"Paltry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her a present in nearly two weeks, and women set great store by such attentions. He decided to invest his money in Maiden Lane and demand credit from his tailor. But a half-hour at a jewelry shop convinced him that nothing suitable to so splendid a creature as his wife could be purchased for a paltry five hundred dollars, and he was upon the point of returning to Crosset with a request to double the loan when his common sense asserted itself. Poverty was odious, but not shameful, he reflected; ostentation, on the other hand, was vulgar. Would it not be in bad taste to squander ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... diminutive stature, his enormous mouth, his pimples and his yellow hair were sufficiently ridiculous. "Nay, don't envy our friend," Rowland said to Singleton afterwards, on his expressing, with a little groan of depreciation of his own paltry performances, his sense of the brilliancy of Roderick's talent. "You sail nearer the shore, but you sail in smoother waters. Be contented with what you are and paint me ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... for paltry money," replied the old woman, scornfully. "I like to do all the good ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... And armed Rebellion pressing on The broken lines of Washington! No stronger voice than thine had then Called out the utmost might of men, To make the Union's charter free And strengthen law by liberty. How had that stern arbitrament To thy gray age youth's vigor lent, Shaming ambition's paltry prize Before thy disillusioned eyes; Breaking the spell about thee wound Like the green withes that Samson bound; Redeeming, in one effort grand, Thyself and thy imperiled land! Ah cruel fate, that closed to thee, O sleeper by the Northern sea, The gates of opportunity! God fills the gaps of ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... law of the land in which he happens to be sojourning. Is it to be supposed that any minister would give himself the trouble to mix himself up in such affairs? He might address a note to the authorities, when the facts would in all probability be denied, or some paltry excuse made: the minister declares himself satisfied, and the Perotes have the laugh against us and our boasted powerful and energetic government. Now, had it been a Frenchman, a Russian, or even a Prussian, who had been served in this scandalous manner, how different ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... was the price of the cow, offering at the same time all the beans in his hat for her. The silly boy could not conceal the pleasure he felt at what he supposed so great an offer: the bargain was struck instantly, and the cow exchanged for a few paltry beans. Jack made the best of his way home, calling aloud to his mother before he reached the door, thinking ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... expenditures in 1910. Of this amount $407,000,000 were appropriated for war expenditures and the glories of militarism. For this same year agriculture received for all its needs the comparatively paltry sum of $12,000,000. In spite of the fact that our nation is devoting two thirds of its enormous national expenditures to war, our militarists point to our vast national wealth and sneer at the niggardly mortals who object to spending ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... chain of my servitude. Having kept close in shore for the land-breeze, we passed the Mission of San Juan Capistrano the same night, and saw distinctly, by the bright moonlight, the cliff which I had gone down by a pair of halyards in search of a few paltry hides. ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... not a matter of paltry traffic, or trifling parsimony and retrenchments of capital. Marseilles looks on all questions of commerce as a dilation and expansion of French capital, and of the raw material exported and imported from Europe and Asia. Commerce at Marseilles is a lucrative ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... never took it amiss if a colonist of Natal or of Cape Colony was unwilling to fight with us against England, yet I admit that it vexed me greatly to think that some of these colonists, for the sake of a paltry five shillings a day, should be ready to shoot down their fellow-countrymen. Such men, alas! there have always been, since, in the first days of the human race, Cain killed his brother Abel. But Cain had not long ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... period, had access to men in the very highest positions—to ministers, ambassadors, to the sons of a king, and even to the late king himself, it is much to his credit that he has contented himself with a paltry riband and a modest place, as Conservateur de la Bibliotheque Mazarine. M. de Sacy belongs to a Jansenist family. Apropos of this, M. Texier tells a pleasant story concerning him. A Roman Catholic writer addressing him one day in the small gallery reserved for the journalist at the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... no man would grudge a paltry three years out of his whole life's happiness to avoid so dreadful a thing as ill blood between twin brothers. If she could wait for his sake, he could wait for hers. A woman must not cheapen herself; if she is worth winning, she ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... tell you that in order to deceive her, not you! But you know better, La Corriveau! It was not for the sake of paltry jewels I desired you to come to the city to see me at this hour ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... is a small and shallow stream. Although from the extent of the stockade Mogoung has evidently in former periods (during the Shan dynasty) been of extent and consequence, it is at present a mean and paltry town. It derives any little consequence it possesses from being the rendezvous of the Shan-Chinese, who flock here annually for ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... not seem possible, but, nevertheless, I shall prove, by quotations, that the whole theory of our author is based upon this paltry equivocation. ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... troubled by them now? And the absurdity of Professor Black's is surely obvious. A child would laugh at it. Yes, a child! I have never been a diary writer. I have never been able to understand the amusement of sitting down late at night and scrawling minutely in some hidden book every paltry incident of one's paltry days. People say it is so interesting to read the entries years afterwards. To read, as a man, the menu that I ate through as a boy, the love-story that I was actor in, the tragedy that I brought about, the debt that I have never paid—how could it ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... themselves as to what was best to be done in the event of the non-arrival of the rescue party within a reasonable limit; Seth fretting and worrying himself the while as much as any, although he tried to preserve a quiet demeanour in order to reassure the rest, and exclaiming against the "paltry wounds," as he called them—which gave him much pain in spite of Jasper continually soaking the bandages around them with cold water in pursuance of his directions—that prevented him from taking an active part in his protege's recovery, ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... largeness and munificence of mercy boundless as space, free and open as the expanse of the firmament. We hope, therefore, the gospel, the real gospel, is as unlike the views of some of its interpreters, as creation, in all its boundless extent and beauty, is unlike the paltry scheme of some wretched scholastic in the middle ages. The middle age of science and civilization is now terminated; but Christianity also had its middle age, and this, perhaps, is not yet fully terminated. There is still a remainder of the old spell, even the spell of human authority, and ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... might have mov'd a Scythian or wild Arab, or indeed any thing but him, to pay her her Portion. To which, however, he seemingly consented, and promis'd to take her to Town with him, and there give her all the Satisfaction she cou'd expect: And having dipp'd some paltry Acres of Land, deeper than ever Heaven dipp'd 'em in Rain, he was as good as his Word, and brought her to Town with him, where he told her he would place her with an ancient Lady, with whom he had contracted a Friendship at his first coming to London; adding, that she was a Lady of incomparable ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... friend say what he pleased; and Reineke himself felt it so. It sate heavy, for him, on his soul, and alone of all the actions of his life we are certain that he wished it undone—the death and eating of that poor foolish Lampe, the hare. It was a paltry revenge in Reineke. Lampe had told tales of him; he had complained that Reineke, under pretence of teaching him his Catechism, had seized him and tried to murder him; and though he provoked his fate by thrusting ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... know where wisdom prompts, and where conceit. Alike their draughts to every scribbler's mind (Blind to their faults as to their danger blind); - We write enraptured, and we write in haste, Dream idle dreams, and call them things of taste, Improvement trace in every paltry line, And see, transported, every dull design; Are seldom cautious, all advice detest, And ever think our own opinions best; Nor shows my Muse a muse-like spirit here, Who bids me pause, before I persevere. But she—who ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe
... down. At its soft, chill touch Gideon's brain cooled and cooled, till he seemed to see everything in a cold, hard, crystal clarity. Life and death—how little they mattered. Life was paltry, and death its end. Yet when the world, the Potterish world, dealt with death it became something other than a mere end; it became a sensation, a problem, an episode in a melodrama. The question, when a man died, was always how and why. So, when Hobart had died, they were all dragged into ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... poor words, our poor deeds, thank Him? How mean and paltry our deepest gratitude, our highest loyalty, when compared with Him to whom it is due—that adorable victim, that perfect sin- offering, who this day offered up Himself upon the altar of the cross, in the fire of His own boundless zeal for the kingdom of God, ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... understandings return to us, and learn to bless the Most High, and not our own wit, and cunning, and prudence; and praise and honour Him that liveth for ever, instead of praising and honouring our own pitiful paltry selves, who are in death in the midst of life, who come up and are cut down like the flower, and ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... hateful, and destroys itself, the moment its presence becomes too perceptibly felt. Bear in mind, however, that all things that happen in our moral being must be equally lightly held, if regarded from the point of view whence you deliver this judgment. Love is a paltry affair, the moment of possession once over that alone is real and ensures the perpetuity of the race; and yet we find that as man grows more civilised, the act of possession assumes ever less value in his eyes if there go not with it, if there do not precede, accompany, and follow it, the ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... don't believe—I can't believe—that simply for the sake of a paltry sum like that you would have risked so much. You could have swindled me in a thousand ways before now, and done it easily, too, with small chance of being found out. But this—this was bound to be discovered sooner or later. You ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the warriors, and carried off the women and children, with everything else he could lay hands on. Of course Amalatok made reprisals; attacked a small island belonging to Grabantak, and did as much general mischief as he could. The paltry islet about which the war began was not worthy either ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... result of his musings had been a desire to live away from the world with those he loved. The world, as other men viewed it, had no charms for him. Its pursuits and passions seemed to him on the whole paltry and faint. He could sympathise with great deeds, but not with bustling life. That which was common did not please him. He loved things that were rare and strange; and the spell that bound him so strongly ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... farming purposes and the land-owner doesn't give a darn then whether he rents to white or yellow—so long as he gets the highest bidder's money. The chink spends hardly anything on clothes, he lives in a hovel; eats rice, works seven days in the week, pays no taxes except a paltry Road Tax of something like four dollars a year—and generally manages to evade even that;—doesn't contribute to Church, Charity or Social welfare, and sends every gold coin he can exchange for dollar bills over ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... I marvel (if it be That aught may wond'rous seem to me) That Jove's high Gift, your noble Art, Bestow'd to raise Man's grov'ling heart, Refining with ethereal ray Each gross and selfish thought away, Should pander turn of paltry pelf, Imprisoning each within himself; Or like a gorgeous serpent, be Your splendid source of misery, And, crushing with his burnish'd folds, Still narrower make ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... which took the breath away. Several of the most conservative owners parted with their estates after naming a figure which they supposed beyond the danger point, and half a dozen second-rate situations, affording but a paltry glimpse of the ocean, were snapped up in eager competition by wealthy capitalists from Chicago, Pittsburg, and St. Louis who had set their hearts on securing ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... busy to stop, but in his blind terror the dwarf would single out some luckless wight—commonly some well-dressed person; Juniper instinctively sought the protection of the aristocracy—getting behind him, ducking between his legs, surrounding him, dancing through him—doing anything to save the paltry flitch of his own bacon. Presently the bear would lose all patience and nip the other fellow. Then, ashamed of losing his temper, he would sneak sullenly away, taking along the body. When he had gone, poor Juniper would fall upon his knees, tearing his beard, pounding his breast, ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... thoughts in a diary. You would say, I should have been superior to circumstances; so I should—so I should; but you see I was not. When fate wronged me, I had not the wisdom to remain cool: I turned desperate; then I degenerated. Now, when any vicious simpleton excites my disgust by his paltry ribaldry, I cannot flatter myself that I am better than he: I am forced to confess that he and I are on a level. I wish I had stood firm—God knows I do! Dread remorse when you are tempted to err, Miss Eyre; remorse is ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... is always a short-cut to his sense, for his estate was too spacious for him to need that trick of winding the path of his thought about, and planting it out with clumps of epithet, by which the landscape-gardeners of literature give to a paltry half-acre the air of a park. In poetry, to be next-best is, in one sense, to be nothing; and yet to be among the first in any kind of writing, as Dryden certainly was, is to be one of a very small company. He had, beyond most, the gift of the right word. And ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... worst; and resolve to lose your life sooner than your virtue. What though the doubts I filled you with, lessen the pleasure you would have had in your master's kindness; yet what signify the delights that arise from a few paltry fine clothes, in comparison ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... with the most harsh reproaches on his perfidy. "Go, monsieur," said he to him, "and let me never again see you before my eyes!" At the same time, and in accordance with formal orders received from Paris, Pius VII was surrounded with the most paltry vexations; henceforth he was deprived in his captivity of all his old servants. The papers and portfolios of the Pope were all seized. "Never mind my purse," said the holy father; "but what will they do with my breviary and the office ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... feeble as to need to have his triumph adorned. He himself had taken hold of practical things at an early age; he had made something out of nothing—a good deal out of nothing; and compared with this act of creation the fabrication of verses or of pictures was a paltry affair, indeed. ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... pledged the fealty of her lover's soul, and demanded hers then and forever? His conscience might have been sullied by crimes more heinous than those charged upon him by her brother and his friends; he might—he HAD—let her go easily, as one resigns his careless hold upon a paltry, unprized toy; but when her hand had rested thus in his, and his passionate regards penetrated her soul, he loved her, alone and entirely! She would fold this conviction to her torpid heart for a little while before she turned herself away finally ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... existence are merged in that of the species only. It is taken for granted that anything that is high, great, or noble by its very nature stands isolated in a world where no better expression can be found to signify what is base and paltry than the term which I have mentioned as ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... that comes from a quick intelligence—a keen appreciation of the intelligence of the great artists who had interpreted a story which thrilled the imagination of generation after generation, and he felt that Parliament was a paltry thing. Parliament—what was Parliament? The wrangle of political parties over a paltry issue. It had no real life in it; it had nothing of the fullness and breadth of the matters that interested ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... cabin to relate the particulars: the destruction of the president's house, the treasury, war, and navy offices, the capitol, the depository of the national library and the public records. There was a momentary pause after the speaker had ceased, when some paltry spirit lifted his head from his settee, and in a tone of complacent derision, 'wondered what Jimmy Madison would say now.' 'Sir,' said Mr. Irving, glad of an escape to his swelling indignation, ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... far as I can see, purity, religious sanctity, or religious sentiment itself. But here is where the change begins. In order to accommodate a religion to all natures, all sorts of petty, miserable, paltry things are introduced. The pomp of the ceremonies, instead of being a true pomp which lays hold on the soul, often degenerates into a commerce in relics, medals, of little saints and Virgins. To what, gentlemen, do the ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... Britain! France would now have an opportunity to develop her socialistic experiments, as she would be permitted to maintain only a very small army. The mistake of 1870 must not be repeated. This time there would be no paltry levy of five billion francs. A great German Empire would rise on the ruins of the British. Commercial gain was the theme. I did not gather from the conversation that anybody but Germany would be a party ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... Tryggveson," Queen Sigrid would often say, and had long been saying, to her Svein, "to marry thy sister without leave had or asked of thee; and now flaunting forth his war navies, as if he, king only of paltry Norway, were the big hero of the North! Why do you suffer it, you kings ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... seize thy mortal frame, Oblivion's pen shall blot thy worthless name; For thy rude hand ne'er plucked the beauteous rose That on Pie'ria's sky-clad summit blows: [Symond's "Greek Poets," First Series, p. 139.] Thy paltry soul with vilest souls shall go To Pluto's kingdom—scenes of endless woe; While I on golden wings ascend to fame, And leave behind a ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... for ever. Stirring ideas; store of knowledge patiently heaped up; visions of better sights than this world can show, falling freshly and sunnily over the pages of my first book; all these were past and gone—withered up by the hot breath of the senses—doomed by a paltry fate, whose germ was the accident of an ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... was it possible for him to persuade himself that so many magnificent palaces, so many splendid temples, so many rich mercantile establishments, had been forsaken by their owners, like the paltry hamlets through which he had recently passed? Daru's mission, however, was fruitless. Not a Muscovite was to be seen; not a particle of smoke arose from a single chimney; not the slightest noise issued from this ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... the two Sosias,(17) in a Whig newspaper. Sosias, can you read it? The pamphlet begins to make a noise: I was asked by several whether I had seen it, and they advised me to read it, for it was something very extraordinary. I shall be suspected; and it will have several paltry answers. It must take its fate, as Savage(18) said of his sermon that he preached at Farnham on Sir William Temple's death. Domville saw Savage in Italy, and says he is a coxcomb, and half mad: he goes in red, and with yellow waistcoats, and was at ceremony kneeling to ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... crime being committed. We have therefore advanced an important step in our enquiry when we have ascertained that the witch of the Old Testament was not capable of anything beyond the administration of baleful drugs or the practising of paltry imposture; in other words, that she did not hold the character ascribed to a modern sorceress. We have thus removed out of the argument the startling objection that, in denying the existence of witchcraft, we deny ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... mistake in one part." "What was it?" the other asked. "Waal, you say that So-and-so 'lipped the hole for a half.'" "Yes, that is right." "Oh, go away; you don't mean to tell me that a rich man like that would be playing for a paltry fifty cents. I've altered it to 'lipped the hole for a hundred dollars.'" And I remember that once when I was playing the best ball of two amateurs, one of the reporters had been instructed by his chief to keep the best ball score. I ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... dismembered, slew the edifice, in its form as well as in its symbolism, in its logic no less than in its beauty. But fashion restored, a thing which neither time nor revolution ever pretended to do. Fashion, on the plea of "good taste," impudently adapted to the wounds of Gothic architecture the paltry gewgaws of a day,—marble ribbons, metallic plumes, a veritable leprosy of egg-shaped moldings, of volutes, wreaths, draperies, spirals, fringes, stone flames, bronze clouds, lusty cupids, and bloated ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... the extortionate money-lender of Warwick. Riding on an easy rein through the town, Hind heard a tumult at a street corner, and inquiring the cause, was told that an innkeeper was arrested by a thievish usurer for a paltry twenty pounds. Dismounting, this providence in jack-boots discharged the debt, cancelled the bond, and took the innkeeper's goods for his own security. And thereupon overtaking the usurer, 'My friend!' he exclaimed, 'I lent you late a sum ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... fidelity, modesty, and unerring sureness in dealing with the things of sense, never conceive aught base or ignoble of themselves: but the multitude the contrary. Why, what am I?—A wretched human creature; with this miserable flesh of mine. Miserable indeed! but you have something better than that paltry flesh of yours. Why then cling to the one, and ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... drawn by oxen, a heap of paternosters of Sanct Claude, every one of them being of the bigness of a hat-block; and thus walking through the cloisters, galleries, or garden, he said more in turning them over than sixteen hermits would have done. Then did he study for some paltry half-hour with his eyes fixt upon his book; but as the comic saith, his mind was in the kitchen. Then he sat down at table; and because he was naturally phlegmatic, he began his meal with some dozens of hams, dried meats' tongues, mullet's roe, chitterlings, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... state and with the rest of the population. Nevertheless, they are glad to escape when the time of their service expires. The people all dread being made soldiers: so that Government is compelled to resort to the most paltry tricks to get recruits. Men are often unjustly charged with theft or debt, and put in prison, and then let out as a favour to be enlisted, or sometimes are clapped into the ranks at once. Youths have been seized as soldiers for kicking up the dust in ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... or less perfect state, and all correspond in design, proportion, and execution to the tower. The ruins of the old Hindoo temples about the place, and about every other place in India, are totally different in all three; here they are all exceedingly paltry and insignificant, compared with the church and its tower, and it is evident that it was the intention of the founder to make them appear so to future generations of the faithful, for he has taken care to make his own great work support rather than destroy them, that they might ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... of chance delays, I should make the trip in two months. Think of it, Alma! Four thousand in two months! Beats the paltry hundred a month I'm getting now. Why, we'll build further out where we'll have more space, gas in every room, and a view, and the rent of the cottage'll pay taxes, insurance, and water, and leave something over. And then there's always the chance of my striking it and coming out a millionaire. ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... paltry fellow in Middlemarch than Bowyer," said Ladislaw, indignantly, "but it seems as if the paltry fellows were always to turn ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... her, will discover his value, and send him to the devil. Now, if it had been Hareton!—Do you know that, twenty times a day, I covet Hareton, with all his degradation? I'd have loved the lad had he been some one else. But I think he's safe from her love. I'll pit him against that paltry creature, unless it bestir itself briskly. We calculate it will scarcely last till it is eighteen. Oh, confound the vapid thing! He's absorbed in drying his feet, ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... earliest of the paltry insinuations against Marie Antoinette emanated from her not counterfeiting deep affliction at the decease of the old King. A few days after that event, the Court received the regular visits of condolence and congratulation of the nobility, whose ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 4 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... "What do you know about it, Bessie? It is dreadfully hard on an ambitious fellow to be forced to turn his back on all his fine visions of usefulness and distinction for the paltry fear that death may ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... half-stunned him. Beside it he himself and his work seemed like dust in the balance. Where were all his plans and achievements now, his greatness, his position, his authority in the town? Compared with amounts like this, what were the paltry sums he had ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... the above he was surprised, and said to himself, "These articles arc so paltry and of such trifling value as not to be worth an arbitration; for surely this shabby cap, the drum, and the wooden ball, cannot be worth altogether more than half a deenar; but I will inquire farther about them." ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... desperately pressed by his duns, had received a small remittance from his father, a struggling Clergyman. The sum amounted to L50, just enough to pay the young fellow's bills, and leave him a paltry sovereign. Do you think he was such a fool as to have read my Circular in vain? He very wisely brought the money to me. I bought Boomerangs at 11 3/4. In 57 1/2 hours that young man was a millionnaire. He has magnificent chambers on the Embankment; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... Huguenot refugee, arrived with a demand for surrender. The heart of the valiant Champlain was wrung. He had inspected his empty magazine and the rickety fort which the improvidence of the Company had allowed to fall into ruin. But even the weakness of his starved and paltry garrison did not affect his fortitude. Kirke's envoy was courteously dismissed, with the bold assurance that Quebec would defend itself to the last man. Champlain still clung to the hope that supplies would arrive from France; and even as he uttered his bold defiance, ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... their horses to the rear, in the care of varlets who subsequently saved themselves by riding them off. The solid ranks are formed bristling with spears. There is a pause as the two parties survey each other. The nobles pass the word along that it looks like a paltry business:— ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... great Naya should be held in awe by all her subjects, for in her anger she seemed capable of the most fiendish cruelty. As in Kumassi, so also in Mo, death seemed to come quickly, and for any paltry offence. Gankoma, executioner to the Great White Queen, was, I afterwards learnt, continually busy obeying the royal commands, and the rapidly increasing number of victims whose heads fell beneath his terrible knife was causing ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... is an English nobleman whose estates are reputed to be worth a larger sum. "She is very great," says a French writer, "that odious England." Odious she may be, but she is great,—too great to be bribed to baseness by a paltry fee. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... friends, for braving the king's displeasure. "By the mass, Master More," he said, "it is perilous striving with princes; therefore, I wish you somewhat to incline to the king's pleasure, for 'indignatio Principis mors est.'" "And is that all, my lord?" replied this man, so much above all paltry considerations; "then in good faith the difference between your grace and me is but this—that I may die to-day, and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... sky at the horizon, although it was of a clear pale primrose hue, had that peculiar indescribable "hardness" of tint that, to the experienced eye, is the sure forerunner of a good wholesome breeze. That breeze, however, was yet to come; the wind at the moment being very paltry—little more than sufficient, indeed, to keep the heavier canvas "asleep," and to send the barque along at a speed of about five knots. The water was perfectly smooth, save of course for the ripple caused by the light breeze; but, so far as swell was concerned, there was absolutely none, ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... lake. At another time Saunders believed the spirit to belong to a man whom Eustace had once employed as a laboratory assistant, "a black-haired spiteful little brute," he said, "who died cursing his doctor because the fellow couldn't help him to live to settle some paltry score with Borlsover." ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... got out the oars, pulling gently to the lee side of these rocks, and with some difficulty landed and made fast my boat between two lofty pillars of granite, which rose sheer from the sea. I was dreadfully cold and could find no shelter from the rain, which had completely saturated my paltry clothing. I therefore had a dip in the sea, which appeared to me warmer than the cold rain and night air, and less likely to have bad after effects upon my constitution. Oh, poor Robinson Crusoe! here was a pretty kettle of fish at the very first trip. How gladly would ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... very dull and depressing that people living there are apt to be driven, by sheer boredom, into spending their lives in a round of small excitements and incessant, wearisome gossip, and into taking far more interest in the paltry squabbles of their neighbours over some storm in a teacup than in the more important topics which invigorate the minds of men and women in healthier and broader societies. Long before Rodenbach's romance was written this peculiarity of Bruges was ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... few minutes there was little doubt about its being a genuine bonfire and no paltry makeshift. Selina, a Maenad now, hatless and tossing disordered locks, all the dross of the young lady purged out of her, stalked around the pyre of her own purloining, or prodded it with a pea-stick. And as she prodded she ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... the peers of the realm,—no time for pleasure or relaxation,—being devoted entirely to public interests of the greatest magnitude; for on his shoulders rested the government of the kingdom. What was the paltry dispute of a few hundred pounds in a distant colony to the Prime Minister of England! All that Franklin could secure was an interview with the great man's secretaries, and they did ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... discussions in which little minds exhaust themselves. In order properly to understand the precise character of the piety of Jesus, we must forget all that is placed between the gospel and ourselves. Deism and Pantheism have become the two poles of theology. The paltry discussions of scholasticism, the dryness of spirit of Descartes, the deep-rooted irreligion of the eighteenth century, by lessening God, and by limiting Him, in a manner, by the exclusion of everything which is not His very self, ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... velvet collar, new from the first, and, we really believe, a permanent velvet collar, adhered to in storm and in sunshine, has a very money-making impression on the world. It shows a spirit superior to feelings of paltry economy, and we think a person would be much more excusable for being victimized by a man with a good velvet collar to his coat, than by one exhibiting that spurious sign of ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... cut down and the railroad bridges burned. A mere handful of regulars, the few volunteers that had got through before the outbreak in Baltimore, and a small number of Union residents and Government department clerks—these, under General Winfield Scott, constituted the paltry force that, for ten days after the Call for troops, held the ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... enjoyable four weeks' visit to Goeteborg), I had scarcely been a month a freshman, attending philosophical lectures and taking part in student life than the dreaded separation between us two so differently constituted friends came to pass. The provocation was trifling, in fact paltry. One day I was standing in the lecture-room with a few fellow- students before a lecture began, when a freshman hurried up to us and asked: "Is it true, what Sebastian says, that he is the person you think most of in the world?" My reply was: "Did he ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... of pictures, which I had the pleasure of starting three years ago with some of your own, only contains, as far as Old Masters go, one Velasquez, one Rembrandt, and three paltry Rubens. You have a great many more. Since it is a shame such masterpieces should be in your hands, I propose to appropriate them; and I shall set about a respectful acquisition of them in your Paris house ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... disciple of Plato: "therefore it is unquiet till it finds repose in God." From this unrest proceed all our miseries. Men do not always succeed in contenting themselves with a petty prosaic happiness, a dull and paltry well-being, and in stifling the while the grand instincts of our nature. If then the heart lives, and fails of its due object; if it does not meet with the supreme term of its repose, its indefinite aspirations attach themselves ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... was generally followed by a crowd of boys who were trying to sell all sorts of little trinkets. One of them especially, was very persistent in trying to dispose of an ancient coin of the Ceasars, which he guaranteed to be very valuable and for which he would take the paltry sum of ten lire. Boyton finally told him that he knew all about the coin, and would give two lire to find the man who made it. The young villain mysteriously whispered the information, which later on was found to be correct. Some of the boys would get him ten fine oranges for one cent ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... "If you had seen her as I did, gliding among the rubbish of the ruined hut, looking about her on all sides, muttering I know not what! Oh, but she has frightened me very much! If she had seen me, I was a lost man. She would have changed me into a lizard, a toad, or a bat. She took a paltry herb—the paltriest I ever saw—of a pale sickly yellow, with red and black marks, like the flames, as they say, of hell. The horror of the thing is, that the whole stalk was hairy like a man, with long, black, sticky hairs. She ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... boys of the best families, whom he boarded on his own terms and undertook to instruct in the French and Latin languages, so as to qualify them for the colleges of Westminster and Eton. While this plan was in its infancy, he was so fortunate as to meet with Jennings, who, for the paltry consideration of thirty pounds a year, which his necessities compelled him to accept, took the whole trouble of educating the children upon himself, contrived an excellent system for that purpose, and, by his assiduity and knowledge, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... allegorical interpretation of the Book of Canticles was in truth the source of, or at least the model for, a vast amount of unwholesome and repulsive pietism. Not a word need be said for such a paltry narrative of endearments and sickly compliments as the "Revelations of the Nun Gertrude," in the thirteenth century. Nor are we concerned to deny that the artificially induced ecstasy, which is desired on account of the intense pleasure ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... of money to be sent to him, instead of the gold which he had promised. Ferdusi was in the public bath when the money was given to him, and his rage and amazement exceeded all bounds when he found himself thus insulted. He distributed the paltry sum among the attendants of the bath and the slaves ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... "da Groto himself did not act that play so well, when I saw him years since in the Farnese theatre at Parma. But you have taken liberties with the lines and, per Bacco! have improved them. Whoever you may be you are too good an actor for such paltry assistance." ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... the language of nature, I translated from her hieroglyphic pages in characters of flame. With rash hands I stripped false seemings from material beauty, and limned the naked divinity of Idea. Shorn by degrees in my strife of youth and strength and passion, I wound them in my work—toiling like paltry larvae. And it was done—retouched and lingered over long, apotheosized by mighty effort. So I offered ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... very unfortunate in his speculations, obliged to sell our plantation and negroes, and now, he says, 'a few paltry thousands only remain;' but, oh! that is not the worst; I wish it were, he has sold out everything, broken every tie, and will be here this evening on his way to Texas. He writes that I must be ready ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... of Swinburne's skits. Modern respectability is so utterly without God, faith, heart; it shows so singular an ingenuity in and injuring everything that is noble and good, and so systematic a preference for what is mean and paltry, that I am not surprised at a young fellow dashing his heels into the face of it .... When there is any kind of true genius, we have no right to drive it mad. We must deal with it ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... with Babo for a thousand doubloons," murmured the black, overhearing the offer, and taking it in earnest, and, with the strange vanity of a faithful slave, appreciated by his master, scorning to hear so paltry a valuation put upon him by a stranger. But Don Benito, apparently hardly yet completely restored, and again interrupted by his cough, made but ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... to record, shall we, who so oft have witnessed—nay, shared—the hardy exploits of our fellow-cits, shall we sit still, and never cease the eternal twirl of our dexter around our sinister thumb, while other scribes hand down to future ages the paltry feats of beardless Meltonians, and try to shame old Father Thames himself with muddy Whissendine's foul stream? Away! thou vampire, Indolence, that suckest the marrow of imagination, and fattenest on the cream of idea ere yet it float on the milk of reflection. Hence! slug-begotten ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... dared to say that thing in my presence,' said the paltry blusterer, with valor on his tongue and pallor on his ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... in some surprise, for it consisted of six white whales' teeth, and two of the same dyed bright red, which seemed to me very paltry things. However, I did not dare to hesitate or ask any questions; so, gathering them up, I left the cabin and was soon on my way to the chief's house, accompanied by Bill. On expressing my surprise at the ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... depth to which he descended for the purpose of making money. No article of trade, however petty, that he thought himself able to make a few dollars by, was passed aside unnoticed, while he would sell from the paltry amount of a pound of flour to the largest quantity of merchandize required. Like all persons who are suddenly elevated, from comparative dependence, to wealth, he had become purse proud and ostentatious, as he was humble and cringing before the ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... But I think it's about time he had some news of her. He ought to know she wasn't actuated by any such paltry, childish motive." ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... visit to Fort Smith would convince anyone of the absolute failure of this method. In the miserable prison pen, one hundred and forty-four were crowded like cattle. Among this multitude of criminals were young boys, just entering upon a life of crime, imprisoned for some paltry offence, and herded with them were grey-headed murderers. All these prisoners were from the Indian Territory, or the "Nation" as they call it. One man had just been convicted of murder. Two beautiful daughters of an ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 1, January 1888 • Various
... the dregs of the cup of woe I am draining. Edith, do not refuse the only aid I can offer you in your loneliness; and accept the earnest assurance that I shall be grateful for the privilege of promoting your comfort. Affection and trust I have not, and a few paltry thousands are all I am now able to bestow. By the love you once professed, and in the name of that compassion you should feel for me, I beg of you, despise not the gift; and let the consciousness that I have saved ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... Then let come what might on this plane of foolish contention, where we strive to cover the Immutable with the petty mask of our mutabilities. We sweat and toil for ends which we know not, and our paltry and blind decisions, our triumphs and failures, determine nothing but the degree of our own ignorance and impotence. The Lord's aims and issues are not ours, and ours do but measure our spiritual stature, and direct our immortal destiny, ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... darted through her brain. She would ask Miss Mitchell, the drawing-room boarder, to lend her the three-and-sixpence which the little shoes would cost. It was the first time she had ever borrowed, and her pride rose in revolt at even naming the paltry sum—but, for the sake of her boy's ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... requiring that his Prussian Majesty shall "help in executing Imperial Orders" in the neighboring Anarchic Country. Which rather huffed little George,—hitherto, since, his Father's death, the principal, or as good as sole Commissioner,—if so big a Britannic Majesty COULD be huffed by paltry slights of that kind! Friedrich Wilhelm, who has much meditated Mecklenburg, strains his intellect, sometimes to an intense degree, to find out ways of settling it: George, who has never cared to meditate it, nor been able if he had, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... And so you mean to let your gifts go to waste? To bury your talent? Do you think your paltry achievements at Leipsic amount to the ne plus ultra of genius? Let us but once get to the great world—Paris and London! where you get your ears boxed if you salute a man as honest. It is a real jubilee to practise one's handicraft there on a grand scale. How ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... I did, my lord. Sell the crown diamonds. Trust me, don't let us try to do things cheaply. Great undertakings come poorly off with paltry means." ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... appeared to me! The wife gossiped as usual, with a tap now and then to the child, a bone to the dogs, and a smile to the philosopher. Not once did Heurtebise turn towards us, and yet he was not asleep. I hardly know whether he thought. Dear, valiant fellow! In those paltry and ceaseless struggles, the mainspring of his strong nature had broken, and he was already beginning to die. The silent death agony, which however was rather an abandonment of life, lasted several months; and then Madame Heurtebise found herself ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... 'Pay me that thou owest.' He had just come through an agony of experience that might have made him tender. He had just received a blessing that might have made his heart glow. But even the repetition of his own petition does not touch him, and when the poor fellow-servant, with his paltry debt, says, 'Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all,' it avails nothing. He durst not sell his fellow-servant. God's rights over a man are more than any man's over another. But he does what he ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... dollars to his quota. For two months, he had carried the double load, and beaten his schedule; in early May, he was falling behind at the rate of fifty dollars a week. With twelve weeks ahead, he faced a deficit of a paltry six hundred dollars—and the Mix amendment was peeping over ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... I have already much diminished the number of employments involving degradation; and raised the character of many of those that are left. There remain to be considered the necessarily painful or mechanical works of mining, forging, and the like: the unclean, noisome, or paltry manufactures—the various kinds of transport—(by merchant shipping, etc.) and the conditions ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... afresh upon its contents. He had left St. Ignace on Monday morning, and it was now Thursday; Henry Clairville was dead and buried; the funeral obsequies being of a complex nature, shabby and ornate, dignified and paltry, leisurely and hurried, while the ceremony was at least well attended, since, as Dr. Renaud had said, a Seigneur did not die every day. Profuse in the matter of lappets, crucifixes, and in the number of voluble country-folk and stout serious-lipped priests, Father Rielle, who had ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... know that men of the Dwining stamp, when they have had the control of nations, often do good simply from the dictates of superior wisdom—the wisdom of the serpent—which, no Ramorney ever did. The skill with which the crawling, paltry leech controls his fierce lord; the contempt for his power and pride shown in Dwining's adroit sneers, and above all, the ease with which the latter casts into the shade Ramorney's fancied superiority in wickedness, is well set forth—and such a character ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... me, 'Come,' and he has given me 'rest.' I have had a long, long struggle, but the conflict is over. Ah, He is so different from human creditors! I have been a poor debtor, chased, hunted, oppressed, goaded almost to insanity, and none took pity on me, because I owed them a few paltry dollars, which I had the heart to pay, but, through the robberies of another, and their oppressions, could not. But what a debt I owed my Savior! Yet, without a word of reproach, he has forgiven ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... the world lay newly made under my eyes. Vastly as my mind had stretched to embrace the idea of a great country, when I exchanged Polotzk for America, it was no such enlargement as I now experienced, when in place of the measurable earth, with its paltry tale of historic centuries, I was given the illimitable universe to contemplate, with the numberless ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... was THE BEST in the universe. The most ridiculous part of the affair is, that the toothpick-case was his, after all—he had left it on the Nawaub's table at tiffin. I can't conceive what madness prompted him to fight about such a paltry bauble; he had much better have yielded it at once, when he saw I was determined to have it. From this slight specimen of my adventures, the reader will perceive that my life has been one of no ordinary interest; and, in fact, I may say that I have led a more remarkable life than ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray |
