the private houses are built. They are stone, or if not, the walls are of massive brick coated with plaster. There are no frame buildings; wood is too expensive for that purpose. It is only in prodigal America that we ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Etonian, and the mask was thrown off in the list of contributors given at the end of the third volume. In The Etonian it was attached to "Godiva," the poem which attracted the warm admiration of Gifford of the Quarterly Review, a man not prodigal of praise, and the "Godiva" of Moultrie may still fearlessly unveil its charms beside the "Godiva" of Tennyson. His longest poem in Knight's Quarterly was "La Belle Tryamour," which has since been ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various
... devotional people, holding frequent prayer-meetings in the pits—often degenerates into fanatical fatalism. But it is seen far more painfully and unmistakably in the alternate plethora and destitution between which, from year's end to year's end, the whole population seems to oscillate. The prodigal revelry of the reckoning night, the drunkenness of Sunday, the refusal to work on Monday and perhaps Tuesday, and then the untidiness of their home towards the latter part of the two or three weeks which intervene before the ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... We must conquer our passions, or our passions will conquer us. 2. The prodigal robs his heirs; the miser robs himself. 3. There is a fierce conflict between good and evil; but good is in the ascendant, and must ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... cellar-master it might be a different thing. That his companions knew him was an added humiliation. He had deserved it all; but there was One who had called Himself the Friend of sinners, and that Friend had received even him, a poor prodigal who had returned to ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... that his mother's fortune should in equity have been divided among the family; but, as he pointed out to his dear old governor, a Carteret mustn't be allowed to starve; so the parson, who loved the handsome lad, put down his hack and sent the prodigal a remittance. He had better have sent him a hempen rope, for necessity might have made a man out of Master Dick; the remittance turned ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... society and news; adventurers, who have no home; Templars, who dine there daily; and men about town, who dine at whatever place is nearest to their hunger. Lords, citizens, concealed Papists, spies, prodigal 'prentices, precisians, aldermen, foreigners, officers, and country gentlemen, all are here. Some have come on foot, some on horseback, and some in those new caroches ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... a leaf is on the bush, In the time before the thrush Has a thought about her nest, Thou wilt come with half a call, Spreading out thy glossy breast Like a careless prodigal; Telling tales about the sun, When we've ...
— Language of Flowers • Kate Greenaway
... downward road; the children of those who professed to be God's children, were never seen there. His soul was troubled. He knew at whose door the fault lay, yet what could he do? He was young and inexperienced. These men and women, parents of the prodigal ones were older than he. Should he show them the fearful mistake they were making in condemning everything that was not purely a religious worship? Should he tell them by reason of their sternness and their narrow prejudices, which seemed more to them than the souls of their children, they were ...
— 'Our guy' - or, The elder brother • Mrs. E. E. Boyd
... years he had disappeared, and no one knew what had become of him. Then, suddenly, as I say, he reappeared at Golden Friars—a very black and silent man, sedate and orderly. His mother was dead and buried; but the "prodigal son" was received good-naturedly. The good vicar, Doctor ...
— Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... masters of the spiritual life have learned, there is more power in the eloquence of forgiving love than in the terrors of retribution; hence, with tears and burning sentiments of sympathy for the erring children of men, he led his hearers as it were by the hand to the Father of the prodigal—to that Jesus who forgave ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... comment among us. The great orator was expected to display his talents, if there were any excuse for it, wherever he might be, so the ladies set up a demand for a toast. He spoke of Franklin, 'The Thrifty Prodigal,' saying; ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... of the wealthy, very modest at the beginning of the century, were transformed into little palaces; velvet, silk, and pearls replaced the patriarchal simplicity of the ancient costume; Holland had become vain, ambitious, and prodigal. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... magazines and books we filled our bags with to take back to London, we could not measure the full powers of men like Willette and Caran d'Ache and Riviere and Louis Morin until we had seen also The Prodigal Son, The March of the Stars, and all the stories they told in those dramatic silhouettes—those marvellous little black figures, cut in tin, only a few inches high, moving across a white space small in due proportion, but so designed and posed and ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... Ottawa in full glee, their canoes laden down with packs of beaver skins. Now came their turn for revelry and extravagance. "You would be amazed," says an old writer already quoted, "if you saw how lewd these peddlers are when they return; how they feast and game, and how prodigal they are, not only in their clothes, but upon their sweethearts. Such of them as are married have the wisdom to retire to their own houses; but the bachelors act just as an East Indiaman and pirates are wont to do; for they lavish, eat, drink, and play all away as ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... the marrow of his bones. Here was ruin, desolation, darkness, for the returning prodigal. These were the things his father had given him. A murderous rage seized him, a lust to rend and destroy, and he sat erect in his chair, his muscles tensed, his blood rioting, his brain reeling. Had his father appeared before him at this minute it would have gone hard with ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... want, a most liberal and bountiful patron towards them, even above his fortune; of which, in those administrations, he was such a dispenser, as, if he had been trusted with it to such uses, and if there had been the least of vice in his expense, he might have been thought too prodigal. He was constant and pertinacious in whatsoever he resolved to do, and not to be wearied by any pains that were necessary to that end. And, therefore, having once resolved not to see London, which he loved ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... at the epoch of this story, there dwelt in one of the Middle States a man whom we shall call Fauntleroy; a man of wealth, and magnificent tastes, and prodigal expenditure. His home might almost be styled a palace; his habits, in the ordinary sense, princely. His whole being seemed to have crystallized itself into an external splendor, wherewith he glittered in the eyes ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... thy balance-weighing, the white glass And black, with equal poise and steadfast hand, A pattern is to princes and great men, How to weigh all estates indifferently; The spiritualty and temporalty alike: Neither to be too prodigal of smiles, Nor too severe in frowning without cause. If you be wise, you monarchs of the earth, Have two such glasses still before your eyes; Think as you have a white glass running on, Good days, friends, favour, and all things at beck, So this white glass run out (as out it will) ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... him out. Across his quiet, ordered path its red trail had stretched and to go forward it had been necessary to go through. The Spences always went through. But Nature, every inch a woman, had made him pay for scorning her. She had killed no fatted calf for her prodigal. ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... fortunate variations were wiped out. The process of Nature, certainly, in the development of biological life thus appears to be no economical convergence of means upon an end. Nature has been recklessly prodigal. Millions more seeds of life are produced than ever come to fruition. And only animals perfectly adapted to their environment survive, while ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... little phrase, with all human liberty to wander—and come back. True, one son may never leave the Father's home, so that all that it contains is his; but there is no restraint on the other son from getting his knowledge as he will, even to the extent of becoming a prodigal. The essential is in the Safe Return, the Soteria, when the harlots and the husks have ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... coming to definite conclusions respecting Jane's father. Of course he was prejudiced against the man, and though himself too little acquainted with the facts of the case to distinguish Joseph's motives, he felt that the middle-aged prodigal's return was anything but a fortunate event for Michael and his granddaughter. The secret marriage with Clem was not likely, in were not lacking grounds for hesitation in refusing to accept any case, to have a respectable significance. True, ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... trunk and branch with fantastic splendour, and matted creepers weave curtains of dense foliage from spreading boughs. The austere and scanty vegetation of Northern climes, which gives a distinct outline and value to every leaf and flower, has nothing in common with the prodigal and passionate beauty of the tropical landscape, where the wealth of earth is flung broadcast at our feet in mad profusion. Day by day the marvellous gardens of Buitenzorg take deeper hold of mind and imagination. The early dawn, when the dark silhouettes of the palms stand etched against the ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... only too closely, that which you try to imitate, that which my mouth has been so vile as to conjure up before you. Lay aside those flowers and that dress. Let us wash away such mimicry with a sincere tear; do not remind me that I am but a prodigal son; I remember ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... not exactly what I meant—but never mind. Hm! Now I understand the light you have seen me in; it was the return of the prodigal that ...
— Pillars of Society • Henrik Ibsen
... nature of things his responsibilities for the vagrancies of his kinsman were inevitably less intimate. As he was not willing to enter the Church, his uncle now thought that Goldsmith should go to London and study law at the Temple. He gave the prodigal fifty pounds, and bade him God-speed. Goldsmith made his way as far as Dublin. There, passing a merry and philanthropic time with new and old familiars, he gambled away, and gave away, and lost his money, and all ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... thy cant! Not Eastern bombast, not the savage rant Of purpled madmen, were they numbered all From Roman Nero down to Russian Paul, Could grate upon my ear so mean, so base, As the rank jargon of that factious race, Who, poor of heart and prodigal of words, Formed to be slaves, yet struggling to be lords, Strut forth, as patriots, from their negro-marts, And shout for rights, with rapine in their hearts. Who can, with patience, for a moment see The medley mass of pride and misery, Of whips and charters, manacles and rights, Of ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... in the Middle Ages by the monks in England. The earliest proof of this that we possess, is the notice by Matthew Paris (thirteenth century) describing the three reredos for St. Alban's Abbey; the first, a large one, depicting the finding of the body of the Protomartyr; the others, "The Prodigal Son" and "The Man who fell among Thieves." All these were executed by ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... majority of Trumet's intelligent people, who understood and appreciated. Dr. Parker, a man with a reputation for dangerously liberal views concerning religious matters and an infrequent attendant at church, was enthusiastic and prodigal ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... gallantly bestowed such money as he had upon the ladies of the company to facilitate their flight to New York. His father, a successful manufacturer of codfish packing-boxes at Newburyport, telegraphed money for the prodigal's return with the stipulation that he should forswear the inky cloak and abase himself in ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... Phoenix appear'd; rising from those Sacred Ashes Testator and Heir; Father and yet Son; Another, and yet the same; introsuming as it were his Spirit, as he breath'd it out, when singing his own Epicedium and Genethliack together, he seem'd prodigal of his own life to have it redouble'd in your felicity: Thus, Rex nunquam moritur. O admirable conduct of the Divine Providence, to immortalize the image of a just Monarch: Ipsa quidem, sed non eadem, quia & ipsa, nec ipsa est. Since that may as truly be apply'd to your Majesty, which ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn
... stuffed with molasses," said Sindbad; "but I never saw it anywhere except aboard of 'The Prodigal Pig.'" ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... I walked ashore. I found the only British subject living there was a university graduate, but—a prodigal son Owing to his habit of constant drinking, the authorities of the town compelled him to work. As I passed up the street I saw him mending a road of the "far country" There I procured five horses, a stock of beads, knives, etc, for barter, and made ready for my land journey into the far interior. ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... was I Drawn to surrender and the bridal-kiss. Annunciations lit with jewelled wings Of sudden angels mid the lilies tall, Proud prothalamia chaunting enraptured things,— O sumptuous fables, why so prodigal Of masque and music, of dreams like foam-white swans On lakes of hyacinthus? Must Love seek Great allies, Beauty sound her arriere-bans That all her splendours betray us to this bleak Simplicity whereto blind satyrs run?"— The irony seems old, old ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... is supposed to be so: and thus everything is as it should be. As long as we are young, and Wagnerites into the bargain, we regard Wagner as rich, even as the model of a prodigal giver, even as a great landlord in the realm of sound. We admire him in very much the same way as young Frenchmen admire Victor Hugo—that is to say, for his "royal liberality." Later on we admire the ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... If the Prodigal Son had been a daughter they'd probably have handed her one of her sister's mother hubbards, and put her to work washing dishes in the kitchen. You see, after Ma died my brother married, and I went to live with him and Lil. I was an ugly little mug, and it looked all to the Cinderella ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... the first clump of brushwood he uttered a delighted exclamation. There, growing in prodigal luxuriance, was the beneficent pitcher-plant, whose large curled-up leaf, shaped like a teacup, not only holds a lasting quantity of rain-water, but mixes therewith its own palatable and ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... deeply degraded—if the termagant and imperious Castlemaine; the lovely and intriguing Denham; the coquettish, cold, and cunning Richmond; the innately-dissipated and unrestrainable Southesk; the equivocal Middleton; the rapacious, prodigal, and insinuating Querouaille,—are rendered infamous in our national history—let us not confound the innocent with the guilty. We can point out to our daughters, for admiration and example, the patient, affectionate, and enduring Lady Northumberland, the beloved ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... hold a public debate On sundry questions wrong or right! Ah, now this is my great delight! For I have often observed of late That such discussions end in a fight. Let us see what the learned wag maintains With such a prodigal waste ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... a most prodigal pride, freely expending upon them the little patrimony which had been put in the Trinidad bank against her old age. Her usual good judgment quite failed her; and she who, patternless and guideless, slashed brown denim fearlessly into uncouth vestures for ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... the name of the friend thus addressed—was a card-sharper, and he instantly seized the opportunity to make something out of the happy disposition of this modern prodigal son, this scion of gentility. With the utmost frankness he explained to the young man his wonderful method of keeping his pockets full of money, and showed that nothing could be easier than for Olivier to go and do likewise in his terrible condition;—in short, on one hand there ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... with him, in shape of rattling majority won at Glasgow. Everybody there but HARTINGTON and CHAMBERLAIN. Meeting in such circumstances with old colleague would have been too touching. But older colleagues, under wing of GLADSTONE, in full force. Determined to kill the fatted calf for the returning prodigal. GLADSTONE would, of course, play the part of Aged Parent; TREVELYAN the repentant son. But who was to stand for the fatted calf? General impression that HARCOURT best suited by natural gifts for the character. HARCOURT'S habitual modesty ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, August 13, 1887 • Various
... "strike" the flat. He foresaw it all: first, glad cries of "Johnnie!" from Cis and Grandpa, and a frightened exclamation from Big Tom, whose anger would instantly melt; next, tears would flow as those two who were dearest hastened to the prodigal, and there would be anxious questions, and words of sweet consolation. On the strength of the return perhaps Barber would even ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... act of the young duke is worthy of honourable mention. Prodigal Louis had made enormous debts; and there is a story extant, to illustrate how lightly he himself regarded these commercial obligations. It appears that Louis, after a narrow escape he made in a thunderstorm, had a smart access of penitence, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "Wicked prodigal! What shall we do to reform him, Mr. Douglas? He has not been to see us for three years past, and during that time we have had the ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... as prodigal of his life, which was now that of a victorious king, as he had formerly been when only an obscure soldier, persisted in attacks upon these woods, notwithstanding the heavy fire which proceeded from them. But he was soon made sensible that a furious ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... ordinary life-times before you and if you have come to the conclusion that you have but one, and a good share of that gone already, perhaps there will be some peace in the house for the time to come." My aunt always complained that her brother had one very serious fault, he was prodigal of time, and took too little thought for the future, and on this ground she replied in rather a snappish voice: "Well, at any rate, if every one was as slack and careless as you, they would hardly survive for one life time; and I can tell you one thing Nathan Adams, this old house has got to ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... daring vice, for which the whole age suffers. The blood of our bold youth, that heretofore Was spent in honourable action, Or to defend, or to enlarge the Kingdom, For the honour of our Country, and our Prince, Pours it self out with prodigal expence Upon our Mothers lap, the Earth that bred us For every trifle; and these private Duells, Which had their first original from the Fr[enc]h (And for which, to this day, we are justly censured) Are banisht from all civil Governments: Scarce ...
— The Little French Lawyer - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont
... household of Roper Ellwell where the wife had fitted boys "in the classical tongues" for Camberton, the family had come to this uncertain state, feverish, like the fickle fluctuations of the stock market; now prodigal and easy, again in a panicky distress with dire fear of unknown depths of poverty and humiliation. Whatever happened—reckless, with a philosophy that ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... work, and is prodigal to her favorite. As one drop of water hath an attraction for another, so do felicities run ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... somewhat the worse for the wetting it had got in salt-water, and, at a sign from Mr Manners, he went up to the stranger, and offered to read to him. Mr Manners told him to select the parable of the Prodigal Son, and several other portions of Scripture likely to interest a person whose mind had long been dormant to spiritual matters. The young man was evidently very much interested. Suddenly ...
— Ben Hadden - or, Do Right Whatever Comes Of It • W.H.G. Kingston
... in their distress. And Clarice! she has been to me as an angel of light. You remember that she gave me a book. I took it to please her, not intending to read it; but I did read it, and it showed me what I was—a wretched, lost sinner. I learned that I was like the prodigal son; and as I heard that my earthly father was no more, I determined to go to my Heavenly Father, knowing that he would receive me. He has done so, and I can now say honestly that I am a Christian, and fit to take charge ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... tea and started down the road weeping. What a bitter day that was for me! I dreaded to face my aunt and uncle. Coming through the grove down by our gate I met Uncle Peabody. With the keen eyesight of the father of the prodigal son he had seen me coming "a long ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... Cornwall: and many, of the royal family especially, were afterwards raised to the same honour. However, in the reign of queen Elizabeth, A.D. 1572[e], the whole order became utterly extinct: but it was revived about fifty years afterwards by her successor, who was remarkably prodigal of honours, in the person of George Villiers ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... "Talk about prodigal sons," Westy said; "when this old car gets back home, they ought to kill the fatted ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the Abbassides, was at length rewarded for his presumption of merit with the usual gratitude of courts. A mean, perhaps a foreign, extraction could not repress the aspiring energy of Abu Moslem. Jealous of his wives, liberal of his wealth, prodigal of his own blood and of that of others, he could boast with pleasure, and possibly with truth, that he had destroyed six hundred thousand of his enemies; and such was the intrepid gravity of his mind and countenance, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... you something of Orange Park, the town, the school established there, and the trouble connected with it. The village is situated on the west bank of the St. John's River, which at that point is a beautiful expanse of water three miles wide. Nature has been very prodigal in that section. The trees and plants are of a luxurious growth. Flowers are numerous. Every kind of fruit is plentiful. Because of these natural advantages, general climate and apparent fitness for orange growing, a Northern settlement was made. The people were from various Northern ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 1, January, 1896 • Various
... different animals the various gifts of courage, strength, swiftness, sagacity; wings to one, claws to another, a shelly covering to a third, etc. But when man came to be provided for, who was to be superior to all other animals, Epimetheus had been so prodigal of his resources that he had nothing left to bestow upon him. In his perplexity he resorted to his brother Prometheus, who, with the aid of Minerva, went up to heaven, and lighted his torch at the chariot of the sun, and brought down fire ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... story passed through many forms and many phases—the myth, e.g. The Labors of Hercules; the legend, e.g. St. George and the Dragon; the fairy tale, e.g. Cinderella; the fable, e.g. The Fox and the Grapes; the allegory, e.g. Addison's The Vision of Mirza; the parable, e.g. The Prodigal Son. Sometimes it was merely to amuse, sometimes to instruct. With this process are intimately connected famous books, such as "The Gesta Romanorum" (which, by the way, has nothing to do with the Romans) and famous ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... dress and her most becoming mood, welcomed him with careful cordiality as a prodigal whose husks, clinging about his coat, were to be handled tenderly as if they were pearls. She saw that something was gravely wrong, and she grasped the line of connection if she did not understand the issue; but, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... cruel turn I had done my father brought me almost to the verge of suicide. On Sunday morning I entered a church in Toronto, and tears flowed down my face as I heard the minister read the parable of the Prodigal Son. It seemed to me as a voice from home, and I determined to go to my father. Without hesitating, or stopping an hour, I took all the money I had to pay my way, and in about six days afterward, sitting beside the driver on the stage-coach, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... boy, the first of all. Oh, that my beloved spouse, Philippus Primus, could rise from his grave—what would he say to his lost son, who, like the prodigal in Scripture, loves strange women and keeps company ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... her, as if in a dream that was blurred by pain, and the sight infused into her soul, that was already harassed by pain and anxiety, a feeling of bitter aversion, and the envious thought that the mere trappings of the horses of this extravagant prodigal would suffice to keep her and her family above misery for ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of her dress, and the way her warm youth became it, drew her back to memories of a childhood nestled in beauty and gentle ways, before her handsome prodigal father had died, and her mother's face had grown pinched in the long struggle with poverty. But those memories were after all less dear to Justine than the grey years following, when, growing up, she had helped to clear a space in the wilderness for their tiny hearth-fire, when ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... with the precision of a practical man, it eludes him, slips away, as the glow of the wine he has drunk is slipping away, leaving him cross, and conscious of his liver. He feels that he has been extravagant, prodigal of something; virtue has gone out of him. He did not desire this glimpse of what lay under the three stars of his catalogue. God forbid that he should know anything about the forces of Nature! God forbid that he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... doughnut and a cup of coffee almost anywhere, or we could eat a sandwich in the park, but the matter of a bed, the business of sleeping in a maelstrom like New York was something more than serious—it was dangerous. Frank, naturally of a more prodigal nature, was all for going to the Broadway Hotel. "It's only for one night," said he. He always was rather careless ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... of the Prodigal Son may be read the history of what are known as the Protestant nations. What happens logically when the individual is suddenly freed from the restraint of external authority occurred when Martin Luther released the vital ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... place of the apathy and indifference with which she regarded the sated pleasures of that jaded world from which she had departed so recently. She had come to be bored—fully resigned for Blanch's sake to endure the ennui of mere vegetation until the prodigal Jack had been safely gathered within the fold once more. After the rude shock of first impressions had passed and she had found time to pause and breathe, she began to cast her eyes about her for something ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... with the love of her people, than any two of her predecessors that took most; which was a fortune strained out of the subjects, through the plausibility of her comportment, and (as I would say, without offence) the prodigal distribution of her grace to all sorts of subjects; for I believe no prince living, that was so tender of honour, and so exactly stood for the preservation of sovereignty, was so great a courtier of the people, yea, ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... throne looked like a quiet, quieting emerald-green. The One on the throne is at perfect rest regarding things down here. He knows all. His ears hear all, the cry of distress and despair, the defiance and arrogance and blasphemy. His eyes see His children down here, creative children all of them, prodigal children so many of them, and trusting children walking in the shadows. He sees all. And He feels all with His ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... impending famine I have obtained from St. John's some most substantial and highly colored candies at very little a pound which are just now quite as popular to an undiscriminating taste. I wish I had not been so prodigal ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... made a silent thanksgiving to Heaven. "God will accept your tears, my dear prodigal child. Come, ere it be too late. See, I have gold. My family diamonds have yielded enough to maintain us in ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... were elected by about one hundred thousand voters out of thirty millions of people. They were all men of property, and as aristocratic as the peers themselves. They began their sessions by granting prodigal compensations, indemnities, and endowments to the crown and to the princes. They appropriated thirty-three millions of francs annually for the maintenance of the king, besides voting thirty millions more for the payment of his debts; they passed a law restoring ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... LUCASTA, she that holy makes the day, And 'stills new life in fields of fueillemort, Hath back restor'd their verdure with one ray, And with her eye bid all to play and sport, Ant, to work still! age will thee truant call; And to save now, th'art worse than prodigal. ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... within 800 yards of the hill, when the guns about Bireh and Ramallah opened on them and they were compelled to withdraw, and a Turkish counter-attack forced our forward line back slightly in the afternoon. The enemy had a plentiful supply of ammunition and made a prodigal use of it. While continuing to shell fiercely he put more infantry into his fighting line, and as we had only 1200 rifles and four mountain guns, which the enemy's artillery outranged, it was clear we could not dislodge him from the Beitunia ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... ever seeing him again. About eleven o'clock I was returning from the kitchen garden, with my hands full of fruit and flowers, when, to my intense delight, poor little Richard came slowly out from under a laurel, and stood in the path before me, as veritable a type of a birdish prodigal son ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... That prodigal is our own splendid planet. Some of us down here have gladly welcomed the Father's plan and the Father's Son. His Son is His plan. But most of us don't seem to understand the Father. And that is hard on Him. And the greater number of us, by far the greater ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... 1830. In the year 1838, he quitted England to fulfil his purpose. For eight years he had patiently and steadily worked towards his object, and gathered about him all that was necessary for its accomplishment. Nothing had been omitted to insure success. A man of fortune, he had been prodigal of his wealth; free from professional and other ties, he had given up his time wholly to the cause. One year was passed in the Mediterranean, that his vessel, The Royalist, might be put to the severest tests. Three years were spent in educating a crew worthy of ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... the sound of the hall clock. At last he ventured into the kitchen, entering by the window and creeping to the kitchen hearth, where he dozed off to the music of the cricket, to be welcomed like another Prodigal Son. ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... natural grudge, however, I generously believe him a great artist or at least a great genius—a creature who despises any prompting short of absolute inspiration. For the rich, the multitudinous melody around me seemed but the offering to my ear of the prodigal spirit of tradition. The wood was ringing with sound because it was twilight, spring and Italy. It was also because of these good things and various others besides that I relished so keenly my visit to the Capuchin convent upon which I emerged after half-an- hour ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... life—the true power and spirit of America; gigantic, crude with the crudity of youth, disdaining rivalry; sane and healthy and vigorous; brutal in its ambition, arrogant in the new-found knowledge of its giant strength, prodigal of its wealth, infinite in its desires. In its capacity boundless, in its courage indomitable; subduing the wilderness in a single generation, defying calamity, and through the flame and the debris of a commonwealth in ashes, rising suddenly ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... kind of illusive advertisement which I answered in prodigal numbers in the greenness of these early days. These were those deceitfully worded requests for "bright, intelligent ladies—no canvassing." And not less prodigal were the returns I got. They came in avalanches by every mail, from ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... opponents on the Treasury Bench to a line of exhausted volcanoes. They had taken office when they were full of mighty aspirations; they had poured forth measures of all sorts with prodigal vigour; and at last they were reduced to wait, supine and helpless, for the inevitable swing of the political pendulum. A similar process of exhaustion goes on among literary men; and there are certain ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... everything upon it. A kind of Jack's beanstalk, and every morning starred with turquoise blue trumpet mouths of ravishing beauty, which were dead at noon. The poor thing was constrained to be a hierodule, gave no seed. Nature is the prodigal's foster-mother. ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... The past, like the country through which we walk, becomes indistinct as we advance. My position is like that of a person wounded in a dream; he feels the wound, though he cannot recollect when he received it. Come, then, thou regenerate man, thou extravagant prodigal, thou awakened sleeper, thou all-powerful visionary, thou invincible millionaire,—once again review thy past life of starvation and wretchedness, revisit the scenes where fate and misfortune conducted, and where despair received thee. Too many diamonds, too much gold and splendor, are now reflected ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the busy passer, a frangipanni-tree, the native sumboya or "flower of the dead," just opening a white crowd of golden-hearted blossoms to the sun, adds another wave of perfume to the floral incense, steaming from earth to sky with prodigal exuberance. ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... about Aunt Catherine, the black sheep of the family, who is supposed to have run off with another woman's husband. It is the day of the village bazaar, and amid a lot of hustle and bustle Catherine enters—the prodigal daughter most inopportunely returned! As the day progresses Old Mrs. Deveral becomes fractious, the Fete entertainment falls through and Judy decides to run away with the unpleasant Rodney. Things are going from bad to worse when ...
— Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act • Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden
... was a clamant and manifold astonishment in the kitchen of the inn, together with prodigal and ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... people consider it a waste of time to learn of some of the wonders God has placed about them, yet, God loved beauty or never would He have been so prodigal of it. If we really try, we too can see wherein it is good. "Consider the lilies of the field," for their consideration will in no ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... graphicness gave rise to such an idea, it would seem to have its foundation as well in Nature as in superstition. Matthew has more detail, more thought; Luke is more picturesque, more descriptive. John has more deep feeling; Luke more action, more life. The Annunciation, the Widow of Nain, the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, the Rich Man and Lazarus, and the incident to which we shall presently advert, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... things, instead of being run, and Agatha would quickly find it out. Nevertheless, he wanted Agatha to come to him for his own sake. So it was that he had put on his frontier rig. He would be the prodigal father, returning as penniless as when he left, and it would be up to her whether or not she killed the fatted calf. Empty of hand, and looking it, he would come back wondering if he could get his old job in the general store. Whatever followed would ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... foolish women in whom there is no ineradicable taint of cruelty or hate will always receive the prodigal who returns. And when Daddy had been fed and clothed, he turned out for a time to be so amiable, so grateful a Daddy, such good company, as he sat in the chair by his wife's fire and told stories of his travels to her and anybody else who might drop in, that not only the ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Barn The Patch of Blue Girl from Montana The Ransom Rose Galbraith The Witness Sound of the Trumpet Sunrise Tomorrow About This Time Amorelle Head of the House Ariel Custer In Tune with Wedding Bells Chance of a Lifetime Maris Crimson Mountain Out of the Storm Exit Betty Mystery Flowers The Prodigal Girl Girl of the Woods Re-Creations The White Flower Matched Pearls Time of the Singing of Birds Ladybird The Substitute Guest Beauty for Ashes Stranger Within the Gates The Best Man Spice Box By Way of the Silverthorns The Seventh Hour Dawn of the Morning ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... was never to be achieved but by postponement, deference, and modesty. Nor can the prodigality of the meadows in May be quoted in dispute. For Nature has something even more severe than moderation: she has an innumerable singleness. Her butter-cup meadows are not prodigal; they show multitude, but not multiplicity, and multiplicity is exactly the disgrace of decoration. Who has ever multiplied or repeated his delights? or who has ever gained the granting of the most foolish of his wishes—the prayer for reiteration? It is ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... lingers in the popular tradition. Count Jean gave her his fairest mountain as a gage of his affection and villages and rich pasture lands to her brave son, his namesake, who had fought by his side at the Bicoque. The gallant count was, according to tradition, very prodigal in his favors, and a certain road, leading to the neighboring village of Charmey where the unhappy Countess Marguerite could watch her faithless lord as he rode away on his various adventures, is still known as ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... you are too prodigal Of your wit's treasure, thus fu pour it forth Upon so mean a subject as ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... said, arresting Peter Ferguson as he tried to escape down a byroad, and eyeing the prodigal sternly, who had fled from discipline to London, and there lost a leg; "the' 'll be a meetin' o' Session next week afore the Saicrament; wull a' tell the Doctor ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... conscious husband bids her rise, When some rich factor courts her charms, Who calls the wanton to his arms, And, prodigal of wealth and fame, Profusely buys the costly ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... Foljambe had not arrived at that point; he was in a condition less unhappy, but quite as perilous. To him the world had offered a fresh apple of Sodom, and he had grasped it as eagerly as the first. The prodigal son was in a better condition when he grew weary of the strange country, than while he was spending his substance on riotous living. Sir Godfrey had laid aside the riotous living, but he was not weary of the strange ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... dozen distorted, misshapen specimens. If given space, every kind of tree and shrub will develop its own individuality; and herein lies one of their greatest charms. If the oak typifies manhood, the drooping elm is equally suggestive of feminine grace, while the sugar-maple, prodigal of its rich juices, tasselled bloom, and winged seeds, reminds us of wholesome, cheerful natures. Even when dying, its foliage takes on the earliest and richest hues ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... the hands of writers like Miss Jewett and Miss Murfree; but in Mr. Allen's romances Nature is not behind the action; she is involved in it. Her presence is everywhere; her influence streams through the story; the deep and prodigal beauty which she wears in rural Kentucky shines on every page; the tremendous forces which sweep through her disclose their potency in human passion and impulse. There was a fine note in Mr. Allen's ...
— James Lane Allen: A Sketch of his Life and Work • Macmillan Company
... no honor in misery; it is picturesque to read about, but it is a sorry state in reality to be very poor. Some poets have been scamps. I shall not start as the prodigal son, Bessie, for I love not swinish company nor ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... unfit, Would steer too nigh the sands, to boast his wit. Great wits are sure to madness near allied, And thin partitions do their bounds divide; Else why should he, with wealth and honour blest, Refuse his age the needful hours of rest? Punish a body which he could not please; Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease? And all to leave what with his toil he won, To that unfeather'd two-legg'd thing, a son; 170 Got, while his soul did huddled notions try; And born a shapeless lump, like anarchy. In friendship false, implacable in hate; Resolved to ruin, or to rule the state. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... Maintaining as we did a large body of wild and reckless warriors, together with their families, it may be naturally supposed the excesses of these people were not few; but it would have required one to have seen, to have believed, the prodigal waste of which they were often guilty. Acknowledging no other law than their own will, following no other line of conduct than that suggested by their own caprice, they had as little respect for the property of the Canadian inhabitant as they would have ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... the idea of getting him to spend some of the money that was rightfully his, had been trying to persuade him to make a visit to his own island in one of our schooners—a special voyage which I had hoped to make a record breaker in the matter of prodigal expense. ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... ruin must succeed, Fresh cities sink in flame, fresh thousands bleed! What want'st thou more, thou prodigal of guilt! Oppression's sword is buried to the hilt In unoffending blood—what want'st thou more, Thou sanguinary pest of an unhappy shore? Far as thy sight can stretch, look round, and see All Sweden piled with monuments of thee; Behold her ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... him suit and service and gave him joy of the kingship. So the preachers preached in his name[FN76] and the poets praised him; and he lavished gifts upon the troops and the officers of his household and overwhelmed them with favours and bounties and was prodigal to the people of justice and equitable dealings and goodly usance and polity. When he had accomplished this much of his desire, he caused bring forth the cook and his household to the divan, but spared the old woman who had tended him, for that she had been the cause of his deliverance. Then ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... which a moment of human weakness betrayed him. Let him return to us the aristocrat he has attempted to save, and we will forget his indiscretion and receive him back amongst us with open arms, as was the prodigal son received." ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... hardest kind of times prevailed in the "Quaker City," on my arrival there. It was almost impossible to obtain employment of any description; and many actors, authors and artists, as well as mechanics, were most confoundedly "hard up." I soon exhausted the contents of my purse; and, like the Prodigal Son, "began to ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... Joy-Energy of God being insupportable to the very nature of flesh, in His tender love and pity He provides us, through the Person of His Son, with degrees of union of such sweet gentleness that we may continually enjoy them through every hour of life; and through His Son He comes out to meet the prodigal "while ...
— The Romance of the Soul • Lilian Staveley
... intimately the figure and the voice of this quiet lady with his memories of another and a younger one,—quite impossible, that he should not feel his whole chivalrous nature stirred in him, and become prodigal of attentions. If there were hypocrisy, it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... carried back to his friends of the sunny skies, the salubrious clime, the fertile soil, and the majesty and loveliness of the landscape; of mountain, valley, lake and river which Providence had lavished with a prodigal hand in this "Garden ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... unity in this infinite variety; the shell and the skin bear witness equally. What! deny God because shell does not resemble leather! And journalists have been prodigal of eulogies about these ineptitudes, eulogies they have not given to Newton and Locke, both worshippers of the Deity who ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... waters of Hudson Bay—the grave of its discoverer. Familiar as the story is of Henry Hudson's fate, for John King's sake how gladly we repeat it. While sailing on the waters he discovered, in 1611, his men mutinied; the mutiny was aided by Henry Green, a prodigal, whom Hudson had generously shielded from ruin. Hudson, the master, and his son, with six sick or disabled members of the crew, were driven from their cabins, forced into a little shallop, and committed helpless to the water and the ice. But there was one stout ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... miseries as these any more. Now I saw plainly the goodness of his observations about the middle station of life, how easy, how comfortably he had lived all his days, and never had been exposed to tempests at sea or troubles on shore; and I resolved that I would, like a true repenting prodigal, go home to ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... of the feudal prince, and its railings and stairways accepting willingly the bronze caps and ornaments. In front of its main edifice was the imposing gateway with proportions almost as massive as the temple itself, with prodigal wealth of curiously fitted and richly carved, painted and gilded supports and morticings, with all the fancies and adornments of the carpenter's art, and having as its frontlet and blazon the splendidly gilt name, style or title. Often these were ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... Never mind, we would make amends for lost time by spending more money! In very truth the years following the Centennial witnessed an extraordinary awakening of worship of beauty, almost religious in its fervor. Passionate pilgrims ransacked Europe and the Orient; a prodigal horde of their captives, objects of luxury and of art, surged into galleries and museums and households. No cold, critical taste weeded out these adorable aliens. The worst and the best conquered, together. Our architecture, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... heavenly intercourse, and renovates The blessed image of obedient love That Eden forfeited. Out of the depths Of true contrition sigh'd a trembling tone In utter abnegation, "I repent! In dust and ashes. I abhor myself." —Thus the returning prodigal who cries Unclothed and empty, "Father! I have sinn'd, And am not worthy to be called thy son," Finds full forgiveness, and a free embrace, While the best robe ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... in the colonies by the press of Thomas Fleet, already mentioned as a printer of small books. This book of 1736, being intended for ready sale, was such as every Puritan would buy for the family library. Entitled "The Prodigal Daughter," it told in Psalm-book metre of a "proud, vain girl, who, because her parents would not indulge her in all her extravagances, bargained with the devil to poisen them." The parents, however, were warned by an angel ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... found it to be him whom they reckoned as lost: and not dead, though he were in a Swound most like Death. They then, who had gone forth as Mourners came back rejoycing, and set to by all means to revive their Prodigal. Who, being come to himself, and hearing of their Anxieties and their Errand of that Morning, "Ay" says he "you may as well finish what you were about: for, for all I have brought back the Jewel (which he shew'd them, and 'twas indeed a rare Piece) I have brought back ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... including double sense, The double guilt of his incontinence Might be express'd, that had no stay t' employ The treasure which the love-god let him joy In his dear Hero, with such sacred thrift As had beseem'd so sanctified a gift; 30 But, like a greedy vulgar prodigal, Would on the stock dispend, and rudely fall, Before his time, to that unblessed blessing Which, for lust's plague, doth perish with possessing: Joy graven in sense, like snow[48] in water, wasts: Without preserve of virtue, nothing lasts. What man is he, that with a wealthy eye ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... minister to Denmark who complained of the smallness of his salary, and said that he could keep neither an equipage nor a table; the king's remark to him was—"You are a prodigal; you ought to know that it is more healthy to go on foot than it is to go in a carriage; and that, so far as eating is concerned, another man's table is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... here: Thackeray only once; neither Tennyson nor Carlyle. Donne came up for a day to see as to the morality of the 'Prodigal Son' {268} at Drury Lane, which the Bishop of London complained of. Donne is deputy Licenser for Jack Kemble. I went to see it with him; it was only stupid ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... he cares very much!" said Howard, gravely. "If you were the Prodigal Son he couldn't ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... took accordingly. No poor, simple, virtuous body was ever cajoled by the attentions of an electioneering politician with more ease than Aunt Chloe was won over by Master Sam's suavities; and if he had been the prodigal son himself, he could not have been overwhelmed with more maternal bountifulness; and he soon found himself seated, happy and glorious, over a large tin pan, containing a sort of olla podrida of all ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... ages of heroism and crime, of war and massacre, of preaching and praying, of blustering and trimming; after all this prodigal waste of blood and tears, and labour and treasure, and genius and sacrifice, we have nothing better to show for Christianity than European ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... like living at the foot of Mount Pelee, the home of awful eruption, and therefore the realm of gloom and uncertainty and fear. We are not saved by law, neither indeed can we be. Neither can law heal us after our transgressions and defeats. The law has nothing for prodigal men but "blackness, and darkness, and tempest." It has no sound but dreaded decree, no message but menace, no look but a frown. Who will build his house at the ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... see you" she continued drily, "and killed the fatted calf, and—and that kind of thing. Though why I say calf, I don't know, nephew George, for you never were the prodigal. I may say calf to thee, my poor Harry! Thou hast been amongst the swine sure enough. And evil companions have robbed the money out of thy pocket and the ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... bountiful hand, was of an inexhaustible fertility, and bore readily year after year a threefold harvest—first a grain crop, and then two crops of grasses or esculent vegetables. The wheat sown returned a hundredfold to the husbandman, and was gathered at harvest-time in prodigal abundance—"as the sand of the sea, very much,"—till men "left numbering" (Gen. xli. 49). Flax and doora were largely cultivated, and enormous quantities were produced of the most nutritive vegetables, such as lentils, garlic, leeks, onions, ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... life of man, to bring round the ill effects of an abuse of power upon the power itself. If hoards were made by violence and tyranny, they were still domestic hoards; and domestic profusion, or the rapine of a more powerful and prodigal hand, restored them to the people. With many disorders, and with few political checks upon power, Nature had still fair play; the sources of acquisition were not dried up; and therefore the trade, the manufactures, and the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... was splendid in its promise and prodigal in its favors. The rains fell just right, and all that the pioneers planted came up in abundance. The soil, so kind to the wheat, was not less so to the corn and the gardens. Henry surveyed with pride the ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... these fortunate variations were wiped out. The process of Nature, certainly, in the development of biological life thus appears to be no economical convergence of means upon an end. Nature has been recklessly prodigal. Millions more seeds of life are produced than ever come to fruition. And only animals perfectly adapted to their environment survive, while an incomparably ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... there. Valerie inherited these courtesan tastes from her mother, on whom General Montcornet had lavished luxury when he was in Paris, and who for twenty years had seen all the world at her feet; who had been wasteful and prodigal, squandering her all in the luxurious living of which the programme has been lost since the fall ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... a wheel; labor in vain &c. (useless) 645; cut blocks with a razor, pour water into a sieve. leak &c. (run out) 295; run to waste; ebb; melt away, run dry, dry up. Adj. wasted &c. v.; at a low ebb. wasteful &c. (prodigal) 818; penny wise and pound foolish. Phr. magno conatu magnas nugas[Lat]; le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle[Fr]; " idly busy rolls their world away ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... action to the word, Mr. Gibney grasped the whistle cord and a strange, sad, sneezing, wheezy moan resembling the expiring protest of a lusty pig and gradually increasing into a long-drawn but respectable whistle rewarded his efforts. For once, he could afford to be prodigal with the steam, and while it lasted there could be no mistaking the fact that here was a ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... was fitted up without any regard to expense; and they played mysteries, or danced the morris-dance, every evening, for the amusement of himself and household, and such strangers as were sharing his prodigal hospitality. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... wasted in a prodigal way. Forests have been recklessly cut, fires been invited and the soil itself has been sacrificed. Natural gas and oil have been burned with no regard for the future. Coal and other minerals have not been husbanded. It ...
— Social Justice Without Socialism • John Bates Clark
... taken to display their fine linen, of which, indeed, they have great plenty, their furniture, plate, housekeeping, and variety of wines, in which article, it must be owned, they are profuse, if not prodigal — A burgher of Edinburgh, not content to vie with a citizen of London, who has ten times his fortune, must excel him in the expence as well as ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... worked into oratorio-books, and the most straitlaced portion of the community applauds their combination with music. But when a subject is in itself solemn, let it be solemnly treated. Opinions may be divided as to whether the story of the Prodigal Son can with propriety be represented in the form of serious opera or spectacle, but that it is an improper theme for burlesque there cannot be the shadow of a doubt. Our dramatic authors have too long been in the habit of trying to raise ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... often says it to us. When argument and appeals to duty and the like fail, there is nothing more to be done but to let us have our request, and find out the poison that lurked under the fair outside. The prodigal son gets his coveted portion, and is allowed to go into the far country, that he may prove how good and happy it is to starve among the swine, not because his father is angry with him, but because such experience is the only way to re-awaken his dormant love, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... intelligence would breed perhaps some viler swindle than my facetious rappings. That's the line our doubting bishops take, and why shouldn't I? For example, these people might give it to Public Charities, minister to the fattened secretary, the prodigal younger son. After all, at worst, I am a sort of latter-day Robin Hood; I take from the rich according to their incomes. I don't give to the poor certainly, I don't get enough. But—there are other good works. Many a poor weakling have I comforted ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... Lincoln, pressing with redoubled might, Broke thro their squadrons and confirmed the flight; When this brave leader met a stunning blow, That stopt his progress and avenged the foe. He left the field; but prodigal of life, Unwearied Francis still prolong'd the strife; Till a chance carabine attained his head, And stretch'd the hero mid the vulgar dead. His near companions rush with ardent gait, Swift to revenge, but soon to share his fate; ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... invitation or of their own accord, he made liberal presents; not neglecting even the freed-men and slaves, who were favourites with their masters and patrons. He offered also singular and ready aid to all who were under prosecution, or in debt, and to prodigal youths; excluding from (19) his bounty those only who were so deeply plunged in guilt, poverty, or luxury, that it was impossible effectually to relieve them. These, he openly declared, could derive no benefit from any other means ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... the five eighths of blue ribbon by the aid of certain brass nails on the counter. He gave good measure, not prodigal, for he was loyal to his employer, but putting a very moderate strain on the ribbon, and letting the thumb-nail slide with a contempt of infinitesimals which betokened a large soul ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... direction by sierras or chains of lofty and rugged mountains, naked, rocky, and precipitous, rendering it almost impregnable, but locking up within their sterile embraces deep, rich, and verdant valleys of prodigal fertility. ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... when I was half ruined that I began to understand the business; and as soon as I did understand it I made up my mind to get out of it; and I am happy to say that I sold the very last of my stud in February, and Tony Lumpkin is his own man again. So you may welcome the prodigal grandson, and order the fatted calf to ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the reapers at their sultry toil. In front they bound the sheaves. Behind Were realms of upland, prodigal in oil, And hoary ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... it came over Vivian who this man must be: surely no other than the Dabney House prodigal, spouse of his own fellow-lodger, landlady, and blanchisseuse. Upon that thought he stepped out into the hall, closing the office door behind him upon ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Court; stingy men, who want to save the charges of house-keeping; courtiers, who come there for society and news; adventurers, who have no home; Templars, who dine there daily; and men about town, who dine at whatever place is nearest to their hunger. Lords, citizens, concealed Papists, spies, prodigal 'prentices, precisians, aldermen, foreigners, officers, and country gentlemen, all are here. Some have come on foot, some on horseback, and some in those new caroches the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Sallust so well remarks to happen frequently in the same person, to be covetous of what is another's, and profuse of what is his own. This sort of men is usually amiable to ordinary eyes; but, in the sight of reason, nothing is laudable but what is guided by reason. The covetous prodigal is of all others the worst man in society. If he would but take time to look into himself, he would find his soul all over gashed with broken vows and promises; and his retrospect on his actions would not consist of reflections upon those good resolutions after mature thought, which are the true ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... whilst others learn it late. . . . . Few intellectual men have the art of economising the hours of study. The very necessity which every one acknowledges of giving vast portions of life to attain proficiency in anything, makes us prodigal where we ought to be parsimonious, and careless where we have need of unceasing vigilance. The best time-savers are a love of soundness in all we learn or do, and a cheerful acceptance of ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... that it should be so different this time! I had gone out as a missionary; and deeper than ever in my consciousness, I must feel the want and woe of the returning prodigal; the same old story, the ever-recurring failure. It seemed as though all the wonder and impatience might well go out ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... light upon the lonely place, which can never pass away. The story of Ruth, again, is as if all the depth of natural affection in the human race was involved in her breast. There are descriptions in the book of Job more prodigal of imagery, more intense in passion, than anything in Homer; as that of the state of his prosperity, and of the vision that came upon him by night. The metaphors in the Old Testament are more boldly figurative. Things were collected ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... the echo there that shall Arouse the drowsy dog, that he may bay The household out to greet the prodigal That ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... and his grew braver As the danger grew more rife, Avaricious they of glory But most prodigal of life, And the "Army of Virginia" Was ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... the epoch of this story, there dwelt in one of the Middle States a man whom we shall call Fauntleroy; a man of wealth, and magnificent tastes, and prodigal expenditure. His home might almost be styled a palace; his habits, in the ordinary sense, princely. His whole being seemed to have crystallized itself into an external splendor, wherewith he glittered in the eyes of the world, and had no other life than upon ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... may come in the cool twilight, when the garish day is past, and the young modest flowers, which refused their perfume to the sun, that, with his hot and fiery beams, sought to command their incense, now welcome back the evening, and become prodigal of sweetness;—within some rustic temple, clustered with woodbine, where the robin or the tiny wren hath formed a nest of matchless skill and neat propriety, and trembles not at the approaching footstep, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... passion in all its warmth, and described it in all its symptoms." Theodore Watts wrote: "Never before these songs were sung, and never since, did the human soul, in the grip of a fiery passion, utter a cry like hers." That amazing prodigal of superlatives, the ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... arrived at the Orphanage, they found a great "Welcome" arranged in daisies over the door. Kate was feasted like the prodigal son on his return, and no one thought of reproaching her for having run away. And Kate returned the love and kindness she met with fully and joyously, for now she had entered into that mysterious ...
— Daybreak - A Story for Girls • Florence A. Sitwell
... made secretary of state, be found a fair young lad in the antechamber at St. James's, -who seeming much at home, the earl, concluding it was the mistress's son, was profuse of attentions to the boy, and more prodigal still of his prodigious regard for his mamma. The shrewd boy received all his lordship's vows with indulgence, and without betraying himself: at last he said, "I suppose your lordship takes me for Master Louis; but I ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... read again. She read of the prodigal son, and of Him who would not condemn the woman that was a sinner. It was a solemn and terrible moment. The fathomless depths of the girl's voice, breaking once and again to a low wail, then rising to a piercing cry, went with the words themselves like an arrow ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... ruled like a queen, in the midst of her companions; she had shed her animation through their lives, and loaded them with prodigal favors, nor once suspected that a popular favorite might not be loved. Now she felt that she had been but a dangerous plaything in the hands of those whose hearts ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... importunities is such as we should consider abrupt and almost cruel in Europe. Let me beg you to moderate your Royal impetuosity for the future; and, as your Highness's tutor, entreat you to be a little less prodigal of your powder ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for it kept him out in the open air. It grieved him to part with the horse, a few hours later, but being prodigal with personal property he presented the animal to a poor Mexican woman, leaving her to face any resulting embarrassments. Ten minutes later he swung himself under a west-bound freight, and in due time arrived in California, ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... effects of the advent of the royal party in Brazil may easily be conceived. The Court had always been somewhat prodigal of its Orders and Decorations. The appetite in the Peninsula for these insignia had always been sufficiently keen; among the cruder Brazilians the greed for any distinction of the sort became quite overwhelming. The most ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... material was used up in the most prodigal manner possible, as those in command had not the inducement of treating the rowers well, from that economic standpoint which causes a man to so use his beast of burden as to get the best work from him. In the galley, when a slave could row no more he was flung overboard and another ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... at all, came back with wealth of furs and bought off punishment, "wearing sword and lace and swaggering as if he were a gentleman," the annals of the day complain; and a long session in the confessional box relieved the prodigal's conscience from the sins of a life in the woods. If my young gentleman were rich enough, the past was forgotten, and he was now on the highroad to distinguished service ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... died in 1732, age 62. See No. 182, and the Spectator, Nos. 268, 370: "When I am commending Wilks for representing the tenderness of a husband and a father in 'Macbeth', the contrition of a reformed prodigal in 'Harry the Fourth', the winning emptiness of a young man of good-nature and wealth in 'The Trip to the Jubilee', the officiousness of an artful servant in 'The Fox', when thus I celebrate Wilks, I talk to all the world who are engaged in any ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... with the other. Underline is a gentleman of some literary attainments, though not entirely divested of quackery; he is particularly noted for the emphasis he gives to certain points in his discourse, and though in some cases, perhaps, he is a little too prodigal of this kind of effect, yet we could not well do without him. Undermine is a greater rascal than Underhand, and had it not been for the counter-acting influence of Underproof, our house had fallen to the ground; to the ground it might have fallen, but had it gone farther, it would ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... and all the enjoyments of this world, the man, without action is unable to enjoy them long, but the high-souled man, who is even diligent, is able to find riches buried deep in the Earth and watched over by the fates. The good man who is prodigal (in religious charities and sacrifices) is sought by the gods for his good conduct, the celestial world being better than the world of men, but the house of the miser though abounding in wealth is looked upon by the gods as the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... paying dear for what many will reckon but a worthless weed; but the more historical associations we can link with our localities, the richer will be the daily life that feeds upon the past, and the more valuable the things that have been long established: so that our children will be less prodigal than their fathers in sacrificing good institutions to passionate impulses and impracticable theories. This herb of grace, let us hope, may be found in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... fifteen I was almost as tall and broad-shouldered as my father. Boy-like, I was prodigal of my bounding vigor, which had not tempered down to the strength of my mature manhood. It was well for me that a sobering responsibility fell on me early, else I might have squandered my resources of endurance, and in place of this sturdy story-teller whose sixty years sit lightly on him, there ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... of those charming, quiet, wise women of whom Russia is so prodigal, a man or two whom I had met at different times, especially one officer, one of the finest, bravest, and truest men I have ever known; some of the inevitable giggling girls—and then suddenly, standing ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... turban round his head,—which his increasing years, and his manifold sins, had driven him to Mecca to seek,—forbade him to partake publicly in the unholy sport. Like most of those who have outgrown their pleasant vices, he had a hearty admiration for his old, prodigal, unregenerate self; and, as I lay listening, he spoke lovingly of the old days at Selangor, before the coming of the ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... most moving adjurations, calling him father, assuring him she was wholly cured and entirely repentant of her disobedience, and entreating forgiveness; and I soon saw that she need fear no great severity from Mr. Greensleeves, who showed himself extraordinarily fond, loud, greedy of caresses and prodigal of tears. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... my dear,' said Mrs Prothero submissively; for Owen, though a prodigal, was the eldest son, and generally had his ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... other, and from a distance appear to be one. The absolute solitude in which they lived intensified their reciprocal thoughts; yet some might have said that it had the disadvantage of consuming their mutual affections at a fearfully prodigal rate. Yeobright did not fear for his own part; but recollection of Eustacia's old speech about the evanescence of love, now apparently forgotten by her, sometimes caused him to ask himself a question; and he ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... sufficient food, skins and other goods to entertain the countryside and are able to properly honor the deceased. At the same time the namesakes of the dead are richly clothed from head to foot and showered with presents. As this prodigal generosity entails the savings of years on the part of the feast givers (naskut), the feast occurs only at irregular intervals of several years. It has been termed the Ten Year Feast by the traders (Kagruska), but so far ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes
... on them and care for them, as for my English children, and that I expect them to gather in many a sorrowing mother's prodigal, who has wandered far from ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... although in a moment of weakness he had sent his son abroad to be educated. Now he was dead, but remembered well, and as a presidential campaign costs much money—legitimate money—and his son was a prodigal giver, the leaders could not refuse to the younger Heathcote the place of national committeeman from ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... simple gladness met him on the road His gray-haired father—elder brother now. Few words were spoken, little welcome said, But, as they walked, the more was understood. If with a less delight he brought him home Than he who met the prodigal returned, It was with more reliance, with more peace; For with the leaning pride that old men feel In young strong arms that draw their might from them, He led him to the house. His sister there, Whose kisses were not many, but whose eyes Were full of watchfulness and hovering ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... night she took her seat by her husband's side, and made room for Thiostolf next herself on the inside. Thiostolf and Thorwald had little to do with each other, and few words were thrown away between them that winter, and so time went on. Hallgerda was prodigal and grasping, and there was nothing that any of their neighbours had that she must not have too, and all that she had, no matter whether it were her own or belonged to others, she waited. But when the spring came there was a scarcity in the house, ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... to be pressed into the service of the theatre and whipped to the conning of their difficult parts. To the caricature of Daniel and Munday in "Cynthia's Revels" must be added Anaides (impudence), here assuredly Marston, and Asotus (the prodigal), interpreted as Lodge or, more perilously, Raleigh. Crites, like Asper-Macilente in "Every Man Out of His Humour," is Jonson's self-complaisant portrait of himself, the just, wholly admirable, and judicious scholar, holding his head high above the pack of the yelping ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... together with several others of her friends, but in the bustle and confusion of the depot not much of sentiment could be uttered, and, though she felt that she was going for a long stay, she was prodigal of ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... chair to the table, rang for candles, and with Allister by his side and me seated opposite to him, began to find a place from which to read to us. To my yet stronger conviction, he began and read through without a word of remark the parable of the Prodigal Son. When he came to the father's delight at having him back, the robe, and the shoes, and the ring, I could not repress my tears. "If I could only go back," I thought, "and set it all right! but then I've never gone away." It ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... repast. From time to time they glanced down the lonely canyon, losing itself in the afternoon shadow. Nevertheless Mrs. Ashwood's preoccupation with Nature did not preclude a human curiosity to hear something more of John Milton's quarrel with his father. There was certainly nothing of the prodigal son about him; there was no precocious evil knowledge in his frank eyes; no record of excesses in his healthy, fresh complexion; no unwholesome or disturbed tastes in what she had seen of his rural preferences and understanding of natural beauty. To have attempted any direct questioning that would ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... Thought-books for Ministers the most suggestive and philosophical we have seen for many a year. If we have any objection to make, it is on the score of too prodigal an expenditure of mental ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 236, May 6, 1854 • Various
... which he attributes to the civil service. You see the character given of that service; you there see their accuser, you there see their defender, who, after having defamed both services, military and civil, never punished the guilty in either, and now receives the prodigal praises of both. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... sudden, years elapsed before the advent of Caravaggio with power of colour and modelling, all that the science of painting could achieve when bereft of genius. And afterwards the decline continued until Bernini was reached—Bernini, the real creator of the Rome of the present popes, the prodigal child who at twenty could already show a galaxy of colossal marble wenches, the universal architect who with fearful activity finished the facade, built the colonnade, decorated the interior of St. Peter's, and raised fountains, churches, and palaces ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Under his roof now ought I to take my rest, but that back-looking ambition tells me I might yet be a Londoner! Well, if we ever do move, we have encumbrances the less to impede us; all our furniture has faded under the auctioneer's hammer, going for nothing, like the tarnished frippery of the prodigal, and we have only a spoon or two left to bless us. Clothed we came into Enfield, and naked we must go out of it. I would live in London shirtless, bookless. Henry Crabb is at Rome; advices to that effect have ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... forest areas are cut off, the [Page 10] sun and air at once start to life seeds which lie dormant in the shade and a new crop at once starts and the old ground is in a few years reforested in nature's prodigal way, a thousand seeds sprouting and growing where only one giant can ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell
... of Deputies, the members of which were elected by about one hundred thousand voters out of thirty millions of people. They were all men of property, and as aristocratic as the peers themselves. They began their sessions by granting prodigal compensations, indemnities, and endowments to the crown and to the princes. They appropriated thirty-three millions of francs annually for the maintenance of the king, besides voting thirty millions more for the payment of his debts; they passed a law restoring to the former ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... do nothing this day, and I counsel thee to act as I tell thee by computation of the constellations." "By Allah," said I, "never did I see a barber who excelled in judicial astrology save thyself: but I think and I know that thou art most prodigal of frivolous talk. I sent for thee only to shave my head, but thou comest and pesterest me with this sorry prattle." "What more wouldst thou have?" replied he. "Allah hath bounteously bestowed ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... and was angered beyond all forgiveness by this premature debut. When Robert went home, he found his trunks ready packed, and a letter of dismissal from his patron awaiting him. A note for L300, which accompanied the letter, was returned, and the prodigal drove off to his cousin Goldsmith, who, with characteristic good-nature, took him in, and promised him his interest ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... kept in continual alarm; and so great was the dread among them now of electing another such Pope, that they unanimously chose Giovanni de' Medici. Up to that time he had always shown himself liberal and easy, or, rather, prodigal in squandering the little that he owned; he had moreover managed so to dissemble as to acquire a reputation for most excellent habits of life.' Vettori adds that his power in Florence helped him, and that he owed ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... contrary side, after they have been together, she soon taketh her light from him, and so increasing in light to the full, she will be as red as the sun was before, and change herself into divers and sundry colours, of which springeth the prodigal monster, or, as you call it, a comet, which is a figure or token appointed of God as a forewarning of his displeasure: as at one time he sendeth hunger, plague, sword, or such like, being all tokens of his judgments, which ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... doom, Cheerless he breathed, and wander'd in the gloom, Then sunk unpitied to the dire abodes, A wretch accursed, and hated by the gods! I brave not heaven: but if the fruits of earth Sustain thy life, and human be thy birth, Bold as thou art, too prodigal of breath, Approach, and enter the dark gates ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... can be recognized in its outward works, it is ordered that Arnolfo, master architect of our commune, prepare models or designs for the restoration of Santa Maria Reparata, with the most exalted and most prodigal magnificence, in order that the industry and power of men may never create or undertake anything whatsoever more vast and more beautiful; in accordance with that which our wisest citizens have declared and counselled in public session and ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... Europe, trusting, he told me, that after five years' absence, the governor's bowels would yearn towards his youngest-born. In this he was entirely mistaken; he greatly underrated the toughness of paternal viscera. Far from killing the fatted calf on the prodigal's return, the incensed old Hollander refused him the smallest cutlet, and shutting the door in his face, consigned him, with more energy than affection, to the custody of the evil one. Van Haubitz found himself in an awkward fix. Credit was dead, none of his relatives ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... something, but ye maunna tell yir faither. I heard him pray for ye all alane by himsel'. He prayed to God to bring ye back—he ca'd ye Robin richt to God. An' I never heard yir faither greet afore or syne. The Buik, tae, it wad open o' itsel' at the prodigal, an' it was his daein', an' he didna think I kent; but I kent it fine, an' I thankit the Heavenly ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... looked still severer. Evidently Sarah Emily had returned in no prodigal-son's frame of mind. Ordinarily the mistress would have sharply rebuked the girl's manner of speech, but now she bent to her work with an air of having washed her hands finally of this ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... when I, with the idea of getting him to spend some of the money that was rightfully his, had been trying to persuade him to make a visit to his own island in one of our schooners—a special voyage that I had hoped to make a record-breaker in the matter of prodigal expense. ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... you betake yourself to haunts of fashion? Now I begin to understand why you have become so prodigal with the blacking; for some time I have had the intention of reproaching you with your shoes—our finances are not equal to ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... Matilda does not seem cordial and forgiving," Mary was continuing, when the prodigal brother himself dropped in. With her pretty, determined manner, Mary renewed her efforts at reconciliation in the estranged family. Mr. Pyecroft was penitent without being humble, and whenever a question ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... represented by "The Prodigal," where the outcast is seen crouching on the ground, his face fixed on vacuity, almost in the act of coming to himself. "For he had Great Possessions," is, however, the greatest and simplest of all. There the young man who went away sorrowful with bowed head, scarcely knowing what ...
— Watts (1817-1904) • William Loftus Hare
... said that this merely indicates that his equipment was the most extravagant instance of the manner in which opulent enthusiasts lavished their cash on the outfitting of their favorites in the arena. To me it seems too prodigal for the profusion of any or all of such spendthrifts: it appears to me more like the self-indulgence of the vainglorious master of the world. Palus often wore a helmet so bejeweled that its cost would have overtaxed the ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... before. He had stories to tell, festivities to describe, and cheerful incidents to recount. The boarders assisted vicariously at weddings and wedding receptions, afternoon teas and dances, given in halls. "Up-town" seemed to them largely given to entertainment and hilarity of an enviably prodigal sort. Mrs. Bowse's guests were not of the class which entertains or is entertained, and the details of banquets and ball-dresses and money-spending were not uncheering material for conversation. Such topics suggested ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... once the width of the gulf which separates the traditionalist from the philosopher. To Dr. Gore the creeds and the miracles are essential to Christianity. No Virgin Birth, no Sermon on the Mount! No Resurrection of the Body, no Parable of the Prodigal Son! No Descent into Hell, no revelation that the Kingdom of Heaven is within! Need we wonder that Dr. Gore cries out despairingly for more discipline? He summons reason, it is true, but to defend and explain creeds without which there is ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... The Prodigal Judge is a shabby outcast, a tavern hanger-on, a genial wayfarer who tarries longest where the inn is most hospitable, yet with that suavity, that distinctive politeness and that saving grace of ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... they began to understand that the town had looked upon Pop as a giant of industry, a prodigal of vicarious extravagance. They began to feel more keenly still how good a man he was. While they were flourishing like orchids in the sun and air, he had grubbed in the earth, sinking roots everywhere in search of moisture and of sustenance. Through him, things that were lowly ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... knocking. They did not even apologise for their Free-soil principles. These they left behind because they had put them off; but the sorrow that follows repentance was absent. In the convention of 1849, John Van Buren was received like a prodigal son and his followers invited to an equal division of the spoils. Had the Hunkers declared they didn't know them as Democrats in their unrepentant attitude, the Barnburner host must have melted like frost work; but, in their desire ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... multitude of noble families without titles, sixty of whom were inscribed in the Capitol by Benedict XIV.; a vast extent of signiorial domains; a thousand palaces; a hundred picture-galleries, large and small; a considerable revenue; a prodigal display of horses, carriages, servants, and armorial bearings; some almost royal entertainments in the course of every winter; the remains of feudal privileges; and the respect of the lower orders: such are the more remarkable features which distinguish ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... hopelessness, the sense of bafflement, of the futility of all human endeavor, which surged through Kate Kildare at that moment. The waste of it! The utter, insensate waste of so much passion and hope and tenderness, of such desperate agony, of such courage to bear...! There is no spendthrift so prodigal as Nature. For one perfected product that pleases her, hundreds of preciously guarded lives, such as this, thrown aside like so many pot-shards, useless, done for—and all to what purpose?... For the moment Kate visualised Nature as some incredible, ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... "that I'm the only female prodigal on the bills. Not that I've been feeding on husks. Not me. Milwaukee lager and raw beef sandwiches. I have a passion for them after the show. We do two a day and I want solid refreshment. I wonder if you ever saw me. Of ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... not what it is now,—one glance, one smile was sufficient to set the soul on fire and draw another soul towards it to consume together in the suddenly kindled flame! And women veiled their faces in youth, lest they should be deemed too prodigal of their charms; and in age they covered themselves still more closely, in order not to affront the Sun-God's fairness by their wrinkles." She smiled, a dazzling smile that drew Gervase yet a few steps closer unconsciously, as though he were being magnetized. ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... to criminals. So, in Political Economy, where the effects of a cause often consist of two sets of phenomena, the one obvious, the other deeper under the surface, and exactly contrary, the latter is often neglected. This was why the rapidly spent capital of the prodigal was supposed formerly to employ more labour than the invested savings of the parsimonious, and the purchase of native goods to encourage native industry more ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... have to their ancient government, and even to those names which have had the sanction of antiquity. Antiquity always begets the opinion of right; and whatever disadvantageous sentiments we may entertain of mankind, they are always found to be prodigal both of blood and treasure in the maintenance of public justice. There is, indeed, no particular in which, at first sight, there may appear a greater contradiction in the frame of the human mind than the present. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... saw more vividly than the besieged could do, the uncertainty of his own position, now poured daily into the city, the enemy becoming more prodigal of his vows, as he felt that the ocean might yet save the victims from his grasp. The inhabitants, in their ignorance, had gradually abandoned their hopes of relief, but they spurned the summons to surrender. Leyden was sublime in its despair. A few murmurs ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... continuously of a morning. Always ready to give her time, her skill and her abounding sympathy to those who made piteous demands upon her, she permitted these incessant telephone interruptions, although I charged her with being foolishly prodigal in this regard. If she felt resentful of the narrow walls in which I had confined her, she ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... the report should lie upon the table. (A laugh, and loud cries of "Hear, hear.") He had, he said, done all he could in the Committee, to prevail upon the members that the purchase of the autograph was a most wasteful and prodigal expenditure. ("Hear, hear," and "No, no.") The precedent was a most mischievous one. If the Court sanctioned such a proceeding as that which the report had described, by and by the autographs of ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... father has killed the fatted calf for his returned prodigal, and I must dine with ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... suffering both in mind and body, she arranged herself to receive her guests. From among all her dresses, she chose the same dark robe she had worn on the night when Pascal Ferailleur was ruined at her house; and as she was even paler than usual, she tried to conceal the fact by a prodigal use of rouge. At ten o'clock, when the first arrivals entered the brilliantly lighted rooms, they found her seated as usual on the sofa, near the fire, with the same eternal, unchangeable smile upon her lips. There were at least forty persons in the ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... against the magic of the ring; the only value he knows is love. Alberich, his opponent, says, in speaking of him: "My curse has no sting for the mettlesome hero, for he knows not the worth of the ring; he squanders his prodigal strength, laughing and glowing with love his body is burning away." Half way between Alberich, the inwardly worthless wielder of power, and Siegfried, the truly free man, the embodiment of all virtue, who is murdered by the powers ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... greediest of conquerors, ancient or modern, would have beheld with amazement the gigantic preparations at command of the Federal Government. Energy and enterprise displayed their implements of death on every hand. One was startled at the prodigal outlay of means, and the reckless summoning of men. I looked at the starred and striped ensign that flaunted above the Fort, and thought of Madame Roland's appeal to the statue ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... gentlemen, the painting now before you illustrates the beautiful and touching parable of the Prodigal Son. Observe the happy expression just breaking over the features of the poor, suffering youth —so worn and weary with his long march; note also the ecstasy beaming from the uplifted countenance of the aged father, and the joy that sparkles in the eyes of the excited ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to a good box, at her own command, and in a carriage to take her there. Valerie inherited these courtesan tastes from her mother, on whom General Montcornet had lavished luxury when he was in Paris, and who for twenty years had seen all the world at her feet; who had been wasteful and prodigal, squandering her all in the luxurious living of which the programme has been lost since ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... peradventure. The very best good fortune attended him. He had hunted but a few minutes, when he trod among the ashes where the camp fire had been burning. This proved that a meal had been partaken of, and in this country, so prodigal in the different species of game, the Indians were not economical in the use of food. Groping around in the dark, his hands soon came upon a goodly-sized bone, plentifully covered with meat, which had ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... on foot from Reese River, a very allegory of Poverty. The son of wealthy parents, here he was, in a strange land, hungry, bootless, mantled in an ancient horse-blanket, roofed with a brimless hat, and so generally and so extravagantly dilapidated that he could have "taken the shine out of the Prodigal Son himself," ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... were gone; that it would be equally wrong to offer to go with them, and quite inappropriate to witness the home-coming,—they took themselves off, but each resolved to flutter unseen in the neighbourhood until he, or she, could make quite sure that the prodigal had returned. ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... Henry Ward Beecher at all knew of his love of books. He was, however, most prodigal in lending his books and he always forgot the borrowers. Then when he wanted a certain volume from his library he could not find it. He would, of course, have forgotten the borrower, but he had a unique ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... cheerfully over the fields of life with the broad swing of an unthrifty mind, expecting that much of his seed will fall among the thorns and rocks, but with faith that the harvest—even if he is not himself permitted to reap it—is yet made safe through his fidelity to that prodigal Providence which miraculously multiplies the little he can do, and makes it ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... hand—however precious a thing, what use is it if you hoard it?—and see what she could make of it, what usury its free loan to fate and fortune would earn. She might lose it; youth made light of the risk. She might crawl back in sad plight; the Prodigal Son did not think of that when he set out. She found herself wishing she had nothing, that she might be free to start ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... her candid indifference, affected them. She had never, really, even when she desired, succeeded in giving them anything, anything conscious or for which they moved. Judith Feldt, on the contrary, had been prodigal. And, while certainly numbers of men had been attracted to her, they all tired of her with marked rapidity. Men met Judith, Linda recalled, with eagerness, they came immediately and often to see her ... for, perhaps, a month. Then, temporarily deserted, she was submerged ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... triumphal acclamation of 3,572,329 suffrages against 2569 "Noes." The country was eager to salute its new master, with a curiosity mixed with confidence in the unexpected resources of his genius. The courtiers alone around him who had found no place in the prodigal distribution of honors, muttered their murmurs. They served him nevertheless; and Talleyrand remained minister of foreign affairs, even when all the important posts of the empire had escaped ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... unless it can do so. I am therefore of opinion that such eggs as are deposited in immature pods are lost. However, the race will hardly suffer by such a loss, so fertile is the little beetle. We shall see directly how prodigal the female is of her eggs, the majority of which are destined ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... father's shop! Then he had in Allen a real friend; but now he had in Lewis only a profligate and unfeeling associate. Lewis cared for no one but himself; and he was as avaricious as he was extravagant; "greedy of what belonged to others, prodigal of his own." ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... exclaimed the old lady, with a look of indignation—"no indeed! Have not you repented and come back, like a good prodigal son; and didn't the dear beautiful letter that you wrote from that awful island—what's its name—where you were ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... of fruitless chastity, Love-lacking vestals and self-loving nuns, 752 That on the earth would breed a scarcity And barren dearth of daughters and of sons, Be prodigal: the lamp that burns by night Dries up his oil to lend the ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... few moments they were silent, drinking in the beauty prodigal Nature lavished all about them. Furtively Lucile examined this cavalier of hers. Straight of feature, bronzed from living in the open, eyes so full of fun you had to laugh in sympathy—oh, he was handsome; there was no doubt of that. And his hair, black ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... always prodigal, my child, where there is plenty, and seldom think of a provision against the morrow. But, if there can be any excuse for destroying animals in this manner, it is in taking the bass. During the winter, you know, they are ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... his turn a contempt and an abomination to the reckless, pleasure-hunting Cavalier, so to-day is the 'psalm-singing, clock-peddling Yankee' a foul odor to the fastidious nostrils of the lordly Southerner, and the reckless prodigal, dissipated and soul-selling planter a thorn in the flesh of Puritan morality. The Yankee is to the Southerner a synonym for all that is low and base and cunning, and the Southerner is to the Yankee the embodiment of all worthlessness and crime. The same ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Salvator Rosa was generally accompanied home by the most distinguished persons, both for talent and rank; and while the frugal Poussin was lighting out some reverend prelate or antiquarian with one sorry taper, Salvator, the prodigal Salvator, was passing the evening in his elegant gallery, in the midst of princes, nobles, and men of wit and science, where he made new claims on their admiration, both as an artist and as an improvisatore; for till within a few years of his death he continued to recite his own poetry, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... Philosopher says (Ethic. iv, 1), "those who spend much on intemperance are not liberal but prodigal"; and likewise whoever spends what he has for the sake of other sins. Hence Ambrose says (De Offic. i): "If you assist to rob others of their possessions, your honesty is not to be commended, nor is your liberality genuine if you give ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... divide men into three classes, and not into two. The first class is of those who are neither converted nor regenerate; the second, who are converted, but not regenerate; the third, who are converted, and also regenerate. The first are like the prodigal in the parable,—living without God; the second, like the hired servants in the same story,—serving God for wages; the third are sons, serving from love, ever with their Father, and all that he has is theirs. The motive of the first class is selfish will, selfish pleasure; the motive of the ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... statement, unless, indeed, one were a bitter, eccentric character like Dr. Monygham—for instance—whose short, hopeless laugh expressed somehow an immense mistrust of mankind. Not that Dr. Monygham was a prodigal either of laughter or of words. He was bitterly taciturn when at his best. At his worst people feared the open scornfulness of his tongue. Only Mrs. Gould could keep his unbelief in men's motives within due bounds; but even to her (on an occasion not connected with Nostromo, and in a ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... they returned, and entered Henchard's premises by the back way or traffic entrance. Here the matter was settled over the breakfast, at which Henchard heaped the young Scotchman's plate to a prodigal fulness. He would not rest satisfied till Farfrae had written for his luggage from Bristol, and dispatched the letter to the post-office. When it was done this man of strong impulses declared that his new friend should take up his abode in his house—at least till ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... carefully trimmed hair, were sufficient indications of a kind of luxury. The animalism of the man, however, had developed so early in life that it had obliterated all strong markings of character. The flaccid, rather fleshy features were those of the sensual, prodigal young American, who haunts hotels. Clean shaven and well dressed, the fellow would be indistinguishable from the thousands of overfed and overdrunk young business men, to be seen every day in the vulgar luxury of Pullman cars, hotel ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... earlier republican times it was the site of the famous Villa of Lucullus, who had accumulated an enormous fortune when general of the Roman army in Asia, and spent it on his retirement from active life in the most sumptuous entertainments and the most prodigal luxuries. Here he gave his celebrated feast to Cicero and Pompey. From Lucullus, the magnificent grounds passed into the possession of Valerius Asiaticus; and while his property they became the scene of a tragedy which reminds one of the story of Ahab and ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... she that holy makes the day, And 'stills new life in fields of fueillemort, Hath back restor'd their verdure with one ray, And with her eye bid all to play and sport, Ant, to work still! age will thee truant call; And to save now, th'art worse than prodigal. ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... of the body for half a minute. And, good Lord! how quickly the tight-strong fellow crumbles, when once the fragmentary disintegration has begun! Weyburn cried out on a heart that bounded off at prodigal gallops, and had to be nipped with reminders of the place of good leader he was for taking among the young. Hang superexcellence! but we know those moanings over the troubles of a married woman; we know their sources, know their goal, or else we are the fiction-puppet or the Bedlamite; and she is ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... would make for him, neither upon any quibble theological or sacerdotal; hope on in him who created him, and who loves him more than thou. God will excuse him better than thou, and his uncovenanted mercy is larger than that of his ministers. Shall not the Father do his best to find his prodigal? the good shepherd to find his lost sheep? The angels in his presence know the Father, and watch for the prodigal. Thou ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... art, acknowledged his own incapacity to supply their place with the productions of later genius; and when the world, and particularly Rome, was plundered to adorn Constantinople, the Emperor, under whom the work was carried on, might be compared to a prodigal youth, who strips an aged parent of her youthful ornaments, in order to decorate a flaunting paramour, on whose brow all must consider them ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... to the house at Walcote, the windows from within were lighted up with friendly welcome; the supper-table was spread in the oak-parlor; it seemed as if forgiveness and love were awaiting the returning prodigal. Two or three familiar faces of domestics were on the look-out at the porch—the old housekeeper was there, and young Lockwood from Castlewood in my lord's livery of tawny and blue. His dear mistress pressed his arm as they passed into the hall. Her eyes beamed out on him with ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... be objected that the German painters at the beginning of the sixteenth century succeed in representing with perfect mastery these scenes of country life, as, for instance, Albrecht Durer, in his engraving of the prodigal son. But it is one thing if a painter, brought up in a school of realism, introduces such scenes, and quite another thing if a poet, accustomed to an ideal or mythological framework, is driven by inward ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... David with a sigh, thinking of his old comrade and the son he had left behind him, 'but there's the prodigal anes!' ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... and conditionally for you," said Hartley cheerfully. "Now I will ring up Wilder and tell him that the prodigal has reappeared, and that you ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... with the man that went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves; and thus he dealt with the prodigal you read of also ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... you slip eagerly from your homes. As for me, poor alien, had I been a member of the club whose demolition has been my theme, I should have grieved for it not one whit the more bitterly. Indeed, my tears would have been a trifle less salt. It was my detachment that enabled me to be so prodigal ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... ingenuous, communicative, artless, candid; gratuitous, spontaneous, voluntary, optional; liberal, open-handed, generous, bountiful, lavish, flush, munificent, hospitable; unrestrained, immoderate, prodigal, dissolute, lax; ready, eager, prompt, willing. Antonyms: subject, reserved, formal, coercive, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... of Mr. Cinch nature had been generous, not to say prodigal, of materials, but certainly a wiser discretion might have been exercised in using them. The centre of Mr. Cinch's gravity was much too far above his waist. All the rest of him appeared to have been fitted out at the expense of his legs, which, unable to endure so oppressive a burden, ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... change ended the costly farce by which such persons were sent to England for trial. Seven years of development followed, to be broken by the long struggle between England and France, which the splendid genius of Pitt inspired and directed. He not only "conquered America in Europe" by the prodigal carelessness with which he poured subsidies into the treasury of Prussia, but he conceived and delivered in America itself a death-blow to French ambition. In 1758 Amherst and Wolfe, with a fleet of ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... sign of love revived his drooping courage. Perhaps there is no other act so full of reassuring power as the pressure of a human hand. Neither a glance from the eye nor a word from the lips can equal it. The fainting pilgrim, the departing friend, the discouraged toiler, the returning prodigal welcome it beyond all other symbols of helpfulness or love, and the dying saint who leans the hardest on the "rod and the staff of God" as he goes down into the dark valley finds a comfort scarcely less sweet in the warm clasp of a human hand. Just as the courage of this ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... "Ah, here comes the prodigal son!" joyously exclaimed Eva, who ran to meet her favourite brother, oblivious of the smiles produced ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... familiarizing himself with streets, making the acquaintance of old inhabitants, drawing into his own hands all loose ends of information which could help to knit the meshes of his net the closer. Such loose ends were not numerous; the prodigal had been too poor, too insignificant, to leave strong memories behind him. Yet Rex knew well by what strange accidents the deceit of an assumed identity is often penetrated. Some old comrade or companion ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... on his position. He glanced back through the departed years, and did not find one day among those many days which had left him one of those gracious memories which delight and console. Millions had slipped through his prodigal hands, and he could not recall a single useful expenditure, a really generous one, amounting to twenty francs. He, who had had so many friends, searched his memory in vain for the name of a single friend whom he regretted to part from. The past seemed to him like a faithful ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... But while he was away, Carolina at Bath received a letter from Dietrich himself, to tell her ruefully he was "laid up very ill" at a waterside tavern in Wapping—not the nicest or most savoury East End sailor-suburb of London. Alexander immediately took the coach to town, put the prodigal into a decent lodging, nursed him carefully for a fortnight, and then took him down with him in triumph to the family home at Bath. There brother William found him safe and sound on his return, under the sisterly care of good Carolina. A pretty dance he had led the two earnest and industrious astronomers; ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... have been prodigal of our resources and, especially, of our time. We have failed to regard our leisure hours as a liability but, like the lotus eaters, have dallied in the realm of pleasure. Like children at play, we have gone on our ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... that so to forgive would be no weak indulgence, but the part of a good father; a good, and noble, and human thing to do? Ay, a human thing, and therefore a divine thing, part of God's likeness in man. For is it not the likeness of God Himself? Has not God Himself, in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, declared that He does so forgive His penitent children, at once and utterly, and that 'There is more joy among the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth, than over ninety and nine just persons who need ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... depraved and contemptible. The outcasts of society were described, not as fit to herd with slaves, but as deserving a place among Samaritans and publicans. They were "hired servants," whom Zebedee employed. In the parable of the prodigal son we have a wealthy Jewish family. Here servants seem to have abounded. The prodigal, bitterly bewailing his wretchedness and folly, described their condition as greatly superior to his own. How happy the change which should place him by their side? His remorse, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... boy—dearer to me than you can tell—the truth is, I covet for you the unutterable blessing of a youth given to GOD. What that is, some know, and many a man converted late in life has imagined with heart-wrung envy: an Augustine, already numbered with the Saints, a Prodigal robed and decked with more than pardon, haunted yet by dark shadows of the past, the husks and the swine. My boy, with an unstained youth yet before you to mould as you will, get to yourself the elder son's portion—'Thou ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... variation that enabled a species to survive and perpetuate its kind. Those not possessing these fortunate variations were wiped out. The process of Nature, certainly, in the development of biological life thus appears to be no economical convergence of means upon an end. Nature has been recklessly prodigal. Millions more seeds of life are produced than ever come to fruition. And only animals perfectly adapted to their environment survive, while an incomparably ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... frown to 'Fordham's Mews;' (Unlucky T——ll, doom'd to daily cares By pugilistic pupils and by bears!) Fines, tutors, tasks, conventions, threat in vain, Before hounds, hunters, and Newmarket plain: Rough with his elders; with his equals rash; Civil to sharpers; prodigal of cash. Fool'd, pillaged, dunn'd, he wastes his terms away; And, unexpell'd perhaps, retires M.A.:— Master of Arts!—as Hells and Clubs[10] proclaim, Where scarce a black-leg bears a ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... never fails to elicit praise. What is true of garlic is also true of the many herbs that are used. It is easy to pass from a rare flavor that makes a most savory dish to a taste of medicine that spoils a dinner. With the well-known prodigal and wasteful habits of America the American who learns the use of herbs usually makes the initial mistake of putting in the flavoring herbs with too lavish a hand, and it is only after years of experience that a knowledge of proper ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
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